My opinion of Freestyle (Dawn)

[Giorgi-one]

So some had to wait a half hour to dine. I supposed you never had to wait 30 minutes to get a seat at busy, popular restaurants ashore or that you never was the tenth car in line at a McDonald's drive thru window.

 

None-the-less, they still decided when to eat. Too bad they decided to do so at the same time many others did.

 

There's only so many tables in the restaurants. The largest restaurants may have 600 to 700 chairs. There's up to 2400 passengers on NCL ships, you do the math and determine if all can be seated instaneously!

 

It's not rocket science. I repeat, some just have to learn to share!

 

To add, I haven't even included the idea "with who you dine with at your table" yet.

 

Keep you pant on! I wasn't arguing with you. We were taking about things being misleading and you said you could walk right into the dining room. I just pointed out that is not always the case.

 

Of course, I always walk right in becasue I am special!

[Mooder]

I've seen this posted before and couldn't understand it either, until I saw a post that made some sense. Perhaps they were low on staff at certain times at that restaurant and that's why they couldn't take customers, or could only take so many customers. That would make sense to me so just thought I'd comment.:) I do think maybe the person standing at the desk could explain it, if that were the case. 'Sorry, we are understaffed this evening', or something of that nature.

 

Good point. I have had it happen A LOT in land-based restaurants. There are obvious empty tables, but they won't seat us for a long time. I always assume it is a staffing issue (especially if I have shown up early and a lot of their staff may start a shift later on), but they rarely volunteer an explanation.

[newmexicoNita]

24 hours in advance is not true: 36 is more like it. No one ever claimed you could just walk in and eat at the pre-reservation dining rooms and if you had been on the boards much, which apparently you were, you would have picked up on this. Can you give me an example of another line where the specialty dining rooms are not filled ahead of tiime. On Celebrity a few years ago reservations were taken in advance via email: we tried the day we arrived on board and nothing was available the entire week. Princess, it took us 2 days to get one for Sabitinis. We could have gotten it one day in advance but not til 9pm which is a little to late for us.

 

On the Star last Sept we were able to get reservations in all but one restaurant 24 hours in advance. The Italian restaurant was the exception. We tried the last night.

 

As for walking by and seeing the restaurant not full, yes, we have all seen this. Like has been pointed out, this has to do with availability of staff. When eating in a specialty dining room it is supposed to be a special experience and poor service would not make for a pleasant evening.

 

Of course you neglected to point out, it is spring break and the ships are filled to the brim. all ships are......

 

Nita

[newmexicoNita]

I mentioned that because I had made fun of someone that claimed he and his family ate all their meals there. If you had more than 2 people in your group and hadn't gotten a reservation, the Garden Cafe would be, in fact, one of your only options.

 

I purposely didn't include Salsa since we weren't able to eat there despite the fact that they had 25 empty tables at the time we were there. We were only able to eat at Venetian and Aqua because there were only 2 of us and 2 people don't need a reservation at those two.

 

Actually, Freestyle might be for me and everyone else except that the way they run it, it's not really "Freestyle" at all.

Paul, I don't think I understand what you were expecting?

 

Nita

[newmexicoNita]

Sorry ncl we will not be back either after last weeks Dawn sailing. I know that many of you disagree but this was our second try on ncl and we were still not overwelmed in any manner. We have sailed on five different cruiselines and in our opinion ncl was the least impressive. We ate in many of the resturants and found the Aqua to be the worst, atmosphere in there was terrible noisy, cold food, slow service etc. The food choice was prime rib and I will tell you that it was horrible! Everyone around us was amazed at the quality and it was still a topic among people everywhere we went several days later. Please understand there was nothing wrong with our cabin or the food (except prime rib), but we resented having to pay for our food when we had already done that. The entertainment was just okay for us. Our room steward introduced himself to us on thursday evening in the hallway and when he did he called us by the wrong name. He kept our room clean but... never have we felt so disconnected.

I hope that ncl will continue to do freestyle as it meets the desires of a certain group of cruisers but not us.

he introduced himself, on our last Princess cruise our room stewardess did not. I do know what you mean about disconnected. This is something I think many of the lines need to work on. The days of feeling good about your room steward in some cases are gone. Even Celebrity we had a similar problem. In the past 5 years of cruising we have only had 2 really outstanding room stewards: one was on NCL and one on HAL>

 

Nita

[AFT_LOVER]

on just about every cruiseline. On RCCL as a Diamond you had the Concierge Lounge for specialty coffee, reservations for restaurants or excursions. 2 cruises ago we had the Concierge do our excursions which she had typed in each one on her computer. Day of trip no reservation as she never made them. Then last cruise only SUITES can use the Concierge Lounge, you can buy specialty coffee if you are not in a suite & a Diamond member. Many folks pretty ticked.

