11 sitting together: Princess says must do on board?

[psychtobe]

11 of us are sailing in August on Sapphire. We are in 4 cabins, but all assigned to late traditional seating.

 

Originally I was told we were seated at 2 adjacent tables of 6 each.

 

When I called to confirm this today, the agent said we need to make those kinds of arrangement onboard, with the maitre d' at dinner the first night.

 

Does this sound right? I'm worried when we show up we'll all be split up. I thought we made these arrangements in advance; don't they have an advanced seating chart or something?

[bdjam]

Princess should cross reference your booking numbers for dinner seating and it should be done before sailing. The representative might not have understood what you were asking – try again.

[jayevee44]

Only one of my seven cruises had traditional seating, so I don’t know if our experience was typical. This cruise was on the Diamond Princess in March of last year.

 

There were 8 couples in our group and we had our bookings cross-referenced and asked that we be together for dinner. We were assigned to two tables of 8 each. The table and seat numbers were printed on our cruise cards. The tables were numbered consecutively, so we thought they would be next to each other, but they were about 50 feet apart with tables in between.

 

It appears that the person making the seating assignments tried to put us together, but did not have a chart of the table locations, so did not know that the assigned tables were not together.

 

Jim

[sunprincess]

Recently we had a cruise reunion with 12 of us. We were from all over, including UK. I got everyone's booking numbers & cabin numbers & forwarded this to my TA. She was able to get our table organized without a problem. One large table for us all.

You can always try to email the Maitre D yourself with the info.

They do prepare the first draft of the seating chart prior to the cruise. Of course the first day or 2 many make changes to this.

Good Luck!

[Pam in CA]

You've been given good advice. Have your TAs cross-reference all of the bookings (that means that everyone's TA needs everyone else's booking #s) which is the first step. Once that's done, use Sunprincess' advice and email the Maitre D onboard. If you don't know who that is, just email sapphireprincess@princesscruises.com and put something like "Maitre D: Sailing <date> Table Request" in the Subject.

[Cruisewoman79]

Absolutely this is your TA's job! Make them do this and yes, double-check with the dining room upon embarkation.

 

I do this for groups all the time.

Have a great cruise!

[Nancyquilts]

And when you get on board, be sure to see the Maitre d' early to confirm - he should have posted hours on boarding day. Nancy

[Bettyboop66]

Does anyone know if you can make reservations for Personal Choice dining before you board There will be 12 or 14 of us sailing but we want personal choice. Thanks for the help.

[Next]

We sailed the Golden and cross referenced parties of 2, 4, & 3.

 

We had traditional seating. First time on Princess.

 

We learned quickly that the Princess dining rooms have very few large tables that can accomodate that many. When we got to the dining room they had us spread out at three tables and not near each other. The first night was a zoo and there was much confusion in the dining room,i.e there seemed to be several mix ups in seating. The maitre 'd was a consumate professional and did the best he could that night to accomadate us. My wife and I ended up volunteering to sit at a table of strangers so my daughter could be seated with the rest of our group (her cousins) at a single table.

 

We ended up having a wonderful time that night and met some nice people. The next night the maitre 'd organized a large round table for 9 and we sat together the rest of the cruise. The people from our first night would make it a point to stop by and say hello each night either entering or leaving.

 

My recollection of the first night was that there were some demanding passengers that were inisisting that the Maitre 'd fix things on the spot. The man was doing the best he could with a flawed seating manifest. It was the first night and I was still in non-vacation hyper-mode. I found myself starting down the demanding path but quickly realized I was on vacation and chilled out. In the end, it all worked out. :)

[psychtobe]

thank you for all this great info!

 

unfortunately I used an online booking agent, so no TA - but I will call Princess again, AND email with the subject line suggested. Hopefully we can be seated near each other, as my family and my sister's boyfriend's family are meeting for the first time on this trip! on second thought, maybe dispersed seating wouldn't be such a bad idea...

[Pam in CA]

Does anyone know if you can make reservations for Personal Choice dining before you board There will be 12 or 14 of us sailing but we want personal choice.

The simple answer is, "No." You'll need to arrange this with the Maitre D when you board. And, you'll probably need to make a reservation for the entire cruise. (Which IMHO, defeats the purpose of PC dining. You might as well select Traditional.) I don't know of any tables that will accommodate 14 so you might have to arrange for 2 tables near each other. I've seen this where the people mixed up who was sitting at each table so that everyone had a chance to sit with everyone else.