Caribbean Princess + Suites Questions

[Nicole721]

We just got back from a cruise on Carnival and to ease our Post Cruise Depression, we're looking into booking another cruise. After a lot of research, we've really been looking into Princess.

 

A few questions for anyone who can answer...

 

1. The dining "choices" are a bit confusing to me...can anyone explain the difference between the two?

 

2. Of the four of us cruising, two of us will be 19 and 20 when we sail. Carnival doesn't offer any activities including this age range but I hear Princess does? Any word on that?

 

3. We're looking into booking an aft Vista Suite. If anyone has any pictures or reviews, it'd really be appreciated :)

 

If anyone has any other tips or suggestions, I'd really love to hear them!

 

TIA!

 

-Nic :)

[jerseygirl3]

I think you are going to love Princess. We've cruised Carnival many times, and although we enjoy it (some more than others), we love Princess.

 

The only question I can answer for you is the dining time question. You have a choice between Traditional Early or Late. That works the way it does on Carnival. You are given a set time either early or late dining. Personal Choice dining leaves the decision up to you. You can show up for dinner at any time you'd like between set hours (I believe it's 5:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.). However, you can also try to make reservations for Personal Choice Dining on any given night or all of the nights. In other words, say you like Table 22 at 7:00 p.m. (you had it the first night and decided you really liked it). You can try to make (notice I say "try", it's not a guarantee) reservations for that table at that time in the Personal Choice dining room for the rest of the week, or any particular evening.

 

What we tended to do was, if we knew we wanted to eat at a particular time on any given night, we called that morning to see if the time we wanted was available. If it was, fine, we took it. If it wasn't, we showed up at that time and waited to be seated. The longest we ever waited the entire week was 20 minutes, and that was on one of the formal nights. Every other night we were seated immediately. On the night we had to wait, we were given a beeper, and we went to the bar and had a drink before dinner.

 

We love Personal Choice dining. It's more like a restaurant. But if you like Traditional with the same wait staff and tablemates, then maybe you'd want to stick to Traditional. I say give the PC dining a chance. You will probably find you like it.

 

BTW, we found no difference whatsoever in the level of service.