Garden Villa Dining Question

[pettums]

We are very excited to be in a Garden Villa on the Star next week for a 14-night cruise. This is our first time in a villa. We are a family of 6 (2 adults, 4 kids). 

 

I am busy wondering whether it might be advisable to try and eat in our suite for dinner most of the time. I think I understand from the postings on this board that we can use our dining plan credits to get a meal from Cagney's delivered to the villa. Does anyone see any drawbacks of trying to get food from le bistro, cuchina and cagneys delivered to the villa rather than eating in the dining room. I am assuming that you can't get Moderno food delivered. 

 

We have eaten at these restaurants on the ncl dawn so I assume it will be similar as an experience. The pros to me of dining in the villa is that I won't have to worry about my 1-year old jumping around and disturbing people. The main con I can see is that it may feel like less of a "experience". 

 

Thank you for your responses. If it looks like a good idea, I will get a 10-night dining plan for my two older daughters, on top of our already included 5-night dining plan (for the parents). 

 

 

 

[OnTheGoMom921]

Enjoy your villa! There are NO drawbacks to dining in your suite. While I've never had a villa, we did enjoy dining in our H6, the aft balconies are huge.  Your butler will deliver breakfast, lunch and dinner from all specialty restaurants. On the Star, your breakfast and lunches are at Cagney's (or Moderno for breakfast) and you have the full menu to choose from.  Ask your butler to serve outside in your private courtyard...it's a real treat to enjoy breakfast, lunch or dinner that way. They will set up at dining table as well, complete with linens and all. We actually would request breakfast the evening before, complete with a delivery time. We would get a phone call from the butler about 5 minutes before delivery, that served as our wake up call each morning. You will be so spoiled after your cruise...as a busy mom with four kids, PLEASE ask the butler to do EVERYTHING for you!!! You deserve the break. Have an incredible time!!

[mdsgu]

From what I can gather, it would not be a problem to have dinner in your suite.  Just set it up with your butler.  However, with that being said, I would encourage you to take your children to the MDR (or specialty restaurtants) for dinner.  It's a good experience for them.  We have been taking our children to the MDR, Le Bistro, and Moderno since the oldest was only 7 months old (he actually sat -- or lay, actually -- in his carrier at 7 months for 2 hours, quietly, while we had dinner in Le Bistro).  They are now 10 and 9.

[laurabegorrah]

The biggest thing to keep in mind with in room dinning is the wait time.  Especially if you are ordering from multiple different restaurants.  We went crazy one night and ordered from 4 different places for out party of 7 in the Gem GV).  It took over 2 hours for everything to get pulled together lol.  It wasn't an issue b/c weren't in a hurry...but with kids that might get cranky if meal time is late, you might want to warn your butler and order as early as possible!

 

The experience of in room dinning is wonderful though - your butler will serve you one course at a time.  It's not like hotel room service where they jsut wheel a cart in and leave.  It's more like a normal restaurant experience -  having a waiter serve you - just in your room

[pettums]

1 hour ago, mdsgu said:

From what I can gather, it would not be a problem to have dinner in your suite.  Just set it up with your butler.  However, with that being said, I would encourage you to take your children to the MDR (or specialty restaurtants) for dinner.  It's a good experience for them.  We have been taking our children to the MDR, Le Bistro, and Moderno since the oldest was only 7 months old (he actually sat -- or lay, actually -- in his carrier at 7 months for 2 hours, quietly, while we had dinner in Le Bistro).  They are now 10 and 9.

 

Good on you! I have always liked the Norwegian MDR but on our most recent sailing on the NCL Gem we fell in a pattern of eating at the buffet with 3 of the kids, and then sometimes going "out" for a meal as a couple (with a baby) afterwards - and taking turns in jiggling the baby if he got impatient. Having said that some of my favorite experiences on cruises have us all being eating together as a family - but that was more on DCL rather than NCL where the service is a more kid-orientated.

 

 

 

 

[pettums]

28 minutes ago, laurabegorrah said:

The biggest thing to keep in mind with in room dinning is the wait time.  Especially if you are ordering from multiple different restaurants.  We went crazy one night and ordered from 4 different places for out party of 7 in the Gem GV).  It took over 2 hours for everything to get pulled together lol.  It wasn't an issue b/c weren't in a hurry...but with kids that might get cranky if meal time is late, you might want to warn your butler and order as early as possible!

