New to Marella/Thomson Discovery 2 for January 2018

After a week at a destination wedding in Montego Bay we'll board the Cuban Fusion cruise on January 23rd. We've booked through Sunwing Vacations in Canada.

I'm pretty sure that most Canadian (and American) Cruisers have never been on a Thomson/Marella Cruise, let alone heard of them (like us). It may be why there doesn't seem to be a great amount of activity on this board.

I'm hoping that some of the more seasoned Marella/Thomson Cruisers may be able to provide some advice.

Our experience of paying extra for specialty dining is slanted toward not being worth it, with maybe a couple of exceptions.

A few years ago and over two years we did trips with Norwegian. The first year we bought a package for the specialty restaurants. The next year we stuck strictly to the MDR and found it to be every bit as good as the year previous. And we saved a bundle.

A bit of research has me removing Kora La from consideration - are any of the others really worth it?

Hi Wefewee and welcome

I will try to help with our experiences but they are only our opinion and others may not agree. We have been on fifty plus cruises with Marella so fit your criteria but we are a little biased. The Discovery's MDR is very light and airy the upstairs level is treated as a second MDR with Italian food, good food in both.

The 'Hot stone' is good fun if a bit messy, the food is ok and obviously cooked to your liking, Surf and turf is our favourite, don't Ignore Kora La the food is good if a little excessive, for us, but the views are the best on the ship and on sail out its just fantastic. We do not eat main meals in the self service.

We always use the speciality on change over day, because the ship is a busy place to be, but you may not get in with you being on stay and cruise.

Usually we use them twice a week for special days.

If you do decide to go book early as places soon fill up and you can only book once onboard they will put you on a wait list and call you.

Well have a great holiday and we hope you enjoy the experience.

:)

We are on Discovery 2 at the same time, but it will be our 2nd week. We are joining the ship on the 16th for Pride of Panama. Hope you're as excited as we are :cool: