free style on the Pride of America

[margaretmerrill]

I`m a little confused. I thought free style meant you ate when and where you wanted. Now I`m reading about reservations. I can understand reservations in the restaurants that charge extra, but I thought the Italian restaurant didn`t have a surcharge? So what restaurants do we need reservations for? The main dining room? This is our first time on Norwegian. We usually go with Princess or Celebrity.

[comfixit]

Freestyle on NCL gives you lots more choices. Instead of being in one dinning room and choosing between 2 times (early / late) your free to choose any of a number of dinning rooms with different times every night.

 

On non-freestyle ships I get 0 choice of dinning rooms and may get the dinner seating I want. For this I have to make all my dinning choices (To eat in the one dinning room for every night at dinner at the given time I request) several months in advance when I book the cruise.

 

NCL is different. You could make up your mind the day you get on the boat as to where you want to eat dinner every night and at what time and probably get most of what you want. Unfortunetly what happens to some people is they are not savvy to the fact you need to make reservations early and they don't get the times or places they want.

 

If you want the traditional style experience just make resevations at the main non-pay restauraunt for the same time every day to get that eat at 6PM every night same dinning room experience with less efficient service.

 

I highly reccomend you make reservations for every night when you first get on the boat. I think you can cancle up to 4PM without penalties the day of. So pick your places and times and you can cancle later if you decide to stay in Hawaii for a Lua or something. The Buffet and Room Service should always be an option if you choose not to keep a reservation. And do make resevations for non specialty restauraunts too.

 

Its not a perfect system, but its a lot more choices when compared to only eating in one dinning room at roughly the same time every night. The people who know ahead of time love it, the ones who find out what its all about on day 2 when everything is booked are usually not so happy.

 

P.S. From what I understand Celebrity and Princess have better food then the budget lines NCL/Carnival/RCCL

[electricron]

People make reservations to guaranteed they will be seated when they wish to eat. No one likes waiting for a long time in a long line. The reason why you must reserve your table at the Speciality Restaurants has to do with numbers, simply, how many seats and tables they have.

The Speciality Restaurants may seat 40 to 80 diners, 10 to 20 tables at most, while the Main Restaurants combined can seat 500 to 800 diners. There's no need to reserve a table at the Main Restaurants, unless you wish to seat more than 8 diners together. But, if just 100 decided to eat at a Speciality Restaurant at 6 pm, out of 2400 passengers, many are going to have to wait over an hour to be seated. The Speciality Restaurants, including those that are free, just don't have enough tables to seat that many diners at once. That's the reason diners reserve a table at a time to dine at them.

 

It's not that confusing if you look at the numbers.

[DaisyL]

The beauty of Freestyle dining is being able to go to the main dining rooms for dinner when you want. The 1st time on the Dawn we were a group of 10 so we did make reservations in the main dining rooms for each night to ensure a table without waiting. The 2nd time on the Dawn we were a group of 6 and had no problems arriving for dinner in the main dining rooms without reservations and getting seated without waiting. Tables for 2 or 4 were also readily available. Having said that, if you want to eat at the specialty restaurants you'll need to make reservations on the 1st day of the cruise. BTW, of the 17 nights (total) on the Dawn we ate in the specialty restaurants for 5 dinners with the rest in the main dining rooms.

 

For the PoAm it may be hectic now but I suspect when NCL gets additional waitstaff with experience, it will improve. Luckily, we will cruise on her Oct. 2006 and hopefully service will improve by then. I'll keep checking these boards though.

 

BTW, we have cruised on NCL, CCL and Celebrity and found the food and service to be comparable on all. Don't beat me up ... just my opinion (and friends we travel with) ...

 

Have fun ... you will have a great time ...

[margaretmerrill]

thanks! I guess we don`t really have to worry. There are just 2 of us, and we will eat mainly in the main dining rooms. Maybe one night at the French restaurant.

[Onessa]

Little Italy was quite good - you may want to consider it. Since it is a specialty restraunt and a no-charge, you'll want to make a reservation. Do so just after you board.

 

If you like chinese or japanese, East-meets-West is very nice - $10 pp surcharge. Again book a reservation early. If you are a sushi person, the all-you-can-eat sushi seating "sell out" quickly.

 

Also on POAl and POAm generally the first night is a BOGO at the surcharge restraunts - pay for one surcharge for two diners.

[CruisinMK]

I tried all the specialty restaurants except lazy j's steakhouse. I would encourage you to try more than one if you can, you won't regret it.

[gsquaredstwins]

Definitely make reservations when you board the ship. Twice I tried to walk up to a restaurant on board and was told I couldn't get in that night unless someone didnt show up ???

 

There is clearly a shortage in wait staff in the main dining rooms making dining times unbearably lengthy and service below standard. But the pay for restaurants were well staffed- and made them worth the extra fee (and trust me I hate paying extra).

 

Our waiter in the main restaurant was a wonderful guy who tried really hard- but he ws 1 guy doing the job of 3 people (waiter, assistant waiter, and bar staff)- so he was just very SLOW (truly not his fault) - but dinner took over 3 hours to eat - NOT FUN !!!

 

Good Luck

[Rabbit58]

THAT IS CRAZY.When was that ? @ the Liberty?...1 - 1/2 hours tops maybe 2 hours and we had 7 people and we were there a week ago.

One night only 4 of us went and we Had the one server doing it all and it was just over an hour..You should have made Waves.bummer ! That's not the norm.

[Leafpeeper]

We sailed with a group of six on a full ship on the NCL Dawn and never had a problem being seated anywhere that reservations were not required. Sometimes we ate at a table for 2--other nights table for 4--and about a couple nights a table for 6. We never had to wait more than five minutes for a table. For those restaurants requiring reservations, we did make reservations in the morning for dinner that night. Never had a problem. Perhaps Pride of America had alot more demand.

 

P.S. My son and his family sailed the Sapphire Princess in May and was not impressed with the food. A friend of mine also sailed the same ship in the Fall and definetely did not like their desserts. For me, the specialty restaurants on new ships are the best. We like RCCL & Carnival, but NCL is definetely our favorite because of all the various restaurant choices. I enjoy a different dining venue each night.