PATRLR

So what are you telling me, for a 4000 passenger Encore cruise they prepare 4000 of each entrée, just in case everyone decides to order the exact same dish? Of course not. They have algorithms and formulas based on years of experience across multiple ships and multiple lines that dictate how much of each dish to prepare each evening. No doubt the Prima menu being new, the data set is small. It's going to take time and they know that.. There will be waste, it's a cost of changing the menus. Do you think Beef Wellington is the only thing they were making too much of? Of course not. But that's the only one they took off the menu. The other dishes they adjusted their algorithms to make less. Hmmm.... Could it be that this is the real reason Beef Wellington is gone? It's simply more expensive to prepare than they want to spend on MDR meals? Just one more case of NCL nickle and diming from the cost side of the ledger?

Then you ought to love what I posted seeing as it was free enterprise making the decision to raise it's minimum wage and not the government. Free enterprise - isn't that how it's supposed to work?

I think what people are complaining about is the higher cruise fares AND the reduced selection. Shouldn't have it both ways. The resort I work part time at instituted an across the board $20/hour minimum wage (for all their resorts across the country). The result was dramatic increase in services because now they were able to hire help. All dining facilities open, all infrastructure working to full capacity, etc, etc. Funny how that works - pay a wage that you can live on and people will come to work.

If you've never eaten at an Applebees, then how do you know the food was good? Or, are you saying you found the food on NCL to be very good? If that's the case, then I'd suggest you probably would find Applebees to be very good too. Enjoy!

I wasn't talking about the food in the post you quoted.

Now there's the understatement of the week. Maybe the month. 🙂 NCL's customer concern, as a business, is absolutely non-existent as far as I can tell. (yes, individuals working for NCL can show very high levels of customer concern. But that is coming from the indviduals, not from the business)

If this is true, then we can expect this menu to continue to contract. When it was first announced, my concerne was getting bored with the menu, especially if we only had 2 nights SD on a 7 night cruise. Welll here we go, menu contracting (swapping fish and chips for beef wellington is a contraction, IMO) Oh please. How about just making less of a dish? How long can it take to figure out how much you need of something each night?

I'm a little surprised at the comments that don't seem to recognize or acknowledge the difference between walking to a buffet and grabbing a few snacks vs sitting down at a sit down restaurant for a snack. Maybe it's just me, but, I find the former to be much more appealing when looking for an evening snack than the latter.

NCL has brought this on themselves. They have lowered their standards to that of low end national chain restaurants and lodging. This is the clientele you get when you lower your quality - it's no secret. If you want better, you'll need to move to a higher end line. No different than if you want good food, you need to stop going to Applebees and consider checking a Capital Grille, if you want decent lodging, skip the Ramada and head to the Westin.

That wasn't unique to RCI. I experienced that on every cruise line until recently: Holland America, RCCL, Dolphin, Disney, and I think even NCL Dawn back in the 2015 time frame.

with these outside stations, are they still making people go to their rooms, get their life vests, put them on and then report to the station?

Yep, that's NCL. Annoying isn't it? I haven't been "everywhere" lately, but, I seem to be hearing most other lines still have some sort of grab and go much later than NCL seems to be offering. We were on Encore in November and there was one night we went looking at around 10-ish and the buffet had a station with cookies and I'm pretty sure that was all. Better than nothing. (If there was something else it was something we had no interest in) Wings are fine if you want to sit down, wait for the order, and eat at a table. I think most late night snackers are more interested in some sort of grab and go. I'll take the pizza I can grab right now over wings I need to wait for. As others have said, we grab food in ziploc or tupperware and keep in the room.

They have a text capability in the app but I don't hear good things about it. If your party is using iPhones, iMessage can be used for free. Put phone in airplane mode, connect to the ship's wifi, but do not "login" or any other form of authentication. iMessage will now work. iMessage works between iPhones on the ship or on land. If you login after connecting to ships wifi you will then be using your "minutes" which is not necessary for iMessage.

The frustrating thing is the hard sell shouldn't be necessary. We're already customers, we've already bought the product once and it really is a good deal. They should sell themselves.

press the three dots and report the post to admins and ask them to remove it.

I wish I'd saved our Freestyle Dailies. I have a feeling we saw it on a sign at the Manhattan. I'd prefer shorts, and we preferred dining in the Manhattan and I couldn't wear shorts (or so I thought). We definitely saw it somewhere, else I would have worn my shorts.

FWIW, I just saw the Freestyle Daily from Encore for January 21, 2023 and it had the same language. I'd love to know if the sign by the entrance to the Manhattan room says the same thing. I'm pretty sure that's what I was going by in November.

Big difference though is that you won't be going back. And, if you experience was the new norm for them, others won't be going back and they may find themselves out of business or roced to change. In the mean time, despite paying more for a product that is "not as good", you'll continue to go on NCL. And you aren't alone. The question is, how far will NCL push this race to the bottom? And is there room for multiple cruise lines down there? We'll see, eventually.

The frequency certainly seems to have increased. NCL has even acknowledged it with their saving the environment BS.

As long as we don't have to put on the life vests and stand out by the boats, I'll be OK.

Agreed. Manhattan room on Encore in November pants required.

I suspect they are commissioned off CruiseNext sales. Possibly they are not commissioned off selling actual cruises? They don't push bookings like they push CNs, so, I suspect they aren't commissioned on bookings.

Sigh. Well that's a statement of the obvious if ever there was one. When a venue is consistently standing room only, most people would think that the venue is not large enough. Apparently, in your mind, high frequency standing room only is correctly sized. Got it.

So you haven't ever participated in anything in the atrium yet you imply there isn't a problem?

We've showed early and found all seats taken to certain shows. Then we head upstairs and often all those seats are taken. So it's not a case of showing up late. The venue simply doesn't have enough seating for certain shows.