Dine My Way - new MedallionClass enhancement

[c-boy]

16 minutes ago, cruzsnooze said:

Since I always book in club class this won't have any impact on me or those in club class when it comes to dinner. 

ya, but don't ya feel naughty ... even a little bit 😃

[voljeep]

Just now got the email from Princess ...🛳️

[CruiseNut24]

So,  I'm gonna assume this new dinning option will have no impact to Club Class dinning?   Reason I went with club class is ability to walk up at any time during dinning times and the ability to get seating right away.....

[dides]

6 minutes ago, CruiseNut24 said:

So,  I'm gonna assume this new dinning option will have no impact to Club Class dinning?   Reason I went with club class is ability to walk up at any time during dinning times and the ability to get seating right away.....

 

Correct,  the new Dine My Way page on the Princess website states No reservations needed for those eligible for Club Class Dining.

[Coffeeluvr05]

I'm really excited to hear about this new way of doing things.  I do hope that they don't start charging for delivering all of this food or for room service.  I feel like I'm already paying extra for cruising "post Covid" anyway.  I will be excited to seeing all of the UK cruisers posts about this and tell us all about their experiences!  I loved the Medallion experience way back when we cruised in 2019 on the Sky...sigh...seems like so very long ago!

[M. St. Louis]

Any news or rumours if Traditional is going to end up no longer be a thing down the road? The wording used of 'we will honour existing arrangements' really makes it sound like it's not long for this world.

 

I sure hope it stays. We have our first Princess trip booked in 2022, would hate to cancel it. Lack of traditional dining is a dealbreaker for us, we simply won't cruise with anyone if they don't offer it.

[phabric]

I changed my 3 anything dining  to traditional.    
 

It shows traditional as 5pm or 8pm.

 

I thought early traditional was 5:30 or 5:45pm or 6pm?

[Astro Flyer]

6 minutes ago, M. St. Louis said:

Any news or rumours if Traditional is going to end up no longer be a thing down the road? The wording used of 'we will honour existing arrangements' really makes it sound like it's not long for this world.

 

I sure hope it stays. We have our first Princess trip booked in 2022, would hate to cancel it. Lack of traditional dining is a dealbreaker for us, we simply won't cruise with anyone if they don't offer it.

In dides first post on this thread the 5th thing listed in the slide indicates that traditional dining will still be available. 👍

 

Edited May 6, 2021 by Astro Flyer

[M. St. Louis]

That's not the same thing though. Requesting the same venue table and time is just establishing continuity if I want it.

 

Traditional Dining is having a cruise line arranged group of strangers dining together. The pre-set group is the fundamental component.

[Coffeeluvr05]

I had an email all about it and then went to the website to read more about it and found that they had updated some things:

 

At this link: https://www.princess.com/ships-and-experience/food-and-dining/whats-included/ 

I was happy to read this:

 

[MamaFej]

It looks like we will be carrying small bills with us around the ship. We always tip the person who brings our room service goodies. If I can sit and order something from several decks away to be delivered to me wherever I am, I'll gladly hand the person who brings it a little token of appreciation. 

And I thought I was spoiled before!

 

Thanks for sharing, @Coffeeluvr05!

[caribill]

45 minutes ago, phabric said:

I changed my 3 anything dining  to traditional.    
 

It shows traditional as 5pm or 8pm.

 

I thought early traditional was 5:30 or 5:45pm or 6pm?

 

In the past the times in the Personalizer have mostly been a holding place for early or late dining.

 

Once on board, you may find the times earlier than, the same as, or later than what was in the Personalizer. You cannot be sure until you board the ship.

[MishelleMcc]

21 minutes ago, MamaFej said:

It looks like we will be carrying small bills with us around the ship. We always tip the person who brings our room service goodies. If I can sit and order something from several decks away to be delivered to me wherever I am, I'll gladly hand the person who brings it a little token of appreciation. 

And I thought I was spoiled before!

 

Thanks for sharing, @Coffeeluvr05!

Great reminder!  We always tip room service and bar servers when they bring us the cocktails but with this service, I suspect we will need extra!  Ha!  Oh the possibilities!!! 

