Dining package disaster

[grandmarnnurse]

In away, you are correct.

It's the same at the MDR; NCL's "freestyle" means if NCL doesn't have a table for you, you are free to wait.

 

 

I just cruised on the NCL Getaway and when we showed up at one of the MDRs, if a table wasn't available, they would check and tell us where we could go for a table (one of the other MDRs),---usually Tropicana Room had room if not the other smaller dining rooms. We never had an issue. Or you could take a buzzer and sit at the bar and wait for a table--just like at any restaurant you would go to back home. To me, this IS Freestyle cruising--not being tied to a set dinner time every single day!

[$hip$hape]

I just cruised on the NCL Getaway and when we showed up at one of the MDRs, if a table wasn't available, they would check and tell us where we could go for a table (one of the other MDRs),---usually Tropicana Room had room if not the other smaller dining rooms. We never had an issue.

Or you could take a buzzer and sit at the bar and wait

for a table--just like at any restaurant you would go to back home. To me, this IS Freestyle cruising--not being tied to a set dinner time every single day!

I agree !

So what if you miss a show because a dinner is late.

It's all fun.

[Cmdr Cody]

I assumed NCL's "freestyle" pertained to no more fixed dining times in the MDR, just show up, but was not pertaining to the specialty dining reservation system.

 

 

You should make reservations, but if your in a suite/Haven the concierge will help with reservations. On the large ship they have a Haven restaurant that is only for suite/Haven passengers that is real easy to get reservations for.

 

 

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[SAPMAN]

Think it out. If they filled all Speciality restaurant tables at 5:30pm and dinner normally takes 1.5 hours, then next reservations could only start at 7pm (or else those with 6:00p reservation would have to wait a long time). Might as well go back to the 2 sittings per evening. So staggered reservations allow people to make reservations at various times and have seats available. I was on Getaway and Escape in past 2 months and had advanced reservations and always got in within 5 minutes. From 5:30 - 6:30 usually many empty tables, but they filled up by 7pm.

 

Hint: I you really want to get in, tell them you do not mind sitting with others. Often singles or twosomes are seated at a 4 top and usually do not mind having company.

[CGinMTL]

Many restaurants on land don't take reservations anymore because of no shows. Maybe ncl should consider gong that route

 

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[hawkeyetlse]

That would be one solution, but if they are having trouble with no-shows in the specialty restaurants, there are ways to deal with that problem without depriving everyone of the possibility of making reservations. Because lots of people appreciate this possibility, and use it responsibly.

 

As already mentioned in this thread, they can announce a penalty fee for no-shows, and actually enforce it. And they can be more aggressive about releasing tables when people don't show up. 15 minutes is more than enough time. The people who reserved are not stuck helplessly in traffic 30 miles away. They are sitting somewhere less than 1000 feet away, being jerks.

[mamasylvia]

> The people who reserved are not stuck helplessly in traffic 30 miles away.

 

Even stuck in traffic, there are cellphones. And on a ship, with room phones and ship phones scattered around, there is really no excuse for not cancelling a reservation if you can't (or don't want to) keep it. But "common courtesy" hasn't actually been common for years.

[beerman2]

> The people who reserved are not stuck helplessly in traffic 30 miles away.

 

Even stuck in traffic, there are cellphones. And on a ship, with room phones and ship phones scattered around, there is really no excuse for not cancelling a reservation if you can't (or don't want to) keep it. But "common courtesy" hasn't actually been common for years.

 

 

😳😳😳 A common sense answer Brilliant! :D:D:D

[mcd2745]

At Walt Disney World, they had a very similar problem several years back. Reservations at their restaurants were getting incredibly difficult to get. Yet, all the anecdotal evidence suggested that most restaurants were normally only half-full despite being fully booked. Another parallel is that this really became a problem when Disney started offering their dining package for "free" (you had to forego any other discounts/promos to get it) as a promotion - much like NCL has been doing recently. It became evident that the problem was clearly people booking reservations at multiple restaurants for each night of their trip to give themselves options (although a good chunk of the blame for that also falls on Disney for opening up the reservation window 6 months out, leading to the sentiment of "how do i know where i want to eat in 6 months? so i'll just book a reservation everywhere 6 moths out and decide at the time where we want to go"). So the resulting problem was, not surprisingly, that very few people were cancelling the reservations that they weren't going to use. If you're a jerk who is selfish and inconsiderate enough to book reservations at 4-5 different restaurants a night in the first place, it's highly unlikely you're going to have the decency to cancel the unused ones. So eventually, Disney required you to give a credit card number for each reservation and if you don't cancel by the day before, you get slapped with a $10 pp no-show fee (also updated their systems to not allow you to have multiple reservations at the same time). Viola! All of a sudden reservations became much easier to get.

