Irish90Cruiser

We've only experience gluten free on the Serenade in the Caribbean, but it was fantastic. My daughter has celiac and every night at dinner they would go over the next night's menu with her so she could decide what she wanted. Some items were gluten free already, sometimes they would make an item gluten free for her. They had gluten free bread waiting for her at the table every night.

We usually ate breakfast in the Windjammer buffet and on our last cruise, items were labeled gluten free. If we had any questions, one of the chefs would walk us around and identify which items were safe. They even made her special gluten free pancakes on a couple of the mornings.

First, thanks to Dee (cruznut1111) for starting this thread. It has been really helpful to me to hear about other people's experiences. I feel so hopeful for my DD that things will get easier for her and others who have to live with celiac.

Also, I too am looking forward to reading graceinmelbourne's article when it is published.

Thanks for all your info and tips everyone!

Katie

Hi. I'm very interested in more information about taking the public bus to Champagne. Did you do it? How was it?

 

Thank you

Was in Dominica last week and took the bus to Champagne Reef. It was a very cool experience. The bus system in Dominica is not as well organized as Antigua. For example, there is no "bus station". We walked from the ship straight into town right past the market square. Be strong and politely turn down the numerous taxi offers you will be bombarded with. Instead, look for the minivans parked along the curb with only local islanders in them. These are the buses. Ask for the one headed to Scott's Head and tell the driver you want to get off at Champagne reef.We waited about 15-20 minutes for the van to fill up and then we were off. If you are in a hurry, this is not the way to go. We rode through the city and botanical garden. the driver stopped at a gas station to put some air in the back tire and some more gas in the van. We had to wait for about 20 minutes to catch a ride back and it was a bit difficult to tell whether a van is a taxi or a bus. Aside from saving some money($2/person each way), I enjoyed getting a brief peek into what life is like on the island plus it added a litle adventure to the day.

Just wanted to update this thread with our recent experience with my DD who has celiac. On boarding day we went to the Windjammer for lunch and the first thing I did was find a sous chef to take us around and point out what items were gluten free. They had a pretty good assortment - there is always a carving station and a potato dish. The salad bar is fine. French fries are not ok because they use the same oil for frying other things. For dessert, the jellos, puddings and ice cream are GF. There were always bowls by the ice cream machine so she was able to get it whenever she wanted to. On day 2 (and every day thereafter) I noticed that directly above the little signs that identify the food items, they had an extra sign that identified the item as gluten free, so we didn't need to ask anyone after that. This also helped when she was roaming around with her friends because sometimes she is a little shy about asking for help. Also on Day 2 for breakfast, we asked a sous chef for some gluten free bread. The gentleman said he would go down and get some and keep it up in the Windjammer so it would be available all week. So my daughter was able to have GF toast every morning. I will say that I think they used the same toaster so if you are very sensitive this may not work for everyone. On the morning of Day 5, another sous chef overheard us asking someone else for the GF bread. He came over and said he takes care of allergy issues and asked if we needed anything else. We said no, the toast was fine. He then offered to make my daughter some GF pancakes with whatever she wanted in them - blueberries, raspberries, chocolate. We didn't want them that morning but he asked what time we would be in the next day and he said he would be there to make them for her. And he did just that the next day. We were very grateful but she did say mine were better ;).

We had sent in the e-mail with the special dining request before the cruise so in the main dining room they were prepared with GF bread for my daughter from the first night on. She ended up just getting the grilled chicken breast for dinner that first night because they didn't have any time to make something special for her. For each other night of the cruise the Head Waitress would come over at the end of the meal and take her order for the following night's dinner. If she wanted something that had gluten in it they would make a special version of it for her without gluten (by using cornstarch instead of flour in the sauce, etc). On a couple of the nights there weren't any desserts that were GF. Ice cream is always an option, but our Head Waitress (Emilia, who was AWESOME) would always make an extra effort. One of the nights, she brought out the GF mango parfait from the previous night because DD had really enjoyed it. The next night she told my daughter that she would have the chef make a special dessert for her and surprise her. It ended up being a baked, spiced apple served with ice cream. My daughter was in heaven because she said it tasted just like apple pie. On the last night, tiramisu was one of the choices and my daughter wanted to try it. So Emilia said she would have them make a special one for my daughter. So my husband gets his and it is the square piece that eveyone else gets, and they bring out my daughter's and it is in the tulip shaped chocolate cup that they use for the tiramisu in Portofino. Hers had just the mousse in the edible cup. It was amazing!!

So, I can only say positive things about our experience. I feel like the staff makes every effort to accommodate dietary restrictions. We cruised on the Serenade 2 years ago and even though we were happy then, there seemed to be a lot more options for my daughter this time around.