Flexible dining

As I have mentioned previously, I had the pleasure of cruising on Norwegian Cruise Line’s EPIC. Norwegian Cruise Line now offer freestyle cruising right across their fleet, I was very interested to see how this works.

It is an unusual concept for many as most of us are used to being told when to eat and when to see a show, great if you like that kind of old school cruising, and most cruise lines still offer this. With Norwegian Cruise Line you have you can eat when you want and head to a show when you want, it is entirely up to you. On board the Epic there are many eating establishments on board some are included in the cost of the cruise and most have a supplement attached to them. I found that going to eat when I was ready worked really well, if I wanted a main meal I would head down to the main dining room and would be taken to a table pretty much straight away, no waiting in line, however if I fancied more of a light meal or snack I just headed to the Irish restaurant and was shown to a table right away, with so many passengers I was expecting to find I would have to wait before I could get a table, surprisingly enough I did not have to wait once at any time I wanted to eat.

As for the shows on board, all you needed to do was to book your seats either through your tv or outside the theatre you had complete choice when you wanted to watch the show, it all worked so really well. Too be honest even if you did not want to watch a show in the main theatre, there was plenty of other entertainment going on to keep you busy. I honestly believe this is the future for main stream cruising and once you get it right it works so well.

The benefit of freestyle also kept the ship busy, there was no real empty times, there was never not something going on, unlike standard cruising where you found quiet times around the ship when the set dining was going on or the set show time.

Kudos to Norwegian Cruise Line, obviously this wont work for everyone but I am seeing more and more of my customers that used to always confirm a set dining time moving to any time dining. Proof is in the pudding, more and more cruise lines are now offering any time dining as an option.