Ultimate Balcony Dining, Dinner or Breakfast - Your Experiences and Take on it?

Am considering UBD on our next cruise on the Royal as we have a angled bigger balcony ( just an excuse to try!), and was wondering what it was like, what it cost, and was it worth it? I always have room service coffee and juice on my balcony in the morning before going to the MDR for breakfast, but was thinking of doing UBD instead.

Any and all information would be greatly appreciated.

Pooh

Am considering UBD on our next cruise on the Royal as we have a angled bigger balcony ( just an excuse to try!), and was wondering what it was like, what it cost, and was it worth it? I always have room service coffee and juice on my balcony in the morning before going to the MDR for breakfast, but was thinking of doing UBD instead.

 

Any and all information would be greatly appreciated.

 

Pooh

We find the Ultimate Balcony Dinner to be worth every penny.

$100 for two, includes four course amazing meal, half bottle real champagne, welcome cocktail of choice, flowers you keep, and s photo, plus two wait staff to take care of your every need. It's amazing, and we do it in every cruise...

We haven't done the breakfast as we're not breakfast people really.. From what I've read about it, doesn't really seem as worth it as the dinner though. $40 for two, breakfast and juice, all delivered at once and no wait staff bringing it by course..

Dinner though - have it booked twice on our next cruise already! Lol...

I agree we did the breakfast and was very disappointed, it was basically just left there and for us to serve it ourselves. No table set up it was a balancing act, would never do it again. We booked the dinner and are looking so forward to it, can't wait.

Cherie

We have done the UBD for dinner. As others have said, the food and service are wonderful. We won't do it again because we do not have large appetites and far too much food was wasted.

We did the breakfast once. Once was enough.

Lots of food, but no real choices about what you get.

Slices of lox (cold salmon) with cream cheese & bagels, DH won't touch salmon. I love salmon, but not lox.

A bunch of pastries. Can't remember all the different things, maybe some bacon?, eggs, fruit, etc.

A small bottle of "rot gut" champagne and OJ.

If you like what they bring, it's worth the $40. If you're picky :rolleyes: , not so much.

The dinner is wonderful. We tried it on our first Princess cruise and have booked it for our upcoming cruise.

I've done the Balcony Breakfast twice and the UBDinner once. IMO, both were worth it.

It's true that all of the breakfast food was delivered at once, but that's certainly not a deterrent, IMO. There was more food than we could eat, so we opted to eat the quiches, bagels, and fresh fruit, and drank the champagne that morning. We saved the "breakfast breads" (assorted Danishes, rolls, etc) (kept the plate of breads covered with one of the lids that were used to keep the hot food plates warm) for the following morning, and ordered coffee, juice, and fresh fruit from room service to go with it. So in essence, at least to us, we had two balcony breakfasts.

The UBD is different, in that the various courses are served to you one at a time. We chose 24K margaritas for our pre-dinner beverages. The salad course was first, followed by our entrées (lobster, of course!!), which was followed by dessert. We chose to provide our own wines to accompany dinner because we have definite preferences.

It was a really fun experience, and made us feel very special and pampered.

Am considering UBD on our next cruise on the Royal as we have a angled bigger balcony ( just an excuse to try!), and was wondering what it was like, what it cost, and was it worth it? I always have room service coffee and juice on my balcony in the morning before going to the MDR for breakfast, but was thinking of doing UBD instead.

 

Any and all information would be greatly appreciated.

 

Pooh

We do the breakfast on our first sea day. We change the items that we don't want. We do the dinner on our last night of the cruise.

Have done both several times and both were enjoyable.

On an Alaskan cruise we did the breakfast as we cruised glacier bay and did the UBD as we cruised college fjords both creating an amazing experience.

Our last breakfast we did with our daughter .....enough food for all.

For the breakfast our table was set up prior to food arriving. Tablecloth and all....

If you are looking for the romantic experience UBD is wonderful.

Lots of food with either. Sometimes we just want to create the experience to enhance the cruise. Every time our wait staff was timely, set up the tables and with the dinner coursed it perfectly. Would do both again depending on the cruise and ports. Imagine having the champagne breakfast as you sailed into Lisbon under the bridge at sunrise!

Thank you guys so much for your input! Knowing me (that translates into knowing hubby! grin), I think I would forego the UBD breakfast and just continue with what I am doing maybe one day adding some croissants. Hubby and I like breakfast in the dining room, especially on sea days.

But the dinner sounds intriguing! Too bad they don't have pricing for non-drinkers, but still might try it just once.

Pooh

We haven't done the breakfast but we did a dinner. It was on Caribbean Princess with a much large balcony than any on Royal/Regal.

The only thing I can add is this: after dinner, my wife said she had never felt more pampered in her life.

Two thumbs up for the dinner. We have done it twice and we are looking forward to enjoying it again shortly.

Absolute thumbs up for dinner. We've done it twice, and honestly, we figure out which night we'll do UBD before booking the cruise.

Not trying to hijack this thread, but we did the UBD (dinner) on our last princess cruise. it was great, more food than we could eat, maybe the best meal I've ever had.