[MamaFej]

4 minutes ago, MishelleMcc said:

Great reminder!  We always tip room service and bar servers when they bring us the cocktails but with this service, I suspect we will need extra!  Ha!  Oh the possibilities!!! 

I certainly hope most folks feel the way you and I do. This will definitely change the working conditions of the wonderful people who help make cruising special (and make us feel spoiled). I hope it ends up being a positive for them, not just drudgery of fetching and delivering. 

[Cruzinnana47]

I feel the same as MishelleMcc and MamaFej.  The crew members should be getting tips for delivering to passengers all around the ship day & night, as it seems this new service would add to their workload.

[Steelers36]

2 hours ago, phabric said:

I changed my 3 anything dining  to traditional.    
 

It shows traditional as 5pm or 8pm.

 

I thought early traditional was 5:30 or 5:45pm or 6pm?

 

1 hour ago, caribill said:

 

In the past the times in the Personalizer have mostly been a holding place for early or late dining.

 

Once on board, you may find the times earlier than, the same as, or later than what was in the Personalizer. You cannot be sure until you board the ship.

 

Yes, the Personalizer times were/are consistently presented for all cruises.  However, the MD would set the times on board and the Patter would tell you the schedule.

 

However, 2-3 years ago, Princess backed up both early and late TD start times.  So, they do show earlier than before in the Personalizer.  My observation has been the actual on-board is a little later than 5pm in at least one DR. 

 

The reasoning, according to my inquiry at the time was that people were requesting earlier TD time.  But, I know at the time that I believed Princess HQ got it all wrong - there was a higher demand for early TD than late, which is different than the early diners wanting to eat even earlier.  Super early TD means difficult some days to get to MDR for the start time.  The last cruise we were on had two different early TD starts - one in the aft MDR and other in the mid-ship DR.  We typically request a later early TD time and get 15-20 minutes allowance after the official start time after Day 1. 

 

I think Princess did not really solve a problem by setting earlier times.  Perhaps they did solve issue from their perspective as it moved more people to select late TD from early TD and made that more popular (7:30-ish versus 8:00-ish).  It's too bad there wasn't more space for early TD using the previous start times.  Anyway, we have managed to adapt and make it work most days for us and our friends.

 

[Steelers36]

For those posting and thinking the new description of TD might mean we can select our own dining start time, this may or may not be true.  Picking the same venue and dining time each evening with same wait staff is TD, but it doesn't necessarily mean we can select our own start time.  It could be that Princess will continue to offer a set clock time(s) per DR location.

 

It would be super nice to be able to pick a DR and our custom start time for TD.  That is something like AT with a set reservation.  We often make a special start time request from the published and can get a modification from the published start time by some minutes - which can be a big help on port days.  We will be thrilled to have a set location with a custom start time, but I am not counting on that until I see/read it for real.

 

[NavyVeteran]

1 hour ago, Steelers36 said:

 

 

Yes, the Personalizer times were/are consistently presented for all cruises.  However, the MD would set the times on board and the Patter would tell you the schedule.

 

However, 2-3 years ago, Princess backed up both early and late TD start times.  So, they do show earlier than before in the Personalizer.  My observation has been the actual on-board is a little later than 5pm in at least one DR. 

 

The reasoning, according to my inquiry at the time was that people were requesting earlier TD time.  But, I know at the time that I believed Princess HQ got it all wrong - there was a higher demand for early TD than late, which is different than the early diners wanting to eat even earlier.  Super early TD means difficult some days to get to MDR for the start time.  The last cruise we were on had two different early TD starts - one in the aft MDR and other in the mid-ship DR.  We typically request a later early TD time and get 15-20 minutes allowance after the official start time after Day 1. 

 

I think Princess did not really solve a problem by setting earlier times.  Perhaps they did solve issue from their perspective as it moved more people to select late TD from early TD and made that more popular (7:30-ish versus 8:00-ish).  It's too bad there wasn't more space for early TD using the previous start times.  Anyway, we have managed to adapt and make it work most days for us and our friends.

