I guess Celebrity isn't the only cruise line whose food quality is going downhill.

[Stockjock]

We've had several recent conversations about the drop-off in food quality, something I definitely noticed on our recent Mediterranean cruise on Infinity a few weeks ago.

I'm with a big Wall Street firm and I just spoke w/a client who returned a few days ago from a northeastern US/Canada cruise on Princess (Caribbean Princess).  These clients are very easygoing and are not the "fussy" types, so I'd consider them to be pretty easy to please.  I asked how things went and this was the response I received...

"Our Princess cruise was the worst vacation ever.  The ship was old.  The food was worse than horrible.  It's not that the taste was just bad night-after-night, but service was slow and the food was served cold every night.  I'm not talking about warm, I'm talking flat-out cold!  Everyone was sick and coughing.  We both caught covid.  They had people crammed together like a cattle car.  They nickel and dimed us for everything.  I'm not sure that we'll ever do a cruise again, but if we do, it definitely won't be with Princess!"

I wonder if these cruise lines aren't shooting themselves in the foot with the recently discussed cutbacks and such, both on Celebrity and apparently on Princess too?  FWIW, both the GF and I caught covid on our recent Celebrity cruise as well as on our last Celebrity cruise.  However, we've been on 3 MSC cruises and didn't catch covid.  Not sure if that's just bad luck or what.

 

Edited October 2, 2023 by Stockjock

[ymncruise]

It was so nice when the ships were sailing half full. 

[doghog]

6 minutes ago, Stockjock said:

We've had several recent conversations about the drop-off in food quality, something I definitely noticed on our recent Mediterranean cruise a few weeks ago.

I'm with a big Wall Street firm and I just spoke w/a client who returned a few days ago from a northeastern US/Canada cruise on Princess (Caribbean Princess).  These clients are very easygoing and are not the "fussy" types, so I'd consider them to be pretty easy to please.  I asked how things went and this was the response I received...

"Our Princess cruise was the worst vacation ever.  The ship was old.  The food was worse than horrible.  It's not that the taste was just bad night-after-night, but service was slow and the food was served cold every night.  I'm not talking about warm, I'm talking flat-out cold!  Everyone was sick and coughing.  We both caught covid.  They had people crammed together like a cattle car.  They nickel and dimed us for everything.  I'm not sure that we'll ever do a cruise again, but if we do, it definitely won't be with Princess!"

I wonder if these cruise lines aren't shooting themselves in the foot with the recently discussed cutbacks and such, both on Celebrity and apparently on Princess too?  FWIW, both the GF and I caught covid on our recent Celebrity cruise as well as on our last Celebrity cruise.  However, we've been on 3 MSC cruises and didn't catch covid.  Not sure if that's just bad luck or what.

 

Yet another great example why we would never book or not book a cruise, ship, itinerary, food etc. based on others opinions, experiences, positive or negative. Looking forward to our  March 2024 Enchanted cruise.  

Edited October 2, 2023 by doghog

[Stockjock]

4 minutes ago, doghog said:

Yet another great example why we would never book or not book a cruise, ship, itinerary, food etc. based on others opinions, experiences, positive or negative.  

I don't book based solely on the opinions of others, but I do take those opinions into account.  Sometimes I find them to be helpful and accurate.  Other times, I find that the gripes are overstated.

A decline in overall experience is one of the reasons we're trying Oceania next year, but we do also have a booking on Ascent.

Edited October 2, 2023 by Stockjock

[Whinenowine]

6 minutes ago, Stockjock said:

 FWIW, both the GF and I caught covid on our recent Celebrity cruise as well as on our last Celebrity cruise.  However, we've been on 3 MSC cruises and didn't catch covid.  Not sure if that's just bad luck or what.

Anecdotal evidence clearly supports adding 2,000 people to your cruise is a successful covid deterent!  😉

 

Sorry to hear of your covid-related Celebrity experience....lucky for us our family of 4 have cruised on X three times in the last 15months without incident. 

[doghog]

9 minutes ago, Stockjock said:

I don't book based solely on the opinions of others, but I do take those opinions into account.  Sometimes I find them to be helpful and accurate.  Other times, I find that the gripes are overstated.

A decline in overall experience is one of the reasons we're trying Oceania next year, but we do also have a booking on Ascent.

