Accessor

One breakfast menu and two lunch menus. Breakfast was only open for one hour. Lunch only open for one hour. They are making it very difficult to eat their other than dinner time. Lunch menu extremely limited. Honestly if you are port intensive I would much prefer brunch as the 2 days at sea on our 10 day reflection cruise who wants to wake up and eat from 7:30am to 8:30am. Lunch was 12:00 to 1:00. Not what I would consider all that convenient. Give us brunch back on sea days...Sorry, heard they were serving only 10 people average for lunch. Seem like a waste of time to be open for 10 guests.

We just cruised the Regal Nov 23rd sailing and had ATD. Other cruiselines we have sailed on Holland, NCL, RCL, DCL, Carnival, etc. none suffer from Princess inept ability to properly manage ATD. We twice were told to wait one hour. No free glass of champs like NCL does (granted it not great, but it's the gesture), and we have cruised every thanksgiving for the last 8 years or so. So yes, the ships are more crowded we get it.

It's a brand new ship, so they ample ability to get ATD right (so much for the argument that this ship wasn't designed for ATD. I can honestly tell you they have empty tables when they are telling you wait an hour. I have literally walked in and found them. Yes, they could be held for reservations. But it's a management issue, period. Everyone else knows how to manage ATD without the long "sorry, it's one hour wait" nonsense. Send management from Princess to Royal and use their system.

The 1st time we were told to go upstairs ATD was full. Upstairs converts to ATD at 7:30pm. I was not happy, we got seated right away, then waited 1 hour for our apps. So all in all we wasted close to 3 hours for dining. Simply unacceptable, inexcusable, and not a way to spend a vacation. I can tell you stateside we don't eat at places that have more than a 30 min wait.

End of rant. I clearly voiced my opinion on the survey emailed. I am sure it's falling on def ears. But in the end, I would highly suggest to never do ATD on Princess. Reservations IMHO are not helpful, at 8am in the morning I won't know what time I will be hungry for dinner.

Just got off the Regal today and ordered the wellington...let's just say they are using a very poor quality of beef. My guess it was eye round. Tough, chewy, and inedible. You can easily eat around the mushrooms and pastry (was served completely separated from meat). Sent it back and got the Alfredo. Impossible to screw that one up.

The whole "Caribbean inspired" menu to me meant we are in low season with lowest possible revenue P/P for Princess, thus we will reduce the menu with selections that are equally less expensive for them to produce.

Some selections were good, but every day Caribbean selections? One of the 3 apps always was a inexpensive fruit dish (who orders fruit for an app at ANY land based restaurant?). On a very positive note, the new "chocolate" deserts from Norman Lover were outstanding. The only bummer was they offered them twice the entire cruise on formal nights only.

What nights?

 

TYIA

Just off the Epic today (2nd on NCL over 37+ from about all mainstream cruiselines).

1st night at buffet prime rib. 1st Night at MDR no prime rib? Clearly promoted PR in buffet tonight (they put a sign out in AM what theme was for evening)

2nd night at buffer lobster night. 2nd night in MDR no lobster? Promoted as "seafood night" with ZERO mention of any lobster. They would only give you one at a time.

Why does NCL make you go to the buffet for my fav foods when all other cruiselines serve it in dining room? My opinion is they post nightly menus for dining rooms...if anyone saw lobster they couldn't handle demand and crowds or sell paid dining venues. So they simply hide the fact that lobster is served.

Also be forewarned if you dine at Le Bistro that you are one deck below Speigel tent. We had constant pounding above us during entire meal. Manager said sorry can't do anything about it and said more insulation is on wish list for dry dock. Not a great response to complaint.

Hope this helps. We had a great cruise and really enjoyed entertainment. Food was middle of road, but plenty of choices for all.

Anyone consider how these slick new tables will fare when the ship starts to rock and roll? They look very smooth, and when glasses get wet from sweating they will surely slide very easily. How much money will they lose from breakage to offset the savings? Anyone know if these are typical of local restaurants with the high gloss finish?

Thank you. I checked the Palace website and tickets are 14 Euros per person. That's a heck of a difference.

Markup...We were on Uniworld and did this on our own. The subway is very easy and cost very little to take from the dock to the palace. We actually were on the city tour of Vienna and when everyone else was heading back to the ship, we took subway to Palace. So we missed a free lunch on the boat, but their is an excellent restaurant on site and it's very reasonably priced. So happy we did did this on our own. Another bonus, we had the next day free when everyone else was off to the palace.

The biggest benefit was we had 5 hours to explore and those on the $$$ ships "tour" only had about 1 hour free time

We were provided excellent headsets and the self guided tour was excellent.