[Maraprince]

NCL's dining reservation system needs a little tweeking. Regardless of when you reserve, any conflicts (i.e., more than one reservation per night) should send up a red flag. Once the system shows a reservation for that night, no additional reservation can be made without the first one being cancelled.

 

This applies to reservations made on board as well. You could have also reserved months prior to boarding and "forgot" about it.. Only one reservation per night period. This would eliminate overbooking and no penalty charge would apply.

 

MARAPRINCE

[Mike D.]

Thanks! After I posted I called Website tech support at NCL (there was 0 hold time :D) and Dave there confirmed that was probably the case. Patience is NOT one of my good features.

 

So patience not being my strong point, I continued to check the website for restaurant availability (in addition to Cagney's and Le Bistro). Every day. Made another call to a NCL rep on Saturday (4/1...April Fool's Day...no kidding). She did agree that it was weird that no other specialty restaurants were available for booking on the Gem 5/27 sailing from NY. She talked with her supervisor and she said he would call me back after he found out more information. On Wednesday evening (4/5) a supervisor did call me. He explained that all the other specialty restaurants were booked by people in the Haven who get to make reservations at 100 days before the cruise.

 

I didn't seem to have much choice but to accept that explanation even though the idea of Moderno (for example) being totally booked seemed weird. He did volunteer that if I wanted to book for 8 people or more, he could do something. Our call ended. I went to the NCL website and booked Cagney's and Le Bistro at 9 p.m. (all that was available on 6/1 and 6/2) for the last two days of the voyage.

 

Next morning, Thursday (4/6...no longer April Fool's day), I checked the NCL website for restaurant availability on the Gem. They were all there! Teppanyaki, Moderno, La Cucina. Of course, since I'd used my 3 meal package previously, I would have been charged for Teppanyaki and Moderno but a 6 a.m. call to a NCL rep got the meals lined up properly.

 

I'm not sure what lesson I should learn here. It might be to be more patient but, frankly, I wished I had booked Cagney's and Le Bistro earlier for better times. It might be that when something doesn't seem to make sense (like no availability of specialty restaurants that don't often fill up totally), I need a better way to get someone's attention at NCL. Or maybe the message is that I should be eating Cherrios on the buffet for all meals? Or perhaps you nice folks have a different idea?

[LrgPizza]

So patience not being my strong point, I continued to check the website for restaurant availability (in addition to Cagney's and Le Bistro). Every day. Made another call to a NCL rep on Saturday (4/1...April Fool's Day...no kidding). She did agree that it was weird that no other specialty restaurants were available for booking on the Gem 5/27 sailing from NY. She talked with her supervisor and she said he would call me back after he found out more information. On Wednesday evening (4/5) a supervisor did call me. He explained that all the other specialty restaurants were booked by people in the Haven who get to make reservations at 100 days before the cruise.

 

I didn't seem to have much choice but to accept that explanation even though the idea of Moderno (for example) being totally booked seemed weird. He did volunteer that if I wanted to book for 8 people or more, he could do something. Our call ended. I went to the NCL website and booked Cagney's and Le Bistro at 9 p.m. (all that was available on 6/1 and 6/2) for the last two days of the voyage.

 

Next morning, Thursday (4/6...no longer April Fool's day), I checked the NCL website for restaurant availability on the Gem. They were all there! Teppanyaki, Moderno, La Cucina. Of course, since I'd used my 3 meal package previously, I would have been charged for Teppanyaki and Moderno but a 6 a.m. call to a NCL rep got the meals lined up properly.

 

I'm not sure what lesson I should learn here. It might be to be more patient but, frankly, I wished I had booked Cagney's and Le Bistro earlier for better times. It might be that when something doesn't seem to make sense (like no availability of specialty restaurants that don't often fill up totally), I need a better way to get someone's attention at NCL. Or maybe the message is that I should be eating Cherrios on the buffet for all meals? Or perhaps you nice folks have a different idea?

Here's my idea. Get on the ship and book what you want. Only some of the reservations are open for pre-bookings. The rest can be booked once on board.

[anonmom]

This makes no sense. Every business has some sort of algorithm or contingency plan for no-shows. Restaurants stagger reservations and they schedule their staff based on expected demand (total reservations minus expected no-shows plus expected walk-ins)

 

If a restaurant has room for 100 diners and they get reservations for 100 diners every night, but an average of only 50 diners show up every night, it doesn't make financial sense to turn down walk-up diners out of a strange sense of fairness to the same clientele who only show up for half of their reservations.

 

If a restaurant has room for 100 diners and they get reservations for 50 diners every night, but they also get an average of 50 walk-up diners every night, it doesn't make financial sense to staff the restaurant at 50% of capacity and then turn away all of the walk-up diners every night.

