Special diets - getting more options?

[leighi123]

We have some dietary restrictions, and have done well eating on many cruise lines, but NCL was the worst as far as getting a good variety of interesting options for meals.   We did a 13 day cruise last year and are doing a week long one this month.   On the previous cruise it took them half the cruise before they got an allergy friendly menu together for us, and never once did we get any "fun" deserts (just fruit!).  On other lines we had plenty of options!    We were also given variations of almost the same thing every day (rice with veggies in various forms)

Anyway, are there any tricks to getting more variety in meals?  Deserts we can eat that aren't just pineapple?     

We obviously alert them in advance, as well as talk to staff on board, but last time the food selections were so boring! 

[mjkacmom]

Did you alert them before the cruise? We always have it noted on our reservation about celiac, and are met with at embarkment lunch. Dd ordered her breakfasts and dinners the day ahead of time, I don’t think she had anything for dinner twice (she prefers to have lunch in the buffet with her new friends and just stick to basics).

[leighi123]

5 minutes ago, mjkacmom said:

Did you alert them before the cruise? We always have it noted on our reservation about celiac, and are met with at embarkment lunch. Dd ordered her breakfasts and dinners the day ahead of time, I don’t think she had anything for dinner twice (she prefers to have lunch in the buffet with her new friends and just stick to basics).

 

Yep we always alert in advance AND go talk to them when on board AND when we get to meals.   We like to do buffet for breakfast/lunch (lunch is not bad with some of the Indian options and the salad bar working fine for us), breakfast is hard even at home to get good things so we are used to that.   It is dinner that was tough last time.    3 of the 5 of us have special diets, mostly the same with a few different things.   We ate SO much rice last time between lunch and dinner for example and the dinners were way under-seasoned, as if they thought allergies = bland.