Anytime Dining

[peter l]

Merry Christmas ! Hope everyone had a great holiday.
The questions I have about Anytime Dining are: (1) During the open seating, are there still specific times one is seated, such as on 1/2 hours? (2) Is it possible to sit in the same area of the Anytime Dining Room so that we can engage with the same wait staff? (3) Are guests expected to follow the formal dining dress? (4) Are there any festivities in these dining settings as we are accustomed to in the main dining times? Thanks so much for this info as I did check on the Princess site but could not come up with this...

Peterl

[f-mattox]

You can make a standing reservation for a specific time in a specific area--even a specific table; but that dosen't guarantee the table will be ready at exactly the time you want, in which case they will issue you a pager and let you know when your table is ready.

The dress codes are the same as for the Traditional Dining Rooms which has come to mean "no shorts, no t-shirts, no ratty jeans, no flip-flops."

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "festivities;" birthdays and anniversaries are still celebrated and there are themed nights. The "Parade of the Baked Alaska" is about the only thing missing.

[RichC]

On the Grand last cruise & recently the Crown they weren't taking reservations in the anytime dining rooms for tables for 2 until 7:45 PM. This caused very long lines building at the door at 5 PM waiting for the door to open. By 6 PM the line had subsided but at that point all the tables for 2 had been taken & beepers were being handed out. I'm not really sure how long a wait for a small table but there were people being paged at 6:40 or so. If you were willing to accept dining at a larger table then the wait would have been much shorter.

[peter l]

Thanks FMattox, and RichC.. We will be sitting most probably with at least 2 or 4 others from our party of 8. Its a first for us with the anytime dining. We usually take the first seating and then attend the shows after eating. I know for sure that 2 in our party would find the first seating too early but still want to go to the shows prior to being seated for dinner. So now I need to find out the show times on the Crown to see how we make it all work out. Thanks again.

Peterl

[f-mattox]

I just thumbed through a bunch of old Princess Patters (none of them from the Crown Princess unfortunately) and showtimes are usually 8:15 or 8:30 and 10:15 or 10:30. So you could catch the early show and have dinner around 9:30-9:45.