 

If a restaurant has enough tables for 100 diners at a time, and is open for 5 hours every night, and diners stay for an average of 90 minutes each, it doesn't make financial sense to reserve each table for only 90 minutes each night and then turn away any additional reservations and any walk-up diners.

 

A successful restaurant has to know what their peak hours are, how long it takes to turn over a table, how many people they can seat in a given night, how many kitchen staff and wait staff they need to serve that many people, etc, etc, etc. No restaurant is going to do this perfectly, but it is reasonable to expect that they will try.

 

It may not be the case that the NCL board is filled with people who weren't able to use their SDP credits, or had to use them at inconvenient times, but it is certainly a complaint I have heard more than once.

 

What this means is that there is a mismatch in expectations between the corporate marketing department and the food and beverage departments on the individual ships. I think this is actually going to turn out like the great UBP debate of 2016. Last year, most people only got one perk when they booked. So the most popular perk (UBP) had a bunch of growing pains that many people complained about on here. Now it is more and more common for people to get 2 perks when they book, so the next most popular perk (SDP) is going to suffer.

That's one reason.

 

Another reason is the plethora of people who make reservations and end up being a no-show. Just because you see empty tables doesn't automatically mean those tables aren't waiting for the people who reserved them to show up.

 

Just an observation. I used to get exercised about going to land-based restaurants without a reservation and waiting while there multiple empty tables. A friend in the restaurant business told me that is done so as not to over-tax the kitchen and waitstaff.

 

The great enjoyment to me of the specialty restaurants has always been the quality of service and the leisurely pace of the meal.

 

 

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[Tmacn]

Think it out. If they filled all Speciality restaurant tables at 5:30pm and dinner normally takes 1.5 hours, then next reservations could only start at 7pm (or else those with 6:00p reservation would have to wait a long time). Might as well go back to the 2 sittings per evening. So staggered reservations allow people to make reservations at various times and have seats available. I was on Getaway and Escape in past 2 months and had advanced reservations and always got in within 5 minutes. From 5:30 - 6:30 usually many empty tables, but they filled up by 7pm.

 

Hint: I you really want to get in, tell them you do not mind sitting with others. Often singles or twosomes are seated at a 4 top and usually do not mind having company.

 

What an insane hint, lol. The vast majority of couples dining on a 4 tip do not want to eat with a stranger or two, let me assure you.

[dekohman]

I hope I'm not hijacking here, but I almost always book the restaurants I want on the web. I did that with our next cruise (the Jewel in April). But, I just tried that with the Gem out of New York at the end of May. Only Cagney's and Le Bistro were available. I booked the 1st night for Cagneys successfully but the other restaurants were not available (Teppanyaki, Moderno etc.)

 

So I called the friendly agents at NCL. After holding for exactly 52 minutes, I reached Rachel, who let me know that she couldn't book restaurants either. They were all full. 88 days before the voyage? We have the 3 meal package (and two for our Platinum status).

 

I'd appreciate any insights or new steps. Thanks. You all are great! :)

 

That is terrible news. The room may seat, say 100, but they only have staff for, say 50, so the room is half full yet the room is full!! Looks like the F&B manager needs to be taken to task about.

 

Someone else maybe already answered this but my understanding is that they hold open only a relatively small number of slots for the pre-registering process - most are held open for people to book when they board. However - just like Vibe passes, people have to be quick about it. The longer you wait the less likely a time that works will be open and eventually there won't be any spaces left.

 

We don't necessarily like it - it takes the spontaneity away - but we do try to book 90 days out so it's done - then build the rest of the stuff around the reservations. Not perfect but it works.

 

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[bromleypod]

For the set fee restaurants you do need to cancel ahead or you'll be charged... for the a la cartes, no.... there's no charge for a no show

 

 

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Which ones are the set fee restaurant on the Epic please??

[samshltn]

This is based on the "dinner for two" principle and my only being "one".

 

How did that go? Did it work?

[ColinIllinois]

Which ones are the set fee restaurant on the Epic please??

 

 

https://www.ncl.com/sites/default/files/Dining_Guide.pdf

[bromleypod]

https://www.ncl.com/sites/default/files/Dining_Guide.pdf

I have the UDP, do I still have to pay extra

to dine in the fixed fee ones e.g tepinakki

[beerman2]

I have the UDP, do I still have to pay extra

to dine in the fixed fee ones e.g tepinakki

No ! You can use 1 of your SDP nights at Teppanyaki.

[LrgPizza]

Which ones are the set fee restaurant on the Epic please??

Teppanyaki and Moderno.

[gail-s]

One of the problems we saw on our last cruise was people booking tables and then not showing up. They figure it's free so it's not big deal and they're inconsiderate to other people who might want to actually eat at that restaurant.