Personal choice dining vs traditional

[med510]

We are on the Sea Princess Nov 19 and are trying to decide if we should try Personal Choice dining vs the second seating. Does any one have any pro's or con's?

 

Thank you

[Franknca]

We are on the Sea Princess Nov 19 and are trying to decide if we should try Personal Choice dining vs the second seating. Does any one have any pro's or con's?

 

Thank you

 

This question comes up all the time and you will hear how personal choice gives you the flexibility to dine when you want. That's true, as long as a lot of passengers don't also want to dine at that same time. Then you'll have to wait for a table. You'll be told you can get around that by making a reservation. So now you have a fixed time after all, right. You'll be told that you can make that reservation with the same wait staff if you really liked them. Again, how does that differ from having a fixed seating?

 

Now my answer to your question is neither. We always book first seating. It allows us to get to the evening performances at a reasonable time, do some gambling and still turn in early enough to catch a morning shore excursion. But if you're a late night person, second seating or PC might appeal to you. Everyone is different. For example, we like morning excursions and then prefer to relax on board in the afternoon so we are ready for dinner when first seating starts. We like having the same wait staff who get to know your needs.

 

About 18 couples in our development just returned from a Mediterranean cruise where they had PC dining and they said they'd never do it again for the reasons I mentioned. BTW, we embark on the Sea Princess on 10/24 and take her from Quebec City to Fort Lauderdale where it can start cruising the Caribbean. I'll be interested in knowing how your Caribbean cruise goes as we have a two week cruise on the Sea Princess again in March.

Frank-in-CA

[med510]

Thank you for your prompt response. We have had both very good and very bad experiences with dining. Last year we had wonderful table mates that have remained dear friends. Two years ago on Sun we dreaded to go to dinner.....that was a 10 day cruise, this is 14. I appreciate your comments about having to wait for a table. Thank you for your input.

[merela]

We are on the Sea Princess Nov 19 and are trying to decide if we should try Personal Choice dining vs the second seating. Does any one have any pro's or con's?

 

Thank you

 

I was checking to see what itinerary you will be cruising, but the only dates I have for Sea Princess are 11/12 and 11/26 for 14-day Caribbean. In any case, if you are from the westcoast doing the Caribbean itinerary, I would do the 2nd seating, but if you are from the eastcoast, choose a seating that you normally eat your dinner. If you normally eat early, around 6pm, then you may want to consider PC dining rather than 2nd seating.

 

Also, are you travelling with a group of people or just with your cabin mate? We had a group of 10 and since we booked late, we didn't have a choice but go with PC dining. We prefer that actually because we have small children and we are from the west coast and it just wouldn't work to have set time for dinner. 6pm EST is 3pm PST and that's normally their nap time. With PC dining, even with a reservation, you can cancel it anytime.

 

If you are doing traditional 2nd seating, you are stuck with that group of diners for 14 days, unless you have your own group of people. But if you do PC dining, you can choose to dine with 2, 4, 6, or a large group of people. The thing is a table for 2 is hard to come by, so make reservation for a table for 2 even in PC dining rooms. You'll be told that you can only make reservation for 6pm and 8pm for PC dining rooms, but if you don't mind sharing a table with others, you can just walk up to the PC dining rooms and they should be able to seat you quickly.

 

It really depends on whether you like small talk with strangers or private time with your cabin mate.

 

As for service, you won't get the same service staff with PC dining, so you will have to explain your quirks (if you have any) at every meal to your wait staff. But if you happen upon a good service team, you can request to be seated at that table every time you eat there. When you have traditional dining, if you like something (like having a coke at every meal), your waiter will be able to get it for you before you even sat down....your waiter would have known your quirks by the 3rd night.

 

Ultimately, you have to decide.

[keep on cruising]

We have had Personal Choice dining on 7 day cruises on both the Golden and Diamond and have selected it again for our 10 day port intensive cruise to the British Isles next year.

 

We never make reservations; we go to dinner when we are ready to eat. We have never waited more than 10 minutes for a table (not really enought time to order a drink).

 

We like it for several reasons, we can eat when we want to eat. We don't have to be on a schedule and can still sit down and have great services. If we are on shore, reading a book, or just being lazy we don't have to rush for dinner. If we skipped lunch, we can eat a little earlier. If we feel like company, we can request a large table. If we would like to eat alone, we can do that too.

[travellady]

Personal choice dining is one of the big reasons we choose Princess and did so once agian for our upcoming Xmas cruise. We love the flexibility it offers, we found the food in the buffet, Diamond and Sapphire, to be pretty darned good. We do choose one of the nicer restaurants a few nights out of each 7 day sailing but we vacation to reduce stress and relax and find trying to get everyone to the dining room at a set time induced more stress than it was worth. For us, especially when all of us go (me, DH, 26 year old twin sons, and 12 year old son), having an assigned time for dining each night was too much.

