What do you think is the biggest misconception about Freestyle Cruising?

[newmexicoNita]

Interesting. NCL actually does make a lot of decisions for you, how much you'll pay (cruise, surcharges, beverages, etc.), when you'll see entertainment, ports, how long you'll be in ports, etc. Also, other lines give you freedom of choice as well. Many lines have alternative restaurants, 24 hour pizzarias, buffets instead of main dining, etc. I think it is a matter of degree. NCL offers more variety.

Yes, most lines have more than one dining option, but I don't think there is one that offers the variety NCL does; I guess you were saying that and what Dwrist was saying is also true: Of course the basics are set by NCL or any line for that matter, but how we handle our vacation time on NCL is strictly up to us. This is one of the things we love so much about freestyle. As for the waiting some seem to experience, I can't say this doesn't happen, I can say (not because I am being an NCL cheerleader right now) we have never waited as I have said before except the one time we had a large group.

 

I agree with Shoreguy, this waiting to eat, for the most part is a myth. NMNita

[Arwenmark]

<<You tell me where you can go to a restaurant on land and for $20 have an intimate environment, impeccable service, an appetizer of crab cakes or jumbo shrimp, a Caesar salad, a 12-ounce filet mignon or a 24-ounce porterhouse with made-from-scratch Bearnaise sauce, steamed asparagus, creamed spinach, baked potato with all the fixin's, butter-sauteed mushrooms, creme brulee or chocolate mousse for dessert and a lovely cappuccino to end the evening? You can't.>>

 

But you can't get all that on a cruiseship for $20 either. It's $20 plus whatever you prepaid for that meal in the cost of your cruise. Saying that the above meal costs $20 means that if you ate in the main dining room, that meal would be free. But it wouldn't be free. You just paid for it ahead of time, that's all."

 

Perhaps that is true but you can eat in the dining room and eat at the specialty the same night if you have the stomach for it. If you eat in one place they don't stop you from eating again later in another.

I realize most people would not want to do that, but it does relate to your scenario.

We actually eat a very early dinner in the dining room and "sometime" have a late "dinner" at a specialty

[Arwenmark]

Vacation Luvver,

That is very odd because the first words out of the hostess mouth EVERY TIME we have gone to the dining room has been would you like to share a table?

Even when we have had a standing reservation for a specific table booked, she always asks even before she looks up the reservation.

[clm101798]

<<You tell me where you can go to a restaurant on land and for $20 have an intimate environment, impeccable service, an appetizer of crab cakes or jumbo shrimp, a Caesar salad, a 12-ounce filet mignon or a 24-ounce porterhouse with made-from-scratch Bearnaise sauce, steamed asparagus, creamed spinach, baked potato with all the fixin's, butter-sauteed mushrooms, creme brulee or chocolate mousse for dessert and a lovely cappuccino to end the evening? You can't.>>

 

But you can't get all that on a cruiseship for $20 either. It's $20 plus whatever you prepaid for that meal in the cost of your cruise. Saying that the above meal costs $20 means that if you ate in the main dining room, that meal would be free. But it wouldn't be free. You just paid for it ahead of time, that's all."

 

You may have technically paid for it before in your cruise cost, but what you are paying wouldn't even cover a cheap meal let alone the one described above. I am paying $89 a night. Included in that is a room, shows, live music, 3 meals a day plus any snacks or additional meals you want, dancing, (and anything else I am forgetting that they don't charge extra for). If you say even only $50 of that is for the room (pretty cheap hotel room) then that leaves $39 for the rest. Just how much of that $39 is going towards my dinner? It would have to be less than $10. What land based sit down restaurant can I go to and have appetizer, entree, and dessert (with seconds if I desire) like you can have in the regular dinning room? SO maybe the fancy meal described in the other post is costing a little more than $20, but where can you get that meal for under $30?

