Journey and Dining

[tuggers]

Just rec'd this little nugget of info which made me a little upset. I have always loved X's traditional dining, but hear now that Journey will be different:

Dining is also open seating. The ship also has two specialty restaurants (a
steak house, and a gourmet restaurant featuring wine at each course)

This is one time I would LOVE to be WRONG! Anyone else have any more info?

[JORAY]

This was posted earlier. http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=466309 Their ads have said open dinning along.
__________________________________________________ ______________
I also asked some questions and here are the answers I received on the Journey which we have booked for Antarctic Cruise in Feb 2008 -- "in writing"

Formal nights or all resort casual? Resort Casual

Open Seating in the Main Dining room and Lido. Reservations for both Specialty Restaurants

We are still developing the shore excursions but they will be very unusual and smaller groups. We should have the shore excursions in the next few weeks. (Antarctic excursions?)

Are the Cat. 7 cabins the only ones that have obstructed view? Yes.

Usual smoking policies or non-smoking? Usual Smoking Policy

The more experienced butlers will service the suites and they will be responsible for a smaller number o

Ray

[tuggers]

Sorry, didn't mean to rehash old news! It was just new to me!

[Baltic Express]

Just rec'd this little nugget of info which made me a little upset. I have always loved X's traditional dining, but hear now that Journey will be different:

Dining is also open seating. The ship also has two specialty restaurants (a
steak house, and a gourmet restaurant featuring wine at each course)

This is one time I would LOVE to be WRONG! Anyone else have any more info?


With 4 restaurants (Main, two specialty, and then however they choose to set up buffet area at night) there is way too much seating to go with two traditional seatings in the main dining room.

Faced with a slightly less than half empty dining room with two traditional dining seatings it makes much more sense to have one open seating. The ambience in an empty dining room just does not feel right in the evenings. In order to get away from the banquet style cooking the open seating allows for all meals to be completely cooked to order versus them being preprepared and sitting under heating lamps for long periods of time. You will find that the quality of food will increase tremendously this way. When you are on a ship with 700 people everything needs to change from the way they handled it with twice that number or more. It may not be for everyone and that is why Celebrity will continue with their traditional dining and formal nights on their other 7 ships. When the mega ship solstice class come out you will probably see another re-alignment of how they do things. The solstice are bound to be heavily family oriented due to their extreme passenger capacity.

In addition to the open seating the Journey and Quest will be 100% country club casual at all times. No more formal nights and no more jacket and ties. They are trying to mimic the success Oceania has had in every possible way. This is what may bring us back to Celebrity.

[JORAY]

Tuggers

I think it is because they are small Xpedition type ships.

We also love formal dinning but I understand you can book the same table & time every night with your friends -- and the same waiter

Ray

[Host Andy]

Sorry, didn't mean to rehash old news! It was just new to me!

Hi Gail !

Not a problem at all. If you take a look at the other thread, it will probably answer your questions. Spengle has said that it will be open seating, but yet, when I call Captains Club, they have told me "we dont know". However, being that it is in print, I am assuming (for now) that Spengle is right about that.

It is hard for me to have an opinion about Open seating on Journey and Quest. While I am not a big fan of it.... on a ship of this size, it may be the right thing to do. I am sailing on Quest in November 2007. I am going to be open minded, and willing to give it a try. If we do not like it, we will stick to the other X ships.

If I hear anything further regarding Open seating, I will post it here.

[ECCruise]

Tuggers

I think it is because they are small Xpedition type ships.

We also love formal dinning but I understand you can book the same table & time every night with your friends -- and the same waiter

Ray

Actually, Journey and Quest are nowhere near the size of Xpedition, which carries only 98 passengers. These ships carry 700+.

[Host Sheila]

To add to Andy's comments - my info came from my TA who got it direct from Celebrity. On another note: while I'm not a big fan of open seating, I'm quite ready to give it a try. New options for X ships is one way of appealing to more people. Change can be a challenge or an opportunity. We prefer to see this as an opportunity to try something different. If we like it - we'll book again; if we don't, we'll book a more traditional ship. I've been wanting to try Oceania for a long time. This gives me the chance to try something similar (and reach Elite status at the same time). AND we're sailing in May so will be sure to report back in detail about our impressions.

[Druke I]

Well, I think either fixed traditional or open is fine for this size ship.

I've been on Pacific Princess (new) where they have traditional dining, and on both Regatta & Nautica (Oceania Cruise Line), where the dining room is open seating. All three are R-class ships, as are Quest & Journey.

