sppunk

Copper10-8, thanks. I just wanted to say you wrote about the Carnival Sensation, not the Carnival Celebration. While I'm sure Sensation is a fine ship to sail, I've never had the experience of doing so. ;)

The good 'ol Carnival Celebration, in 1989.

The good 'ol Carnival Celebration, in 1989.

For this cruise, pure majority as there was no large group.

Our take - from the review of our 5/18/08 Westerdam sailing review (http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=781689).

One of the primary reasons we had neglected to book a HAL cruise was the dining situation - we simply hate being told exactly when to dine in the main dining room and don't feel the lido buffet can ever fully replace dinner. So, with this, we happily signed up for As You Wish dining when we booked our cruise in January. On the cruise documents received, they said AS YOU WISH dining. However, when we received our cruise cards we were giving a specific table for the 8 p.m. dining time. *****?

We immediately sought the maître d to have it changed. He informed us that 1,400 of the 2,098 individuals on board had requested As You Wish dining and HAL decided to randomly place people in traditional dining slots. We were scratching our heads, and asked to be placed back to our preference. He tried to talk us out of it - saying lines would be long, we would likely have rushed meals, etc. - but we knew the pros/cons and insisted to be placed back to As You Wish, which we were.

Not one time did we have to wait for a table (and only one time out of three when requesting a table for 2 were we told it'd be a 10 minute wait) and only saw large groups having to wait. We ate at all times - from 5 p.m. to 8:15 p.m.

The meals - which we were warned would be rushed - were the opposite. I'm sorry, but 2 and 1/2 hours for a meal is too long and we experienced this three times, one when we were at a table for 2! I believe the issue lies within the sheer number of waitstaff not being able to handle the amount of workloads they are now given. The kitchen could get backed up, but this is something we obviously can't see so I won't speculate.

Everyone has to keep in mind, CruiseCritic is a very, very small percentage of cruises.

Also, people are much more likely to go out of their way to criticize than praise something - hence you'll get MANY more "AYWD is the worst invention ever" than "AYWD works well and is a nice option."

And, AYWD is no different than the Pinnacle, where you still have to make a reservation for each day if you wished to dine there each evening.

Here's our breakdown per person for our upcoming Alaska cruise on the Westerdam:

Cruise $ 448.00

Airfare $ 0.00

Fuel Suppliment-$5 Day/$70 Max $ 35.00

Insurance $ 0.00

Tax / Fees $ 350.19

PASSENGER TOTAL $ 833.19

So, the actual cruise is less than $100 more than taxes and fees. Crazy.