Coastal Kitchen vs Luminae?

[tkline]

So I have another foodie question!

 

For those of you who may have tried Coastal Kitchen on Royal Caribbean, and Luminae on Celebrity.. which did you like better and why?

[George C]

We did both in last year, no competition quality of food and service is much better in luminae.  When we were on Oasis after two dinners wife wanted specialty restaurants for rest of cruise, on celebrity we were happy having all but one dinner in luminae. One thing that is better on CK is it is open for lunch on port day. 

[chemmo]

Menu...

Coastal Kitchen has one ongoing menu which is OK but not good and quickly becomes boring if you plan to dine there most nights. Luminae has a different menu nightly but it is quite limited and many guests supplement it with choices from the MDR. The menu descriptions in Luminae are poor, you do sometimes have to ask exactly what to expect from a dish. Food quality good (better than Coastal) although many dishes seem to have vegetables as a ‘garnish’ rather than an integral part of the dish.

 

Ambience...

Luminae wins, more attractive, more comfortable a real ‘speciality feel’.

 

Service...

Luminae wins for attention to detail and  personalised service. However, breakfast service is faster in Coastal and they do serve a lunch menu on port days whilst Luminae is only open at lunch on sea days...

 

Drinks...

Wine/drinks are served free of charge in Coastal to suite guests without a drinks package. Wine is at an additional cost in Luminae for guests without a drinks package.

 

Personal opinion....

 

On both lines we will use the suite restaurant at times. However, on both lines our main dining will be in the speciality restaurants. Either as an included part or our suite choice or purchased as a ‘dining package’. To us, our evening meal is a significant part of our ‘evening entertainment’. We do find the speciality restaurants on S class much better than on RC generally, however, M class has more limited options...

 

 

[hcat]

We had same reaction on Oasis..MD food and service were really  not up to expectations, compared to Celeb mdr  and esp BLU.  Switched off to Specialty dining venues...better than mdr  but not great,

Not familiar with Coastal Kitchen or Luminae..but if we cruised again on Royal  we would select a suite and dine in Specialty venues..

Edited July 30, 2019 by hcat

[tkline]

Thanks.. we are considering a few itineraries for Royal, but we are bigtime foodies and we loved the Luminae on our Alaska cruise. We have never done Royal before, but we did Regal Princess and found the MDR to be better than expected, but still several notches below Luminae. Even though we had a club class mini suite on Princess we still missed the "special suite only restaurant" thing. We decided we'd like to stick to royal or celebrity to rack up our captains club points if we can 🙂

 

We try not to do specialty restaurants because the cruise itself was expensive, so if we are going to spend money to eat we would rather eat at a local restaurant in one of the stops. And we want to save what money we have left for the casino (which is also where we spend our onboard credit) 🙂

[George C]

34 minutes ago, chemmo said:

Menu...

Coastal Kitchen has one ongoing menu which is OK but not good and quickly becomes boring if you plan to dine there most nights. Luminae has a different menu nightly but it is quite limited and many guests supplement it with choices from the MDR. The menu descriptions in Luminae are poor, you do sometimes have to ask exactly what to expect from a dish. Food quality good (better than Coastal) although many dishes seem to have vegetables as a ‘garnish’ rather than an integral part of the dish.

 

Ambience...

Luminae wins, more attractive, more comfortable a real ‘speciality feel’.

 

Service...

Luminae wins for attention to detail and  personalised service. However, breakfast service is faster in Coastal and they do serve a lunch menu on port days whilst Luminae is only open at lunch on sea days...

 

Drinks...

Wine/drinks are served free of charge in Coastal to suite guests without a drinks package. Wine is at an additional cost in Luminae for guests without a drinks package.

 

Personal opinion....

 

On both lines we will use the suite restaurant at times. However, on both lines our main dining will be in the speciality restaurants. Either as an included part or our suite choice or purchased as a ‘dining package’. To us, our evening meal is a significant part of our ‘evening entertainment’. We do find the speciality restaurants on S class much better than on RC generally, however, M class has more limited options...

 

 

But wine served in CK goes for about 4 dollars a bottle in stores, in luminae we went to micheals and requested decoy Cabernet and just brought a large glass with us. 

[chemmo]

7 minutes ago, George C said:

But wine served in CK goes for about 4 dollars a bottle in stores, in luminae we went to micheals and requested decoy Cabernet and just brought a large glass with us. 

 

 As Celebrity tends to offer most suite guests drinks packages  as part of their ‘perks’ it often isn’t relevant. However, I was just trying to inform the OP about the differences between the two lines. Technically in Coastal suite guests have wine included, in Luminae you do not...

 

Agree, if you have no drinks package Michael’s/Retreat will let you carry a glass of wine out of the lounge.

[mafig]

Chemmo, as far as I know the menu changes in Coastal Kitchen.  They used to have two (maybe three?) rotating menus, but now it's a new menu every night.

 

Lunch and breakfast stay the same, though.

[George C]

Lunch was similar but not same in CK

[grandgeezer]

1 hour ago, George C said:

But wine served in CK goes for about 4 dollars a bottle in stores, in luminae we went to micheals and requested decoy Cabernet and just brought a large glass with us. 