I respect others opinions and experiences but that's where I draw the line. Our first cruise was in 1991 ten years before I joined CC in 2001.  The one and only mistake we made was booking late TD instead of early TD. Now how many different opinions would I have received if I was to ask, early or late TD? We've  learned from our own past experience going forward. 

Edited October 2, 2023 by doghog

[RichYak]

25 minutes ago, Stockjock said:

I don't book based solely on the opinions of others, but I do take those opinions into account.  

Of course, it's called making an educated decision. It's clear who the perpetual gripers and the perpetual "head in the sand" folks are on this board. I ignore them all. Most of the rest, I take with a grain of salt. A select few, I value their feedback.

 

19 minutes ago, doghog said:

Now how many different opinions would I have received if I was to ask, early or late TD?

Ask the right question instead. "What are the pros and cons of early and late TD?" Then ignore the silliness ("I like early" or "I never eat late at home"), weigh the pros and cons given by the people who actually comprehended your question, and then make your own decision.

[Team Stag]

I think if people are being truly objective; food quality has taken a massive hit everywhere in our life (at least in the US).  High end steak houses are currently shell of their former self in quality and taste of their product.  Even grocery stores are seeing varied quality.

 

Inflation and supply chain shortages have completely upset the market.  Throw in disease and weather challenges along with advances in things like cutting and packaging of meats; Food Service in general is not what it was 5 years ago.  The cost is higher, the quality is less and an outstanding meal is more the exception than it is the norm. 

[Ken the cruiser]

Fascinating. We were just on the Diamond Princess for 17-days in July cruising around Japan and had a great time and the food was quite tasty! Now I will say we were in a Reserve Collection mini-suite and got to eat in the Reserve dining room every day, except for a buffet lunch on port days if we weren't on an excursion. Sure, there was a few folks coughing here and there, as is the case on any cruise. But nothing out of the ordinary. 

 

We're also getting ready to go on a 22-day B2B in less than 2 weeks on the Caribbean Princess, which includes a 5-day pre-cruise land adventure starting in Toronto, with the B2B cruise portion starting in Quebec on Oct 19 and heading down to Ft Lauderdale. In fact, I just started a Live From thread on the Princess forum which you are more than welcome to follow.  

 

But then in all fairness, we're a little slanted as of late towards Princess, as we have 10 future cruises booked with them through 2025 and only one with Celebrity, a Galapagos cruise this December.

[Stockjock]

16 minutes ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Fascinating. We were just on the Diamond Princess for 17-days in July cruising around Japan and had a great time and the food was quite tasty! Now I will say we were in a Reserve Collection mini-suite and got to eat in the Reserve dining room every day, except for a buffet lunch on port days if we weren't on an excursion. Sure, there was a few folks coughing here and there, as is the case on any cruise. But nothing out of the ordinary. 

 

We're also getting ready to go on a 22-day B2B in less than 2 weeks on the Caribbean Princess, which includes a 5-day pre-cruise land adventure starting in Toronto, with the B2B cruise portion starting in Quebec on Oct 19 and heading down to Ft Lauderdale. In fact, I just started a Live From thread on the Princess forum which you are more than welcome to follow.  

 

But then in all fairness, we're a little slanted as of late towards Princess, as we have 10 future cruises booked with them through 2025 and only one with Celebrity, a Galapagos cruise this December.

FWIW, they were not in a suite or mini-suite.

[Loracpin2]

1 hour ago, Stockjock said:

We've had several recent conversations about the drop-off in food quality, something I definitely noticed on our recent Mediterranean cruise on Infinity a few weeks ago.

I'm with a big Wall Street firm and I just spoke w/a client who returned a few days ago from a northeastern US/Canada cruise on Princess (Caribbean Princess).  These clients are very easygoing and are not the "fussy" types, so I'd consider them to be pretty easy to please.  I asked how things went and this was the response I received...

"Our Princess cruise was the worst vacation ever.  The ship was old.  The food was worse than horrible.  It's not that the taste was just bad night-after-night, but service was slow and the food was served cold every night.  I'm not talking about warm, I'm talking flat-out cold!  Everyone was sick and coughing.  We both caught covid.  They had people crammed together like a cattle car.  They nickel and dimed us for everything.  I'm not sure that we'll ever do a cruise again, but if we do, it definitely won't be with Princess!"

I wonder if these cruise lines aren't shooting themselves in the foot with the recently discussed cutbacks and such, both on Celebrity and apparently on Princess too?  FWIW, both the GF and I caught covid on our recent Celebrity cruise as well as on our last Celebrity cruise.  However, we've been on 3 MSC cruises and didn't catch covid.  Not sure if that's just bad luck or what.

