kdzkatz

Youre kidding, right?

• RCI AOS MTD food served piping hot every time. Excellent food. Excellent service. Food served across a four hour service.
  
• NCL Spirit food served cold/warm and dried out every time. Was an effort to get water/bread/drinks/menu/starters etc
  

I would say the AOS MTD works more like a restaurant, with the Spirit food all prepared in one great big batch and kept under a lamp.

Froggit....I have an answer for you.....don't cruise NCL...we won't miss you.

I enjoy pizza. I could eat it everyday. I don't but I could. Since our one and only cruise ever on RCCL they have set the bar....the low bar for pizza. It was hands down the absolute worst pizza I have ever had. So RCCL is certainly the best at making the worst pizza in the world! :roll eyes:

P.S. Thanks for making us sit with a bunch of snobs if we wanted to the honor of eating in your MDR instead of with the nice people we met during the cruise. I think their motto could read, "RCCL, for pretentious snobs or those that want to learn to become one"

If they gave me a free cruise then I might consider it. RCCL was our first and was very close to our last cruise. Thank goodness for NCL and REAL freestyle! We now have our 6th and 7th NCL cruises booked. I am glad RCCL is trying to keep up as hopefully it will keep NCL on their toes to keep doing the great job they have been doing for many years now. :D

I must say the customer service to book the cruise through the NCL website leaves A LOT to be desired! I will never book directly with them again. You can easily get much more value booking through reputable third party sites.

We did one cruise on RCI doing the Mexican Rivera....it was our first cruise and I thought was going to be our last. Being told when to eat and who I will eat with....you call that a vacation? Sounds like daycare to me...lol. I have to say they had the worst pizza I have ever had. NO flavor... none. It was a very forgettable experience for us. Several years later we heard about freestyle and did an Alaska cruise on the Star....we were hooked! We could actually make our own decisions of when, where and with whom we could eat with....almost like we were grownups.

I guess RCI is doing some wanna be NCL thing trying to put a spin on something NCL has been doing for years. RCI is not for us but you are doing the right thing by looking on here. My opinion is biased from my experience but more than anything I think RCI just wasn't a fit for us and NCL is. There is a cruise line for just about anyone I think. Whatever you decide if you end up not enjoying yourself try a different cruise line. Second time was a charm for us! :D

Still trying to figure out how to add large pics of food

We live about 20 miles north of the Pier so it is super convenient for us. You will love Glacier Bay! Tracy Arm is more intimate but Glacier Bay on a beautiful day when the water is like glass...priceless. They are very different experiences. You get a majestic look at Margerie Glacier up in Glacier Bay and in 2009 we saw an AMAZING calving! We do also enjoy the itinerary for the Glacier Bay cruise too. More time in ports to give you the time to decide if you want to do something there...or not. It is nice going to the same ports several times because you can relax so much more on your cruise and not feel like you have to cram it all in just to end up exhausted at the end of your cruise :p We just don't know which cruise to be excited about more...our honeymoon cruise in the 2 bedroom penthouse this may or our anniversary cruise in 2015 the 9 day in our first experience on the front of the ship in an SE penthouse! I would say it is equal excitement and anticipation. We do enjoy Tracy Arm and Sawyer Glacier a lot but really look forward to Glacier Bay.

Just to clarify....I like pretty much all italian food so my previous bash on NYC italian was just to prove a point.:D:)

So you like NYC italian.....I think it sucks....you like to bash someones opinion I just thought I would return the favor. The original poster did not ask for critiques of peoples opinions of what they enjoy for specialty restaurants on NCL ships. Let's stay on topic. If you have had the italian food on NCL and don't care for it then I think you can express that. We enjoy the italian food on NCL. Once we had it and it wasn't as good as other times but we loooooove the focaccia bread. We have been on 5 NCL cruises but have actually only been in the 2 of the current specialty restaurants (italian and teppenyaki) We enjoyed them both. We are considering the UDP for our cruise this May as it is our last cruise before Platinum (that will give us 2 complimentary meals which makes UDP not a great deal).

For all of you that are doing different things to get yourselves more healthy I encourage you to look into water kefir. It is very helpful in balancing your gut. You make it yourself once you buy the kefir grains (we got ours off of amazon) and feed it sugar water. A couple days later you have water kefir and you then put the grains into a new batch of sugar water and begin the process again. I could go on and on but if you google it you should be able to find quite a bit of info on it. It is amazing stuff. It's really good for you and it is very affordable. In fact the grains procreate so the 5 tablespoons we started with have turned into well over 100 tablespoons. We have sold off some of the grains to pay for the sugar. So it is pretty much free for us the sales of the grains supports our kefir habit.

So you are in an SF Penthouse? We were in a deck 10 SF on the Pearl and it was great. Being in the aft of the ship is very convenient if you want to grab something to eat in the buffet or Great Outdoors. We like to use the spa so it is more of a walk but we don't mind that as we like to walk off as much of all the great food as we can :D You are also sandwiched between other rooms on deck 8 and 10 so noise should not be a problem. The aft was peaceful with a beautiful view for us. Hopefully you will experience the same. If you in an inside I think it is still a nice location for the above reasons you are in a convenient location to the Great Outdoors. A nice place to grab something to eat and enjoy the scenery.

Ask your concierge. If they can accommodate they will do their best to do so. If they can't for whatever reason then thank them and enjoy your vacation regardless.

They may bring it back but I think this promo is to fill this years cruises. I would be surprised if they extended it but I would not be shocked to see it come back next year if it proves to be successful for them. We certainly used it. We were 2 in an SF on the Jewel for this May and now we are 5 in an SC! We lose the larger balcony and view from the aft but we gain that huge bathroom and super comfy bed! All 5 of us also get the suite perks for less than it would have cost to put our additional 3 in a deck 4 inside room. Certainly a suite deal! :D

I am not sure of the structure of HAL and Princess as we have only cruised on RCCL and NCL. We did not care for the traditional dining concept on RCCL. We LOVE the Freestyle approach of NCL. We live about 20 miles north of the pier and we are booked on our 6th Alaska cruise on NCL.

We like being able to eat where we want (MDR included), when we want and with who we want. On RCCL if we wanted to eat in the MDR it was at a specific time hungry or not, with people we did no select and even though we met other people we wanted to eat with it wasn't going to happen in the MDR. NOT FOR US! Lots of people do like that kind of structure but that is not how we like to vacation.

I do not think NCL is terribly activity intensive but it is also extremely casual. That also is for us and not for others. We are not offended if someone wants to eat dinner while wearing jeans. NCL has a "dress up or not night". As we don't like dressing up at home let alone on vacation that suits (no pun intended) us well.

It is a very personal thing so research as much as possible while keeping the research fun. CC has been a wonderful resource for us over the years. The great thing, you will be on a cruise to Alaska so I don't think you will have made a bad decision no matter who you go with.

I wonder if there is any chance of them expanding this promo to the other ships? It feels like the rest of us don't matter.....

I would take the UDC over the $100 OBC. It is like you are having to eat at just about anywhere on the ship for $50 pp. You could take the week to find out for yourself if the MDR is fine for you as you could eat there for lunch and then try different specialties all week long. If the OBC was higher it may not be as good of deal but I think for just $100 I would not think twice for us.