Evening chic at first late-night port???

[sofietucker]

On the Connie leaving Tampa on Dec 2. (Last time we cruised X was on the Edge's first time post-pandemic in June 2021.)

The first 2 days are sea days--so you think, Okay, dressy night on first--or even second--sea day, as usual. First port is day 4, San Juan,  PR. Unfortunately a short stay--we don't dock til 3pm. Many of the ship tours there are food-and-booze related, as they should be in this fabulous city!

 

BUT. Looking at the menus of Luminae, Blu and MDR for that evening: this is very clearly a formal night! Each restaurant offers several variations of lobster tail and escargot and--the big tell!--Beef Wellington and Baked Alaska. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

Bewildering on several fronts:

1. Why would they have a second dressy night so soon after the cruise begins, assuming they follow the decades-old pattern of first sea day= formal night?

2. Why would they schedule a dressy night at a late-night port? Since many of the ship's tour options here (never mind the independent visits) are actually foodie-related, you roll back on board at 7 pm full of food & rum, and...rush to a fancy meal?

3. Wouldn't this possibly harm San Juan tourism's hopes of keeping folks ashore a little longer?

 

We love spending time in SJ whenever possible--a reason we booked this itinerary. But we also really enjoy the fancy dinner nights.

Any thoughts or observations?

[jelayne]

The order of the menus in the app are not always correct. 
We recently had a 12N cruise and up until about a month before there were only menus for 9N.  Then they added 2 more and finally the last night showed up. 

[WestLakeGirl]

The app is simply unreliable

[wrk2cruise]

Sounds like they have the 5 night rotation loaded.  Lobster/Wellington is almost always the second to last night of the sailing as last night people are packing etc.

 

[D C]

You're too far from sailing to rely on the app.
Last week, the standard turkey & potatoes was being shown as the menu on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.  Now the app says something like they're working on the menu and won't show any days.  I expect that it might be accurate once we're onboard. 

[mahdnc]

22 hours ago, sofietucker said:

On the Connie leaving Tampa on Dec 2. (Last time we cruised X was on the Edge's first time post-pandemic in June 2021.)

The first 2 days are sea days--so you think, Okay, dressy night on first--or even second--sea day, as usual. First port is day 4, San Juan,  PR. Unfortunately a short stay--we don't dock til 3pm. Many of the ship tours there are food-and-booze related, as they should be in this fabulous city!

 

BUT. Looking at the menus of Luminae, Blu and MDR for that evening: this is very clearly a formal night! Each restaurant offers several variations of lobster tail and escargot and--the big tell!--Beef Wellington and Baked Alaska. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

Bewildering on several fronts:

1. Why would they have a second dressy night so soon after the cruise begins, assuming they follow the decades-old pattern of first sea day= formal night?

2. Why would they schedule a dressy night at a late-night port? Since many of the ship's tour options here (never mind the independent visits) are actually foodie-related, you roll back on board at 7 pm full of food & rum, and...rush to a fancy meal?

3. Wouldn't this possibly harm San Juan tourism's hopes of keeping folks ashore a little longer?

 

We love spending time in SJ whenever possible--a reason we booked this itinerary. But we also really enjoy the fancy dinner nights.

Any thoughts or observations?

 

As everyone has said, don't pay attention to the app yet.  I tried to glean the same information from the app for my Oct 22 Connie transatlantic cruise and I found the menu to be an unreliable indicator in advance of the cruise.  It should work in theory.

 

Give your 10 night sailing schedule, it is pretty clear (as I am sure you already know) that your 2 evening chic nights will be Day 2 (sea day) and Day 9 (sea day).

[sofietucker]

Thanks everyone. Completely agree re: the non-reliability of the app--and forgot to mention that there are NO dinner starters & entrees listed in the menus, for any venue, after Day 5. Just drinks and desserts--the important parts, lol! But expecting to see the full menus in advance, in order to decide where to eat, when. Hope that SJ may still be dinner ashore...