 

It's definitely not just Celebrity and Princess. In addition to having Elite+ status on Celebrity, we're also Diamond with RCI but hadn't sailed them in years.  We did, however, to spend time with our Daughter's Family join them this past July on the Oasis of the Seas. The quality of the food was the worst we've had on any cruise.  With the exception of the $700 dinner for 8 in Chops (which defintely wasn't worth the money) I never finished one dinner in the MDR. As a result, RCI is now on our.....never book again list.

 

Just hoping our January Celebrity experience on the APEX doesn't end up with the same results!!!!!.

 

[doghog]

1 hour ago, RichYak said:

Of course, it's called making an educated decision. It's clear who the perpetual gripers and the perpetual "head in the sand" folks are on this board. I ignore them all. Most of the rest, I take with a grain of salt. A select few, I value their feedback.

 

Ask the right question instead. "What are the pros and cons of early and late TD?" Then ignore the silliness ("I like early" or "I never eat late at home"), weigh the pros and cons given by the people who actually comprehended your question, and then make your own decision.

Like I said, I do read and respect others options.  My point is it doesn't matter what your or anyone else's opinion on the subject would have been at that time. We would have and did base decision based on our port times and excursions. Going forward based on our experience we would book early TD. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Edited October 2, 2023 by doghog

[Ken the cruiser]

Just now, Stockjock said:

FWIW, they were not in a suite or mini-suite.

 

"Our Princess cruise was the worst vacation ever.  The ship was old.  The food was worse than horrible.  It's not that the taste was just bad night-after-night, but service was slow and the food was served cold every night.  I'm not talking about warm, I'm talking flat-out cold!  Everyone was sick and coughing.  We both caught covid.  They had people crammed together like a cattle car.  They nickel and dimed us for everything.  I'm not sure that we'll ever do a cruise again, but if we do, it definitely won't be with Princess!"

 

All I can say is that has not been our experience on the various Princess cruises we've been on since cruising started back up. Well, maybe except for our July 2022 21-day "New Love Boat" B3B in the Med on the Regal Princess. That ship was packed with 400+ teenagers and young adults on each leg enjoying their graduation cruise, whom by the way were allowed to drink alcohol if they were 18. I have to admit, there were some pretty tight places on that ship we tried to avoid at all cost. Needless to say around 10 pm every night the internet got a little slow as they were all accessing their social media sites! 🤣

 

But you're right. We only cruise in Reserve Collection mini-suites or higher as we do very much enjoy eating in the Reserve dining room where all of our meals have always been served hot and tasty (most of the time).

[kywildcatfanone]

In fairness to his first complaint, the Caribbean Princess is 19 years old, so he should have known that before he boarded.

 

I'm normally a Princess cruiser,  but on Equinox soon.  Food is subjective.  I'm not fussy, can always find something to eat, but food quality is down from years ago.  No one should be surprised by that at this point. 

There are still lots of options to enjoy on most any ship.

[Dolebludger]

I do take objective comments of others into account when choosing a cruise. If the food is cold, that is objective. If the comment is the food didn’t taste good, that is not objective. It should be clear that few cruise lines are able to provide consistent quality of anything now. So I take both the negative and positive comments into account.

[Ken the cruiser]

Just now, Dolebludger said:

I do take objective comments of others into account when choosing a cruise. If the food is cold, that is objective. If the comment is the food didn’t taste good, that is not objective. It should be clear that few cruise lines are able to provide consistent quality of anything now. So I take both the negative and positive comments into account.

When someone says their food was served "cold", ask them if they were sitting at a table for 2 or a sharing table where there are usually 6-8 people seated. If they were at a sharing table, they are more likely to have received entrees or even soup that have cooled somewhat waiting for all of the orders for that table to be filled and subsequently being served. At least that was our experience when we first started cruising back in 2012 until we gave up on the sharing tables and opted for 2-tops.

[Dolebludger]

Ken, that is a good idea. My wife and I always opt for two tops when cruising (when possible), but I had never thought of this reason for doing so.

[MISTER 67]

1 hour ago, Dolebludger said:

I do take objective comments of others into account when choosing a cruise. If the food is cold, that is objective. If the comment is the food didn’t taste good, that is not objective. It should be clear that few cruise lines are able to provide consistent quality of anything now. So I take both the negative and positive comments into account.

