Speciality Restaurants – I think they should be free.
Having just recently been on board Norwegian Epic I came away questioning whether cruise lines should charge for Speciality Restaurants.
When you book a cruise holiday you pay a lot of money, but some of this is offset by the fact that your meals are included. However I do find it cheeky that more and more of the restaurants carry a cover charge to dine in them. On Epic – Cagneys Steakhouse charged a $25pp cover charge and then some of the dishes also carried a supplement. La Cucina, which whilst being an Italian restaurant was basically just a pizza and pasta place and again charged an extra $10pp.
One of my last land based package holidays was to a Sandals resort in Cuba. Being a 4* All Inclusive hotel my food in the main restaurant was included. However they also had 3 speciality restaurants. I was allowed 1 night in each of these restaurants during my 10 night stay free of charge – and could book more subject to availability. This is fairly standard to hotel holidays – there are sometimes a la carte dishes that you can pay for but generally you can dine in other venues as part of your holiday package.
This I feel is a much better way to run the system, cruise lines are alienating customers by charging for the privilege of dining in a smaller restaurant. It’s great that with each new ship there are more choices of dining venues, but as they have a captive market I personally think its just a clever way to take more revenue on board.You’ve paid for food and service anyway so why pay more?
What do you think?
6 Comments on “Speciality Restaurants – I think they should be free.”
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I don’t mind paying for something thats generally quieter and on most cruise ships a better quality than the main restaurants, it would be impossible for the cruise lines to offer these free of charge as you would never be able to get in them, as they are not big enough to serve all passengers over the length of a cruise.
I agree with you Jo, it won,t be long before they charge for all restaurants.
Thanks for replying – it’s great to hear what other cruisers think and makes me feel better when telling customers that there are additional charges for these restaurants
I think they should charge for some extras but i do think NCL charge far to much for to many things,
I would understand if there cruise fare was a lot cheaper than other lines but these days its much of a muchness.
I agree in terms of why should we pay for a so called better steak, pasta, sushi, hotdogs.
Some lines like Todds on Cunard or SS US on Celebrity I could see as these are like 6 star establishments.
RCL OASIS OTHS has a top notch New York style with its own celebrated chef.
HA Pinnacle though was empty most of the time when we were onboard.
What they all have in common is expensive wine recommendations per course and true, smaller staff and passengers.
The charges though seem to increase to the point that passengers might tend to not book a meal.
I like the All Inclusive idea of you can book xn free while on your trip.
I do not have a problem as long as there is only one or two restaurants on each ship that charge.
I also think that the majority of restaurants should be free after all you are a captive audiance and you need feeding.