But, when we were done, we wanted to give our 2 servers a tip. i agonized over how much to give them for a few days before the dinner. For those who have done it, would you mind sharing how much of a tip you gave? I would love to have sort of ballpark figure for next time.

We ended up giving them $40.

Thanks

ML

We did both the dinner and breakfast in January -- looking forward to booking the dinner again on our upcoming cruise. Will skip the breakfast.

As others have said, the dinner was worth every penny -- my only issue was with the scheduler, who was completely inflexible with the time ( I wanted sunset, and was told "there won't be a sunset" ????????? Pretty sure the sun sets every evening.). Aside from the fact that yes, the sun did set that evening, the dinner was AMAZING, service delightful and I highly recommend the UBD.

Breakfast was truly lackluster. I have a special needs diet (completely accommodated for the UBD) so needed to swap out the entree, and can't eat the pastries :-( So I ordered an omelet. What I got was the same velveta cheese meh omelet that they serve in the buffet. Hubby's breakfast was quite nice though. The food was summarily brought in, and stacked on the small table -- definitely a balancing act trying to figure out what wa in each dish, and to manage them on the small table.

We would like to do the UBD on our next cruise. How do we book it now or should we wait and do it on the ship?

We would like to do the UBD on our next cruise. How do we book it now or should we wait and do it on the ship?

You can book in advance and choose your date. Go to your cruise personalizer, then Onboard reservations, then Culinary Delights and scroll down to Ultimate Balcony Dinner or Breakfast..

Not trying to hijack this thread, but we did the UBD (dinner) on our last princess cruise. it was great, more food than we could eat, maybe the best meal I've ever had.

 

But, when we were done, we wanted to give our 2 servers a tip. i agonized over how much to give them for a few days before the dinner. For those who have done it, would you mind sharing how much of a tip you gave? I would love to have sort of ballpark figure for next time.

 

We ended up giving them $40.

I think we've usually done $20 each ($40 total), and I just checked my budget plan for our cruise next month, and that's how much I penciled in. (I do have a $160 contingency to be able to go above and beyond if needed across the week.)

Not trying to hijack this thread, but we did the UBD (dinner) on our last princess cruise. it was great, more food than we could eat, maybe the best meal I've ever had.

 

But, when we were done, we wanted to give our 2 servers a tip. i agonized over how much to give them for a few days before the dinner. For those who have done it, would you mind sharing how much of a tip you gave? I would love to have sort of ballpark figure for next time.

 

We ended up giving them $40.

 

Thanks

ML

$10-$20 per staff/server.

Usually there are 2 crew serving/helping.

 

But the dinner sounds intriguing! Too bad they don't have pricing for non-drinkers, but still might try it just once.

 

Pooh

We have been wanting to book a UBD, but we are not drinkers, so we haven't felt it was worth it to us. I'd book it in a heartbeat on our next cruise since we will have an extended balcony, but I seriously doubt they would give us a price reduction for no alcohol. :(

You can book in advance and choose your date. Go to your cruise personalizer, then Onboard reservations, then Culinary Delights and scroll down to Ultimate Balcony Dinner or Breakfast..

You can pre-book your date but not the time, which has to be agreed once on board. Apparently they only do a maximum of four each evening, two at 6pm and two at 8pm.

I think that the reason one may not be able to book a time is that suite passengers have some 'priority', but only with respect to timing. So, if you pre-book and select your evening, you won't be bumped from the evening for a later booking suite passenger, but you will probably not be contacted to discuss your booking time etc., until they have first contacted any suite passengers taking UBD on the same evening.

We are next cruising in December, when sunset will be around 5.45 most evenings (except when the port's local time zone is out of position for its longitude).

We will, however, go for 8pm (and have a gin and tonic - at sunset) as we have deliberately selected days when our scheduled departure time is 10pm.

I have a question on this as well, can you get it for one person even if there are two of you in the cabin? Hubby wants to do the breakfast one, but I often don't want/can't eat breakfast. So for me, it could be a total waste of money.

Thanks

Lisa

thanks Reedprincess. Found It!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have a question on this as well, can you get it for one person even if there are two of you in the cabin? Hubby wants to do the breakfast one, but I often don't want/can't eat breakfast. So for me, it could be a total waste of money.

 

Thanks

 

Lisa

Nope. It's priced as a total package, not per person. So it's all other nothing.. He could order breakfast for just himself but it's still the $40 whether you join in or not...

We did the UBD on the Regal this past January and it was amazing! Unfortunately, due to high winds and rain, we ended up having it inside our balcony cabin but it was still amazing. Crazy amount of food but all well-prepared and excellent! It was our anniversary so they brought us extra desserts along with their birthday chocolate cake so we ended up putting much of the desserts in the fridge to eat the next couple of days. The only thing we really didn't like was the canapes so that was a waste but we did manage to pretty much finish everything else.

Well worth the $100. Planning to book it again on the Royal in January 2019 and going to purchase it for my son and daughter-in-laws honeymoon cruise this coming January.