Cruisers need to eat. This is an undeniable and obvious fact. After all activities, no matter if it is wild horse ride at Cosumel or swimming and splashing at the ship, participants want to eat... And there is plenty to eat (sorry spelling mistake -feast!) on cruise.
Let's start that one saves a lot of monies when cruising. How come you would say, you spend money! True. But if you were to attend for a week equivalent restaurants at home city, you would probably spend around $100 for a dinner for 2 + another $40 for a buffet + another $20 for a breakfast... So it makes $160 * 7 = 1120 for 2 for a week... Oh I did not include coffee and tea and sushi and the fact that buffet on board of the cruise is available throughout the whole day and there is also 24 hours service to get some substantial food.. If you add all this up you will see that food alone at cruise pays off... But hold on - how about the quality, enjoyment, is it just purely food?
All cruises we traveled with had an open seating breakfast. What does it mean? You come to a restaurant and being served something close to continental breakfast. Good, very good continental breakfast... including Benedict Eggs... and some other nice stuff, like smoked salmon. It is a good setting for folks who are well organized and don't have young children. Why later? Because serving at the breakfast takes a bit of time and children don't like to wait. Why former - because breakfast lasts just for some time... So what if you have children or not so organized? Where do you eat your breakfast? There are 2 options - one order to a stateroom. You are going to get whatever you ordered into your bed. The only little disadvantage of this option is that it offers a relatively limited choice. For instance no Benedict Eggs. Also eating in a stateroom, in the bed... Hm, we tried once but it was not our style.
Second option is to get to one of the buffets open from the early morning. To be completely precise those buffets don't really close for 24 hours. But at the breakfast, lunch and dinner time they just provide way greater variety of foods. This option seemed to work best for us - either we were at sea or were going to disembark and travel ashore - morning buffet always proved to be a good charging station for the rest of the day.
There are few different buffet types (and this is more or less common for all the cruises). In the morning one gets all kind of omelette's , vegetables, fruits, toasts, pastry. At lunch there is a past bar and mongolian grill. Also there is a barbeque buffet, on the open deck. Just before dinner start - a sushi bar opens. This is not something similar to sushi we used to eat at good sushi place in our home city. Portions are tiny - just 3 pieces of rolls. Yet one can take as many as wanted and they are fairly tasty if you ask me - very good rice and fair composition of fish, vegetables and even cheese. Olga ha
d a bit different opinion on it. And 24 hours a day there is a choice of pizza and burgers/american hot dogs. Pizza is not thin crust, but tasty otherwise... Burgers are just burgers.
Drinks which are included do not include pop and alcohol. Don't get afraid. There is a good choice of healthy tea, coffee, a few juices, milk and cream. If you want to get pop - you have to buy it. Same with alcohol. We did not, except for Olga's dad bought a pop package when we cruised on Carribean Princess. For ourselves - choice of drinks was just more than enough. As per alcohol... You can buy it cheaper ashore in a duty free, but required to surrender it when return to the ship. When you disembark you get it back. Cruise company tries to enforce this way some additional profits from selling cocktails and other boose. Of course some folks get around thi
s ban and do not surrender alcohol, even it is "strictly prohibited". There is also a little fridge with pop, drinks and water bottle in the stateroom. If you use it - you are charged. It is good though to have those drinks handy for occasional use. Fridge also allowed us to store some milk for Alice - if she wanted to eat it in the middle of the night. This drink policy is a major difference from most all inclusive resorts. This worked for Olga and myself - Olga is not a big fun of alcohol. As for myself I am more of a gourmet rather than drinker. If it is vodka it should be "Dostar","Monastryrskaja" or best of Crystall's production, if it is wine it should be of a decent grade (desirable real derivative of Saperavi from Georgia) :)))) It is difficult to get in North America, not speaking of cruise... Ups seems that I got snobbish :))))
Back to our sheeps though... actually not sheeps but lambs and lobsters! As those are some of the dishes served at actual dinner. As this may be known - there are 2 schedules for dinner - early starting around 6pm and late starting around 8 pm. One can choose to be seated alone or in the company of other folks. Company usually stays for the rest of the cruise.
We initially got our time at late dinner, but asked to change to an earlier one. This resulted in transfer of our dinner to another restaurant. We never regretted it. We were dining in the restaurant at the aft of the ship, our table was close to a beautiful ocean view window and we had an amazing company of a family from North Carolina. Lovely folks they were!
There are casual days and formal days for dining. Both imply - no shorts allowed, but at formal people are supposed to dress... well formally. Some cruisers do it. Others break the rules thinking that formal dress includes NB 992 and no need in tie there is. I belonged to the later category. Cruise is for relaxation and not for formal. Olga and Alice though were shining every evening (formal or not) attracting attention from everybody around our table. Best part of humanity my ladies are :)))
Dinner contained 3 courses. Starters/Appetizers, Main Course and Dessert. Important point was that one could order as many dishes as wanted. We used this few times - when there were very interesting appetizers, such as crab cakes. The quality of the food was superb. Steaks, seafood, desserts everything was cooked very well. I would compare dinners at cruise to the higher end of middle level dining in the home city. Keg, Red Lobster,Earls even Red Water Grill or Gaucho can be compared to cruise dining in terms of food quality and cruise has more than an edge. Waiter at the dining are dedicated to 3-4 tables. This somehow gets you more attention than in a good restaurant ashore, which is nice as you don't have to catch a waiter - they are just somehow always there around. Also very nice an cheerful folks.
At Carribean Princess - we were shocked in a good sense by a fellow from South Africa. He apparently was a professional waiter and a piece of actor altogether! He made us feel as if we were sitting not in the cruise ship dining room but somewhere in the Victorian style reception happening somewhere in the 19-th century England, surrounded by a nobility. And all this was done without a hint of joke - just for real!
At Dream as well as at Fascination there was a tradition to make a little show during the dinner -a "Shshshsow time!" It could be just waiters joining to sing, or some 5 minute dancing break or so. Not disturbing and very pleasing event it was.
What else can I say about dining and food in general at cruise? Every ship we traveled had its own nice food features. Carnival - good melting chocolate cake and nice selection of seafood. Princess - amazing goat cheese souffle.
Overall - the only trouble with the food at cruise is that there is too much of it and it is too tasty. So to keep myself feet I was swimming in the pool for about 30 min every evening and then running in the jogging path for a bit. Not considering walking and swimming ashore.
Will try to tell about amenities and entertainment in the next post...
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