[Retired not Expired]

Everyone keeps harping about the specialty restaurants. I suppose that on the other lines, you are not up-grading your service and quality of food in the specialty restaurants since NCL seems to be the only one who makes you pay for this up-grade. Makes one wonder why the few other options they have are so popular.

 

I also believe by these posts that all the specialty restaurants on those other lines are totally free since NCL is the only one who nickel and dimes it’s customers.

[Retired not Expired]

Everyone keeps harping about the specialty restaurants. I suppose that on the other lines, you are not up-grading your service and quality of food in the specialty restaurants since NCL seems to be the only one who makes you pay for this up-grade. Makes one wonder why the few other options they have are so popular.

 

I also believe by these posts that all the specialty restaurants on those other lines are totally free since NCL is the only one who nickel and dimes it’s customers.

[vacation luvver]

<<Perhaps that is true but you can eat in the dining room and eat at the specialty the same night if you have the stomach for it. If you eat in one place they don't stop you from eating again later in another.>>

 

You're absolutely right! I didn't think about someone eating two dinners on the same night. But you're right - then the second dinner at the specialty restaurant WOULD cost only $20, and that WOULD be a bargain! But it reminds me of the kind of place where if you can eat a 32 oz. steak PLUS a baked potato PLUS a salad PLUS a roll, it's free! Meaning that, as you said, a lot of people might not want to eat a whole lot of food JUST BECAUSE IT'S A BARGAIN.

 

<<I am paying $89 a night. Included in that is a room, shows, live music, 3 meals a day plus any snacks or additional meals you want, dancing, (and anything else I am forgetting that they don't charge extra for). If you say even only $50 of that is for the room (pretty cheap hotel room) then that leaves $39 for the rest. Just how much of that $39 is going towards my dinner? It would have to be less than $10.>>

 

I honestly have no idea how much of my cruise cost covers the cost of my meals, and I have no idea how much money is allocated for each breakfast, each lunch, each dinner, snacks, the chocolate buffet, etc. All I know is that however much is allocated, NCL is making a profit - and I have no problem with that, since I believe in capitalism. I am the first to agree that the money that you spend on a cruise cannot buy a comparable resort vacation.

 

<<That is very odd because the first words out of the hostess mouth EVERY TIME we have gone to the dining room has been would you like to share a table?

Even when we have had a standing reservation for a specific table booked, she always asks even before she looks up the reservation.>>

 

Yes, it is odd. I did mention that there were two times that I went into the dining room with an eating companion or eating companions, and we were asked if we wanted to share a table (and we did), but it just didn't seem to happen when I was by myself. Maybe there would have been more of an opportunity to share a table if I had been on a smaller ship than the Dawn. The Dawn had so many restaurants, and there was so much time available to be served, that it was against the odds that people desiring to sit with strangers would show up at the restaurant that I chose within a few minutes of the time that I showed up. Who knows - maybe as I was asking in the Venetian Room if I could sit with strangers, other people were asking in the Aqua Room if they could sit with strangers, and there was no way we could get together.

 

One time, when the hostess gave me the usual look as if I had three heads and said that she didn't think that strangers would show up clamoring to sit with a stranger (me), I waited on the side so that when people showed up, they could be asked if they wanted to sit with strangers. After I waited about three minutes, a couple showed up, and the hostess asked them if they wanted to sit with strangers. They looked at her as if SHE had three heads and said, "No!" They wanted a table for two. They didn't want to eat with pesky strangers! That's the point of "freestyle" - you can do whatever you want, and if you don't want anything to do with pesky strangers, you don't have to have anything to do with them. I waited another five minutes without anyone else showing up, and that's when I gave up and asked for a table for one.

 

I have never cruised on Carnival, but I believe there is a surcharge to eat in their specialty restaurants.

 

FWIW I never had to wait for a table in the dining rooms.

[megessey]

If you read very closely, outside of Hawaii very few of the regulars here have encountered a long line,

 

THIS also leads to huge confusion and frustration! Some people defend NCL complainers with "All Freestyle is great!!!!! (oh, execpt PoH, PoAM, PoA)" :mad:

 

Some of the reviews of the Pride ships are so extreme that it seems unreal, food is so inedible it seems they wouldn't serve it to their dogs. The wait times are so horrible that people are having heart attacks before they get to their table! OMG! (Ok, now I'm exaggerating :p )

 

I personally won't make any assumptions about the PoAm until I've taken my cruise. But it is disheartening to see this about your up & coming vacation. Defenders of NCL Freestyle unite!!! (cough--except for the redheaded stepchildren of Hawaii).

[coneygal]

We have sailed with Carnival, (out of control children in everything) Celebrity, nice, but had the later seating and did not get out of the dining room until almost 11:pm, and then with NCL Crown to Bermuda, NCL Dream to Alaska, NCL Dawn to Bermuda and Bahamas and next week on NCL Dawn to Western Carib. Hands down, NCL was the most enjoyable in both dining and offerings for us to enjoy. They bent over backwards to give our granddaughter her dairy free meals as well as sugar free to diabetics.

[sjbdtz]

To imply -or worse, to state outright- that NCL offers these choices simply to wring a few dollars out of its passengers is just silly.

 

 

Are you naive, or unfamiliar with capitalism? Of course this is all about making more money. The cruise industry is a business. I have no trouble with NCL and all other cruise lines trying to make more money from the passengers. That's their free market right. And my free market right as a passenger is not to spend the money.

 

At the end of the cruise, I then decide whether to sail on NCL again or not, based on every factor, including costs of extras. My decision is to keep sailing on NCL because the pros outweigh the cons.

 

But, to suggest that the pay restaurants don't exist to make money is bizarre and naive.

 

If the sole purpose of supplemental fee dining was to "wring a few dollars", makes you wonder why these establishments are so small, and always sold out.

 

If you claim that this is a free-market move to maximize profitability, then they should use the Le Bistro space for the free food, and charge everyone for Tsar's Palace (reversing the menus and service, of course). Then they could make thousands of dollars extra per night.

 

Silly businesspeople, trying to wring every dollar. :rolleyes:

[sjbdtz]

I am paying $89 a night. Included in that is a room, shows, live music, 3 meals a day plus any snacks or additional meals you want, dancing, (and anything else I am forgetting that they don't charge extra for). If you say even only $50 of that is for the room (pretty cheap hotel room) then that leaves $39 for the rest.

 

 

Don't forget: TRANSPORTATION! You're actually GOING SOMEWHERE! You could pay that same amount at a hotel, without the food, music, dancing, and you wake up in exactly the same place ! :(

[Host CMLA]

Thanks for all the great replies. I'd forgotten about over half of the things mentioned here. No wonder so many new cruisers have the wrong impression of NCL. :o

[hotspur]

Then again we have those who would label those of us who have never had the experience like you've described in order to discredit us as nothing more than cheerleaders skewing the true picture, or the picture as you want it known..

 

I've never had your waits and I don't eat every night at the same time. We go when we are hungry or around our schedule for others things.

 

The only time I've had a wait for dessert is when the waiters were singing and dancing on a traditional line.

 

Sorry, but this is another misconception. That all that have had positive experiences are cult like or cheerleaders.

Couldn't agree more.

 

And I'm tired of complainers who mislead people by overstating an infrequently-encountered issue and taking their one experience and generalizing it to make it sound like it will be regularly encountered by everyone.

 

Nearly everyone here who is an NCL regular has made clear that there is no consistent problem with having to wait to be seated in main dining rooms, or to have to wait longer than you'd consider normal between courses. Frankly, I've never gotten out of a dining room on a traditional-dining cruise ship as quickly as I consistently get out of an NCL freestyle dining room. And, even if for some reason I had an appointment that required my leaving the dining room before dessert and coffee, at least I could go back to the dining room later to finish my meal. Try doing that on Celebrity or HAL.

[cantwaitt]

I don't think they are silly. I think they are smart.

