Why We Eat at the Buffet - Sometimes.

P&O Pacific Encounter - Dragon Lady main dining.

Food is one of the good things about cruising - it's usually good and you don't have to cook or wash up. We always book late dining in the main dining room, and enjoy the 3-4 course meals. Of all the cruise lines we have been on the food in the main dining room has been great and varied except for P&O Australia - the food was good but very little variety from night to night, despite there being three different main dining rooms.

P&O Pacific Encounter - Pantry buffet lunch.

It is the same with the buffet dining on some ships. Some people like the buffet on P&O Australia, but I have never liked it - from our first sailing way back in 2009. The salads are usually good as are the chips, but everything else is hit and miss. Every other cruise line we have been on have had great buffets.

OK, so lets look at each meal. Breakfast, P&O Australia use to have the best main dining breakfast, but no more - too many up-charges for what use to be free. Main dining rooms for breakfast usually start early and run for about 2 hrs - sometimes too early for us, so it is the buffet. Buffet breakfast is not as good as the main dining room but we are on holiday and sometimes don't want to get up early for breakfast. Buffet breakfast is usually the same each day on P&O, with limited choices - fried eggs or scrambled.

P&O Pacific Encounter buffet breakfast - same each day.

Royal do some dishes alternating each day which is lovely, including crepes and Eggs Benedict.

Royal Caribbean Quantum of the Seas - buffet breakfast, many choices.

Carnival do Eggs Benedict - my favourite, and all buffets do scrambled and fried eggs.

Carnival Luminosa - buffet breakfast 

Lunch, we often don't eat in the main dining room for lunch, although Carnival do a good Sea Day Brunch in the main dining room. Most cruises we go to the buffet for a late lunch/snack. Royal do a lovely afternoon tea of savory and sweet finger food. Buffet lunch is usually when we pick up a few snacks for the cabin for the afternoon or late night snack or early morning before while getting ready for breakfast. Typically cookies on Celebrity, Royal and Carnival (no cookies on P&O); bread rolls, cheese and crackers on P&O; I really don't recall needing to have anything for the cabin when we sailed on Princess - we just got what we wanted when we wanted it.

P&O Pacific Encounter buffet lunch - the rare day they had prawns and donuts.

Dinner, we prefer the main dining room, but if sailing on longer cruises or back to back the buffet is can be good for a change. We never tried the buffet for dinner on Princess. We did a 19 night cruise on Celebrity and had the buffet a couple of nights when we were not that hungry to sit down for a 3 course meal. We often do back to back cruises on Royal, and we have found the first week in the main dining room good, but the second week the occasional buffet was better. Surprisingly we found the French night in the buffet had more choices than the main dining room menu. It always pays to check. Carnival we had buffet dinner when the show times were changed and conflicted with our dining time. We found some of the exact same dishes in the buffet as on the main dining room menu on both Royal and Carnival. P&O, well there are only two menus for each restaurant and they are suppose to rotate every three days as the passengers rotate the restaurants. That doesn't always happen. As the menus are not very varied, maybe 3-4 different dishes across the 3 courses. The buffet is not much better, but they do have salad and chips.

Carnival Luminosa buffet lunch - many different choices and longer open hours.

So there are advantages and disadvantages, depending on ship. 

Generally buffet is more casual and main dining is more formal, as it should be. 

Buffet is often quicker service, choose what and how much you want to eat. Main dining is a la carte and usually takes longer, although you can get as much as you want. In the buffet you can eat as much as you want and go back many times. In the main dining you can order two or more dishes of food for each course.

In the buffet you can be as quick or a leisurely as you want. Main dining is regulated by your dining staff. 

In the buffet you need to find a seat, at busy times it can be difficult. In main dining you have a  set table and staff each night which we like.

Carnival Luminosa buffet lunch.

The dress code in the buffet is very casual, most passengers dress better for main dining room, although sadly, the staff no longer enforce the smart casual dress.

In the buffet you know what you are putting on your plate and have more control over what you eat. The main dining room you don't know what size serving you will have until you get it. I hate leaving food in the main dining room and often don't order a main because I know I wont eat it all. I'll order two or three first courses instead.

Royal Caribbean Quantum of the Seas lunch buffet.

The views are often better in buffet, with the large usually floor to ceiling windows both sides. You can't be sure of a window seat in the main dining room.

You can arrive when it suits you in the buffet - no need to book like in the main dining room.

Royal Caribbean Quantum of the Seas buffet lunch.

So we eat in the buffet when:

   1. the times are more convenient than the main dining room for entertainment or shore excursions.

    2. main dining overlaps the shows.

   3. there is nothing new to try in the main dining menus, or we want more variety.

   4. we are tired after a port day and don't want to shower and dress for main dining.