 

I believe Princess did solve the problem. Before the change, we booked early dining because late was too late for us. After the change, we now book late dining. I agree that the new early dining times are too early for us, but I don't have to book them. The new late dining times are just about right for us. So we are happy because we have the times we want, and we have reduced the demand for early dining.

 

Princess could not make more space for early dining without enlarging the dining rooms - and then having a lot of empty space during late dining. Early TD was already full, and the anytime dining room was also full at the same time. In ships with three dining rooms, they had already made a second early TD dining room - converting to anytime when the early TD diners were finished. When we were anytime, we knew that we couldn't get a seat in the single anytime dining room until the early diners were finished unless we were there when it opened.

 

They didn't take reservations for the middle of that period - only for opening and after the first group left - because taking a reservation for one hour after opening would mean leaving a table empty for the first hour. The only time I was able to get a reservation during that time period was when I was in a suite (this was before Club Class dining and suite passengers had priority dining reservations).

[caribill]

1 hour ago, NavyVeteran said:

I believe Princess did solve the problem. Before the change, we booked early dining because late was too late for us. After the change, we now book late dining. I agree that the new early dining times are too early for us, but I don't have to book them. The new late dining times are just about right for us.

 

When they first implemented the earlier dining times, the food department did not coordinate with the entertainment department so scheduled events retained their original times.

 

This resulted in late seating passengers, who were now dining 30 or 40 minutes earlier than before, had to either walk out in the middle of some activities or stay to the end and be late to the second seating.

 

Some examples of activities that now ran past the start of the earlier 2nd seating:

o early show at the Princess Theater

o trivia game

o Captain's "welcome aboard" speech on first formal evening.

[Barry ATL]

We might find that traditional dining is different when we return.  It would appear from the guidelines that sharing a table with strangers is not going to happen. 

[dides]

3 hours ago, Cruzinnana47 said:

I feel the same as MishelleMcc and MamaFej.  The crew members should be getting tips for delivering to passengers all around the ship day & night, as it seems this new service would add to their workload.

Handing over tips to crew doesn't really go with TrulyTouchless™ cruising - would be nice if that was factored into your App ordering process (like most of our home food delivery services in the past year!)

 

Edited May 7, 2021 by dides

[AtlantaCruiser72]

16 minutes ago, dides said:

Handing over tips to crew doesn't really go with TrulyTouchless™ cruising - would be nice if that was factored into your App ordering process (like most of our home food delivery services in the past year!)

 

It would be nice to see a selection feature at the end of the food ordering process “would you like to add a tip?” With radio buttons to click yes or no. Selecting yes could then open a dialog box promoting you to enter an amount, or give you a range of $ amounts to select from.
 

I’d definitely use a feature like that rather than carrying cash around. Even at home I almost never have cash in my wallet as I use my debit/credit cards for virtually everything.  I usually get a small amount of cash at an ATM the day before a cruise for miscellaneous tipping of tour guides and service staff, but if I could shift some, or all, of that to electronic tipping I would. 

[caribill]

22 minutes ago, AtlantaCruiser72 said:

It would be nice to see a selection feature at the end of the food ordering process “would you like to add a tip?” With radio buttons to click yes or no. Selecting yes could then open a dialog box promoting you to enter an amount, or give you a range of $ amounts to select from.
 

 

Since room service personnel are already getting tipped as they are in the "daily gratuity" charge pool, Princess probably feels that asking for more tips for already tipped staff would not be looked upon kindly.

[wowzz]

6 hours ago, MamaFej said:

It looks like we will be carrying small bills with us around the ship. We always tip the person who brings our room service goodies. If I can sit and order something from several decks away to be delivered to me wherever I am, I'll gladly hand the person who brings it a little token of appreciation. 

And I thought I was spoiled before!

 

Thanks for sharing, @Coffeeluvr05!

At least in the UK we won't have that problem - no small bills available! 

[dides]

20 minutes ago, wowzz said:

At least in the UK we won't have that problem - no small bills available! 

I always used to tip in dollars anyway even for ex-Southampton Princess cruises because it is the onboard currency.  But then we always had a stash from our regular trips to the States (miss that too!)