My wife and I just took the Royal Princess this past fall across the Pacific. We had 29 nights from LA to Sydney, Australia. We were on Riviera deck in a balcony cabin and loved it. It is a beautiful ship.
Mike, Thank you for sharing your journey and experience on the Royal Princess! Are you still in Sydney or did you fly back? We are thinking of heading back to Australia in 2026.
Mark, That's awesome. I wish we would have bumped into each other. We had a great cruise as well! Do you have any more cruises🚢 booked? Maybe we are on the same sailing. Are you a subscriber? Please consider hitting the subscribe button and coming along on our journey as we travel around the world.
Hi Richard, Thank you for watching and the kind words. Are you a cruiser? Do you choose your cabin based on price or type of cabin or both? We would love to hear your opinion.
If you experience the Any Time dining will you update how it’s working or if they are not prepared and lines and waits get long, etc. We have 2 upcoming cruises and I’m waiting to find out before choosing my dining.
Thank you for your question and it's a good one to ask. We are going to try and put together a video on this process as we feel it is NOT very user friendly or fair to most passengers. But let me try and explain how this works and what you can do to get the most out of this option. First, the ships have several main dining rooms. One is dedicated to Reserved Dining Times, one is for Walk-In Dining, and the other one or two are for Anytime Dining. Second, Anytime Dining means you can choose the time you wish to dine. This can typically be done through the APP or by calling Dining Reservations on your stateroom phone. However, unlike the reservation on the sister brand Carnival, Princess allows you to book all of your dining options for the ENTIRE voyage up front (or on the 1st day). That really doesn’t sound like an anytime dining option to us. Whereas, on the Carnival APP you can ONLY check-in on the day you are dining (No anytime dining reservations) and it will only let you check in 15 minutes before the first seating each day. We like this option much better! It’s clearly an anytime dining situation. We typically do Buffet Dining on the Princess Ships since we feel it has a nice selection. And then we choose to do Specialty Dining when we want a nice sit down meal. But, based on your question I actually tried to book a Main Dining option through the APP and I had all kinds of error messages while trying to book a time that appeared to be available. I then called in and was told that all times were booked except a 5pm Shared Table or a 7:30pm Private Table. When I asked if that was just for "today" I was told it was for the entire 16 day voyage! Yikes, it's only day 3, how is this possible? Well, apparently everyone books on day 1 or 2 for the full voyage (whether they go or not). We personally don't think this is fair. A day or two in advance is adequate and we will be putting in feedback on this process. We have yet to try the Walk-In Dining on this voyage ,but we will do that and let you know how it goes. However, we have done this on other Princess ships and depending on the time we walked-in we either were seated right away or only had to wait 15-20 min which seemed reasonable to us. Again, we thank you for your comment and will do a detailed video on this process so stay tuned for that. We will be sailing the next 4 months to our last continent Antarctica. Hit the subscribe button and come along on our journey around the world. Happy Cruising!
My wife and I just took the Royal Princess this past fall across the Pacific. We had 29 nights from LA to Sydney, Australia. We were on Riviera deck in a balcony cabin and loved it. It is a beautiful ship.
Mike, Thank you for sharing your journey and experience on the Royal Princess! Are you still in Sydney or did you fly back? We are thinking of heading back to Australia in 2026.
Thanks for the video my wife and I were on that same cruise we were in C726 so one deck below and one cabin forward and we very much enjoyed our trip.
Mark, That's awesome. I wish we would have bumped into each other. We had a great cruise as well! Do you have any more cruises🚢 booked? Maybe we are on the same sailing. Are you a subscriber? Please consider hitting the subscribe button and coming along on our journey as we travel around the world.
Nice video, thanks. Also appreciate the links in your description. Some good ideas there.
Hi Richard, Thank you for watching and the kind words. Are you a cruiser? Do you choose your cabin based on price or type of cabin or both? We would love to hear your opinion.
If you experience the Any Time dining will you update how it’s working or if they are not prepared and lines and waits get long, etc. We have 2 upcoming cruises and I’m waiting to find out before choosing my dining.
Thank you for your question and it's a good one to ask. We are going to try and put together a video on this process as we feel it is NOT very user friendly or fair to most passengers. But let me try and explain how this works and what you can do to get the most out of this option.
First, the ships have several main dining rooms. One is dedicated to Reserved Dining Times, one is for Walk-In Dining, and the other one or two are for Anytime Dining.
Second, Anytime Dining means you can choose the time you wish to dine. This can typically be done through the APP or by calling Dining Reservations on your stateroom phone. However, unlike the reservation on the sister brand Carnival, Princess allows you to book all of your dining options for the ENTIRE voyage up front (or on the 1st day). That really doesn’t sound like an anytime dining option to us. Whereas, on the Carnival APP you can ONLY check-in on the day you are dining (No anytime dining reservations) and it will only let you check in 15 minutes before the first seating each day. We like this option much better! It’s clearly an anytime dining situation.
We typically do Buffet Dining on the Princess Ships since we feel it has a nice selection. And then we choose to do Specialty Dining when we want a nice sit down meal. But, based on your question I actually tried to book a Main Dining option through the APP and I had all kinds of error messages while trying to book a time that appeared to be available. I then called in and was told that all times were booked except a 5pm Shared Table or a 7:30pm Private Table. When I asked if that was just for "today" I was told it was for the entire 16 day voyage! Yikes, it's only day 3, how is this possible? Well, apparently everyone books on day 1 or 2 for the full voyage (whether they go or not). We personally don't think this is fair. A day or two in advance is adequate and we will be putting in feedback on this process.
We have yet to try the Walk-In Dining on this voyage ,but we will do that and let you know how it goes. However, we have done this on other Princess ships and depending on the time we walked-in we either were seated right away or only had to wait 15-20 min which seemed reasonable to us. Again, we thank you for your comment and will do a detailed video on this process so stay tuned for that. We will be sailing the next 4 months to our last continent Antarctica. Hit the subscribe button and come along on our journey around the world. Happy Cruising!