 

We've taken 2 cruises where traditional dining was the only deal, other than a not so great dinner buffet. The kids decide not to show up more often than not and end up grabbing something from the buffet anyway because they have so many activities planned, sitting down for a 2 hour dinner each night doesn't appeal to them.

 

When it's just my husband and I, and when visiting ports are not the main point of the trip, we enjoy the traditional dining experience.

[JackieB]

I read a recent review that suggested that PC dining included dressing as you wish. Is this true?

 

The OP said it was nice to dress in shorts for all meals.

 

I thought PC dining was for time and table, not a dress-down as well.

 

Please advise?

 

Thanks,

Jack

[travellady]

You can choose to eat in the buffet on formal nights and no need to dress up here. if you choose one of the other sit-down restaurants, then yes, you will be asked to follow the dress code.

 

When we chose to do this on our Feb Diamond Princess cruise, we treated it as a laid back night for us and chose not to attend any shows. More will be dressed up for the shows on formal night, but I've noticed there are some that don't bother.

[Layla]

med510 - We have always chosen traditional 2nd seating. We like to have dinner at the same time every night and like having the same waitstaff. We have been very lucky in that we have had great table mates for our Princess cruises. We like 2nd seating because we like to relax on our balcony before dinner. We don't usually attend shows so the late seating doesn't affect us in that regard. Hope this helps with your decision.

[med510]

What about tipping on Personal Choice dining? Who do you tip at the end of the cruise? Is is automatically taken from your account and split? Thanks

[merela]

What about tipping on Personal Choice dining? Who do you tip at the end of the cruise? Is is automatically taken from your account and split? Thanks

 

Auto-tipping at $10 per day per person which includes tips for all your dining service people and room steward. I think it's a bargain however you look at it. You can tip more if you wish by using the envelopes provided at the Purser's Office. There were some discussions on this board about a year ago regarding how the $10 tip is split up and how the additional tip will be (or will not be) added to the pot. You'll have to do a search on this board to get more information on that.

 

For formal nights, you still have to dress up to eat in PC dining rooms. We tend to dress for dinner (not formal nights) as if we go out to a nice restaurant. The only place we dress down is to go to the Horizon Court.

[med510]

Merela, thank you. We are still trying to decide whether to do personal choice. We have been on many cruises, but never tried it.

[Franknca]

Merela, thank you. We are still trying to decide whether to do personal choice. We have been on many cruises, but never tried it.

 

Just because one signs up for traditional seating does not preclude them from also doing PC. But if one does, they should be courteous and let the wait staff and table mates know that you won't be there just like if you decided to do the specialty restaurant one evening.

 

The $10/day/pp started shortly after PC dining as the staff working there were not getting the tips those in traditional were. This way they put it all in a pot and split it up according to job description. If one allows the $10/day/pp tip and decides to give some of the help an additional tip, they are allowed to keep that. If the passenger doesn't allow the $10/day/pp tip, the service people are honor bound to put that tip in the pot. How the management know when this happens I don't know but if they are caught violating this code, they can be dismissed. But the service people are alerted to who is not allowing the tipping to be automatic. That was the story a couple of wait staff on different ships told me.

Frank

[merela]

Just because one signs up for traditional seating does not preclude them from also doing PC. But if one does, they should be courteous and let the wait staff and table mates know that you won't be there just like if you decided to do the specialty restaurant one evening.

 

If you sign up for traditional seating, it is best that you stick with it. If everyone from traditional seating decides to go PC dining, then the PC dining room would get overwhelmed by the extra people eating there. Although Princess do not enforce it, but once you decide to forego traditional dining and try PC dining, you can't go back to traditional dining.

 

Also, if you can't make your traditional seating, you must inform your tablemates or the maitre d' of the dining room, so they won't hold the table waiting for you to arrive.

 

If you think you might miss a couple of dinners (or at least can't make it to the designated seating time), then go with PC dining.

 

Although the 4 PC dining rooms on the Diamond and Sapphire no longer serve themed menus, it's still neat to be able to go to different restaurants. It breaks up the boredom of going to one location all the time. We can at least pretend we have access to 4 different restaurants while we are on the ship.

[LeopardGirl2]

We are waitlisted for 2nd seating TC dining on CB next week. I had booked PC dining first, but my DH said he did not want to wait to eat!

 

Having read good and bad reviews of PC dining, and the possibility that we may be using it after all, I am hoping it will be the perfect choice for us. We do not like to adhere to strict scheduling while on vacation. I like the fact that we can eat early or later as we please. :)

[JohnL1935]

I'm almost totally in agreement with Frankncal. My wife has diabetes so we generally eat early at home and prefer that time on a cruise. We enjoy dining with the same people and to get to exchange ideas, etc. while dining. We are seniors and do not socialize at this stage of our lives at home as we did in our younger and energetic years. So, the opportunity to socialize now is enjoyable to us. To be seated with new people each evening and have to exchange our life history over and over again drives me nuts let alone the stress of trying to remember names.... To sit by ourselves is somewhat boring since we chit chat for countless hours while driving, shopping, etc. while at home. We've had our share of loser tablemates but they seem to be the ones we never forget!!

