Dining on Sky Princess

[GK95]

My husband, daughter (14) and I will be on the Sky Princess for a 7-day cruise in early 2023. We’re going to make reservations at two specialty dining sites during the week but the other nights I’m not sure if I should make main dining reservations or if some of the restaurants on board we can walk up but still get waiter service. I’ve tried looking online for some menus for non-specialty places but can’t locate any.
 

We love to try different types of food and don’t want to do quick service restaurants the other nights, but are more casual in nature and don’t want to plan out every dinner in advance. 

[Rick&Jeannie]

For walk up in a MDR you may have to wait a few minutes but ever since the restart we've been able to do so wit the worst wait time about 2 minutes. 

[wowzz]

Alfredo's, the pizza restaurant, is waiter service, no charge, and do not take reservations, so you could also eat there.

[Alcairns]

If you like sushi the Ocean Terrace Sushi bar is great and is usually very quiet. It is an Al a carte menu which we paid about $30 for a meal for two. 

[GK95]

On 9/17/2022 at 4:44 AM, wowzz said:

Alfredo's, the pizza restaurant, is waiter service, no charge, and do not take reservations, so you could also eat there.

Perfect! We love pizza 😃

[GK95]

On 9/17/2022 at 8:57 AM, Alcairns said:

If you like sushi the Ocean Terrace Sushi bar is great and is usually very quiet. It is an Al a carte menu which we paid about $30 for a meal for two. 

My family aren’t sushi fans but maybe I can convince them to give the cooked dishes a try. I love it so if they don’t want to go, I’ll head over by myself for some quiet time and sushi. 

[ghstudio]

You actually can avoid the main dining rooms completely and probably eat a better variety of more interesting and better seasoned food by eating in the buffet for dinner.  Recently off the Sky, we found the dining room food pretty uninteresting....you can view the menu each day on the medallion app and decide if you want the main dining room at all that night.  The Pizza is excellent....and they will make calzones and smaller pizzas if you don't want a large one.  BTW, we were club class and the "extra dish" was just another average meal...no tableside preparation.  My DW prefers a sit down, waiter dinner, so we ate in the club class dining room....but if I were alone, I'd probably skip it altogether for dinner.

Edited September 21, 2022 by ghstudio

[candy4040]

Also, on Lido deck there should be hamburgers, fries and maybe tacos available.

 

[Alcairns]

Look at the Patter daily as the buffet has different themed meals every night. Italian is very good!

[Dancer Bob]

I'm also on Sky Princess in January. I was recently on another ship, not Princess, you were required to use an app for everything- menus, ordering. The restaurant was such an aggravation I quickly migrated to the buffet. Does Princess use a similar system? I try to restrain myself to 2,000 Calories/day even on a cruise ship and usually use the buffet anyway, so it sounds like an excellent choice. But I'm travelling with a group, I'd like to tell the organiser if I won't be putting up with restaurant hassles.

[ghstudio]

2 hours ago, Dancer Bob said:

I'm also on Sky Princess in January. I was recently on another ship, not Princess, you were required to use an app for everything- menus, ordering. The restaurant was such an aggravation I quickly migrated to the buffet. Does Princess use a similar system?

No...princess dining in the restaurants is the standard order from the waiter, etc. 

 

What cruise line had you ordering from your application???

[johnmik1]

9 hours ago, ghstudio said:

You actually can avoid the main dining rooms completely and probably eat a better variety of more interesting and better seasoned food by eating in the buffet for dinner.  Recently off the Sky, we found the dining room food pretty uninteresting....you can view the menu each day on the medallion app and decide if you want the main dining room at all that night.  The Pizza is excellent....and they will make calzones and smaller pizzas if you don't want a large one.  BTW, we were club class and the "extra dish" was just another average meal...no tableside preparation.  My DW prefers a sit down, waiter dinner, so we ate in the club class dining room....but if I were alone, I'd probably skip it altogether for dinner.

We just returned from 28 nights on Sky and the MDR choices for dinner were so abysmal,that we only ate there 6 or 7 times.We are planning on using other lines until Princess changes their menus.

