personal choice dining on Golden Princess

[DeniseN]

Hi everyone,

I'm taking my first Princess cruise in April. (I've previously done 3 Carnival cruises). I'm going to try personal choice dining. I really like the idea of dining anytime. That's why I chose this cruise. What does everyone think of the pc dining?

Denise

[jbond]

Although we have sailed on several Princess ships we have never tried PC dining. I enjoy the dining room and we have always had great table companions. We always have second seating and have found no reason to change. We have friends who went on Sun Princess with a group of people. They had PC dining and had the same table, same time and same waiter every night. They enjoyed it and said they wouldn't do it any other way.

[Shari2]

Hi Denise...I haven't tried it. Haven't even been on Princess, yet, but I'm very interested in it. I hope you will post a review when you return.

[DeniseN]

Thanks for your response jbond.

Shari,

I'll definately post a review upon return.

[DaCruzNut]

Due to a "mistake," I had both assigned (late seating) and PC, when I sailed on the Grand. Being pretty "traditional," I went to my assigned seating on the first two evenings. On the third night, I decided to try PC, and never went back to my assigned seating. To my surprise, I truly enjoyed it!

By the way, their breakfast buffet is a killer!!!! Best at sea.

[rccruisers]

Denise, I know a couple that tried this and really liked it a lot. They liked eating when they wanted to....and the way they dressed was not an issue unless of course they went somewhere you had to dress up. They said they did not eat as much, did not miss shows that they wanted to go to and seemed to have more time.

They had different waitors though and at the end of the cruise they did not know what to do about the tips. They thought what they would have gave in the dining room and divided it among the ones that was the best. Their tips were way above the suggested price.

My husband and myself like eating in the dining room and enjoy the company at the table...most of the time, LOL. We also enjoy the open seating at breakfast and lunch...this way you really get to meet more people.

I think that you will enjoy it Denise...try it and see. You will never know unless you try. Be sure to let us know all the details. If you do not like it and want to go to the dining room I am sure they will find you a spot.

[JohnG]

My experience with PC was on Golden Princess:

We had opted to try Personal Choice dining. We have normally been traditional late seating on all previous cruises, with or without kids. We had read that 7-8pm was the busiest time so we went down the first night at 8:30pm and were told there was a 15-20 minute wait in both PC dining rooms. We got to a table at 9:05.

The second day I attempted to make a dinner reservation for PC dining but was advised at 10am that only one PC dining room was taking reservations and had only 5:45-6:15pm available. With that, I went to the dining room captain in the traditional dining room and requested late seating. He said if we had not heard from him by dinner, just show up at 8:30 and he’s find a place. The dining room seated the four of us and two others at a table for 10, and by the next night had us at a table for 6. We won't be doing PC dining again.

[sunnyB]

Star Princess for us and we also tried both the conventional assigned seating and the personal choice dining. Hands down no contest we had a great deal more fun with PC dining. We are not regular hours type people (we eat when we get hungry and not when the clock says we should) and the various dining companions every night were WONDERFUL--totally unexpected people ie not necessarily 'our type', but we were laughing so hard I feared we might get tossed out for rowdiness. I definitely will choose personal choice if given the choice. :D

[sunnyB]

Star Princess for us and we also tried both the conventional assigned seating and the personal choice dining. Hands down no contest we had a great deal more fun with PC dining. We are not regular hours type people (we eat when we get hungry and not when the clock says we should) and the various dining companions every night were WONDERFUL--totally unexpected people ie not necessarily 'our type', but we were laughing so hard I feared we might get tossed out for rowdiness. I definitely will choose personal choice if given the choice. :D

[dreamer]

We are also cruising on the Golden in April(17th) and we will be trying P.C. dining. We have done early traditional seating and found it too early( especially on port days) and traditional late( found it tooo late and I would often be too tired to go to the shows as we often didn't finish dining till 10 or 10:30.)

So we are hoping for the best of both worlds with this type of dining. We don't mind waiting 15 or 20 minutes for a table( we'll go have a drink!) and because we are quite flexible( we don't care if they stick us at a table for 2 or 10) we are hoping we won't have too much trouble with long waits.

I think that the opportunity to meet many different types of people could be fun. We have found that although we never had any "nightmare" tablemates , we've neither found the exact right match for us. Just because they stick you at a table with some comparable aged persons doesn't guarantee compatiblity. At least with P.C. you would only have to suffer one meal with table mates you don't click with, and if you are lucky you may find some that you do and then you could make reservations to dine together another evening.