Dine my Way, Royal Princess, Alaska question

[PK123]

Hi All - We are booked on the royal princess from San Fransisco roundtrip to Alaska on June 6, 2023.  This will be my first time on Princess, and I do not fully understand the dining reservations process. 

Using the dine-my-way section on the app, I just went round-robin between Michelangelo, Botticelli, and Da Vinci Dining Rooms' selecting a private table for each night. I also booked one night at the Crown Grill for my partner's b-day, which canceled my previous Michelangelo reservation. Does that sound right?

 

Is this the best approach? 

[memoak]

31 minutes ago, PK123 said:

Hi All - We are booked on the royal princess from San Fransisco roundtrip to Alaska on June 6, 2023.  This will be my first time on Princess, and I do not fully understand the dining reservations process. 

Using the dine-my-way section on the app, I just went round-robin between Michelangelo, Botticelli, and Da Vinci Dining Rooms' selecting a private table for each night. I also booked one night at the Crown Grill for my partner's b-day, which canceled my previous Michelangelo reservation. Does that sound right?

 

Is this the best approach? 

All 3 of the MDR’s have the same  menu each night. The only difference is the location 

[Stosh68]

I tried the same approach on my first Princess cruise, because I didn't know better.  I made MDR reservations at 4 different locations assuming there might be some kind of difference in the menus, there is not.

 

The result was that I had different waiters, different tables and different reservation times each evening which I had to keep track.

 

In retrospect, I should have picked one and made my life easier with the same MDR, table waiter and reservation time each evening, but I did not know.

[snoozecrooze]

1 hour ago, PK123 said:

We are booked on the royal princess from San Fransisco roundtrip to Alaska on June 6, 2023.

Surely you mean Ruby? Royal will be in Seattle this summer.

 

1 hour ago, PK123 said:

I just went round-robin between Michelangelo, Botticelli, and Da Vinci Dining Rooms' selecting a private table for each night. I also booked one night at the Crown Grill for my partner's b-day, which canceled my previous Michelangelo reservation. Does that sound right?

As others have said, you can just pick one dining room to make your life easier. And yes, if you picked a night to visit Crown Grill reservation, then that night's dining room reservation would basically be void. 

[PK123]

2 hours ago, snoozecrooze said:

Surely you mean Ruby? Royal will be in Seattle this summer.

 

As others have said, you can just pick one dining room to make your life easier. And yes, if you picked a night to visit Crown Grill reservation, then that night's dining room reservation would basically be void. 

 

How embarrassing. Yes, I meant Ruby. 🙂

Thanks so much for the advice.  Final question, any recommendations on the three main rooms mentioned (Michelangelo, Botticelli, and Da Vinci)?   Are any of them "nicer" or "better view"?  

Thanks so much!!!  Such a helpful group here!! 

[snoozecrooze]

32 minutes ago, PK123 said:

Thanks so much for the advice.  Final question, any recommendations on the three main rooms mentioned (Michelangelo, Botticelli, and Da Vinci)?   Are any of them "nicer" or "better view"? 

No worries about mistaking the ships lol, it's easy to confuse them since Royal is leaving from SF right now.

 

I don't think either of the MDRs are really better than the other. Botticelli's location being in the aft might afford you some nice-ish views...but it's not like Michelangelo or Da Vinci don't have some views of their own to the sides either. Getting a window table is hard either way.

 

I've often thought that since Dine My Way was launched, the aft dining room on deck 6 could be the least busiest, since it's the hardest to reach, but I don't know how true that really is, given the cruises I've been on since. Your experience may vary.

[Buckeye10640]

So I think what you did is fine. We make varying reservations each day depending on what we are doing that day. Sometimes we cancel them to eat elsewhere, sometimes we adjust the times. Last cruisec we found one dining room to be more efficient than the other and changed our reservation to that dining room for the remainder of our cruise.  We personally do not care about having the same staff each night, but some folks do. 

[PK123]

1 hour ago, Buckeye10640 said:

So I think what you did is fine. We make varying reservations each day depending on what we are doing that day. Sometimes we cancel them to eat elsewhere, sometimes we adjust the times. Last cruisec we found one dining room to be more efficient than the other and changed our reservation to that dining room for the remainder of our cruise.  We personally do not care about having the same staff each night, but some folks do. 

Awesome!  Thank you!  I will probably follow this path.