How do you choose the nights you use specialty restaurants?

[Janespup]

Hi,

How do you choose the nights you want to eat at a specialty restaurant? Do you look at dining room menus first? Sea days? Port days?

[Nigeldelarue]

We always do the specialty restaurant on departure day as we find the MDR a little to unorganized and hectic. Also normally you get a 20% discount on first night of sailing :)

The rest of the time we look at the menu the day of and if there is nothing good we book something

[bigque]

We usually will do two nights on a 7 day cruise. I usually look at the menus for the particular cruise and will schedule the 2 Specialty nights when there is something on the menu that we don't care if we miss it. We always let our waiter in the MDR know the days we won't be there. :cool:

[spookwife]

Hi,

How do you choose the nights you want to eat at a specialty restaurant? Do you look at dining room menus first? Sea days? Port days?

 

 

mainly by menu. the two menus between Formal nights are usually the ones where none of the entrees excite me at all.

[dreday3]

Can you book these on the ship? Or do you need to do it before you leave? Would love to be able to just decide day of...

 

We are sailing FOS if it matters.

[Thia]

Specialty restaurants can be booked on the ship.

[George C]

Can you book these on the ship? Or do you need to do it before you leave? Would love to be able to just decide day of...

 

We are sailing FOS if it matters.

 

you normally can book on the ship if it isn't sold out, and normally this is not a problem- if you have a special occasion and want a certain restaurant I would book it in advance .

 

I think MDR is a little nicer on formal nights , but that is just us

[John&LaLa]

Go to cruise critic to verify menu order, then make reservations for the nights with no appeal. And do your waiter a favor and let them know you won't be there that night

[cruisegirl1]

Several ways. We'll go once or twice during a week cruise.

 

We like to dine in the specialty restaurants on the last night. - Our favorite plan

 

We prefer to dine there on a (Caribbean) port day rather than sea day. On a sea day we tend to eat a larger breakfast and lunch, not to mention snacks. We generally eat less on a port day. Caribbean port days are generally relaxing on the beach, or some snorkeling and not too tiring

 

Exception to the port theory, We don't go as often on an itinerary (Europe) that has exhausting and long sightseeing port days, such as a Med cruise. (We did not go at all on a recent 2 week Med cruise).

 

We sometimes dine there on the first or second night because we have a BOGO coupon ( we don't go two nights in a row).

 

In summary, we usually go by our schedule, rather than the dining room menu.

 

Enjoy,

M

[dreday3]

Go to cruise critic to verify menu order, then make reservations for the nights with no appeal. And do your waiter a favor and let them know you won't be there that night

 

We have my-time dining, so I didn't think we had a set waiter?

 

Thanks everyone!

Edited February 11, 2015 by dreday3

[setsail]

We just book when we want. Never look at the mdr menu. If they don't have a time to suit us then we just switch to another night when the time is right.

[tm3750]

Even with MTD they still try to sit you with the same team every night

[cb at sea]

We prefer sea days..port days are tiring, and I want to be able to enjoy that which I pay extra for.

 

We decide "spur of the moment"...I do NOT plan what I'm going to eat weeks or months in advance!

[dreday3]

Even with MTD they still try to sit you with the same team every night

 

Thanks. How do you let the waiter know if you are deciding that same day?:)

 

(sorry, all new to me)

[setsail]

Thanks. How do you let the waiter know if you are deciding that same day?:)

 

(sorry, all new to me)

 

On all the newer ships the minute you book a SR on ship its in the system showing what you are doing that time/evening, the mtd waiter would see that if he/she looked because you were not there and would know you were at the SR. Sometimes I will just ask the sr person making the resi to take out the mdr time

Edited February 11, 2015 by setsail

[gonnatrycruisin']

Even with MTD they still try to sit you with the same team every night

We were on Serenade of the Seas last week and did MTD. We ate in the main dining room every night and we never sat at the same table twice.

[Big_G]

Thanks. How do you let the waiter know if you are deciding that same day?:)

 

 

 

(sorry, all new to me)

 

 

If you have MTD, I wouldn't worry. The last time we had MTD reservations, we went to the dining room one day to cancel. When we told them, they said "OK" and never even asked for our cabin number. We had no other reservation that night. We decided to Windjam it because we were in port late. We've never made an MTD reservation since and always get the same waiter without a wait.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Edited February 11, 2015 by Big_G

[RocketMan275]

Hi,

How do you choose the nights you want to eat at a specialty restaurant? Do you look at dining room menus first? Sea days? Port days?

 

When are formal nights? Those are the ones we choose for specialty dining.

[afdds]

Every night is a good night. Seems like each cruise we add another night. For sure formal nights!

[B-52]

When are formal nights? Those are the ones we choose for specialty dining.

 

same here...we don't care for formal nights, so we book the specialty restaurants on those nights....

[GUT2407]

IF I do specialty at all it's a night the menu doesn't excite us.

[islandgirl70]

How do you find the menus in advance?

[Clarea]

How do you find the menus in advance?

Only way is to ask here on CC and hope that someone who has recently cruised on the same ship and itinerary will report.

[Nigeldelarue]

Something else Imfound interesting was that the Specialty Restaurants charge a extra $5 per person on formal nights !

[RocketMan275]

Only way is to ask here on CC and hope that someone who has recently cruised on the same ship and itinerary will report.

 

file:///C:/Users/Duke483/Downloads/1349876628_Culinary-Road-Show-Main-Menus-Final-0925AD%20(1).pdf

 

The menus can be found at the above link. Don't know the order