Princess Premier dining reservations

[gerig]

I just upgraded from the plus package to the premier package and will be on the Enchanted Princess on October 12th.  I tried to book additional reservations since I now have unlimited specialty dining but according to the app there are no open reservations for Crown Grill or Sabatini's.  Do you think that additional reservations will be added once I board this Saturday?  

 

I can get some reservations for the Catch by Rudi but I don't want to eat there for 5 nights.  Please share your experience with this.  Thank you

[Rick&Jeannie]

Almost a guarantee that there will be open seats onboard. Many times we have walked past an SD venue that was half full or less at "prime" times. My opinion...they don't open up every available table via the reservation system. 

[gerig]

1 hour ago, Rick&Jeannie said:

Almost a guarantee that there will be open seats onboard. Many times we have walked past an SD venue that was half full or less at "prime" times. My opinion...they don't open up every available table via the reservation system. 

My concern is that since they changed the premier package to unlimited specailty dining that dining venues and times will be in demand.  I will keep trying to book and if not will have to book once on board.

[Rick&Jeannie]

Yep! Time will tell how much of an impact the "new" Premier will have.

[grimace95120]

26 minutes ago, gerig said:

My concern is that since they changed the premier package to unlimited specailty dining that dining venues and times will be in demand.  I will keep trying to book and if not will have to book once on board.

On our 9/21 sailing on Enchanted, i can say that there was availability on board day 1, when there wasn't on the app leading up to. However, i will caution that there were a lot of folks at the maître D station for each restaurant on day one, and by sail away the availability on the app was gone for the most part. Sabatini's and Crown Grill went super fast, Rudi's a bit slower ( which was fine by us as I personally thought Rudi's was the best of the three). I did witness empty tables each night we dined, but also witnessed people being turned away who didn't have a reservation, with the restaurant manager stating they were full. Available capacity of tables does not equal availability of staff, so my advice would be to make your resos early to avoid disappointment

We ate at Rudis 3 of the seven nights, and i would gladly eat there every night, but that's just me 🙂  

[ghgeckos]

We just upgraded too, but our cruise on Enchanted is later this month. I was able to get one Sabatini reservation and two more Rudi’s reservations. We now have 5 specialty dinner reservations and will only eat in the MDR on formal nights. 

[gerig]

23 hours ago, LoisPierson said:

I'm afraid we won't be that close except when we're coming into port or when docked, and depending on where we port maybe not even then.

 

3 hours ago, grimace95120 said:

On our 9/21 sailing on Enchanted, i can say that there was availability on board day 1, when there wasn't on the app leading up to. However, i will caution that there were a lot of folks at the maître D station for each restaurant on day one, and by sail away the availability on the app was gone for the most part. Sabatini's and Crown Grill went super fast, Rudi's a bit slower ( which was fine by us as I personally thought Rudi's was the best of the three). I did witness empty tables each night we dined, but also witnessed people being turned away who didn't have a reservation, with the restaurant manager stating they were full. Available capacity of tables does not equal availability of staff, so my advice would be to make your resos early to avoid disappointment

We ate at Rudis 3 of the seven nights, and i would gladly eat there every night, but that's just me 🙂  

I have 2 reservations for Rudi's and one for crown grill so I would like to add Sabatini's and an additional crown grill reservation.  Once you boarded were you able to make your reservation on the app or did you have to go to the restaurant to reserve.  Can the crown grill make reservations for Sabatini's?

[grimace95120]

59 minutes ago, gerig said:

 

I have 2 reservations for Rudi's and one for crown grill so I would like to add Sabatini's and an additional crown grill reservation.  Once you boarded were you able to make your reservation on the app or did you have to go to the restaurant to reserve.  Can the crown grill make reservations for Sabatini's?

i was able to do all of mine prior to ( i upgraded a few days after the announcement), but there were people booking Crown and Sabatini's and I did see some availability on the stateroom TV for both earlier in the day. We could have booked them, but we were happy with what we had ( 3X Rudi, 2X Sabatini 1X Crown) and we did one night at the Ocean Terrace to round out the 7. There may also be cancellations along the way. With the 24 hour cancel or pay a penalty clause, you can always check during the day for the next day to see if something opens up as well . We had a 2nd Crown Grill reservation, but we didn't care for it so I cancelled. Someone scooped it up pretty quickly.  

[IndyKid]

5 hours ago, Rick&Jeannie said:

Yep! Time will tell how much of an impact the "new" Premier will have.

Agreed. I guess the best thing to do is that if you're leaning heavily towards doing the Premier package, order it right when you make the reservation and do your reservations right away.

[sandancer]

We have the new Premium package. I can book 2 speciality restaurants without payment but once they are booked I am being asked for payment for any other reservations. Whilst we don’t want to eat in a speciality restaurant every night, we certainly want more than 2 bookings. I have called Princess and they assure me we definitely have the new package. Anyone know a way round this?

[IndyKid]

51 minutes ago, sandancer said:

We have the new Premium package. I can book 2 speciality restaurants without payment but once they are booked I am being asked for payment for any other reservations. Whilst we don’t want to eat in a speciality restaurant every night, we certainly want more than 2 bookings. I have called Princess and they assure me we definitely have the new package. Anyone know a way round this?

Does it show an actual price? When I booked all our meals, it showed "$0.00". And you should be getting unlimited speciality dining with the new Premier package, it was 2 meals under the old one.

Edited October 9 by IndyKid

[gerig]

5 minutes ago, IndyKid said:

Does it show an actual price? When I booked all our meals, it showed "$0.00". And you should be getting unlimited speciality dining with the new Premier package, it was 2 meals under the old one.

