judycruiser32

I'm wondering if any of you have noticed that the passengers are getting ruder?

Sorry to harp on the As You Wish dining but on two instances came up where I feel I have to relay to you. (1) an elderly couple with many, many cruises behind them showed up at their assigned table at their assigned dining time only to find 4 "table crashers" already seated. When the waiter and then assistant matre'd told them that they were in the wrong dining room and at the wrong table, they refused to budge. The elderly couple demanded, and were finally given, a table at the Pinnacle Grill (free of the extra surcharge). (2) A family of three were seated at a table for six in the As You wish dining room. When a waiter brought 2 more people to the table, the father of the family jumped up and demanded that the new couple be removed from "his" table.

What's going on here? Has the Noordam turned into a saloon in Dodge City? I'm sorry, but I think the traditional cruise experience suffers when you try to be all things to all people. As You Wish doesn't mean just me and the hell with everyone else. Assigned seating had a certain cache. People behaved better.

By the way, the Thanksgiving holiday cruise I took was sold out but 10 cabins had no shows on the day of sailing so the ship wasn't filled to capacity (this was told to me by one of the future sales consultants).

I just returned from a 10 day cruise to the Caribbean on the Noordam. HAL instituted the As You Wish dining a few weeks prior to my cruise on this ship. I think it's a disaster. Only one floor of the dining room (deck 3) had assigned dining. Apparently many people requested assigned seating because you could barely move or seat yourself at your table because there were so many tables shoved into the dining room. Almost all the round tables were replaced by long rectangular ones, making it impossible to talk to anyone more than a seat or two from your left or right. It looked like a mess hall or school cafeteria. We hardly ever saw our waiter because he was forced to wedge himself between the tables, standing behind us to take our orders. Forget a little small talk. He was too busy. By setting up assigned seating on only one floor, HAL has basically provided only 1/3 of its seating arrangements for assigned seating (if you count the second deck and the Lido deck casual dining option). HAL has been my favorite cruise line for over 25 years. I've just switched my preference to Celebrity. Hopefully HAL will reconsider it's new policy (I doubt it) and Celebrity will NOT change it's dining arrangements.

Thanks for letting me vent.