 

If most people wanted to pay additional money for food, they WOULD make Le Bistro the main dining room. It would just make sense.

 

I guess the long waits for the inclusive (pre-paid) restaurants are an indication of two things:

 

1) there is still strong demand for the food and restaurants people paid for before they boarded

 

2) staffing is not adequate enough, because there is little incentive to make these people extremely happy, given the automatic tipping policy.

 

 

Is this only obvious to me?

[johnql]

2) staffing is not adequate enough, because there is little incentive to make these people extremely happy, given the automatic tipping policy.

This is biggest misconception numero uno. See Cecilia's Post #1, which started this thread.

 

Automatic tipping only means that the money is automatically debited to your account. It does NOT mean that every staff member automatically receives an equal share of the pool. Each staff member still has plenty of incentive to perform well.

[hotspur]

It just dawned on me that someone coming to this thread out of the blue will come away thinking that newmexiconita, shoreguy, Retired not Expired, dwrist, jana, I, and a long list of other NCL regulars here, willingly board these NCL ships time and again just to wait hours to be seated for dinner every night, to wait thirty or forty-five minutes between every course, and to be served by a lazy, unmotivated, slovenly, uncaring wait staff, and that somehow we must be desensitized, even hypnotized, in some way such that we don't even notice this is happening to us!

 

Because--if you believed some of the nonsense that's been posted here about freestyle--there's only that one possible explanation: that we've all been brainwashed by NCL! That's right. This is all right out of The Manchurian Candidate. We've been programmed by NCL--must be special training for cruise directors or something--to have no recollections at all of all these indignities and inconveniences that we are put through daily, and we are programmed to come here and, in unison, deny that any of these things have ever happened to us in order to entice unsuspecting newbies to join our cult.

 

Amazing, just amazing.

[discjoker]

It just dawned on me that someone coming to this thread out of the blue will come away thinking that newmexiconita, shoreguy, Retired not Expired, dwrist, jana, I, and a long list of other NCL regulars here, willingly board these NCL ships time and again just to wait hours to be seated for dinner every night, to wait thirty or forty-five minutes between every course, and to be served by a lazy, unmotivated, slovenly, uncaring wait staff, and that somehow we must be desensitized, even hypnotized, in some way such that we don't even notice this is happening to us!

 

Because--if you believed some of the nonsense that's been posted here about freestyle--there's only that one possible explanation: that we've all been brainwashed by NCL! That's right. This is all right out of The Manchurian Candidate. We've been programmed by NCL--must be special training for cruise directors or something--to have no recollections at all of all these indignities and inconveniences that we are put through daily, and we are programmed to come here and, in unison, deny that any of these things have ever happened to us to entice the unsuspecting to join our cult.

 

Amazing, just amazing.

 

:D . It is amazing. I don't know what these people are doing to get poor service. I have never ever experienced poor service on NCL...NEVER. I think there must be some sort of victim mentality that these people have or something. Oh, and add me to the brainwashed cult as well.

[Retired not Expired]

Is this only obvious to me?

 

Obviously...

[shoreguy]

I don't think they are silly. I think they are smart.

 

If most people wanted to pay additional money for food, they WOULD make Le Bistro the main dining room. It would just make sense.

 

I guess the long waits for the inclusive (pre-paid) restaurants are an indication of two things:

 

1) there is still strong demand for the food and restaurants people paid for before they boarded

 

2) staffing is not adequate enough, because there is little incentive to make these people extremely happy, given the automatic tipping policy.

 

 

Is this only obvious to me?

 

Yes :)

[mbisson]

Is this only obvious to me?

 

Since I haven't had the problems you have repeatedly described, I'll admit it's not obvious to me.

 

-Monte

[dwrist]

It just dawned on me that someone coming to this thread out of the blue will come away thinking that newmexiconita, shoreguy, Retired not Expired, dwrist, jana, I, and a long list of other NCL regulars here, willingly board these NCL ships time and again just to wait hours to be seated for dinner every night, to wait thirty or forty-five minutes between every course, and to be served by a lazy, unmotivated, slovenly, uncaring wait staff, and that somehow we must be desensitized, even hypnotized, in some way such that we don't even notice this is happening to us!

