APPRECIATE ANY COMMENTS ON HOW YOU ENJOYED THE CHOICE OF ANY TIME DINING...WE ARE GOING TO EITHER CHOOSE THIS OR THE LATE SEATING...
WE HAVE A PARTY OF 8 CAN WE WALK IN AND JUST REQUEST A TABLE FOR 8...??

I assume you are talking about Princess' Personal Choice--

Yes, it is anytime dining between 6-10pm but it is suggested that you make reservations daily..

We had a terrific waiter and busboy the first nite in Personal Choice- and continued with them for the entire week..

We would just call down to the Dining room at 8am and make our reservations daily..No problem at all..In fact, it was terrific!!

And NO , you cannot just walk in==well, you CAN but you will be waiting forever for a table..Treat this as a restaurant with reservations and you won't go wrong!

My husband and I love the anytime seating. With the two of us, we can go when we like and get a table with others or by ourselves. We do miss the fun of getting to know "our" waiter with a fixed seating. With a large group, I think the extra flexibility would be great. You don't have to adjust your daytime activities around a meal time. The group could also split up for meals on some nights...

We liked the anytime dining on the Golden Princess on our May cruise. We ate between 6:00 and 7:30 every night and never had to wait for a table. The dining room seems to fill up later in the evening. If you don't want to take the risk of waiting, I would call ahead for a reservation. This is the advice Princess gave me before we sailed.Worked for us!

Personal Choice dining is great. There were 10 of us and we never needed to reserve and never had to wait more than a few minutes. This was on SunPrincess Alaska trip. If you go too late you will miss the shows. So figure what time the shows start, and allow at least 1-1/2hours to dine. ENJOY!

We love personal choice dining. We sailed on the Daimond May 23rd. We reserved a table in each of the 4 dining rooms - Vivaldi (italian), Pacific Moon (asian), Sterling (steak), Santa Fe (mexican). Each of these dining rooms has a unique menu and the regular menu. Very difficult to choose what to eat! There was no extra service charge either. Only in Sabatini's which is $20 and about 3 hours. We reserved for the entire week and it made it easy, especially in a large group. When we sailed on the Star in New Zealand, we reserved the same time/table for 14 days then had to call only if we needed to cancel which we never did because we loved the waiter and assistant.

bumper- we tried Sabatinis at the $20 pp service charge on Princess Golden- and found it NOT worth the money- Restaurant is not adequately staffed and food arrived lukewarm to say the least...Service was 2 waiters for the entire restaurant..

Upon leaving the restaurant, we were talking among ourselves and ran into another couple with the exact same complaints..so we knew we were not crazy!

AVOID Sabatini's--

The Mexican Rest. on Golden Princess was Great and had a wonderful guitatist during dinner..service charge of $6 pp covered a large margharita or glass of wine...so in our thoughts, there in essence was a service charger- if you catch my drift...

Just got back from Star Princess Mediterranean/Greek Isle cruise. This was our first cruise, so I can't do much comparing, but I loved the anytime dining. Our routine was to eat dinner after the sail-away ritual (5:30-6:30, cocktails on the top deck, sunset, all that stuff.) We tried making reservations once without luck, so we ended up just heading in most nights, sitting with whomever they put us with (hint: look at who's ahead of you in line). We always enjoyed our table companions, and I think it would be, at best, boring to sit with the same people every night. There were a couple of night when our party of four just wanted to eat alone. Doing this, really, was just a matter of playing the game: The door lady/greeter/whatever would ALWAYS say only tables for sharing available; she would ALWAYS says the wait would be 20-30 minutes -- hey, that's JUST enough time for us to sit in the bar and buy a drink! (15% gratuity automatically added to you bill). And ALWAYS, after just enough time to order and get halfway through one drink -- we would be let into the dining room to a table all to ourselves.