When I booked my 3rd specialty meal yesterday it showed 0 as the price.

[CannonG]

We just got off the Caribbean princess and had the upgraded premier package. I had the same concerns about availability but I can assure you there were plenty of available times in the Crown Grill and Sabatinis. We ate I think a total of 7 times in the crown and also 3 times in Sabatinis. Additionally we ordered Sabatinis from room service at no additional change the last night. The more difficult venue was Planks. We were slow to book this and the alternating scheduling with Steamers made this a more difficult get. We were unable to get in but tbh we didn’t try super hard to get in. 

[grimace95120]

5 minutes ago, CannonG said:

Additionally we ordered Sabatinis from room service at no additional change the last night.

that's interesting. I saw items from the SDs on the app, but when i did a "dummy" order they were going to come in at full prices ( vs the included items that showed the value of the order then a zero as the actual cost), so I backed off.. Did you app show the cost then zero as your payment ?

[CannonG]

6 minutes ago, grimace95120 said:

that's interesting. I saw items from the SDs on the app, but when i did a "dummy" order they were going to come in at full prices ( vs the included items that showed the value of the order then a zero as the actual cost), so I backed off.. Did you app show the cost then zero as your payment ?

Same thing happened to us. The app showed our order would be $120ish. I called guest services and asked if that was correct and they said no it would have no charge. Didn’t see any charge on our folio after so it’s included just not advertised or explained well. 

[grimace95120]

6 minutes ago, CannonG said:

Same thing happened to us. The app showed our order would be $120ish. I called guest services and asked if that was correct and they said no it would have no charge. Didn’t see any charge on our folio after so it’s included just not advertised or explained well. 

Wow, that is a nugget of gold ! I suspect there are many folks who did exactly as we did BUT didn't go the extra mile to call GS like you did. Well done, and thank you this is an awesome piece of intel.

We are travelling again soon with my sons family and his 6 year old. We will all have the Premier package ( except the child) so this will allow us to order SD food to our stateroom and feed him something "kid friendly" from the regular menu  without having to worry about him sitting in the SDs being bored out of his head. You just made my day, thank you !!!!

[sandancer]

57 minutes ago, IndyKid said:

Does it show an actual price? When I booked all our meals, it showed "$0.00". And you should be getting unlimited speciality dining with the new Premier package, it was 2 meals under the old one.

Unfortunately I have been given the wrong information. We only have the “old” premium package. The agent assured me we had the new version and even said “enjoy your unlimited speciality dining” when she signed off. So only 2 meals included. Now to decide if we want to pay an extra £10 each a day. Note, not $10. We may still go for it - is it worth it. We do like speciality restaurants although the unlimited drinks will not be any advantage for us. 

[TomBaker]

58 minutes ago, sandancer said:

Unfortunately I have been given the wrong information. We only have the “old” premium package. The agent assured me we had the new version and even said “enjoy your unlimited speciality dining” when she signed off. So only 2 meals included. Now to decide if we want to pay an extra £10 each a day. Note, not $10. We may still go for it - is it worth it. We do like speciality restaurants although the unlimited drinks will not be any advantage for us. 

If you decide to "Go for it" book on board on the first day and it will be $10pppd as opposed to £10pppd

[Cruise Raider]

15 hours ago, gerig said:

 

I have 2 reservations for Rudi's and one for crown grill so I would like to add Sabatini's and an additional crown grill reservation.  Once you boarded were you able to make your reservation on the app or did you have to go to the restaurant to reserve.  Can the crown grill make reservations for Sabatini's?

We upgraded to the premier package onboard last week.  We have had no issues with getting reservations onboard, however, this cruise has very few passengers with the premier package and we prefer to eat early.  We mostly have walked up when they first open and have been seated.  None of the venues have been packed on this 11 night sailing.  When we disembark tomorrow, this ship will be doing a 2 night cruise, followed by two 5 night cruises.  I understand a lot of passengers have purchased the premier packages on those 3 shorter cruises, so it may be more challenging depending on the length of your sailing.  

On the first day, you can simply call the dine line on your cabin phone or one of the house phones and ask for the venue(s) dates and times you want.  Not all reservations are available on the app ahead of time.  Oddly enough, I could make reservations on the app once onboard but it was trying to charge me for them.  So, calling the dine line was the better way to go.  
 

[sandancer]

I have upgraded by calling the contact centre and have access now to every night without being charged in advance. We are doing an itinerary that is only once a year so didn’t want to take a chance on booking onboard. 

[blueboro]

So What happens when you have paid for the premium package prior to the unlimited change and you cannot get reservations?  Seems they should make some type of restitution.  

[startedwithamouse]

4 minutes ago, blueboro said:

So What happens when you have paid for the premium package prior to the unlimited change and you cannot get reservations?  Seems they should make some type of restitution.  

Contact princess and upgrade. Prior to unlimited you still get what you paid for, two SD.

[jwattle]

1 hour ago, blueboro said:

So What happens when you have paid for the premium package prior to the unlimited change and you cannot get reservations?  Seems they should make some type of restitution.  

There is a clause that you do not get paid for unused portions of package

[blueboro]

10 minutes ago, jwattle said:

There is a clause that you do not get paid for unused portions of package,

Unused is different than not being able to use because of no space IMO.  By having unlimited it likely will make it near impossible to book.

[jwattle]

What if I don’t use the specialty dining or casual dining meals included in my package?
The specialty dining credits are available only for your current voyage, are non-refundable if not used and cannot be redeemed for cash.