 

The experience of in room dinning is wonderful though - your butler will serve you one course at a time.  It's not like hotel room service where they jsut wheel a cart in and leave.  It's more like a normal restaurant experience -  having a waiter serve you - just in your room

 

Thank you for the warning! We will focus our order each night from just one speciality restaurant then. This is a stupid question but were you able to get food from Moderno's delivered to the villa? I mean is there a way of saying bring me some "grilled pineapple, grilled pork, and grilled beef and rice" and then it happening. Probably not but I thought I would ask! 

[ggTexasGal]

2 hours ago, pettums said:

...

Thank you for your responses. If it looks like a good idea, I will get a 10-night dining plan for my two older daughters, on top of our already included 5-night dining plan (for the parents). 

 

 

 

Unless I am totally misunderstanding what you posted here, I want to warn you about this plan.

Purchasing a "10-night" dining plan CANNOT be split 2 x 5.  Each plan is only good for the person for whom it is purchased (or assigned, if part of Room Perks).

[pettums]

2 hours ago, ggTexasGal said:

Unless I am totally misunderstanding what you posted here, I want to warn you about this plan.

Purchasing a "10-night" dining plan CANNOT be split 2 x 5.  Each plan is only good for the person for whom it is purchased (or assigned, if part of Room Perks).

 

My plan was to purchase 2x10 night dining plans for my 12-year old twins. My rough idea was that would give us 2 nights where we could dine as a family (in Teppanyaki or Moderno) and use 4 credits for each meal. Then we would have left over 3x2 and 7x2 room service credits and we would use those to order room service. I must admit that I was thinking that on a few of those nights I was planning to  use credits for two people, and then the others order from regular room service, as it is a lot of food otherwise! 

 

Do you see a problem with this? I am not sure how they could enforce for in-room dining the idea that we couldn't sample from each other plates. 

 

 

[roger001]

My only fear of having food delivered for that many folks is that it might end up getting cool by the time each of you gets served.  

[bob brown]

JMHO, but anyone paying for what a Garden Villa costs, should not have to pay any additional for specialty dining packages.  Especially since there is no Haven restaurant on those GV ships... 

 

[Greenpea2]

1 hour ago, pettums said:

 

My plan was to purchase 2x10 night dining plans for my 12-year old twins. My rough idea was that would give us 2 nights where we could dine as a family (in Teppanyaki or Moderno) and use 4 credits for each meal. Then we would have left over 3x2 and 7x2 room service credits and we would use those to order room service. I must admit that I was thinking that on a few of those nights I was planning to  use credits for two people, and then the others order from regular room service, as it is a lot of food otherwise! 

 

Do you see a problem with this? I am not sure how they could enforce for in-room dining the idea that we couldn't sample from each other plates. 

 

 

There might not be a problem since you will be in the GV, but I don't think you could count on it being allowed in a regular cabin or suite. I could be wrong--but some of what I have read indicates they can be strict on this...

 

[pettums]

29 minutes ago, Greenpea2 said:

There might not be a problem since you will be in the GV, but I don't think you could count on it being allowed in a regular cabin or suite. I could be wrong--but some of what I have read indicates they can be strict on this...

 

So just to understand they don't allow generally for two people to order from a speciality dining for room service, and the other two people in the cabin to order from the regular room service menu at the same time? That is good to know. 

 

Edited February 6, 2020 by pettums

[Greenpea2]

No, that's not what I meant. I meant the divvying up of the specialty meal perks. I guess I don't really understand what you want to do. I was thinking that if someone gets a specialty meal package then I don't think someone else can use it. Clearly I am not the right person to listen to! 

 

[ggTexasGal]

25 minutes ago, Greenpea2 said:

No, that's not what I meant. I meant the divvying up of the specialty meal perks. I guess I don't really understand what you want to do. I was thinking that if someone gets a specialty meal package then I don't think someone else can use it. Clearly I am not the right person to listen to! 

 

Greenpea2, that is what I was thinking as well.  But, then DH and I have never ordered meals to our (any) staterooms.