The problem with all these issues from food to entertainment to ship maintenance is the quality of things are going down while the prices keep going up. We had a horrible cruise with Holland America this past February and were very loyal to that line but things were so bad that they lost us as customers. We have been on 5 Celebrity cruises since we started cruising again in November of 2021 and have had some very nice cruises with the food being pretty good but along with not enough of a selection in the MDR the quality has gone down a notch but the selection and quality of the food in the OVC buffet has been outstanding. We sail again on the Equinox in February but before that will sail on the Sky Princess in December and to tell the truth don’t know to expect with reviews all over the place but the first 2 cruises we had after the startup were on the Caribbean Princess and everything was great, the ship was only half full on both cruises with outstanding service with the food being very good and the cruise prices were unbeatable as the lines were trying to get people to cruise again.

Edited October 2, 2023 by MISTER 67

[darren42]

If your food is cold, why not send it back? Do this 2 evening in a row and you can be assured the rest of the trip will be hot. Be sure to tell the wait staff to NOT bring the mains from the kitchen at the same time as the starters. They sometimes do this because lotsa people want to eat FAST. Very few it seems want a 90-120 minute meal. We always explain how fast we want our meal delivered so have have very few issues with temperature of food.  

[Dolebludger]

Well, where we live in a small tourist city in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, our hospitality businesses are having a hard time getting up to steam. Labor and supplies are just too expensive, and the owners were hurt because of the pandemic shutdown. While realizing that cruise lines draw from international labor and supply sources, they seem to be having some problems too. So there will be variations in quality of everything that makes up a cruise, I guess. All I know is that we had a couple of pre pandemic cruises in the X Retreat. The experience (for us) was equal to the lux lines, but at much less cost.  Now it is at more cost than the lux lines, with reduced service and inclusions. So we took a summer cruise on our old friend, Regent, this summer And all things onboard were actually better than years earlier.  For our next cruise, we looked at the Retreat, and prices were higher “apples to apples” in the Retreat than on Regent— with more inclusions and services on Regent than the Retreat. We booked Regent again, obviously. On the summer Regent cruise, there was no sign of understaffing, reduction in menu choices or quality, or anything else.

[lv2cruisgrl]

3 hours ago, Loracpin2 said:

It's definitely not just Celebrity and Princess. In addition to having Elite+ status on Celebrity, we're also Diamond with RCI but hadn't sailed them in years.  We did, however, to spend time with our Daughter's Family join them this past July on the Oasis of the Seas. The quality of the food was the worst we've had on any cruise.  With the exception of the $700 dinner for 8 in Chops (which defintely wasn't worth the money) I never finished one dinner in the MDR. As a result, RCI is now on our.....never book again list.

 

Just hoping our January Celebrity experience on the APEX doesn't end up with the same results!!!!!.

 

We agree as we sailed Wonder of the Seas earlier this year and said never RC again. Dining room food was barely warm each night and just now that tasty.

 

 

[Jeal]

We have cruised on Princess 3 times since the restart on the Caribbean, Enchanted, and Sky. The food was terrible. As a result, we will no longer sail with Princess. The desserts were especially awful. The entertainment was good but it didn’t make up for the terrible food. 

[crimsonbird]

We had been on the Sky for one month prior to the pandemic.  The food was lovely.  We were excited to cruise her again several months ago.  Oh my...the food was horrendous🤯.  We almost dreaded every dinner.  

[SusieAV8R]

7 hours ago, Whinenowine said:

Anecdotal evidence clearly supports adding 2,000 people to your cruise is a successful covid deterent!  😉

 

Sorry to hear of your covid-related Celebrity experience....lucky for us our family of 4 have cruised on X three times in the last 15months without incident. 

We've enjoyed 7 Celebrity cruises in the past 15 months and neither DH nor I have gotten covid, sore throats, coughs or any other symptom indicating less than good health.  (DH says I hug every crew member on board whenever we cruise.......I am a hugger, what can I. say?🤣 I do ask for permission first.). And we are no spring chickens🤣. )

[Georgia_Peaches]

7 hours ago, ymncruise said:

It was so nice when the ships were sailing half full. 

There was a time when one could get a really nice cruise at max capacity. I refuse to believe that the only way to get a nice cruise moving forward is with the ship sailing at half capacity…even if it means that I have to shop around to find it.