 

Because--if you believed some of the nonsense that's been posted here about freestyle--there's only that one possible explanation: that we've all been brainwashed by NCL! That's right. This is all right out of The Manchurian Candidate. We've been programmed by NCL--must be special training for cruise directors or something--to have no recollections at all of all these indignities and inconveniences that we are put through daily, and we are programmed to come here and, in unison, deny that any of these things have ever happened to us in order to entice unsuspecting newbies to join our cult.

 

Amazing, just amazing.

 

 

Love it:D

[samtig]

:D . It is amazing. I don't know what these people are doing to get poor service. I have never ever experienced poor service on NCL...NEVER. I think there must be some sort of victim mentality that these people have or something. Oh, and add me to the brainwashed cult as well.

 

 

I've never had anything but excellent service on NCL, as well as RCI & Carnival. Have absolutely NO complaints about service. Luck of the draw??

[shoreguy]

It just dawned on me that someone coming to this thread out of the blue will come away thinking that newmexiconita, shoreguy, Retired not Expired, dwrist, jana, I, and a long list of other NCL regulars here, willingly board these NCL ships time and again just to wait hours to be seated for dinner every night, to wait thirty or forty-five minutes between every course, and to be served by a lazy, unmotivated, slovenly, uncaring wait staff, and that somehow we must be desensitized, even hypnotized, in some way such that we don't even notice this is happening to us!

 

Because--if you believed some of the nonsense that's been posted here about freestyle--there's only that one possible explanation: that we've all been brainwashed by NCL! That's right. This is all right out of The Manchurian Candidate. We've been programmed by NCL--must be special training for cruise directors or something--to have no recollections at all of all these indignities and inconveniences that we are put through daily, and we are programmed to come here and, in unison, deny that any of these things have ever happened to us in order to entice unsuspecting newbies to join our cult.

 

Amazing, just amazing.

 

I need to learn how the cruise directors do that. I could use that to blind my clients as well. It seems to work very well.

 

The longest I ever waited to be seated for dinner on NCL was 30 minutes. It was horrible. It was on the Dream and it was before freestyle :eek: Hundreds stuffed in line waiting for the stragglers in the Terraces from the early seating to finish on a late port day. Nobody got seated until we all did.

[CPT Trips]

I need to learn how the cruise directors do that. I could use that to blind my clients as well. It seems to work very well.

 

The longest I ever waited to be seated for dinner on NCL was 30 minutes. It was horrible. It was on the Dream and it was before freestyle :eek: Hundreds stuffed in line waiting for the stragglers in the Terraces from the early seating to finish on a late port day. Nobody got seated until we all did.

 

Based on that experience, did you come late the next evening?

[DaisyL]

Some people defend NCL complainers with "All Freestyle is great!!!!! (oh, execpt PoH, PoAM, PoA)" :mad:

The wait times are so horrible that people are having heart attacks before they get to their table! OMG! (Ok, now I'm exaggerating :p )

 

Major misconception is cruising with NCL and NCLA are the SAME.

The PoAm is not the Dawn! There was definitely a difference with wait times for the main dining rooms. BTW, we thought the food was good though.

 

On our Oct. '06 PoAm cruise was terribly understaffed and it showed in the service. We had long waits several times (1 hour), with the dining rooms half empty. Luckily we made reservations for specialty restaurants for 3 nights but we did not want to micro-manage our entire vacation.

 

In contrast on our past 3 Dawn cruises, we have only dined in the specialty restaurants several times, and have not had a wait longer than 10 mins (a few times only) for the main dining rooms. And this was for popular times between 7 PM and 8 PM.

 

Had a great time on the PoAm but looking forward to our 'homeport' and the Dawn later this year.