It works well on all three ships, IMO.

I do like the "country club casual" - certainly simplifies packing.

[nmtraveler]

Interestingly enough, when I booked the Journey repo in October, I was given second seating.:confused:

[ECCruise]

Interestingly enough, when I booked the Journey repo in October, I was given second seating.:confused:

There has been some discussion that the Bermuda season through the repo would be traditional dining but no confirmation that I've seen.

[lisiamc]

There has been some discussion that the Bermuda season through the repo would be traditional dining but no confirmation that I've seen.

For what it's worth, when I look up my Bermuda booking on the Celebrity website, it still says Late Seating. Not sure if that's a leftover, or an indication that they are still going to have two seatings for Bermuda.

Lisa

[lysolqn]

The industry-wide trend is toward casual attire and anytime dining. Perhaps X, one of the few holdouts re traditional dining and formal, informal and casaul attire, is testing the waters (no pun intended!) on Journey. In order to stay competitve, I can't help but think they will eventually move in that direction throughout the fleet.

[Zenithfan]

We had two cabins booked on Zenith, May 26th.
When they transferred us to Journey, we had one cabin first seating and one cabin second seating. I called celebrity and was told there was no more room on first seating but as soon as there was a cancellation, our other cabin would be switched to first seating. About a week later it was changed to first seating also. I guess it's irrelevant if there is open seating.
:confused:

[kelmac]

We had two cabins booked on Zenith, May 26th.
When they transferred us to Journey, we had one cabin first seating and one cabin second seating. I called celebrity and was told there was no more room on first seating but as soon as there was a cancellation, our other cabin would be switched to first seating. About a week later it was changed to first seating also. I guess it's irrelevant if there is open seating.
:confused:

Zenithfan,

Sounds like this will be something new and exciting! We are on the same cruise, and there is a roll call going on over on that board:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=430

You are welcome to join us!:)

Enjoy!
Kel

[tuggers]

On HAL's Prinsendam, which is just a little larger, there are two seatings and specialy restaurant. Of course, the dining rooms are smaller, but the traditional, two seatings are still followed.

If I traveled with a group I am sure I would be more open to oopen seating (gee, did that make any sense?), but traveling as a single, it is not as appealing. We tend to use the dining experience a little more as a social setting to get to know people and like the sameness of an assigned table.

I also like a waiter that knows my preferances and not having to repeat EVERY night, 'no pepper on anything' when they bring the grinders around. It's just a small thing, but important to me.

[cruisingdelt]

I am traveling with my family to Bermuda on the Journey in July. When I mentioned to my 16 year old son that formal nights and traditional dining may be nowhere to be found on this cruise I expected him to be overjoyed. To my shock he replied that he actually enjoyed both. This will be his 5th cruise and I guess the kids really do learn from the parents, they just like to hide it

[caviargal]

I agree that these ships are X's play for some of the business lost to Oceania. While I enjoy traditional dining, I very much enjoyed the open dining on Regent as well as the CCC dress code. It does sound like one of the restuarants (the one including wine with dinner) may carry a surcharge, unlike Oceania.

Tuggers, I travelled as a single on several NCL cruises with Freestyle and greatly disliked it for the reasons you mention. I ended up booking the ala carte restaurants for all the nights I was onboard.

I do think the implementation of open dining will be very different on these smaller ships and that the size of the ship will make it easier to meet and join people for dinner. The demographic this ships appeal to is quite different based on my Regent experience and I think I would be fine as a solo on these X ships.

[pvmeistrel]

I am thrilled to see this discussion of open seating dining on Journey. We are going on the Jan 10 2008 trip that includes Antarctica. We had been attracted to Oceania but shifted to X because their Antarctica trips were not over Christmas. However, I have been having second thoughts when I read about all the formal nights on X ships. (that's just our preference, no slam on Celebrity) We too were told we had second seating but I keep reading on the internet that it will be open seating.

We did 2 weeks on an identical ship when it belonged to Renaissance Cruises (Society Islands trip). The open seating works on a ship this size. The main dining room is large and you can come to dinner at a time of your choice each day. We never had any significant lines to wait. They tend to fill out the seats at the tables together so the waiter is serving your table as if you were a group that had arrived together. We got to know some very interesting people this way. They had tables for 4, 6 and 8 I believe... maybe an occasional table for 2.

Anyway, I hope what you all have heard is true and that it will indeed be open seating with CCC dress.

[pvmeistrel]

My post didn't come through for 5 minutes so I tried retyping it. When I did, both came through. So hopefully I edited the second out.