What Happened to RCCL's ChefMakers Cooking Academy - "REAL" Cooking Class Experience

[Dlanco]

What happened to the ChefMakers Cooking Academy? Other cruise lines have a robust culinary class offering with a true "hands on" course (maybe an hour to up to three). I'm not talking about a galley tour or a quick demonstration on how to make an omelet.

 

I understand the ChefMakers Cooking Academy was offering that could be booked for FOS class ships? Has it been discontinued? Would this be something that could be offered fleet wide or even on RCCLs larger class vessels (Oasis)? Are there any other onboard offerings to actually interact with the ship chef's and staff for "real" culinary class offerings? I'm not talking about decorating a cupcake; I'm talking about a literal cooking class/demonstration offering onboard the ship on a "sea day".

[setsail]

Not offered anymore, believe it was only on a couple ships as a trial. My wife took some of the classes and thought it was fun.

[Dlanco]

You would think there would be a market for this offering and a revenue maker too.......

[John&LaLa]

We did it on Freedom several years ago. Risotto and Decorating with Chocolate. Cooked the risotto in Chops kitchen

[setsail]

You would think there would be a market for this offering and a revenue maker too.......

 

I think the revenue thing is what ended it

[MADflyer]

You would think there would be a market for this offering and a revenue maker too.......

 

At $40 to $80 RCI's experience was very inexpensive. As with most lines this was handled as a way to make revenue in facilities that already existed, using staff and chefs that had to perform this duty on top of their normal duties and in my opinion this may be part of the problem.

 

RCI does still offer a good Sushi Making Class onboard many sailings on ships that have an Izumi. What they do right here is that first the sushi chef's do a presentation for all passengers on the first sea day and then offer the class on the second sea day if they can. This means that they close Izumi for lunch to do the class and the staff can only focus on this activity. Passengers are then served a full lunch including their own sushi produced and accompany it with offerings from the chef. All this is just $25.

 

The only line doing this absolutely correctly is Oceania. There they have a dedicated facility and dedicated 'faculty' that are actually trained to teach culinary courses. Oceania have over 20 different courses offered on their ships and the experience is fantastic if that is ever an option for you.

[setsail]

The chef doing the classes on LOTS was hired/paid from chefmakers and his job was dedicated only to the classes, no other responsibility. The wife asked :)

 

They did around 14-15 classes on a 7 day- 2 to 2 1/2 hrs each, not counting all the prep and cleanup

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1347223

Edited September 16, 2015 by setsail

[MADflyer]

The chef doing the classes on LOTS was hired/paid from chefmakers and his job was dedicated only to the classes, no other responsibility. The wife asked :)

 

They did around 14-15 classes on a 7 day- 2 to 2 1/2 hrs each, not counting all the prep and cleanup

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1347223

 

I know about the marketing for the courses and wonder if there were actually very few sailings where all the courses were actually offered.

 

http://www.royalcaribbean.com/contentWithHero.do?pagename=chefmakers

 

I was actually interested in the success of this program and sat down and had a discussion about this while on a Liberty TA in 2012. They did not have anything very favorable to say about the time that the 'classes' were offered onboard and I had not been told the same answer as what you and your wife experienced.

 

I would have really enjoyed to experience the RCI version of this as I really enjoyed the one time I was on Oceania.