Dining Venues

It used to be that when you booked a cruise you had to immediately choose main or late seating for your meals. This meant that except for open seating during breakfast and lunch on port days, you ate at either 7:00am, noon, and 6:15pm or 8:30am, 1:30pm, and 8:30pm. Your only other option was to eat in the buffet for breakfast and/or lunch. There were no other choices for dinner. Early seating meant having to hurry back from port and quickly prepare for dinner. Late seating meant not being done with dinner until 10:30pm or so.

This all changed a few years ago when NCL decided to test market Freestyle Cruising. Now most of the main cruise lines offer other choices besides traditional dining. Options can range anywhere from just having the buffet now open for dinner to offering many different types of restaurants. We have been on a few ships that not only offer dinner in the buffet, but with having two main dining rooms aboard, a choice of traditional seating and anytime dining. The last ship we were on offered not only anytime dining in both main dining rooms and a dinner buffet, but a choice of Spanish, French, fine continental, Japanese, Thai, and sushi restaurants as well as a diner and an outdoor grill.

You might be thinking "with all of these choices, who would still opt for traditional dining?" Of course traditional dining is much more restrictive, but there are some benefits. Having the same table at the same time everyday with the same waitstaff does make a vacation simpler. This is great if too many options tends to overwhelm you. All you need to do is show up at your assigned table and your servers, having established a rapport with you, will have your drink of choice waiting. You also will have the same table mates everyday which works really well if you travel with friends. On one of our cruises our group of 17 was accommodated at two large tables located near each other and served by the same waitstaff. This enabled us to "round robin" which allowed us to enjoy every one of our friend's dinner company at least once. However, if you travel with just one other person you could end up with table mates that you have nothing in common with and don't particularly care for. The maitre'd will try to change your seating assignment, but this may not be possible if the ship is totally full.

There are some drawbacks to choices for dining also. Although some ships will let you call ahead for reservations for the main dining rooms, most are on a first come first served basis. This can lead to a wait for seating, especially on formal nights when not many passengers visit the buffet. All specialty restaurants require reservations which may be hard to get in the more popular eateries. Most of them also have a surcharge which can be quite steep. NCL sometimes offers early bird or late dining at half price. This can be a way to take advantage of a specialty venue without breaking the bank.

Although we do enjoy being flexible, we never personally choose a cruise based on dining options alone. We can enjoy the dining experience either way. There are simply other criteria that are more important to us. Everyone must decide for themselves what will provide their best cruising experience.