Oceanview Cafe dinner service being eliminated?

[Wakepatrol]

2 hours ago, bonagrad said:

I sent a second email, after my first email on Sunday and I didn't ask this, but noted that we made our final payment on January 2nd, having no idea this was coming.  In addition I added much more feedback and suggestions that I didn't provide on Sunday.  As with Sunday, I got a call within 2 hours, this time from a different person.  This time actually got provide quite a bit of extra feedback.  I noted that I get the concern for waste, but there has to be a happy medium.  She said that they had gotten a lot of feedback the last few years about waste.  While this is fair, they went too far with the cuts on OVC.  They literally went from one of the best in terms of variety to the worst in the industry overnight.  I provide a suggestion that she said was going to pass along directly the Food and Beverage Team.  Here was my thought.  Since the Mast Grill closes at 6 and the Spa Cafe, mid-afternoon, why not repurposed those in the evening.  Use the Mast Grill for that made to order proteins and salads and the Spa Cafe for lighter options.  Both options for people without setting out large platters of food that might get thrown out.  That would provide additional options that could easily be controlled from an inventory standpoint.  Overall, I felt the conversation was productive.  She said they are listening and appreciate the feedback and suggestions.  I suggest everyone who feel strongly enough to take a few minutes to put together an email  Every bit of feedback gets us closer to them to make some changes in the right direction!   llutoff-perlo@celebritycruises.com

If only I had time in my day to do all this homework 

[MamaFej]

8 minutes ago, WonderMan3 said:

This is the second report I've heard from an M class ship where it sounds like the OVC selections are not as reduced as E and S class. I wonder if it's because M class has fewer specialty offerings and maybe the OVC gets busier for dinner on those ships than on the other classes? From my own personal experiences I recall OVC dinner being much busier on Constellation and Summit than on Edge and the S-class ships I've been on.

I hadn't considered that. I've only been on M Class ships since the restart. The OVC was plenty busy in the evenings. 

[mpdog42]

5 hours ago, harz99 said:

We are 2 long term non suite Celebrity cruisers at E-plus loyalty level, quite frankly with all the cutbacks and changes we no longer feel valued in any way by Celebrity, the product is not deserving of the price being asked in any way shape or form, having taken a Canaries cruise on Silhouette last October to use up our FCCs from covid cancellations, i cannot see us ever taking another cruise on this line. Of course there will be plenty of newbies to take our place - they (X) hope!

Or Newbies complaining to their TA!!!🤬

[terrydtx]

deleted

Edited January 13, 2023 by terrydtx

[terrydtx]

5 hours ago, kenb said:

Our MDR menu on the Equinox for our June 4th cruise now shows Pork and Beans as an entree on day 6 of the cruise in the app, this wasn't there previously.  Oh well we are in a suite so we will be in Luminae.

[RichYak]

2 minutes ago, terrydtx said:

Our MDR menu on the Equinox for our June 4th cruise now shows Pork and Beans as an entree on day 6 of the cruise in the app, this wasn't there previously.  Oh well we are in a suite so we will be in Luminae.

On Equinox, you can order from the MDR menu in Luminae, so you can still get the Pork and Beans. 😇

[LGW59]

3 minutes ago, terrydtx said:

Our MDR menu on the Equinox for our June 4th cruise now shows Pork and Beans as an entree on day 6 of the cruise in the app, this wasn't there previously.  Oh well we are in a suite so we will be in Luminae.

Good because at least in Luminae I believe they take that big chunk of fat out when they open the can of beans 🤪

[terrydtx]

4 hours ago, Ipeeinthepools said:

 

Bye. We have 1 more cruise booked on Celebrity and it is a very unique itinerary so it is likely we'll keep the reservation.  

 

We will likely try HAL, maybe we'll see you there.

The grass is not always greener, we sailed almost exclusively on HAL from 2010 to 2019 and we found being in our early 70's was too young for HAL and the mediocrity of their food and service. We made 4 Star in their loyalty program and after using up our FCC's on the Oosterdam last year we are done with HAL. Now after making Elite with Celebrity we may be going on to more premium lines like Oceania and Viking Ocean after our next 4 cruises.