Just our opinions, and what we do.

P&O Mocktails and the Refreshment Package - Pacific Encounter

We started our cruising adventures paying as we go for our drinks - way too expensive, then we would get the alcohol package, and it was well worth it back then. The most we ever paid was $65 a day. Certainly can't drink $100+ a day now. So now it depends on the cruise lines. We were particularly impressed with the new eco friendly take away coffee cups. Often the tops were hard to put on if a staff member didn't help.

For P&O Peter buys as he goes. Jon gets the soft drink package and I get the refreshment package which includes mocktails. My favourite is Sweet Tooth. So much better now that we can get mocktails at any bars.

P&O has changed a lot in regard to mocktails. Now mocktails can be obtained at any bar. There is a new mocktail menu at the bars - above. One can also order the old  menu mocktails and sometimes, if you get the right bar staff any cocktail can be made as a mocktail. 

I like my cocktails, and if I feel like one I just buy it. However, I'm finding I sail more often not having any alcohol at all. On P&O the refreshment package is all I need. As with other cruise lines, there is no consistency with the mocktails. Passion Pop was my go to for meals as it was easier to order rather than another mocktail...... but no consistency.

Morning specialised tea or coffee, mocktails and water bottles throughout the day.

I especially like the bubble tea available now at Charlies Bar. Evening is a mocktail or two, then hot chocolate before bed - and another water bottle.

Here are the other drink menus:

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Pacific Encounter Queensland Cruise

 

Early this month we went on a 7 night cruise to Airlie Beach and Cairns. We booked a guaranteed balcony cabin when at the beginning of July I saw a special deal. 

Guaranteed means we don't get to choose the cabin, the cruise lines chooses it for us. We were allocated the cabin 12408 (see cabin blog here) on 9th August - 5 weeks after booking and 3 weeks before we sailed.

The last time we were on Encounter was May 2023. Prices have been insane, so we have cruised other cruise lines that had better value. In saying that, the ship is beautiful and it was good to be on her again.

This cruise our son wanted to try the Edge activities, he enjoyed them so much, and the staff were so accommodating to his special needs, he is going to do the Extreme level next cruise in a few weeks. I'll do a dedicate blog to the Edge activities then. 

P&O Australia are the budget cruise line here. The food is great, but not a lot of variety. One needs to be inventive. However, one thing P&O Australia do the best is themes. We have been on a Halloween cruise, a Christmas cruise, a Melbourne Cup cruise and now a Fathers Day Cruise - all great decorations all around the ship. On this cruise was Fathers Day and there was Fathers Day jokes at the trivia, and decorations around parts of the ship.

P&O and Carnival do the best 'Sail Aways'.

The trivia is pretty good. We like it in the Black Circus as more people that want to do trivia can get in - 

 and get there early enough to get front seats.

When Trivia is in the Encounter Hotel, it can get quite crowded and very noisy from passengers not playing trivia but socializing. On port days it is easy to get a seat.

We enjoyed sitting in the Atrium listening to the artists playing each night before dinner and after the evening show. So many good performers. It's like a piano bar but not always with a piano player.

The Blue room after dinner was also good, and plenty of seats at the back.

The shows were good. We had seen some of them before. Went to One again. We went to first performance of One, and just wanted to see if it had changed and made more sense. It still didn't. Good songs and the first half is about saving the environment, the second half is about love.

We did go to a magician, there seems to be one every cruise now. He was entertaining.

We also went to a culinary demonstration.

In the cabin on the tv, one channel has the cruise map and the details of weather, speed, temperature, speed, and position.

Also on the cabin tv there are two sports channels 'Sports 24' where we watched the NRL games. The games were also shown on the big screen of the pool deck.

And don't forget the towels animals. Some people don't like them, we do.

Hiding and finding ducks is becoming more popular on Australian cruises. We found our first duck in 2019 on Ovation of the Seas. This one was the tiniest duck I've ever found. Found it in a elevator and had to ask a crew member to reach it for me.

Another trend becoming popular in Australia is door decorating. Didn't see a lot this cruise, but we weren't looking either.

On the last seas day we won a prize in the cruise director trivia. It was a $30 bingo voucher. The Bingo was interesting but very quick. The only other time we have played Bingo on a cruise was way back in 2009 on P&O Pacific Sun. We didn't win, either time.

One new to us this cruise was the reservation of tenders. We sailed to Airlie as a tender port and docked in Cairns. As I was looking at the app while on board I came across reservations for tenders. I chose a time for us and it was booked. Much easier than getting up early in the morning to line up for tender tickets.

A beautiful ship. We have three more cruises booked on her and it will be interesting to see what changes will happen once she is rebranded Carnival. Hopefully food choices and variety will be like Carnival, but I will miss the refreshment drink package on P&O.