21 Day Cruise Menus

[mr. godfredo]

We will be on a 21 day Med and Adriatic cruise on Oosterdam this summer from Athens to Rome. We have three nights of specialty dining, and I want to schedule strategically. Any insight on how often the menus repeat in the MDR? I can't imagine 21 unique menus. Any insights would be appreciated.

[CruiserBruce]

Actually,  they probably will be unique, particularly if the cruise is only sold as a 21 day cruise, not, for example,  a 10 day and an 11 day cruise. If it is sold as two cruises,  it is quite likely menus will repeat. 

 

That doesn't mean an item won't be repeated, just that an entire menu won't. 

 

HAL has a library of 15 menus, IIRC. 

[kazu]

The only things that may be pure repeats would be the Gala night dinners, I think.

 

the menus are not the same on longer cruises.  They do use the same meats and fish of course but there is usually a twist.  Some appetizers repeat but not at the same time.

 

HAL does a pretty good job on their menus for the European cruises and their port to table specials match the country - some can be quite good.

[CruiserBruce]

8 minutes ago, kazu said:

The only things that may be pure repeats would be the Gala night dinners, I think.

 

 

HAL has 4 Gala night menus, so whether or not they repeat depends on the number of Gala nights.

[kazu]

2 minutes ago, CruiserBruce said:

HAL has 4 Gala night menus, so whether or not they repeat depends on the number of Gala nights.

 

Agree - I think the OP has the possibility of more than 4 depending on the itinerary, etc.

In any case most of them are decent so the OP would be fine, I think.

[VMax1700]

2 hours ago, mr. godfredo said:

We will be on a 21 day Med and Adriatic cruise on Oosterdam this summer from Athens to Rome. We have three nights of specialty dining, and I want to schedule strategically. Any insight on how often the menus repeat in the MDR? I can't imagine 21 unique menus. Any insights would be appreciated.

The 21 day Med and Adriatic cruise, departing Athens on 23 June and arriving in Rome/Civitavecchia on 14 July is a collector cruise made up of a 12 day Med Empires arriving in Trieste on 5 July and departing the same day towards Rome on a 9 day Adriatic and Italian 'Splendors' cruise.  So, there will probably be a good bit of repetition on the second cruise.  There will probably be 4 dressy nights.

[CruiserBruce]

4 minutes ago, VMax1700 said:

The 21 day Med and Adriatic cruise, departing Athens on 23 June and arriving in Rome/Civitavecchia on 14 July is a collector cruise made up of a 12 day Med Empires arriving in Trieste on 5 July and departing the same day towards Rome on a 9 day Adriatic and Italian 'Splendors' cruise.  So, there will probably be a good bit of repetition on the second cruise.  There will probably be 4 dressy nights.

But, in that case, the Gala night menus will probably repeat. 

[mr. godfredo]

1 hour ago, VMax1700 said:

The 21 day Med and Adriatic cruise, departing Athens on 23 June and arriving in Rome/Civitavecchia on 14 July is a collector cruise made up of a 12 day Med Empires arriving in Trieste on 5 July and departing the same day towards Rome on a 9 day Adriatic and Italian 'Splendors' cruise.  So, there will probably be a good bit of repetition on the second cruise.  There will probably be 4 dressy nights.

Thanks for the tip on that.

[WriterOnDeck]

Just FYI, a feature of the world cruise is that the menu doesn't repeat for 128 days. Of course a lot of the individual items do, which is just fine with me.

[Blackduck59]

I often read posts where people want to see the menus or some secret rotation formula so they can plan their specialty dining. I don't get it, FOMO to the max; We like to plan our cruise to a degree, what we will do on shore days, where we will stay before and after the cruise, etc. We actually have to preplan meals because of my wife's dietary needs. Never once have we thought, If we have dinner here we will miss out on (insert menu item here) there. We know that we should be able to find something to eat every day. If we missed the prime rib night because we made reservations for the Tamarind pop up, Oh well, I can roast a perfect prime rib at home and my Yorkshire pudding is pretty good too.

Edited March 18 by Blackduck59

[Woofbite]

I traveled with a lady who was lactose intolerant and the executive chef met with her each evening to go over the next night's menu. There were usually three or more changes from the one sent from HDQ because he explained he had to balance shipboard supplies.  If passenger demand depleted a certain item, he substituted dishes where he had a surplus of another one.  I think every single lunch and dinner meal on our 46 day African trip had carrots!  I'm surprised there weren't carrot pancakes in the mornings.