RichOZ

This is disappointing to say the least. Do you think a lot of it has to do with the COVID interruption? Have all the decent chefs found somewhere else to work, leaving the cruise industry to start again? (If so, hopefully things will pick up in the next 6 months before our cruise.) Certainly in Australia after all our lockdowns, now things are back to normal, the hospitality industry is struggling to find staff. People have found other lines of work.

Good call styxfire. I was too dismissive of this as an issue, but that is because of my own perspective, which was that I am going in to my first NCL cruise (Norwegian Joy) with the expectation that MD would be disappointing and I would be paying for additional meals anyway. The same menu for 7 days is unacceptable but so is only minor changes in the same dull restaurant for 9 days as I saw with Royal Caribbean (at least for the 3 or 4 nights we ate in MD the menu was barely changing).

I find this debate interesting, especially the "I won't sail NCL again" comments. I know it is annoying to feel pushed into paying more, but why not just accept it and look at the overall cost as I do? A bit of background. We have only been on 3 cruises - 2 with Disney (out of USA) for 6 and 7 nights and a Royal Caribbean from Australia (home) over 9 nights. The Disney cruises were great. Dinner rotated over 3 restaurants with largely changing menus, so you only went to each restaurant 2-3 times. Buffets were also great. We were told by our TA there was no need to book SD on RC. We did for one night (NYE) and it was fantastic, but were bitterly disappointed in MD for the rest. The menu barely changed and the food was very average. Even though they had another dining room at our sailing class we couldn't go there (I know the menu was the same but a change of decor would be nice.) We ended up eating at the buffet and one smaller free (included) restaurant that we found which was much nicer. The breakfast and lunch buffets were a was a bit disappointing too - no seafood at lunch and the same boring fruit at breakfast (would it break the bank to buy a few berries RC?) So Disney food was much better BUT Disney was almost twice the price. We said we would never cruise again without factoring in SD for the majority of the trip as I feel dining is a huge part of a cruise. Our next cruise (out of Miami) will be with NCL for 7 nights. Comes with 2 SD and now just debating how many more to pay for. Probably 5 SD all up for Mum and Dad and 4 for the kids. In the end, it will still be a thousands cheaper than the Disney cruise we were looking at as an alternative.