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Spa Day or Dine Out?
permanentrose
Posts: 3,789 Member
I still don’t own either Dine Out or Spa Day, but I have been considering adding one of these packs recently and was wondering if there’s one you’d suggest over the other. I’m open to suggestions regarding both gameplay features and BB/CAS stuff. Thanks 
Gallery ID: permanentrose537
Spa Day or Dine Out? 148 votes
Dine Out
60%
89 votes
Spa Day
39%
59 votes
0
Comments
Well...
Dine out is great cause it adds the ability to go out for dinner with a date, friends, family or just alone. You can even order a birthday cake and celebrate at the restaurant. You can create any kind of restaurant and change the menu, making it specialized in vegetarian food, fish, meat, ice cream, burgers, experimental food... you can also own a restaurant, but that's something i never did.
Spa day brings the wellness skill and wellness activities. I love yoga because it makes me relaxed to watch my sims practice it, and they become fit and muscled. You can add a trainer's mat and a few regular yoga mats and create an area where yoga classes will happen autonomously and your sim can participate. There are also several kinds of massages and meditation. And there's the sauna... You can also do all kind of spas, or just mix academy and spa stuff to create a complete workout lot.
Just be sure, if you get Dine Out, to be careful of downloaded restaurants - check everything has plenty of space, access for playability and does not have huge amounts of dining tables everywhere or your sims may end up never getting their meal.
Owning your restaurants are fun too (but making them 5 stars is hard!)
Sea may rise, sky may fall, My love will never die..
My heart, my heart, My drowning heart, Oh all the tears I've cried
Oh I may weep forevermore, My love will never die..
I really enjoy putting restaurants in my game and sending my Sims out for romantic dinners, friendly get togethers, and even special occasions (you can ask a waiter to bring out a birthday cake). I think that Dine Out works really well with other packs too, for example, thanks to Snowy Escape I have a beautiful Japanese restaurant.
My question to you would be where do you think you're most likely to want to send your Sims? If you play families more often, then you might want to send them out for a lovely meal together, but a young single wealthy Sim might prefer treating themselves to a spa day.
As for BB and CAS, I rarely use the Dive Out BB but I do use the CAS alot, especially the female hair. It also adds some more modern formal wear looks that aren't long dresses.
Updated with Werewolf Diaries (1)
Dine out is riddled with bugs.
Exactly this.
In my opinion, Dine Out really doesn't offer much other than
- Resturaunts
- The ability to own and run a resturaunt
- A few new recipes
Sure, the resturuants, even ones you just plop down from the gallery are super custimozable. But in comparison, Spa Day offers
- Spas
- New Skill (Wellness)
- Multiple new game play objects (meditation stool, massage tables, yoga mats, sauna, incense)
- Yoga classes which gives you two ways to use yoga (in the spa and at home)
- Mud Baths and Bath Soaks which can be used in any bathtub. At home or at the spa.
- New Death + Woohoo location: the sauna (I'm not sure if this is something you're interested in but thought it's worth mentioning anyway.)
- New recipes
- New Fish for the aqauriums
As far as CAS goes, not only does it offer almost twice as many options looking at the number alone, but I also feel Spa Day is a lot more versitle than Dine Out. All you really get with Dine Out is a few options for formal wear or for resturaunt employees. But the Spa Day stuff can be used for every day, atheletic, swimwear, and even hot weather. I don't remember if the sweatshirts are tagged for cold weather, but you can use the clothing for a lot.
Build-Buy I don't have much of an opinion on, since they both have a more modern style. But I'd still give the point to Spa Day due to the the lotus flower themed items and the overall zen aesthetic. And because of the fact that a good number of those items are actually functional (ie all the gameplay items I mentioned.)
Plus, as others have mentioned, Dine Out is much more buggy as well. But even if it wasn't, I'd still pick Spa Day.
Dine Out has also been in my game since I started TS4 so I send sims to restaurants all the time without thinking about it. I've got at least 8 restaurants. I've had someone be a restaurant owner but I usually send sims there to hang out or go on dates.
That said, Spa Day is one of my top favorites as well. I love the yoga mat and meditation stool.