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A Modest Proposal: Eliminate the Wine Stewards


whogo
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Wine steward ignoring you? Do you not get your wine until the main course is served? Is the wine steward never around to refill your glass?

 

My modest proposal is to eliminate the wine stewards. Instead, guests would select a bottle from coolers as they enter the dining room. It would be like buying bottled water when leaving for a shore excursion, no muss, no fuss, and an easy 15% gratuity for staff. There might even be an automat type cooler that allows you to select your bottle with your key card. A dining steward would plunk the bottle in an ice bucket and carry it to your table and seat you. The ice bucket would have a self service cork screw attached by a length of chain for bottles without screw tops. Open the bottle and serve yourself just as you would at home.

 

Eliminate the wine steward with the towel over his arm that ignores you anyway. Eliminate the bottle opening theater, the cradled bottle presented for viewing, the first small pour, the gentleman's swirl, sniff and sip and the wine steward's hopeful look that the guest will find the vintage acceptable. Eliminate the wine steward and put staff to more productive use.

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We enjoy having wine steward take care of us. We prefer having service while on vacation than self-serve. To date, we've been fortunate to have had good wine stewards who provide the service we seek. I understand not everyone has been so 'fortunate'.

 

But no...... I don't want to take a bottle from a 'cooler' when we enter the MDR. I want a wine list, proper glasses placed on the table and the wine steward pouring.

 

But no one needs to agree with me. :o

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We enjoy having wine steward take care of us. We prefer having service while on vacation than self-serve. To date, we've been fortunate to have had good wine stewards who provide the service we seek. I understand not everyone has been so 'fortunate'.

 

But no...... I don't want to take a bottle from a 'cooler' when we enter the MDR. I want a wine list, proper glasses placed on the table and the wine steward pouring.

 

But no one needs to agree with me. :o

 

I agree with you. But we don't drink wine. Every night the wine steward would come around and make sure we still didn't want any wine. And our other beverage services were great.

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It's formerly called the Automat

 

Yes...great idea for those who haven't the strength to dress for the dining room

 

Just show up in crocs and sweatpants,Reach in, grab a ham and cheese on rye,and a bottle of two buck chuck and you're good to go. No wine stewards or waiters and no worries of tipping extra

 

 

I'm sure there are some that are salivating for this.

Edited by Wakepatrol
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Wine steward ignoring you? Do you not get your wine until the main course is served? Is the wine steward never around to refill your glass?

 

My modest proposal is to eliminate the wine stewards. Instead, guests would select a bottle from coolers as they enter the dining room. It would be like buying bottled water when leaving for a shore excursion, no muss, no fuss, and an easy 15% gratuity for staff. There might even be an automat type cooler that allows you to select your bottle with your key card. A dining steward would plunk the bottle in an ice bucket and carry it to your table and seat you. The ice bucket would have a self service cork screw attached by a length of chain for bottles without screw tops. Open the bottle and serve yourself just as you would at home.

 

Eliminate the wine steward with the towel over his arm that ignores you anyway. Eliminate the bottle opening theater, the cradled bottle presented for viewing, the first small pour, the gentleman's swirl, sniff and sip and the wine steward's hopeful look that the guest will find the vintage acceptable. Eliminate the wine steward and put staff to more productive use.

 

 

How many different choices of wine would you offer?

You seem to be concentrating on white wines seeing you are chilling them.

 

Will you have one [white] and one [red]? Or will we have a large selection? People are already complaining about the wine selection HAL offers. With your plan, where would there be room to set out a large selection of bottles and can you imagine the congestion as people attempt to enter the dining room each evening? Whoa...... talk about a herd!!! :D

 

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Since we mostly cruise on Princess , they don't have wine stewards . The table stewards deal with bring and pouring the wine for you. But if there was a wine steward I would probably like the assistance.

 

.....and they are way more efficient than Hal is as well.

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I have to admit we've had some lousy service from the wine stewards just about every cruise we've ever taken with HAL, and we're extremely close to celebrating our Four Star status. We generally only stay in full suites, and usually buy wine packages before boarding, but even so, absolutely have to beg the steward to come to our table. We have two cruises booked for the very near future, and can only hope we won't experience the same. Nothing upsets me more on the first night than for the wine steward to finally get around to my table while I'm having my entrée, especially after first requesting from my waiter that I'd like to see the wine steward. Who wants wine then!!! By the time the bottle arrives, I'm ready for dessert and coffee!!

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How many different choices of wine would you offer?

You seem to be concentrating on white wines seeing you are chilling them.

 

Will you have one [white] and one [red]? Or will we have a large selection? People are already complaining about the wine selection HAL offers. With your plan, where would there be room to set out a large selection of bottles and can you imagine the congestion as people attempt to enter the dining room each evening? Whoa...... talk about a herd!!! :D

 

Holland America could offer as many as they could display, perhaps a wider selection than they currently do, including some local European wines that cruisers seem to crave.

 

Guests could select and open red wines well in advance and allow them to breathe.

 

No need for congestion, the wines could be displayed at some distance and carried to the main dining room or Lido or back to the cabin. The selection process would not delay your fellow diner's meals. If the service is lousy you have no one but yourself to blame. The modest proposal is sounding better and better.

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How many different choices of wine would you offer?

You seem to be concentrating on white wines seeing you are chilling them.

 

Will you have one [white] and one [red]? Or will we have a large selection? People are already complaining about the wine selection HAL offers. With your plan, where would there be room to set out a large selection of bottles and can you imagine the congestion as people attempt to enter the dining room each evening? Whoa...... talk about a herd!!! :D

 

 

HAL could turn the Neptune Lounge into the "Wineatorium" where passengers could pick up their favorite swill on their way to the MDR. This could work!!

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It would be good to have it as we do in Sydney at many places; bring your own wine if you want and be responsible for it. Our wine is nearly all screw top, not cork, so we open it ourselves. There would need to be a wine shop, I suppose. Then they who want could order off the drinks menu.

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My husband doesn't like wine so my bottle that I would now be grabbing on the way into the dining room would only have a glass and a half missing from it after dinner. What would you envision re storage and delivery of unfinished bottles? Another pick-up station?? I can see arguments over picking up the wrong bottle and another area of congestion.

 

Why not eliminate waiters too and have people line up to receive their dinners after they choose their bottle of wine? Oh wait, they already have that set-up and call it the Lido. We certainly don't need two Lidos do we?

 

There is a difference between chowing down and dining. Let's keep the choice in place.

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We have had a couple of fabulous female wine stewards in the past few years. Two that stood out were Anna and Jane. I have been hoping that we might see them again in the future and would really miss having a wine steward taking care of us.

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We don't always require the services of a wine steward, but when we have, they've always been quite attentive.

 

Some people have trouble at the Lido and spend an age deciding between the potato salad and macaroni salad . . . can you imagine the backlog at the entrance to the dining room if those same folks had to decide on a bottle of wine - without the price tags attached? LOL

 

Smooth Sailing! :) :) :)

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