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The Buffet Lunch was excellent today unlike our prior experiences at the lunch or dinner buffets on this cruise. I was starting to wonder if they brought in a new buffet chef in San Antonio, Chile, as there was such an improvement in the taste of the food. I always check the pasta and I rarely have any desire for what they offer. Usually they mix it with shrimp or other seafood and I don't like pasta that tastes fishy at all. When they do offer a pasta without fish, it has Alfredo or some other cream sauce instead of tomato or marinara sauce. Today I tried both pasta sauces and they were both excellent! One was with tomato sauce without any fish and the other was in a mushroom wine sauce. There were a couple of vegetable offerings and vegetable with chicken offerings, some a bit spicy, that were excellent also.
The diversity of offerings in the buffet has been OK every day, but not as good as most other cruises I've been on. A lot more people seem to eat at the buffet for lunch than for dinner which is not surprising since most of the Main Dining Rooms and Specialty Dining Rooms are closed for lunch. During lunch Princess opens both sides of the buffet serving areas. For Dinner, they usual only open one side of the buffet serving area.
Both sides of the buffet serving areas are almost the same, but not always identical. We discovered that today. One side had a vegetable curry and the other side had a vegetable stew. At 2:30pm they closed one side of the buffet while keeping the other side open until 3pm. I went back wanting more of the vegetable curry as it was so good, but they had closed that side of the buffet. When I went to the other side of the buffet to find it, they didn't have it. But they did have a vegetable stew, which was also very good, that had not been on the side of the buffet that cosed at 2:30pm.
Above Left: Trident Grill; Above Right: Premium Desserts
The Trident Grill is free to everyone and is usually open from 11:30am to 9:30pm, weather permitting as it is by the main outdoor pool. Two Premium Desserts are available free each day to those that purchased the Princess Plus upgrade while unlimited Premium Desserts are available free each day to those that purchased the Princess Premium upgrade. We have the old Princess Plus 50 upgrade that we purchased at a much lower price so aren't entitled to any free Premium Desserts. That is no problem for my wife and myself as we rarely ever eat any dessets, even regular desserts though they are free in the Main Dining Rooms and the buffet.
That again brings up the topic of how the Princess Plus upgrade at $60 per day each is just barely worth it for us, and the Princess Premier upgrade at $80 per day is definitely not worth it for us. Since we rarely eat dessert, especially rich high calorie Premium Desserts, especially two or more per day each, we would rarely if ever use that feature of the upgrade packages. We also don't ever go to juice bars (too many calories), don't use Fitness classes, and don't use OceanNow® delivery, so none of those Princess upgrade features are of any value to us. The only room service delivery that we use is to request breakfast in the morning. I don't know if you still get this free without an upgrade package. If not, I'd have no problem running up the buffet and getting our own coffee and cereal.
The ONLY things we would buy if we didn't buy an upgrade package would be the "Crew appreciation" and the "Wi-Fi (1 device per guest). Purchased separately, those almost come up to the cost of the Princess Plus upgrade package. Sometimes Princess offers a significant discount on the Princess upgrade packages if you book early, which brings the price of that Princess Plus upgrade even closer to just buying the crew appreciation and WiFi separately. For just a bit more than buying these two features separately, we can buy the Princess Plus upgrade that includes both of these AND the Plus Peverage Package! So that is why we normally book early and buy the Princess Plus package.
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