MDR or Steakhouse for NYE?

[Tenamarie123]

We will be cruising on the Magic during the week after Christmas.  We will be celebrating NYE on the ship.  For those of you who have done this, do you recommend eating dinner that night in the MDR, I'm assuming they have party favors in there, etc. or make reservations which, I have already done to the Steakhouse?  Want to be where the fun is, lol.  It will be me, my husband and our 3 kids (21, 19, 15).  TIA

[coevan]

any day of the year, the Steakhouse blows away the MDR. The party is on the Lido Deck, later in the evening.  

[jimbo5544]

Both NYE cruises we did steakhouse that night.  Carnival cruises on NYE rock!  Like Caribbean and Times Square combined, you will not be disappointed.

[Tenamarie123]

1 hour ago, coevan said:

any day of the year, the Steakhouse blows away the MDR. The party is on the Lido Deck, later in the evening.  

Okay good, thank you for reassuring me!!

[Tenamarie123]

1 hour ago, jimbo5544 said:

Both NYE cruises we did steakhouse that night.  Carnival cruises on NYE rock!  Like Caribbean and Times Square combined, you will not be disappointed.

Thank you for getting me even more excited 🙂 !  We are very much looking forward to ringing in the new year on a cruise!!  This will be my family's first, my second.  Super excited. Going to be a blast!

[mdsgu]

Try to find out when your "formal" nights are.  They tend to have the better MDR selections on those nights, and, if NYE is a formal night, you will definitely have to dress the part for the steakhouse (while the MDR is a little more lax).  I'm not saying don't go to the steakhouse -- it is VERY good on any night -- but we try to avoid formal nights.

[SurfCat]

We did the steakhouse NYE last year and would have preferred to have been in the main dining room.  The MDR had party favors and a really good menu on NYE.  The steakhouse, while delicious, didn't do anything special.  We had to ask them for party favors and they begrudgingly went down and got some hats.

 

Next year we'll do the steakhouse on another night and eat in the MDR for NYE.

[Joebucks]

I tend to be in the minority on this. While I don't have an NYE experience, we were very excited for our first visit to the Steakhouse on our last cruise. While it was good, it wasn't $80 good, and didn't blow us away. We actually missed the MDR experience that night. Our dining team there was far better and it was so much fun each night. This was our only Steakhouse experience though. However, the MDR is a place where it is more acceptable to have a good time. Having fun in the Steakhouse will result in a bunch of people clutching their pearls.

[coevan]

3 hours ago, mdsgu said:

Try to find out when your "formal" nights are.  They tend to have the better MDR selections on those nights, and, if NYE is a formal night, you will definitely have to dress the part for the steakhouse (while the MDR is a little more lax).  I'm not saying don't go to the steakhouse -- it is VERY good on any night -- but we try to avoid formal nights.

 

 

 

first of all it's Elegant night, not formal. You do not need to dress up for the Steakhouse, a golf shirt and slacks are fine. 

[luv2cruise2thebeach]

We did MDR last year on the Dream for NYE.  I would never even consider the steakhouse.  It is a formal night, and the menu is extra special.  People dress better than most formal nights too.