World Fresh Marketplace

We are sailing on the Caribbean Princess next month. I have read that the World Fresh Marketplace is just a small buffet. I know they will make an omelet in the morning but will they make you a custom-made sandwich for lunch? How, is it different than the Horizon Court?

We are sailing on the Caribbean Princess next month. I have read that the World Fresh Marketplace is just a small buffet. I know they will make an omelet in the morning but will they make you a custom-made sandwich for lunch? How, is it different than the Horizon Court?

It is a little bigger and much better than the Horizon Courts on all the other Princess ships except the Royal Class ships. Yes they will make you a custom sandwich for lunch.

Best buffet on any Princess ship

So, it is an upgrade to the Horizzon court? Sounds good. Any other ships in the fleet have it?

We were on Caribbean Princess in January for 14 days.

On port days when we stayed on the ship we were always happy enough with the World Fresh Marketplace for lunch. :)

We were on the CB in April 2017, shortly after the big drydock when the world fresh marketplace was added. I am not a buffet person but my husband LOVES them. Even he couldn’t get anything good at the buffet on the CB. We didn’t feel like we missed out though. We had a suite so we had breakfast

In Sabatini’s most days and when we weren’t eating in Club Class we enjoyed the pizza, burgers, and stuff on the lido.

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The wife and I were on the CB this summer on a B2B. We have traveled with Princess on 25+ cruises, on every ship from the early Sun class to the present big ship Royal class. Seen a lot of food venues come and go. While we did not eat at the buffet but a time or two, I walked through the WFM numerous times. Based on my observations the cruiseline has made cutbacks in quantity and quality in food. The offerings in the breakfast and lunch buffets were extremely skinny, made it hard to believe I was on a Princess cruise. The food on this ship would have been a serious disappointment if we had not been in a suite and thoroughly enjoyed the Sabatinis breakfast and club class dinning. Princess is still where I belong, but I don't believe WFM is the way forward.

We Club Class Dining on At Sea Days which certainly was better ... but we were OK with World Fresh Marketplace which had great service from their staff getting us drinks, etc. when we were there on port days. :)

We were on Caribbean Princess in January for 14 days.

On port days when we stayed on the ship we were always happy enough with the World Fresh Marketplace for lunch. :)

Hi LuLu,

Thanks for sharing. Don’t forget you promised me a dance on our next cruise. LOL

Tony

Best buffet on any Princess ship

The Royal class have by far the best buffets.

We were on the Caribbean this year. The Horizon Ct. was re-designed for better flow and better seating and re-named World Fresh Marketplace. We found the selections to be better than on other ships of this class.We enjoyed the pre-made sandwiches. I think you can ask for sandwiches made to order.

The old Cafe Carib area is now Planks and Steamers with a $12/pp surcharge for evening dinner. No charge for breakfast and lunch. The old Cafe Carib serving line is open at various times. This is where you can get omelets made to order.

We are sailing on the Caribbean Princess next month. I have read that the World Fresh Marketplace is just a small buffet. I know they will make an omelet in the morning but will they make you a custom-made sandwich for lunch? How, is it different than the Horizon Court?

We sailed CB July 7-14, 2018.

Breakfast and lunch were fine. The space is the old Horizon court but they've changed the layout. It has two sides that open and close like Horizon court did.

There were Omelets in the Steamers/ Planks (old Cafe Caribe) breakfast buffet so head back there in the morning.

Lunch did have a sandwich station in WFM.

The big difference from prior Grand Class ships was in the Dinner offerings. (I won't compare to Royal class because that is different).

Prior on CB and currently on other Grand class ships the dinner is served in Cafe Caribe. Last we saw, tables are set for dinner, glassware, placemats, cutlery and napkins, servers in "dinner"vests.

On CB WFM has no table dinner setup at all, servers in daytime shirts. While this is not a big deal, it did add to the "not dinner" atmosphere. (In the two pay restaurants now occupying Cafe Caribe -- Planks and Steamers -- the tables were set and the waiters were dressed in the usual dinner way).

WFM dinner food was more like "lunch fare" in our opinion. The carvings were unimpressive. One night was cuts of roast beef being sliced into a sauce, ended up looking kinda like soup. The night german food was on the world food section they were carving pork hocks. (We love the german night and thought it was great, but pork hocks is definitely not the main event for a proper dinner carving!).

The last night they were carving meatloaf ( it was round and tubular like a salami and they were slicing it up).

So overall buffet dinner choices were:

-the described above carving station, some sides, a specialty main served in "hot pots", one or two other things.

-one hot side "family" buffet - plain pasta (marinara sauce, maybe a cream sauce) chicken fingers, fries, ---> plain and simple for kids.

-other hot side "international" choice - mains and sides.

-soup station with two soups

We found the quality and creativeness / complexity of the dishes, plus the atmosphere at dinner to be more Cafeteria than cruise buffet. Or more lunch type than dinner quality. Certainly not dining room dinner quality as the Princess buffets of the past were.

Sure it was fine. Yes we found something we liked. Did it "wow" us? Nope. It made us decide to not cruise a ship with WFM under the current plan.

