What's Your Dining Style? Specialty v. Included Dining

Specialty restaurants or main dining room? Sit down for dinner or grab a faster meal at the buffet or other included places? Reservations or not?

Last cruise, we bought the older ultimate dining plan and all dinners were at specialty restaurants. Food was great and menus were more interesting than the main dining room. But the restaurant dining (specialty or main dining) takes longer than just getting a faster meal for dinner and having more time for relaxation and entertainment.

Buying the new specialty dining plan (SDP) also commits us to having a certain number of dinners in specialty restaurants. But the SDP (after a la carte pricing starts) only seems like it saves money for some restaurants: Cagneys, Le Bistro, and Teppanyaki. The SDP cost averages $20 to $23 per meal. That's about the same as the regular price for Moderno and the dinner shows like illusionarium or supper club for the record on Escape (adding the $15 surcharge on top of $20-23.

I think I'll only get the 3 meal SDP and commit to Bayamo, Teppanyaki, and Cagney's. The other 4 nights, we will have no plans until it's dinner time. Maybe go to a specialty, main dining room if specialty not available, or maybe just grab something from the buffet or a cheeseburger in paradise......

What's your plan for dinner?

My plan is to have no plan. The MDR works, the buffet works, maybe take food back to the balcony, whatever.

The SDP should also have savings at Bayamo (Escape) and Ocean Blue (Getaway and Breakaway). I'm assuming the a la carte prices for 1 person will be more than the cost of the SDP $20-23 avg. plus the $15 surcharge = $35-38 total.

My plan is to have no plan. The MDR works, the buffet works, maybe take food back to the balcony, whatever.

This is our plan as well. We don't like to be scheduled while on vacation. Neither do we want to be charged extra for specialty or A La Carte dining. MDR always serves us well.

I'm a planner and book all my dinners ahead of time. I only eat in the specialty restaurants, because (1) I feel their food is much better, (2) the atmosphere is much, much better and (3) I think the service far supersedes that of the included dining areas.

We plan 1 or 2 special meals ahead of time, but mostly decide on the go. I would say that most days we do buffet breakfast and lunch and sit down dinner. Although we'll do sit down breakfast/lunch 1 or 2 days and buffet dinner 1 or 2 days.

We dine mostly in the included restaurants. Probably 1-2 specialty restaurants on an average 7 night cruise. Although for our cruise next June we have the dining package from the promo so we might do more specialty dinners.

Breakfast in the buffet.

Lunch in an MDR.

Afternoon snack (if needed) in the buffet

Dinner: decide on the fly. If there's room in a specialty we want that night (which it sounds is becoming less and less possible), we'll try to get in. If not, MDR. Mostly MDR, though. However, DH almost insists on one Moderno night per cruise.

--Michael

We decide as we go also; don't really like planning everything on vacation. We usually check the MDR menus & decide from there. Most days buffet for breakfast & lunch.

Even when we have had a dining plan we have still eaten some meals in the MDR or buffet.

As for advance planning. We don't know when we will be hungry or what we will feel like eating even a few hours beforehand so I am Freestyle all the way. We are quite looking forward to a la carte to see what changes it brings with it and I will make no judgements about it until I get to see the actual menus and the pricing.

There are too many specialty restaurants. We prefer the MDRs that are included. Otherwise there is no FREE to FREESTYLE!

We love the specialty restaurants.

We had the UDP last cruise and ate 6 of 7 dinners in the specialty. One night we did buffet because they had a delicious gnocchi dish and that's not something that DH enjoys, so I never make it at home.

Before we left I pre-booked 4 of the specialty restaurants (even though once on board they had no record of them, lol).

I like to do a few specialty meals because le Bistro is fantastic! I generally do the MDR for breakfast because I like eggs Benedict and the buffet kind isn't as good. Lunch is generally the buffet because its quick and easy. Dinner is a toss up depending on reservations and what is on the MDR menu.

I go where and when D.W. wants to. :cool:

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Buffet breakfast, lunch depends on port, dinner in MDR except once at Moderno. We also plan on Illusionarium on Getaway.

I'm a mixed of anything goes (specialty & complimentary) and if its included in the fare, especially if can't get a seat at the MDR or Specialty - there's the buffet, there's always a seat in there for dinner time, lol. I don't make dinner reservations - the solo coordinator does that for me, lol. Breakfast and lunch, same thing - whatever's open and what I feeling like eating.

The Specialty Restaurants on NCL cruises! :)

Looking forward to more responses. Thanks. On our last cruise, we traveled with 9 yr old son so had to coordinate dining around show times and when the Splash Academy was open for our adult only dinners. I think we can still do that without planning too much ahead. If only committed to 3 specialty dinners, it will be easier. I love the specialty restaurants but it does take up time.

I plan all my meals in advance (as well as afternoon snacks and pre-dinner and late night drinks--I want to try every place at least once!) but I only make reservations for the specialty restaurants (and entertainment). Once I get on board, the plans usually go out the window (for the most part) and I go with the flow (except for the meals with reservations).

We would definitely be Total Freestyle. I haven't cruised NCL yet and this is one of the big things that makes me apprehensive about our upcoming Escape cruise.

At home we may end up at a $250 dinner on a splurge, or we may end up at Pizza Hut. I'm just not a planner when it comes to meals, especially while on vacation. I may want dinner at 4:30, maybe at 9:30, maybe super casual, maybe get dressed up? I understand in theory that is how Freestyle is supposed to work, but it's not in reality. As time goes on I'm pretty much sold on not getting a SDP package and just doing the complimenatry venues to avoid having to make reservations.

Pretty much specialty restaurants or buffet for me. I don't want to spend 2 hours on a meal when I'm on vacation. OK, maybe occasionally for a special dinner, but most of the time even in a specialty we're out in under an hour. It's not like they're THAT special!

We split it up last time on the Dawn (MDR x 3 nights, Cagney's 2x, La Cucina, and Teppanyaki) and will probably do something similar on our upcoming cruise. Last time we paid cover for each since we did not have UDP. We do for this cruise coming up.

With a couple of exceptions, most nights we just decided early evening where we wanted to eat, and had the concierge arrange it for the time we wanted.

We did book Teppanyaki pretty early on last time, since that's such limited seating.

We didn't have dinner at the buffet at all, but I think that's just more due to the selection of available sit- down restaurants :) We did have a couple of breakfasts and lunches at the buffet.

Specialty restaurants only...or room service delivered to our suite. Breakfast from Cagney's/Moderno delivered to our cabin. Sometimes we just want an "indoor picnic" and to watch TV and it's kind of cool to be eating escargots and rack of lamb from LeBistro while wearing pj's...

When we have the UDP (not purchased), we will dine in specialties each night, but book when we board. Without the UDP, we will book one specialty after boarding and will do a variety of MDRs, O'Sheehans, and buffet.