 

I'm glad you are getting something for the extreme difference in pricing. We did the Grand Suite on Allure last October and it was well over $130 p.p. per day cheaper than the Sky Suite on the Equinox. No drink package on the Allure but with the loyalty hours of 4:30 til 8 and free soda, wine, and beer available 11am til 11pm, we survived. We aren't drink snobs and once you add water or another mix to the premium brands, we couldn't tell the difference.

We did get , internet, and $200 obc from RCL, and the $450 obc from travel agency covered the gratuities with a little left over to take home, Also dinner for two in a specialty restaurant from them also.

[George C]

I do not think cost was part of the original question, but I agree celebrity suites cost lots more than rccl ,in general, also smallest suite with all the perks is sky on celebrity, much rather have rccl grand suites. But celebrity is more consistent with perks , most rccl ships do not even heave a CK.

[chemmo]

8 hours ago, mafig said:

Chemmo, as far as I know the menu changes in Coastal Kitchen.  They used to have two (maybe three?) rotating menus, but now it's a new menu every night.

 

Lunch and breakfast stay the same, though.

 

Probably my mistake...We dined there a couple of times and were offered the same menu each time but had a speciality dining package too so on the nights we weren’t there the menu probably was different. 

[chemmo]

7 hours ago, grandgeezer said:

 

I'm glad you are getting something for the extreme difference in pricing. We did the Grand Suite on Allure last October and it was well over $130 p.p. per day cheaper than the Sky Suite on the Equinox. No drink package on the Allure but with the loyalty hours of 4:30 til 8 and free soda, wine, and beer available 11am til 11pm, we survived. We aren't drink snobs and once you add water or another mix to the premium brands, we couldn't tell the difference.

We did get , internet, and $200 obc from RCL, and the $450 obc from travel agency covered the gratuities with a little left over to take home, Also dinner for two in a specialty restaurant from them also.

 

I always enjoy reading your posts as you clearly factually express ‘what you get for your $’. I agree with you that we could usually probably cruise the Suite Life on RC cheaper and also not need a drinks package.

 

However, for us food quality and restaurant and lounge ‘ambience’ is important. When we do occasionally return to RC (despite much better shows) we find that we simply don’t enjoy dining and pre and post dinner drinks as much....We never feel ‘as well looked after’ as a suite guest, even in top suites. We do feel that the speciality restaurants on RC are less special too...

[JonnyGUofD]

16 hours ago, George C said:

We did both in last year, no competition quality of food and service is much better in luminae.  When we were on Oasis after two dinners wife wanted specialty restaurants for rest of cruise, on celebrity we were happy having all but one dinner in luminae. One thing that is better on CK is it is open for lunch on port day. 

Our experience is exactly the same as this poster.

 

[chill6x6]

We did both last year...Luminae on Silhouette and CK on Oasis.  IMO Luminae by a mile.  CK was packed not by suite guest but by Pinnacles.  There were less attendants and more folks dining in CK.  I got much better service in the Holland America Rotterdam MDR than in CK.  In Luminae we probably had five different people waiting on our table, from the Maitre' d on down.  They waited on us hand and foot.  Luminae was quieter too.  I wasn't that crazy about the Suite Louge either besides the view which was great!  We much preferred Michaels Club.

[TeeRick]

18 hours ago, chemmo said:

Menu...

Coastal Kitchen has one ongoing menu which is OK but not good and quickly becomes boring if you plan to dine there most nights. Luminae has a different menu nightly but it is quite limited and many guests supplement it with choices from the MDR. The menu descriptions in Luminae are poor, you do sometimes have to ask exactly what to expect from a dish. Food quality good (better than Coastal) although many dishes seem to have vegetables as a ‘garnish’ rather than an integral part of the dish.

 

Ambience...

Luminae wins, more attractive, more comfortable a real ‘speciality feel’.

 

Service...

Luminae wins for attention to detail and  personalised service. However, breakfast service is faster in Coastal and they do serve a lunch menu on port days whilst Luminae is only open at lunch on sea days...

 

Drinks...

Wine/drinks are served free of charge in Coastal to suite guests without a drinks package. Wine is at an additional cost in Luminae for guests without a drinks package.

 

Personal opinion....

 

On both lines we will use the suite restaurant at times. However, on both lines our main dining will be in the speciality restaurants. Either as an included part or our suite choice or purchased as a ‘dining package’. To us, our evening meal is a significant part of our ‘evening entertainment’. We do find the speciality restaurants on S class much better than on RC generally, however, M class has more limited options...

 

 

We did a back to back in January this year in mid-level suites first on Harmony (CL) and then on Edge (CS).  I reviewed the suite experience here on CC if anybody is interested.  As far as CK vs. Luminae, both experiences were very good but I do overall very much agree with chemmo's comments above.  Our experience on Edge with Luminae was not as good as either M-Class or S-Class versions.  On Edge it was a much larger space and loud.  No feel of intimacy. Similar to CK on Harmony which is also in a very large space as it is combined with the Suite Lounge.  In general for most but not all sailings, the suite experience on Celebrity usually includes everything, even in a Sky Suite.  On RCCL, you need to be in the highest class suites to get most extras.