[terrydtx]

3 minutes ago, LGW59 said:

Good because at least in Luminae I believe they take that big chunk of fat out when they open the can of beans 🤪

Funny you say that, in Luminae on the same night one entree is Broiled Scallops "Surf and Turf" with the turf being grilled pork belly.  The fat from the can of beans is being repurposed in the Luminae S & T, 🤣

[terrydtx]

10 minutes ago, RichYak said:

On Equinox, you can order from the MDR menu in Luminae, so you can still get the Pork and Beans. 😇

on the Luminae menu on the same night one entree is Broiled Scallops "Surf and Turf" with the turf being grilled pork belly. Could the pork belly be the repurposed pork fat from the can of beans in the MDR?

[LGW59]

3 minutes ago, terrydtx said:

Funny you say that, in Luminae on the same night one entree is Broiled Scallops "Surf and Turf" with the turf being grilled pork belly.  The fat from the can of beans is being repurposed in the Luminae S & T, 🤣

This was a typical Saturday night dinner when I grew up in Boston.  Hot dogs, beans, with brown bread from a can.

  

*Photo credit: New England Today Living

 

[mpdog42]

36 minutes ago, RichYak said:

On Equinox, you can order from the MDR menu in Luminae, so you can still get the Pork and Beans. 😇

And should….

[coaster]

Seems to me Royal is becoming the more upscale line. No cutbacks reported on their evening buffet. Room service charge cheaper than Celebtity. What a turn of events since the first part of the year.

 

 

[tfred]

25 minutes ago, coaster said:

Seems to me Royal is becoming the more upscale line. No cutbacks reported on their evening buffet. Room service charge cheaper than Celebtity. What a turn of events since the first part of the year.

 

 

Your definition of an upscale line is a better buffet and cheaper room service?

[coaster]

6 minutes ago, tfred said:

Your definition of an upscale line is a better buffet and cheaper room service?

Yes. Makes sense to me.  Why I spent the extra $ over Royal. 

 

Edited January 13, 2023 by coaster

[Ipeeinthepools]

6 hours ago, terrydtx said:

The grass is not always greener, we sailed almost exclusively on HAL from 2010 to 2019 and we found being in our early 70's was too young for HAL and the mediocrity of their food and service. We made 4 Star in their loyalty program and after using up our FCC's on the Oosterdam last year we are done with HAL. Now after making Elite with Celebrity we may be going on to more premium lines like Oceania and Viking Ocean after our next 4 cruises.

 

We'll see, you may be correct.  However based on your frequent references to Luminae, one difference between us is that we do not cruise in suites.  I believe that the HAL suite experience may not be as good as others but it may be a different conclusion for non-suite guests.  Their Pinnacle class ships look very nice but I'm not as interested in their other ships at this point.  HAL does tend to offer longer itineraries while Celebrity seems to be on a path to offer shorter cruises.  So we'll see, perhaps we'll follow you over to Viking.  Who knows, perhaps Celebrity will change course and we'll be back for another try.

[Ipeeinthepools]

7 hours ago, LGW59 said:

This was a typical Saturday night dinner when I grew up in Boston.  Hot dogs, beans, with brown bread from a can.

  

*Photo credit: New England Today Living

 

 

Looks great to me or at least better than tilapia.  

[hcat]

9 minutes ago, Ipeeinthepools said:

 

Looks great to me or at least better than tilapia.  

or bologna at the buffet

[iandjm]

13 hours ago, harz99 said:

We are 2 long term non suite Celebrity cruisers at E-plus loyalty level, quite frankly with all the cutbacks and changes we no longer feel valued in any way by Celebrity, the product is not deserving of the price being asked in any way shape or form, having taken a Canaries cruise on Silhouette last October to use up our FCCs from covid cancellations, i cannot see us ever taking another cruise on this line. Of course there will be plenty of newbies to take our place - they (X) hope!