(Not even when we've been in Owner's Suites.)

If it were my desire to do as OP stated, I'd call the Pre-Cruise Concierge and ask some VERY SPECIFIC questions before investing in the Meal Packages as mentioned above.   But, it may be possible that some "rules" are overlooked for Garden Villas, especially if/when children are involved.

[maja651]

We were in the GV on the Dawn last March for 14 days. We have also been in the GV on the Star as well as the Jewel.  I can tell you with personal experience, you will get the absolute BEST SERVICE you could even imagine when in the GV.  Last March, we ate 95% of our meals ,when on the ship, in the villa.  We also ordered from just about every restaurant on the ship, sometimes multiple restaurants for one meal. We paid for the specialty meals as required, but everything else was included. Jane, our butler, did ask us when we ordered from different restaurants if it was ok to deliver in separate phases, so the food would be warm. We had no issues with that and the food was always perfect.   

 

Note  - you will have menus from all of the restaurants in the villa, and you can ask your butler to bring you the main dining rooms menu for each day so you know the daily specials.  Take advantage of that!  Also, you can ask your butler to bring certain things daily - for example, we had Jane bring a plate of pastries, fruit and coffee every morning to have waiting for us when we woke up. (The nice thing about the villa is that huge living and dining area, so she could easily come in, drop off the food, and leave without waking anyone.)We would order the hot breakfast after we woke up (if we wanted it, we just called her).  Usually she came up to take every order in person. We didn’t ask for that, she just did that. 

Enjoy the villa! In my opinion, the best GVs on the Star and Dawn are the absolute BEST ROOMS of any NCL ship. The outdoor space alone makes them simply magnificent!

 

oh - and please don’t forget to tip the butler, room steward and concierge well. They really do go above and beyond for the villas. 
 

‘Have fun!

 

 

[Love my butler]

All the times we have been in the garden villa, Star and Dawn, we ate about half our meals there.  Super easy with a super great butler each time.

[MisterBubba]

8 hours ago, maja651 said:

 We also ordered from just about every restaurant on the ship, sometimes multiple restaurants for one meal. We paid for the specialty meals as required, but everything else was included.

This is the relevant part for the specialty dining package question. If only three people want mains from a specialty restaurant and all others want mains from the MDR then only three credits will be charged. 
 

We found the easiest way to get organized was to write down your order and from which restaurant it should come from so it could just be handed to the butler. All in all we probably only ate three or four meals not in our room when we stayed in the Star GV and the sailing was 14 days. 

[pettums]

On 2/6/2020 at 7:39 PM, ggTexasGal said:

Greenpea2, that is what I was thinking as well.  But, then DH and I have never ordered meals to our (any) staterooms.

(Not even when we've been in Owner's Suites.)

If it were my desire to do as OP stated, I'd call the Pre-Cruise Concierge and ask some VERY SPECIFIC questions before investing in the Meal Packages as mentioned above.   But, it may be possible that some "rules" are overlooked for Garden Villas, especially if/when children are involved.

 

I don't want to break any rules! Don't worry. I know that for example I can't order 14-night package between and try and try and split the credits between two people. What I was hoping to do though is to be able to alternate which two of us (Mom and Dad vs Twins) is ordering from the speciality restaurant. Otherwise we will end up with far too much food!  Of course if that twin is the person ordering that will be their meal (not mine). The twins love steak so I thought it might be nice for them.  I can't guarantee I won't have a taste though occasionally 🙂

 

I think though you are right though that I will just check with the Butler on board about whether they feel comfortable with just 2 people ordering from speciality, and the other 2 ordering from room service before buying the two kids meal packages. 

[pettums]

12 hours ago, MisterBubba said:

This is the relevant part for the specialty dining package question. If only three people want mains from a specialty restaurant and all others want mains from the MDR then only three credits will be charged. 
 

We found the easiest way to get organized was to write down your order and from which restaurant it should come from so it could just be handed to the butler. All in all we probably only ate three or four meals not in our room when we stayed in the Star GV and the sailing was 14 days. 

 

I just love the sound of this! You make me so excited for this trip. The fact we can write down our order will make things so much easier than trying to do it over the phone.