totalee

On the Epic studios had a desk, it was small but comfortable. On that boat the solo cruisers had a meet up before dinner each evening. The First night we went to the dining room as a group of 20 or so, but on later nights we met up in groups of 3-4 after we had met people we could have reasonable conversation with.

On another NCL Cruise I went to the MDR alone and waited 2 hours between my appetizer and main course. I really felt ignored that day and used specialty restaurants until I met some other people on the boat whose dinner company I enjoyed.

Last week I sailed on NCL again I received good service the 1 time I went to a dining room alone, they had a solo travelers meet up there and a few times I joined together with some of the people I had met there for dinner, and I joined some people I had met through out Cruise critic roll call other evenings. I received a bottle of wine each day from the casino and wanted to share it (I couldn't drink that much wine all by myself).

On Carnival I have always had a set dining room time, and always had good company and the one time a jerk was seated at our table he was only there for one meal.

I took a carnival cruise 2 years ago and won $1000 on a slot machine, this year they sent me a free cruise. I took that in May on the Pride and wound up getting 7000 points in the casino. I received a free drink card the first night of the cruise, chocolate strawberries in my room 2 nights, a bottle of wine at dinner on night and a free cruise certificate from the host on the last night of the cruise. Unfortunately I gave back almost all my winnings from my previous cruise on that trip. the Free cruises only charged port fees which are less than $100.

I took a transatlantic on NCL last year I received a discount from Ceasar's and a bottle of wine and a free drink card when checked into my room. I had an outstanding bar server in the casino (on the Epic) if I even walked through the casino I had a drink in my hand before I walked from one side of the casino to the other.

I few months later I received a free cruise certificate from Ceasar's and took a cruise on the Pearl. I received the free drink card the first day. NCL adds a NCF fee of $150-200 to its free cruise plus port taxes and their Free cruise winds up costing about $400. I moved to "hot" red car status on that cruise, but the drink service was not very good. When I was finally able to speak to the casino host on the last night of the cruise she was apologetic that she hadn't talked to me and discounted my cruise bill by $100. but that was all she did I was disappointed. I received another free cruise certicate from Ceasar's for an NCL cruise but the dates and ship's offered were extremely limited and they still want to charge that bogus NCF fee (which I think is the casino room rate). So I will probably stick with Carnival for a while.