Anytime dining and tips

[shofer]

We are thinking of doing anytime dining on our next cruise in February as we are traveling w/our "kids" and their spouses and the set times are not agreeable to all. How do you tip your waiters, assuming we reserve a set table and time for us? We have only done Princess once before and had the automatic tips added to our bill but we had early set time dining.

[sunshine426]

IF you leave the automatic tip in place, then you don't have to add any. However, if you are very happy with your wait staff, they are not going to refuse a tip. We always do anytime dining, and did tip extra at the end of our trip to the waiter who served us most of the time.

[jillyfish]

If you find a waiter you do like and a time that is agreeable with your party, they will let you make a set reservation for the entire cruise with that waiter and at a time that works for you.

[gertw2003]

Hello all

 

My wife and I just got back from the Crown Princess..... one thing I must say about Anytime Dining is that they should really call it "Anytime, but only when you can find a table, dining". Be prepared to get handed a buzzer, a la Applebees, every night, especially if you eat after 7:00 pm. The other problem with anytime dining is that the wait staff seemed bored and seemed to always want to rush you out of the dining room, which I guess was a good thing or else we'd have to have waited longer than the 30 minute wait time.

 

Also, why call it anytime dining when you can reserve a table?? I was confused about this aspect of it, as well.....

[vmom]

Hello all

 

My wife and I just got back from the Crown Princess..... one thing I must say about Anytime Dining is that they should really call it "Anytime, but only when you can find a table, dining". Be prepared to get handed a buzzer, a la Applebees, every night, especially if you eat after 7:00 pm. The other problem with anytime dining is that the wait staff seemed bored and seemed to always want to rush you out of the dining room, which I guess was a good thing or else we'd have to have waited longer than the 30 minute wait time.

 

Also, why call it anytime dining when you can reserve a table?? I was confused about this aspect of it, as well.....

 

Do you recommend trying to reserve a table to avoid the wait? Also, what size table were you waiting for? A table for 2, or anysize? Would that have made a difference?

 

We are going on the CB in Dec. We were on the CB a couple of years ago and I just made reservations for a table every night on the first day of the cruise since we had a group of 5. I think things are different now and they discourage reservations unless there is a very large group.

[jillyfish]

It was a couple of years ago we were on Caribbean Princess when we were able to reserve a table and waiter for the entire week, maybe it has changed since then. The "anytime" part of this, I guess, is that YOU are choosing the time rather than having to stick to their set times. You could reserve at variable times throughout the week according to your plans, hopefully then eliminating to much of a wait.

[GeorgetteCruz]

We found we were generally seated right away, or the longest wait we had was 5min. HOWEVER, it was only 2 of us. It looked like it was the larger groups (5+) that had longer waits. Also, a couple times we chose to sit at a large table, but again, they seated us right away, and filled the table with other couples.

[UT-Volsfan]

Our last cruise on the Crown in June we had anytime dining. When we arrived on ship we made a set reservation for 6:15 so we would have plenty of time for dinner before the first Princess Theatre show (that way we could go up to Explorer's lounge after the first show). We were very fortunate to get excellent wait staff as well as two head waiters that stopped by every night bringing us extra appetizers that weren't on the menu. This was an improvement over the first time we had any-time dining (on the Diamond the anytime dining rooms had staff that were fairly unattentive and took what we thought was way too long to serve the meal).

 

We normally leave the automatic tips on our charges, then we tip the staff that we really appreciate during the cruise extra. And we also turn in the employee appreciation cards to let Princess know how much we enjoyed the service.

[psbtrvlr]

Hello all

 

My wife and I just got back from the Crown Princess..... one thing I must say about Anytime Dining is that they should really call it "Anytime, but only when you can find a table, dining". Be prepared to get handed a buzzer, a la Applebees, every night, especially if you eat after 7:00 pm. The other problem with anytime dining is that the wait staff seemed bored and seemed to always want to rush you out of the dining room, which I guess was a good thing or else we'd have to have waited longer than the 30 minute wait time.

 

Also, why call it anytime dining when you can reserve a table?? I was confused about this aspect of it, as well.....

 

There were 8 of us and the only time we were handed a buzzer was one of the formal nights. We never reserved tables. Probably won't next time either.

[sunshine426]

I agree with the above poster. We just returned from a cruise to Alaska on the Sapphire Princess. On the first night we chose to dine at 7pm with a group of 4. Even though we asked to join another table, we were told it would be abt 30 minutes. We proceeded to go to each of the dining rooms and told the same thing. We took the buzzer and went to Crooner's. In less than 30 minutes we were buzzed in (Maybe a little buzzed on martini's as well!). The next night was formal night, so we called down for a reservation at 6pm (wanted to see the 8:15 show). We were offered tables in any of the dining rooms, had wonderful service, no wait, etc. Still missed the show as dinner took 2 hours, but what a great two hours they were! We saw the 10:15 show instead. The rest of the cruise we just showed up downstairs and were seated immediatley, no reservations needed. We did have a party of four, and actually would have preferred to join a large table, but the Sapphire seemed to have more tables for 4 and 6 than large tops.

[Kurbanfan]

Hello all

 

My wife and I just got back from the Crown Princess..... one thing I must say about Anytime Dining is that they should really call it "Anytime, but only when you can find a table, dining". Be prepared to get handed a buzzer, a la Applebees, every night, especially if you eat after 7:00 pm. The other problem with anytime dining is that the wait staff seemed bored and seemed to always want to rush you out of the dining room, which I guess was a good thing or else we'd have to have waited longer than the 30 minute wait time.

 

Also, why call it anytime dining when you can reserve a table?? I was confused about this aspect of it, as well.....

 

Sounds good to me. Not sure why anyone would think that you would just be able to walk right in and sit down. Have you ever had that happen at a popular land based restaurant during dinner time.:confused: Give me that beeper and I will sit and have a cocktail. I'm in no hurry.... I have no place to go lol! The whole point of anytime dining is not to be on a schedule IMO.

[sunshine426]

The one time we had traditional dining, we felt we waited more, as they opened the dining room doors at a certain time. We always seemed to be ready about 15-30 minutes early, so would be sitting in the lounge with a coctail. Now we just go when we are ready, and are usually seated immediately. No times for pre dinner coctails:eek: . Must be a happy medium somewhere. I think it involves having a glass of wine in the cabin as you get ready for dinner.