Specialty Dining "Haggling" Strategies

[phoenix_dream]

My best 'haggling' advice is to make friends with your Maître d' (preferably) or waiter, and have them do the haggling for you.  This works best if you are in Blu or Luminae, but I imagine it could work in the MDR as well.  We have found the best deals tend to be for less favorable times (8:30 or later, or very early).  On some cruises we have been able to get 2 for 1; on others around 30% or so.  We will not take any offer less than that.  Our experience, is that this works best on longer (than 7 night) cruises, and best towards the half-way point or later.  But we have had the occasional cruise where they either would not negotiate a decent price, or where a large group hogged the specialty restaurants so the rest of us were out of luck.  But fortunately those occasions have been few.

[Orator]

1 hour ago, BEAV said:

We've had good luck in the past with many of the various strategies mentioned here. But having said that, we sail mostly longer cruises. 

 

Personally, I think it's more difficult to score a deal on 7 night cruises than the longer sailings. If a certain percentage of people tend to book 1 night per cruise in a specialty restaurant, then the math indicates there are fewer nights to squeeze everyone in. Much easier on the longer voyages, thus the better chance to score a deal. 

 

Crystal allows each passenger two complimentary specialty restaurant reservations per voyage. There's currently a discussion over on that board with people reporting how service can suffer in the specialties on shorter cruises of 7 days. Too few days to cycle everyone through their two complimentary visits. Much easier on the longer cruises.

On Serenity I have 3 reservations in speciality restaurants and one dinner show reservation. I have the same on an 8 day and 12 day cruise. You can reserve a time when you make complete payment.

[Blazerboy]

19 hours ago, DrKoob said:

I will usually try this with a group. I make sure I have all the stateroom numbers as well as the complete names of all the guests with me. If you can find out their Captain's Club status that helps too. I approach either the maitre'd of that restaurant or if I have met someone earlier that has tried to sell me specialty restaurant meals I go to that guy You will know him as he will circulate around the boarding area and outside the dining rooms. These people work on incentives. 

 

I also don't try for the more popular restaurants or the most popular days. But on Monday, I will be shooting for a big one. We board Reflection and we have 30+ people who want to dine in the Lawn Club Grille. I am looking for at least a 30% discount. We shall see. 

Make sure to take a photo of your group making your flatbread!  It was a lot of fun!  Have a great cruise.  We are off to Hawaii on Eclipse in September.

[Blazerboy]

Duplicate post.😊

Edited May 30, 2019 by Blazerboy

[BEAV]

1 hour ago, Orator said:

On Serenity I have 3 reservations in speciality restaurants and one dinner show reservation. I have the same on an 8 day and 12 day cruise. You can reserve a time when you make complete payment.

 

That’s correct about making reservations. What I’m alluding to isn’t people being unable to get into the Specialty restaurants, but how much more full they can tend to be on shorter sailings with service issues being the culprit of that popularity.

With regard to Celebrity, I think it stands to reason the Specialties are going to be more crowded on a shorter sailing, thus the greater inability to score deals. And keep in mind if you walk by a Specialty that appears to have empty tables doesn’t mean they're desperate for business. They may have limited staff and wouldn’t be able to adequately serve with every table occupied simultaneously.

[2NHcruisers]

make friends with m'd and waiter, also being in a royal suite helps 🙂

[fstuff1]

does bogo work for solo travelers?

ie: 2 days of Tuscan (Summit) for the price of 1?

[Muffinz]

when we did our first ever cruise last year (on Solstice) we decided against booking any sort of specialty dining package, as we weren't really interested and couldn't really afford it..... on the 2nd day as we were coming back from an excursion there was a man from sushi on 5 offering 'all you can eat'  for $25 or something and we declined..... we also bumped into people outside the buffet a couple of times trying to sell us a dinner in Tuscan Grille, but to be honest we though the food in the MDR was outstanding and didn't see a need to go elsewhere

[DrKoob]

4 hours ago, Blazerboy said:

Make sure to take a photo of your group making your flatbread!  It was a lot of fun!  Have a great cruise.  We are off to Hawaii on Eclipse in September.

 

Hi Andrew! So good to hear from you. 

We did take that pic a few years back when we did LCG on Silhouette. We made all the non-cooks, cook and took their pic! Have a great time on Eclipse. Hope we run into you and Ed again someday.

Jim

[yorky]

4 hours ago, fstuff1 said:

does bogo work for solo travelers?

ie: 2 days of Tuscan (Summit) for the price of 1?

I think highly unlikely