I had a conversation with some of the senior chef staff who were at the WFM one night inspecting and asking us for passenger comments - they said the WFM was a work in progress and Princess was trying it out in order to make changes to Princess and innovate as other lines have ( push to pay dining by not offering a decent dinner alternative) but they knew they were not there yet.

(I find it very telling that Crown's drydock had everything CB had done EXCEPT WFM done to it. Clearly Princess realizes they haven't figured it out yet).

The chefs said they change it up and try different things almost weekly so everyone's experiences reported here will be somewhat different depending what week they sailed and what they were doing that week.

I was on CB right after big dry dock and IMO WFM was terrible. Worse than Golden Coral in the states, which is pretty bad. Luckily I was in a suite so always had a good breakfast in Sabitini’s. With early dinner lunch was not a priority.

The choices were very limited for lunch or dinner and tasteless. Planks & Steamers is a rip off. This is one ship I avoid like the plague

We sailed on the CB last summer and enjoyed the revamped Lido food offerings. We did not eat at Planks or Steamers since we always like to have dinner in traditional dining. We had a Lido Deck cabin and ate more at the buffet for breakfast than we normally do on cruises primarily because it was quick and easy to get something. Our itinerary was port intensive, so we did not want to waste time having breakfast in the dining room on a lot of mornings.

IS the CB only ship that has World fresh Marketplace?

What about Emerald princess?

IS the CB only ship that has World fresh Marketplace?

 

What about :(Emerald princess?

As far as I know CB is the only ship - TG. Also OP said about pre-made sandwiches which were mostly bread with maybe 1 slice of meat or thin smear of tuna. I got better sandwiches on high school cafeteria line :(

I was on CB right after big dry dock and IMO WFM was terrible. Worse than Golden Coral in the states, which is pretty bad. Luckily I was in a suite so always had a good breakfast in Sabitini’s. With early dinner lunch was not a priority.

The choices were very limited for lunch or dinner and tasteless. Planks & Steamers is a rip off. This is one ship I avoid like the plague

Was that in April 2017?

Was that in April 2017?

Yep. I had tons of issues with that cruise. WFM was just one of them.

I was on CB right after big dry dock and IMO WFM was terrible. Worse than Golden Coral in the states, which is pretty bad. Luckily I was in a suite so always had a good breakfast in Sabitini’s. With early dinner lunch was not a priority.

The choices were very limited for lunch or dinner and tasteless. Planks & Steamers is a rip off. This is one ship I avoid like the plague

Horses for Courses... We loved the WFM on the Caribbean when we sailed in March. Only really ate there for breakfast / lunch and enjoyed the sandwiches. We also really enjoyed Planks and thought $12 was good value. Our Circle Caribbean cruise was one of our best cruises with Princess.

Hi LuLu,

Thanks for sharing. Don’t forget you promised me a dance on our next cruise. LOL

Tony

For sure, Tony!

Does "The Rowboat" have a dance floor? :D

LuLu

The wife and I were on the CB this summer on a B2B. We have traveled with Princess on 25+ cruises, on every ship from the early Sun class to the present big ship Royal class. Seen a lot of food venues come and go. While we did not eat at the buffet but a time or two, I walked through the WFM numerous times. Based on my observations the cruiseline has made cutbacks in quantity and quality in food. The offerings in the breakfast and lunch buffets were extremely skinny, made it hard to believe I was on a Princess cruise. The food on this ship would have been a serious disappointment if we had not been in a suite and thoroughly enjoyed the Sabatinis breakfast and club class dinning. Princess is still where I belong, but I don't believe WFM is the way forward.

Totally agree with this post about the food on the CB. What happened to my Princess?!?WFM is certainly many steps backward. Been on the CB eight times, but the cruise last month confirmed that we will not sail this ship again.

I was on CB right after big dry dock and IMO WFM was terrible. Worse than Golden Coral in the states, which is pretty bad. Luckily I was in a suite so always had a good breakfast in Sabitini’s. With early dinner lunch was not a priority.

The choices were very limited for lunch or dinner and tasteless. Planks & Steamers is a rip off. This is one ship I avoid like the plague

Agree with this post. It was terrible and dining on this ship has become a low class experience. So, so sad.

Well I hope 16 months since inception that all the "tweaking" has made the WFM better. :o

Its not like the first food rodeo for Princess but some of venue these changes sure make it look that way. :rolleyes:

The Royal class have by far the best buffets.

I don't think Paul has yet to experience a Royal class buffet.

He's in for a real treat someday. :cool:

I was on CB right after big dry dock and IMO WFM was terrible. Worse than Golden Coral in the states, which is pretty bad. Luckily I was in a suite so always had a good breakfast in Sabitini’s. With early dinner lunch was not a priority.

The choices were very limited for lunch or dinner and tasteless. Planks & Steamers is a rip off. This is one ship I avoid like the plague

I'm not sure that the comment about Golden Corral was meant to be funny but if there's the slightest truth to it, Princess has slipped beyond all help. :(

I've never been to a Golden Coral, but I know the food quality seriously took a turn for the worse....really bad...compared to what it was.