Making Restaurant Reservations On Line

[Cruisin' Patty]

It varies, teppanyaki is a la carte, and everything else runs from 12.50 to 25 per person.

 

How is it a la carte in pricing?

[mbisson]

How is it a la carte in pricing?

 

There are several different prices (depending on what you order) on the menu. Also, in my experience, even when they have 1/2 off pricing in the specialty restaurants, they do not extend it to the teppanyaki menu.

 

-Monte

[lindajeff]

They should put the "free" back in freestyle. I understand the need to make reservations, but the NCL book says, blah,blah,blah...the freedom to dine when and where you want.....I say NO reservations at all.

 

AMEN

[mbisson]

AMEN

 

Of course without reservations at all, you could have 100 people show up at the teppanyaki dining room for a 7 o'clock seating and it only seats 12-36 at a time depending on the ship!

 

-Monte

[seahorse]

Of course without reservations at all, you could have 100 people show up at the teppanyaki dining room for a 7 o'clock seating and it only seats 12-36 at a time depending on the ship!

 

-Monte

 

This is true. I do not understand why they don`t leave it like it is (perhaps they will.......yet to be verified).

[newlywedcruisers]

This is true. I do not understand why they don`t leave it like it is (perhaps they will.......yet to be verified).

 

Sounds good to me, heres hoping they listened to your input.

[uneamie]

Another thing to consider for a vote against making reservations "online" for the speciality restaurants.

They usually run 2 for 1 specials all through out the cruise in each restaurant. It will be hard to plan for these since you will not know which days the specials are planned for. :(

[garycarla]

Spending way too much time on the computer, I was excited about making reservations online. Then I took just a nanosecond to THINK and realized how stupid that would be.

 

Who can plan that far ahead? How many no shows? What about poor people that board the ship to find out there are no seats left?

 

Nah... in fact just trying to plan which nights in advance gives me a headache. The thought of trying to book in advance, more than a day bothers me. Of course, if you have the secret handshake (cabin level, etc) you usually can still get in.

[seahorse]

Spending way too much time on the computer, I was excited about making reservations online. Then I took just a nanosecond to THINK and realized how stupid that would be.

 

Who can plan that far ahead? How many no shows? What about poor people that board the ship to find out there are no seats left?

 

Nah... in fact just trying to plan which nights in advance gives me a headache. The thought of trying to book in advance, more than a day bothers me. Of course, if you have the secret handshake (cabin level, etc) you usually can still get in.

 

Exactly......they will be shooting themselves in the foot if they do;)

[can'twaittogoagain]

The Disney analogy was a good one. I suppose it would allow NCL to better plan on the numbers of dinners they would be serving in each restaurant??? Or cut back the number of man-hours they use to have a dining reservations desk? Maybe they would improve their offerings?? I really don't know. I do know that hubbie and I considered Disney this fall but when I started the planning and asked him where/when he wanted to eat every night he looked at me like I was crazy. Then I had to explain that if we didn't book ahead we'd be out of luck. He said, "The heck with that!" I did it for a mom-daughter getaway a couple of years ago and hated every speed-dialing moment. We cruise with NCL primarily for Freestyle. IMHO I'd rather see them up their charges and offer "specialty" fare as their standard than implement this policy.

[tomluvsaida]

Happens every week without kaos - most passengers don't have reservations and with 10 restaurtants ( some reservation only for the most part - I have walked up and been seated) 3 to 4 seatings a night handling 2000 passengers no problem.

I'd like to believe you and I do believe you - for the NCL cruises you have been on. However I'm sure you know as well as I do that all over this board we have been urged by positive and negative posters alike to make reservations - I think mostly on the NCLA ships. We will be on POH and I really don't want to take chances.

[tomluvsaida]

Of course without reservations at all, you could have 100 people show up at the teppanyaki dining room for a 7 o'clock seating and it only seats 12-36 at a time depending on the ship!

 

-Monte

My point exactly!

[electricron]

IMHO I'd rather see them up their charges and offer "specialty" fare as their standard than implement this policy.

 

If they did that, up the "regular" fare to "speciality" fare, who in their right minds will pay extra to dine at the "speciality" restaurants? Might as well remove the extra eight restautrants and turn them into more bars for alcholics to enjoy.

Personally, I prefer choices, and if I decide I'd would rather dine on chinese, mexician, or french fare, I could. Try finding sushi on a Carnival ship. They have it of course, as a part of the cafeteria/buffet, but the ambiance of a cafeteria/buffet is much less than what you'll find on a NCL ship.

What you want is a "Garden Villa" of restaurants while paying for an "Inside Cabin" restaurant.

[mbmam2]

I'm with Shoreguy. What's the point of "Freestyle" cruising if you have to book your dinner reservations 6 months in advance?? Kind of taks the "free" out of freestyle! ;)

 

It just seems like a bad idea to me. Or, like another poster said, maybe if they leave a decent percentage of dinner openings available for those wishing to make a reservation once onboard the ship, it might be ok.

 

Have you ever cruised on NCLA? I would have loved to have booked our reservations on line ahead of time on POH to avoid the fiasco they had on the first day trying to handle everyone booking their reservations. Plus, if you did not have a reservation in advance, you were SOL on finding somewhere good to eat. Many people were very disappointed on our cruise over the dining situation.

[calmac]

Personally, I would rather they returned to the 1 or 2 days in advance booking situation - that way everyone has a better chance of booking and I would also imagine that the number of "no shows" would be lower as people would not be booking "just in case".

[alwayssingin]

I have mixed feelings about it. If they could somehow limit the number of bookings/cabin/restaurant made online (like ONE!), that might be okay. We never ate in a specialty restaurant on the Sun, but we do plan on eating in Le Bistro while on the Wind. If we could go online and book a reservation for one night out of ten, we'd be happy. We know we want to book it for lobster night because neither or us are big fans - let everybody else fight that out in the main dining rooms! :p

 

As for everyone being able to go online and book every night, definitely against that. I'd rather them go back only being allowed to make reservations to 1-2 days prior.

[mbisson]

We never ate in a specialty restaurant on the Sun, but we do plan on eating in Le Bistro while on the Wind. If we could go online and book a reservation for one night out of ten, we'd be happy.

 

I bet you won't have problems getting a reservation for that night when you board.

 

-Monte