Personal Choice is really nothing complicated or difficult to understand, although I sure managed to before our first experience with it.

The notion that you can dine "where, when and with whoever you like" is for the most part true...even moreso on this ship.

Traditional dining will offer your choice of two seatings for dinner, one early and one later. You pick which one you want and hope to get it. This is still a very popular option and reflects decades of seagoing dining tradition. In other words, if you're looking for a lot of boring old people, that's the place you'll find a bunch of them. You'll also find scaredy cats who hate change with a passion or are first-time cruisers who are following the advice of well-meaning travel (buffoon) agents. The group that's also there is a bunch that's having a fabulous vacation and happen to be in traditional dining because that's what they prefer.

The fact of the matter is that unless you've got some regularity problems, small children that must eat at a specific time, or some other logical (probably not) reason, you're missing the ..ahem..."boat" by not trying Personal Choice. With few exceptions not even worth talking about, the menu and style of service is the same if not better when following the Personal Choice plan...wait a minute, that sounds like a Weight Watchers diet I was on once...make that: Personal Choice offers a rich dining experience that, if skipped, is a lot like missing formal night.

Pause for gasping

Well it's true.

Personal Choice offers dining as cruising is offered in its contemporary form:

Do what you want, when you want to.

That probably really makes the Princess SourPusses mad...but again: it's their loss.

The dining options are pretty simple with the exception of the Caribe Cafe which was thought up by someone on an acid trip at the time. Let's go there first.

The Caribe Cafe, more accurately called the Caribe Cafe Buffet, adjoins the Horizon Court Buffet, both aft.

Side note:
In previous versions of this ship the space it occupies provided room for tables and chairs by the Outrigger Bar, what was a great place for a Cruise Critic meeting in the past but is too crowded now. For future meetings I'm going to push for the Sterling Steakhouse, empty during the day, which hosted the Friends of Dorothy get together. They set up a nice buffet of snacks but no one attended. I if we get in their faces about it they'll do it for Cruise Critic which would indeed attend since we all go anywhere there is food to fill our gaping maws.

What they've done with the design of the Caribe Cafe is to allow the option of having four, not two, buffet lines open at the same time which is exactly what they did on, for example, Embarkation Day. The menu was exactly the same and no body cared because we were ravenous cruise passengers at the first feeding.

Pretty clever of them huh?

The Caribe Cafe designers went out of their way to disguise this though.

During the day it appears to be similar to the Horizon court but with some different food choices. What is dang odd is that nobody still seems to be able to figure out the scramble system of serving yourself from different stations in the Horizon court.

But the Caribe Cafe, more of a straight line cafeteria, for some reason brings out the station hopping skills guests should have used in the Horizon Court which causes some bottlenecks around the good stuff and of course nasty glances by Princess Sourpusses who may have lost their way and wandered into this area while looking for someone to complain about the coffee to.

They are ALWAYS complaining about the coffee.

I make a point of taking my first sip right in front of them and saying (ala Folgers picture of calm benevolence; Mrs Olson, ) "Now Dat's Goood coffee...good to the last drop!"...or something like that.

What is really wierd and takes some getting used to in the Caribe Cafe is dining there at night. Whoever thought this idea up must have majored in Ambiguity. The place closes early in the afternoon so they can set up the tables with table cloths, wine glasses and silverware in a manner that is not coincidentally like the main dining rooms. The food is still buffet style, you still serve yourself, but they put Creole seasoning on the tables and feature food with Caribbean names...most of which is quite good and unique. One night I had (I kid you not) skewers that had huge shrimp and hunks of lobster. Pretty good for buffet fare.

Funny though, I always thought of Creole style as like New Orleans and Caribbean style as like Jamaican. Is this one of those things that everyone but me knows?

The odd part is deciding what to do.

You'll see passengers circling the place trying to decide if they can get in there with shorts or casual wear on like they can in the other (Horizon court) buffet. It's a real dilemma. I finally gave up trying to figure it out when I saw a bunch of kids I'd met earlier in the day by the pool having dinner and a good time.

I'm pretty sure that the same dude who designed Club Confusion is in cahoots with the dude who designed this place.

The cool part is that it all works. The Caribe Cafe is a great dining venue offering some really unique cuisine. Indeed, they could have simply added a couple more lines to the Horizon Court to open during peak times. But they chose to add yet another dimension to Personal Choice dining.

Tip: If both are open, go to the Horizon Court first but keep going and go through the line at the Caribe Cafe too. Just pick the good stuff, there's plenty of choices.

In addition to these two buffet style dining venues there are other offerings as well

 

Other dining options include:


The Pizza Place/Grill
Open from lunchtime through early evening, this is a good place for a good slice of pizza or a burger, chicken sandwich or hot dog. A bar separates the pizza place from the grill and spans the width of the aft of the ship. This is a great place to grab a quick bite to eat and maybe take a dip in the pool to wash the sand off after a day at the beach

Ordering off the menu in your cabin
I'd heard that it was possible to have room service send down a menu from the dining room from which you could order and have it delivered to your stateroom. If you're in a mini or full suite this is no problem. On this sailing we were told that the service was normally reserved for suites but that they would send us a menu anyway. We were indeed able to order everything we wanted off the regular dining room menu. For comparison purposes we ordered the Fettuccini Alfredo which is a favorite of mine in the dining room to see how that translated to being served in-cabin.

It was good. Not as good as in the dining room but one heck of a lot better than a sandwich.

Room Service
Not that the regular room service fare is not good, it is quite good. I guess that's a matter of opinion but my day would not be complete without an order of Caramel Flan from room service. Other favorites included French Fries served with Ranch Dressing (hey try it) and burgers. There was no problem with a special request of a BLT along with Honey Roasted Peanuts and an awesome snack/pretzel mix.

Just dropping in at peak times at a PC dining room
As yet another experiment and test of the system, we tried dropping into the Coral PC dining room without reservations at 8:00, a peak time when lots of people were standing around with pagers waiting for a table. We were told it would be about 10 to 15 minutes for our party of 2 sitting by ourselves. It was 12 minutes so I think they did pretty good there. Our service that night, by the way, was the best ever in the dining room. I'm sure that has a lot to do with the individual service teams but this one was tops.

Scoops
The Haagen Daz was being scooped up but not with any big lines as we had experienced on the Golden earlier this year. I think many passengers had gotten the news that iced cream was served in the Horizon Court from 3 to 3:30 and went there. I think others simply passed the place without noticing it as the Ceramics classes were being held right beside it, kind of overshadowing the whole thing. I was looking for Cruise Critic Members/Haagen Daz owners to get a free shake or malt but none could be found.

The Martini Bar/Coffee Place
I don't even know if this place has a name but its on the lowest floor in the atrium. It's a quaint little place kind of tucked away by itself used mostly as a service bar for waiters to get drinks for the guests enjoying the atruim music or just relaxing with a book. But there's always a little something to eat here! That's unique because there is really no other place within 50 feet of it that food is served. To me, more than 50 feet away from a food venue is too far and I get nervous. I wonder if all the other passengers are at the food places I can't see gobbling up all the food and leaving nothing for me. In the morining there's a continental breakfast served, in the afternoon they have cool little cookies. A Princess Sourpuss would probably take one or two to linger over a cup of coffee with. I load up a plate and ask the string quartet if they know any good fiddle music that we can dance to.

The Bars and snack mix
They don't brag about it but hidden behind all the bars is a really good pretzel/snack mix and peanuts that are there for the asking.

Tea Time
I have yet to make it to tea time. I just know I am missing a big event that would add yet more dimension to our cruise experience but I always seem to be doing something else!