3 meal specialty dining package

[Kimslice]

For the 3 night specialty dining package it says you get $20 daily for a la carte restaurants. Is that $20 daily in addition to the 3 specialty dining meals or in stead of the meals. So if I eat at playmakers 3 times do I lose my specialty dining meals?

[AshleyDillo]

It means if you want to use one of your 3 dining credits at Playmakers you can order up to $20 in food. It is not in addition to 3 specialty meals.

[Geezer Of The Seas]

12 minutes ago, AshleyDillo said:

It means if you want to use one of your 3 dining credits at Playmakers you can order up to $20 in food. It is not in addition to 3 specialty meals.

I'd save the package for the specialty restaurants. The a' la carte prices of menu items at Playmakers is on par (some items cheaper) than land based sports bars I've been in. And that nacho platter with a margarita................... My wife and I shared it on Mariner and didn't need to eat dinner the first night on the ship. Increasing miles on the odometer does that to me for some reason. 

[martinez78717]

@Kimslice we just got off a cruise, Allure/President's, and didn't feel the three night dining package was worth it for one main reason. On a full sailing, most specialty restaurants are already reserved. For the dining package you can only make reservations once you are on the ship. We, and a bunch of other people, waited in a long line only to be told what we wanted and when was sold out.

After a lot of leg work, talking to multiple people at multiple times we ended up eating at Giovanni's the first night at 5 pm, 150 Central Park (not good) day 5, and Izumi Hibachi day 6.

While the discount is attractive, in the future we will book two specialty at discounted rates and reserve our dates and times.

[Ryan79]

21 hours ago, martinez78717 said:

While the discount is attractive, in the future we will book two specialty at discounted rates and reserve our dates and times.

This is my specialty dining philosophy. I don’t like having dinner plans up in the air until after I board. Peace of mind is worth more than saving a few bucks to me

[Rackham]

I would expect the President's Cruise to have more passengers than usual booking specialty dining since it's a sailing targeting Loyal to Royal. So between an increase over normal on the number of cruisers with B1G1 free entitlements, cruisers wanting to try Sabor and Samba since they're not on too many other ships, and cruisers wanting to do specialty dining since it's a special cruise, plus cruisers purchasing dining packages and specialty dining because they're on vacation, specialty dining was probably packed during this particular sailing.

[OCSC Mike]

1 hour ago, Ryan79 said:

I don’t like having dinner plans up in the air until after I board. Peace of mind is worth more than saving a few bucks to me

I'm not going to like it but once we turn D+ after our next cruise, I'm going to revert to using our BOGO's onboard. We don't do much specialty dining but I'm too frugal to not use a BOGO.