Thanksgiving Tip for those sailing Thanksgiving Week

[CruisingWalter]

Just a quick tip from previous experience.

 

Instead of going to the main dining rooms for a traditional Thanksgiving Dinner, go to a specialty restaurant that night instead. We did the MDR on our first Thanksgiving cruise (this week will be our fifth) and discovered it's really hard to make a good Turkey dinner for 1000+ people. It was akin to a Cafeteria style meal, good stuffing but the turkey was dry, the mashed potatoes not right and the gravy too thin. Even as good as the chefs are onboard, it's just not a great meal.

 

Ever since then, we schedule a specialty meal for Thanksgiving night and then I make a small turkey dinner when we get back home. At the very least, consider ordering anything but the turkey dinner on Thanksgiving in MDR. Hope that's helpful! 

[bluesea777]

Good tip, if you don't want to dine in packed MDRs and wait to be served ....

 

Another good tip .... go to Garden Cafe - there will also be roast turkey there and you get served on the spot, and you get to select the veg/sides that you want.

 

 

[CruisingWalter]

1 hour ago, bluesea777 said:

Good tip, if you don't want to dine in packed MDRs and wait to be served ....

 

Another good tip .... go to Garden Cafe - there will also be roast turkey there and you get served on the spot, and you get to select the veg/sides that you want.

 

 

Didn't even think about the Garden Cafe. Best part is you can make "Thanksgiving Leftovers" with some bread to make turkey and stuffing sandwiches! 🙂

[numberguy]

We'll be in Santorini for Thanksgiving, and plan to have a seafood platter for lunch.  We did this in 2019 and it was excellent and it was also fun to tell all our relatives we had octopus for Thanksgiving (and to see the looks on their Iowa and Virginia faces)!

 

🐙🐙🐙

 

--Michael

[bluesea777]

10 minutes ago, creativegenius said:

Didn't even think about the Garden Cafe. Best part is you can make "Thanksgiving Leftovers" with some bread to make turkey and stuffing sandwiches! 🙂

 

Leftovers? Garden Cafes have Carving stations, therefore you'll be seeing whole turkey there and you get served directly from the beast! 

 

 

[bluesea777]

5 minutes ago, numberguy said:

We'll be in Santorini for Thanksgiving, and plan to have a seafood platter for lunch.  We did this in 2019 and it was excellent and it was also fun to tell all our relatives we had octopus for Thanksgiving (and to see the looks on their Iowa and Virginia faces)!

 

🐙🐙🐙

 

--Michael

 

We LOVE octopus .... if it were us we'd do the same .... and then still have little turkey in Garden Cafe later in the day, lol.

 

 

[BirdTravels]

We prefer to go to the Garden Café. We don't want to be served a "pretty" slice of turkey and mash. We really enjoy the variety of foods (just like at home). 

 

 

Tablecloths are out in the Garden Café

 

Turkey carved to order

 

With all of the fixings

 

And a wide variety of sweets. 

 

 

Edited November 19, 2021 by BirdTravels

[fabby50]

Do you know if they do something similar on Christmas in the cafe?  I never even though about it or checked it out when we went on our Christmas cruise.  Went to the main dining room and it was the worse meal of the week.  The cafe meal pictures above look like a really good experience.

[MsTabbyKats]

15 minutes ago, fabby50 said:

Do you know if they do something similar on Christmas in the cafe?  I never even though about it or checked it out when we went on our Christmas cruise.  Went to the main dining room and it was the worse meal of the week.  The cafe meal pictures above look like a really good experience.

As people who eat almost exclusively in the buffet, the buffet meals are always better than the MDR.  They have the dining room food available...plus 1000 other things.  You get as much of what you want and don't have to wait for the servers.  And if you like it, you can get immediate refills.

If we do the MDR it's always "my worst meal of the week".

[BirdTravels]

I will offer that the last Encore Thanksgiving dinner had some extra special treats... (this was for our inaugural Encore cruise only... snow crab, king crab, and lobster claws)

 

Edited November 20, 2021 by BirdTravels