With the recent announcements by Royal Caribbean and Celebrity regarding their new flexible dining programs aboard their ships, I thought it would be a good time to comment on this major change in the industry.
Evening dining on cruise ships used to be all about schedules. You'd tpyically have two seatings for dinner each night, early or late, and you'd select your preferred seating time when you booked. Each night you'd sit at the same table with the same companions, and the evening entertainment would be scheduled around those dining times. There would be an early show for the late-seating diners, and a late show for the early-seating diners.
I have had both good and bad experiences with the traditional dining. One great experience was on the Carnival Jubilee way back in 1990. Our loud family of 5, who enjoyed laughing and having fun, was seated with another couple whom we did not know, but they enjoyed laughing along with us. Each night of the cruise we joked around with our waiter and busboy, who seemed to really enjoy our jokes, and it really was a lot of fun. Dinner was more than just dinner; it was an event. Our tablemates really got into our silly spirit and it really was a memorable experience for all. The opposite, however, was true the following year when my husband and went on our honeymoon on a Royal Caribbean ship. We were seated at a table with 2 other couples, and it was a disaster. One couple never spoke to us, even to greet us or say goodnight when they left the table; the other couple spoke but had about zero personality. We tried conversing with them but there were so many awkward silences that we eventually gave up. For some reason which I cannot recall, we were unable to change our seating assignment, so we began eating in the buffet instead.
Overall, the best part about traditional dining is forming a relationship with the waitstaff. On a recent Celebrity cruise, our waiter and busboy enjoyed making little animals from our napkins, and it seemed like every night they had something different with which to entertain us. On my husband's and my anniversary cruise last year on the Royal Caribbean Adventure of the Seas, we had a wonderful waiter who really helped make our cruise special. And on our most recent cruise on the Carnival Valor, our waitstaff really pleased our kids by knowing their likes and dislikes right away. The smile on my son's face as our waiter poured his ketchup on his nightly chicken nuggets dinner was priceless, as was my daughter's delight at being brought a shrimp cocktail without even asking. Those are the kind of experiences that really make cruising a wonderful vacation.
Unfortunately, you oftentimes forfeit that relationship when you have flexible dining. Since you eat at a different table each night and at different times, it is hard to get the same waiter and busboy more than once, unless you remember their names and specifically ask for them. Sometimes your request can be accommodated and sometimes it can't, so the whole experience becomes less personal and more like going to a typical restaurant.
Yet the flexibility of being able to eat when you are hungry and with whom you would like certainly has its merits, and I think it is great that almost all of the American contemporary cruise lines are now offering their own versions of flexible dining to give us more of a choice when we cruise. There are slight differences and distinctions between the cruise lines' programs, so I am briefly outlining them here.
I think it is important to begin with NCL, because their Freestyle Dining is probably what started the movement. NCL's program is very flexible, allowing you to eat wherever you want and whenever you want. Reservations can be made onboard the ship or you can walk up to a restaurant and be seated, but depending on the time you arrive, you may encounter a wait. NCL actually will charge a fee if you fail to cancel a reservation, but I think this is a good way to deter passengers from making reservations at every restaurant on the ship and preventing others from dining there when they'd like. Overall, I really like NCL's Freestyle cruising experience, and I think the Freestyle dining works well, but I have found some of their waitstaff to be very impersonal.
Princess has offered its Anytime Dining for quite a while now, and I think it works quite well also. One of the main dining rooms is used for traditional seatings, and the other is used for Anytime Dining. You can make reservations once you get onboard, or you can just show up, and sometimes, depending on what time it is, you may encounter a wait. I have taken a number of Princess cruises and never had to wait more than 15 minutes to be seated, so that turned out good, but on my last Princess cruise I encountered waitstaff that was impersonal and seemed rushed. Perhaps the waitstaff needed to be better trained or we caught them at a bad moment. Overall, the program works well in my opinion.
Holland America's As You Wish Dining works similarly to Princess's program. This program was introduced about 2 years ago and has been implemented fleetwide for about a year. As You Wish dining operates much like Princess's program does, with one dining room designated for traditional dining, and the other for flexible dining. Reservations can be made once onboard the ship.
Carnival now offers its Your Choice Dining on some of its ships and it should be implemented fleetwide in mid-2010. When booking, guests now choose which dining option they want, be it Early Seating, Late Seating, or Your Choice, and the dining selection is then confirmed. With Your Choice Dining, guests can make reservations once onboard and will be seated at 15-minute intervals. Too bad this program wasn't available when I sailed on the Valor last July because I would have liked to experience it. I assume that the program will operate similarly to Princess and Holland America, with one dining room for traditional and the other for Your Choice.
Royal Caribbean offers My Time Dining, which allows guests to make daily reservations once onboard. The difference with My Time Dining is that guests must enroll in the program in advance of their cruise, and they must pre-pay their gratuities to participate. I do not really understand why Royal Caribbean requires guests to pre-pay their gratuities, since the line charges gratuities to guests' onboard accounts anyway, but perhaps they do so to ensure that the waitstaff get what they are entitled to.
Royal Caribbean also offers a unique program called My Family Time Dining, which offers an expedited 40-minute dinner experience during the first seating in the main dining room for kids, ages 3-11, enrolled in the Adventure Ocean youth program. Once seated, kids will enjoy expedited service and be immediately served. Forty-five minutes into the seating, a youth counselor will escort kids from the main dining room entrance back to the Adventure Ocean spaces for continued evening activities, allowing parents to enjoy the rest of their dinner quietly while the children play elsewhere. This isn't flexible, in that it is only for early seating guests, but it sounds like a great program and apparently there is no charge to participate.
At the end of August, Celebrity announced its Celebrity Select dining program, which offers a feature that the other flexible dining programs do not offer: the ability to make dining reservations before you even board the ship! Guests can book reservations online up to 4 days before boarding, so they can really plan ahead! Like Royal Caribbean, Celebrity requires guests to enroll in the program in advance and requires pre-paid gratuities. The program became available on the September 26 sailing of the Equinox, and will be introduced on other ships according to a schedule on the cruise line's website. The online system for reservations is supposed to become operational for most sailings on October 15, and guests will always have at least 30 days before sailing to begin making their reservations.
With Celebrity's program starting up, we now have almost every contemporary and upscale American-market cruise line offering some form of flexible dining. Carnival, Royal Caribbean, NCL, Celebrity, Princess, and Holland America all offer a program, and I think this really shows how the industry is open to change. The only player in these American-market cruise line categories that does not offer a flexible dining program is Disney, although the fixed dining program they offer isn't exactly "traditional". Disney's program truly is unique, but I choose not to elaborate because the program is really beyond the scope of this blog entry. Nevertheless, this shift towards freedom to dine at guest's schedules instead of the cruise lines', shows how the cruise lines are constantly evolving to meet our needs and desires. This is yet another reason why cruising is about the best vacation experience around.
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