But with F2.0 you do have a dept to make reservations for you if you are balcony or mini suite. 48 hours in advance you can made them.


[quote name='Dolphins']There are a larger number of cabins which don't have concierge service and they will have the most difficulty getting reservations for the specialty restaurants (most balcony cabins do not have concierge service). A certain number of specialty reservations are set aside for suite passengers who have concierge service. The only way you can be reasonably assured of reservations in the specialty restaurants is to book one of the suite cabins which have concierge service. That's why they pay more and you get what you pay for. How much success do you think you would have booking a specialty restaurant on a 3,000 passenger mega-ship with traditional dining that has only one specialty restaurant? At least the Dawn gives you 10 restaurants to choose from.[/quote]

[newmexicoNita]

[quote name='doodlefan']Thanks Paul and Cozzello and Nekochan

I am sailing NCL for the first time in May on the PEarl. I must admit that I am having some worries.

I think that what nobody, especially the NCL cheerleaders don't want to admit, is that NCL caters to the big spenders. If you book one of the more expensive rooms, you get access to making your reservations before everyone in the cheaper rooms. For me that rubs me the wrong way.

Nobody wants to say it, but that is the reason why alot of people can't get reservations, like Paul saying he was trying to book Friday night for Saturday night and it was already full, how if you can only book 24 hrs in advance. The upper priced rooms are allowed to do it, that's how.

I don't like the idea of it, since we always book inside rooms and if I feel like I'm treated any different than the more expensive room people, I won't sail them again.

And freestyle, they mislead you with "eat what you want when you want" making it sound like you can just pick a restaurant and go, maybe have a few minutes wait like on land, but that is not the case. In reality it's not much different than the lines with a set dining time, except you pick the time the day before IF you can get in.

Just FYI I am not guessing at all of this, my sister has sailed NCL exclusively and totally admits that unless you book a more expensive room, or if you travel with more than 2 people, your dining options will be limited. Not always but it certainly happens alot.

We have 6 girls going in May and if we cant' get into any of the restaurants when booking 24 hrs in advance I'm not going to be happy. If you're booking the 24 hrs they require and they still say all the restaurants are full, what does that tell you, someone is booking them early, and it's the higher end room people, to me that's not fair.[/QUOTE]This is so far from true I want to laugh. I don't mean at you, but at your take on this. We have cruised NCL for about 10 years, everything from the lowest outside cabin to balcony cabins, I have cleints who have done the same, never have I heard comments that they cater to the big spenders. Do you get more if you book a suite? Sure you do and I would expect that, IF I stay on the executive level at a hotel I expect a little more in the amenities area.

As for dining in the specialty dining rooms, yes, the larger the group, the harder it is to get reservations, but that is the case with all lines. These restaurants are small and don't have many tables for 6,8 or more. You will probably be able to eat in them, but you may not have many choices of times.

Good luck and let us know how it works out.

Nita

[newmexicoNita]

[quote name='maggymine']i totally agree with Paul507. Went on the Dawn last summer with a group of 13 and could not get reservations for the resturants unless you wanted to eat at 10 pm. I will never go freestyle again.[/QUOTE]
Can you give an example of getting reservations at any ship/any line for 13? Heck on some lines you can't even get 13 togeher for seating with traditional dining.

[snorkel28]

[quote name='Paul507']Just to recap- and this was last week so it's fresh in my mind- we were a party of two and were able to eat without a reservation at:

Venetian
Aqua
Garden Cafe
Blue Lagoon (where the portions are tiny and microwaved)

So yeah, that's 4 places and I'm not complaining about the food that I ate- it was good. I'm merely stating that it's nowhere near "freestyle".[/QUOTE]
My husband and I were on Dawn last year and there were only a couple of times that we could not get the time we wanted for our reservations. We just changed the time or day and were able to get in. We did Cagneys twice, El Bistro, the asian restaurant and the mexican without a problem. The ship was full as it was in Jan. We did enjoy the freestyle idea so that we could pick our times for dinner which varied according to what we had plans for each evening. Sorry it did not work out for you.