[Kay S]

8 hours ago, johnmik1 said:

We just returned from 28 nights on Sky and the MDR choices for dinner were so abysmal,that we only ate there 6 or 7 times.We are planning on using other lines until Princess changes their menus.

I understand that thinking.  We have a 14 day cruise on the Sky in June, so I have been researching the options other than MDR.  Because this trip is financed by FCC and OBC, I figure this is a good time to do the upcharge venues.  Which ones did you use?

[johnmik1]

1 hour ago, Kay S said:

I understand that thinking.  We have a 14 day cruise on the Sky in June, so I have been researching the options other than MDR.  Because this trip is financed by FCC and OBC, I figure this is a good time to do the upcharge venues.  Which ones did you use?

We went to Sabatini's and Crown Grille(with our room steward and her husband) and they were both excellent.Some of the lunchs in the MDR were quite good,just not the dinners.We also ate in Alfredo's a few times.Also invited twice to the most traveled luncheon.

[Kay S]

33 minutes ago, johnmik1 said:

We went to Sabatini's and Crown Grille(with our room steward and her husband) and they were both excellent.Some of the lunchs in the MDR were quite good,just not the dinners.We also ate in Alfredo's a few times.Also invited twice to the most traveled luncheon.

I guess I'll be doing lamb chops more than once in the CG on this cruise.  I have always thought they do the best chops of anyone.  I'm glad the Sky is retaining the traditional Princess restaurants.

[Rick&Jeannie]

Another vote for Crown Grill!

[Senga]

We were on a 14 night Alaska cruise on the Grand and we loved the main dining room choices and food.  Everything was excellent.

[wowzz]

32 minutes ago, Senga said:

We were on a 14 night Alaska cruise on the Grand and we loved the main dining room choices and food.  Everything was excellent.

Although the OP is talking about Sky, so not actually relevant.

[Senga]

@wowzzSO sorry.  I thought I had read numerous posts about the menus being the same ship wide.  My mistake.

[royallondon]

Just home from a 7 night Sky Princess cruise.

 

We had pre booked 2 specialty restaurants (Crown & Sabatini’s) but for the other 5 nights went to one of the the 3 MDR’s without a reservation.  Despite the cruise being very busy (3250 passengers) we visited the Soleil restaurant on deck 5 at around 7.30pm and never had to wait more then a couple of mins and most times were seated straight away.  It certainly helps if your willing to share a table, but those wanting a table for 2 had a minimal wait.

Regards

 

[JF - retired RRT]

23 hours ago, Senga said:

@wowzzSO sorry.  I thought I had read numerous posts about the menus being the same ship wide.  My mistake.

They are the same, but the prep can be different. It depends on the chef and his staff.

[Senga]

4 minutes ago, JF - retired RRT said:

They are the same, but the prep can be different. It depends on the chef and his staff.

Thanks.  I was sure that’s what I had read on numerous posts; same menus.

[wowzz]

24 minutes ago, Senga said:

Thanks.  I was sure that’s what I had read on numerous posts; same menus.

Same menus,  but in our experience the presentation and servide can vary dramatically from ship to ship.

[Martha1974]

46 minutes ago, royallondon said:

Just home from a 7 night Sky Princess cruise.

 

We had pre booked 2 specialty restaurants (Crown & Sabatini’s) but for the other 5 nights went to one of the the 3 MDR’s without a reservation.  Despite the cruise being very busy (3250 passengers) we visited the Soleil restaurant on deck 5 at around 7.30pm and never had to wait more then a couple of mins and most times were seated straight away.  It certainly helps if your willing to share a table, but those wanting a table for 2 had a minimal wait.

Regards

 

We’re just off the same cruise and can agree - we did have MDR bookings for some nights but there were no queues of “non-reservations” people when we arrived at the restaurants (all our bookings were for 7:30). Incidentally though, for the 2 nights that we ate in the buffet instead of the MDR or SD restaurants we felt the quality was better than other ship’s buffets that we have eaten in, and a really good alternative when we wanted something quick or just a starter & main or a main & dessert rather than the full “MDR experience”. I appreciate that’s not to everyone’s taste but we enjoyed it 😁