Diamond Princess - Japan - Forced Traditional Dining

[patrickmoran]

We will be on this cruise in early January. We also will tour with Estancia. They require payment in British pounds. Did you pay in pounds? If yes, where did you get yours? Thanks

[Aulanis]

16 minutes ago, patrickmoran said:

We will be on this cruise in early January.

What cruise? are you posting in the correct thread? This is about dining?

If not maybe edit it to "posted in error".

Edited November 15, 2018 by Aulanis

[rocklinmom]

Wow this is interesting!  I have been looking at the 2020 Japan cruises on Diamond and I didn't know they had only traditional dining.  I did a mock booking and it shows anytime dining as an option, so maybe that is a choice now (?).  I think we would prefer that as well.  But I don't know because several airfare quotes for July 2019 come up as 11K (??!) for five of us in economy...so probably not.  Sounds like a unique itinerary though. 

[Brisbane41]

58 minutes ago, rocklinmom said:

Wow this is interesting!  I have been looking at the 2020 Japan cruises on Diamond and I didn't know they had only traditional dining.  I did a mock booking and it shows anytime dining as an option, so maybe that is a choice now (?).  I think we would prefer that as well.  But I don't know because several airfare quotes for July 2019 come up as 11K (??!) for five of us in economy...so probably not.  Sounds like a unique itinerary though. 

 

I am happy to say that I have booked for 2020 in Japan and that Princess have changed the system to allow any-time dining to resume. I am very happy with that as I put a lot of effort into contacting Princess to let them know that their system of forced traditional dining for the entire passenger compliment was not working.

 

That said I had a recent cruise on Diamond Princess just last month. It was traditional dining but fortunately they managed to arrange a brilliant table where we all had a great time. We were all relatively same age limit and the nationality mix was more diverse making it even better. The table was a mix of Australian, American, Mexican, German, New Zealand and we were pretty much the last ones out of the dining room each night headed to the nearest bar. 

 

Having said that on all previous cruises the system did not work. I know they tried hard recently to make it work by matching age groups and other methods but originally having a table for 8 where only 2 turn up of vastly huge age groups and maybe absolutely nothing in common then the system does not work at all. Too many people were opting out and going to the buffet because any-time dining was not an option. The only time the dining rooms were popular was on open seating when the ship was late in port.

 

I am glad to see this change back to normal because it helps with the flexibility of cruising by having any-time dining back.