We were on that cruise too. It was a bit grim eh 😩

[Ex-Airbalancer]

7 hours ago, coaster said:

Seems to me Royal is becoming the more upscale line. No cutbacks reported on their evening buffet. Room service charge cheaper than Celebtity. What a turn of events since the first part of the year.

 

 

If you like plastic plates and plastic cups in OV than RCL is more up upscale 

The only thing better is the 4 anytime drinks perk for Diamonds 😁🧐🍻

[harz99]

23 minutes ago, iandjm said:

We were on that cruise too. It was a bit grim eh 😩

It didn't start well for us...despite doing all the online bits and printing out boarding passes, they didn't work with the tablet holding girls, so we waited while that was sorted manually, got our cards and embarked only to find we couldn't access our booked deck 3 OV cabin as the area was locked off, Qing at guest services to sort this out then i noticed the cabin number on our keycards had changed! Turns out that for several cruises they'd been using the section where we should have been as quarantine cabins, fair enough but i shouldn't be finding that out at embarkation, nor should i be finding out that the replacement was an INSIDE on deck 10 - we booked on 3 for a reason, everything we want during the cruise is on 3/4/5, except for the Sky Lounge🙄, and Ocean View Cafe for port day lunch. 

 

An hour later the matter was sorted, we were given a deck 3 OV about 4 doors up from the sectioned of bit, you can imagine my thoughts on why they didn't just reallocate us to that one anyway...

 

Anyway, so many other service related matters were simply not up to previous standards that it'd just be too negative to go through them all...

 

[iandjm]

27 minutes ago, harz99 said:

It didn't start well for us...despite doing all the online bits and printing out boarding passes, they didn't work with the tablet holding girls, so we waited while that was sorted manually, got our cards and embarked only to find we couldn't access our booked deck 3 OV cabin as the area was locked off, Qing at guest services to sort this out then i noticed the cabin number on our keycards had changed! Turns out that for several cruises they'd been using the section where we should have been as quarantine cabins, fair enough but i shouldn't be finding that out at embarkation, nor should i be finding out that the replacement was an INSIDE on deck 10 - we booked on 3 for a reason, everything we want during the cruise is on 3/4/5, except for the Sky Lounge🙄, and Ocean View Cafe for port day lunch. 

 

An hour later the matter was sorted, we were given a deck 3 OV about 4 doors up from the sectioned of bit, you can imagine my thoughts on why they didn't just reallocate us to that one anyway...

 

Anyway, so many other service related matters were simply not up to previous standards that it'd just be too negative to go through them all...

 

Sounds worryingly similar. The MDR food and service was awful compared to the normal Celebrity service. And what the heck were the two waiters going round signing and playing guitars at the tables. It was so downmarket. The restaurant management didn’t want to engage with any diners and the waiters seemed to be on their first cruise pre trained. 
and that’s before the cutbacks! 

[harz99]

6 minutes ago, iandjm said:

Sounds worryingly similar. The MDR food and service was awful compared to the normal Celebrity service. And what the heck were the two waiters going round signing and playing guitars at the tables. It was so downmarket. The restaurant management didn’t want to engage with any diners and the waiters seemed to be on their first cruise pre trained. 
and that’s before the cutbacks! 

Lol, we had an MDR waiter who kept mumbling to himself and was a tad slow serving for first 2 nights, then he went sick, and we lucked out with a lad from Qsine next night, then an absolutely top notch lass from Bali until the final evening when the mumbler was back. Food was so so at times but we didn't starve...as to MDR  Restaurant Management, I've noticed that the last few years very few of them seem willing to get hands on or interact with diners, and also the Maitre D in charge of Tuscan/Murano whom we encounteted during the Elite breakfasts had a really poor attitude.

Edited January 13, 2023 by harz99

[jean87510]

10 hours ago, Wakepatrol said:

If only I had time in my day to do all this homework 

exactly.  And for more variety of food then I currently have in my refrigerator.

[DaKahuna]

2 hours ago, hcat said:

or bologna at the buffet

 

Hey - be careful.  My favorite breakfast growing up was fried bologna with two sunny side up eggs and grits.