 

John L.

[Redsgj]

We are doing PC dining on our first Princess cruise in January. This is one thing that I really liked about Princess. We have done many land based all inclusives so we are too used to going to eat when we feel like it on our vacations to change now ;)!

 

The way we look at it is we have to wait to get a table a lot of the time when we go out to eat at home (especially at peak times), it's not going to bother us to do the same on the ship! After all, on the cruise, we're on vacation :D!

 

Reds

[cynbar]

Just because one signs up for traditional seating does not preclude them from also doing PC. But if one does, they should be courteous and let the wait staff and table mates know that you won't be there just like if you decided to do the specialty restaurant one evening.

 

 

Frank

This seems to be a popular misconception. On most of the Princess ships, the maitre d' at the PC DRs checks your cruise card in the computer. If you're scheduled for traditional, you lose that spot if you go to the PC rooms. There may be times it slides through, but this is how it's supposed to work -- and, after all, it's only fair to the PC diners who would be stuck with longer waits if the tables are taken up by traditional diners. Of course, the traditional diners are free to skip a meal and eat at the buffet or one of the specialty restaurants without penalty---- and yes, it's polite to let your tablemates know in advance if possible.

[RASHOPPER2]

We have cruised many times on lines that have only traditional dining. The personal choice dining concept has now made us Princess Cruisers exclusively . When we sailed the Coral Princess, we never waited for PC more than 10 minutes. The wonderful thing about PC is that you can eat when you want to - depending on your day and your appetite. You also have the option of eating alone or joining others. Finally you ge to meet so many more people on the ship, because each evening you have new tablemates. We found the service in the PC dining room on the Coral to be excellent. All in all I definitely recommend PC dining.

[cruzinchris]

This is a good discussion, and just about every aspect of traditional vs. "anytime" dining has been covered. I simply want to add a few thoughts.

 

If there were more tables for two available for traditional (early seating), DH and I would likely opt for this. While we enjoy meeting other passengers, we enjoy our dinners alone for a couple of reasons:

 

1) When seated at a large table in the dining room, the meal often lasts close to two hours. DH and I rarely order dessert and never have coffee after dinner. We would not feel comfortable excusing ourselves from the table before everyone was finished, but the extended meal can restrict the choice of evening entertainment.

 

2) We have dinner early at home and prefer early seating, but we don't want to feel rushed on days when we've been in port. On a few of our cruises, we missed dinner entirely because we simply didn't have time to freshen up following a shore excursion. We were assigned late seating on one cruise and didn't like waiting to have dinner at 8:15.

 

One of the reasons that DH and I are sailing with Princess is the option to dine when, where, and with whom we choose. I'm afraid that DH would not want to cruise at all if "anytime" dining were not a choice.

 

Bon Voyage!

Chris

[Franknca]

This is a good discussion, and just about every aspect of traditional vs. "anytime" dining has been covered. I simply want to add a few thoughts.

 

 

I agree, it is a good discussion. We are all different and it is good that Princess can satisfy such a variety of needs. What works for me may not work for others. Now this party should have a good overall idea of the pluses and minuses of the different dining options and can chose what suits them the best.

Frank

[med510]

Thanks to everyone,

 

We are going to try PC dining this time. We appreciate you all.

 

Ed and Mary

[DesrtDrmr]

I think you'll love it!

We had always been hard core traditional seating diners. Our last cruise, on the Island, we had requested and received, a table for two in the traditional dining room. On our first evening, we arrived at our table for two, and found it about six inches away from another table for two, and surrounded by larger tables. Our waiter and assistant were very nice, and very busy with the larger tables. We decided that we would ask the Maitre 'D if we could change to PC. We did, and it was wonderful! We had no need to be at a dining room at any particular time. We went to the early show, and found ourselves passing a HUGE line of people waiting to get into the second show. Some nights we ate in the Horizon Court..........same food as in the dining room, some nights we ate at a large table in the dining room, and sometimes we ate at a table for two. It was all great.

The best things about Personal Choice is not having to answer to any schedule, or to feel hurried after a day ashore. It was very relaxing. :)

(We still followed the dress for the evening in the Patter.........even at Horizon court) We never had to wait more than 10 minutes at the dining room, and that was just twice.

[CruiseFever]

Good job discussing this frequently asked question/ hot topic. From what I've seen you've covered it all.

[momthecruisedirector]

We were on the Diamond this summer and had PC dining. We followed the advice of other posters. For the evenings we knew when/where we wanted to eat, as soon as we got to our room the first day we called the dining room (there is a button on your phone with the number) and booked two nights, for us it was the formal nights, so we would have the restaurant and time we wanted. The other days we had no problem making reservations for the same night as long as we were somewhat flexible about the time and two nights we just walked up to a restaurant and were seated within moments.