Free Style Dining

Hello all , I have a question regarding Free Style Dining. We have sailed on RCCL numerous times and had a specific dining time . Our NCL trip on the Escape has free style dining. I assume you can eat whatever time you choose. However, are there long wait times since a specific time is not chosen ?

Welcome to Cruise Critic!

The best place for your specific research is the portion of Cruise Critic devoted to NCL, located here:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=107

Most all cruise lines offer some variant of what might be generally titled "Open Seating", although there may be some differing rules. How NCL deals with lines and crowds is what you are interested in.

Each cruise will vary as to high demand times for diners. So, yes, there may be peak demand, and longer lines. This cruise, peak demand might be 5:30-6, next cruise, 7-7:30, for example.

We were on b2b cruises on the Escape in May 2016. Biggest ship we were ever on and we were concerned about wait times in the main dining rooms also. You can make reservations for a particular time if you want, but we never experienced a problem. We were very pleasantly surprised at how efficient the restaurants were. The two main dining rooms are directly across from each other so it was easy to assess lines at each. I must say we never waited more than five minutes any place to dine. Very enjoyable. We leave in three weeks for a b2b 16 days on the Dawn. Hope those lines are comparable. One week includes Thanksgiving so it may be more crowded. We LOVE freestyle dining. Have fun.

We sailed witha group and they got us assigned dining at 5:30. I'm not that old, don't eat til 7:30 so I only ate twice with the group. We never had to wait for anytime because we went in fairly late and had notified the staff. They didn't seem to care. We had great service from one waiter from India who found we like Indian food and brought many dishes for us to taste. It was fun and we will not go with assigned dining again.Who want's a schedule on vacation. I don't even wear a watch.

On NCL, do make your specialty dining reservations online in advance of your cruise as by the end of the first day, specialty restaurants such as Le Bistro and Cagney's are usually sold out or only have times like 5:30 or 9:30 left. On NCL ships, most people go to a different restaurant every night. O'Sheehan's is popular for serving prime rib. Some people love the Teppanyaki restaurant and there is also Moderno and La Cucina. There is a sushi bar which doesn't take advance reservations and Escape has Food Republic which gets great reviews! There is also a tapas bar and Bayamo.