A guide to free and paid dining on Royal Caribbean ships

The Street

The cruise line offers multiple free and paid dining options on every ship.

Transcript

00:00Welcome, cruisers. I am Dan Klein, executive editor of Come Cruise With Me.

00:04That is comecruisewith.com or, if you want to be special, comecruisewith.me.

00:09We couldn't get the actual URL. That is a whole story we are not going to tell.

00:12So, comecruisewith.com. Sitting next to me is Dennis Post, my friend, travel agent

00:18partner, co-owner of Postcard Travel Planning. They can help you book whenever

00:23you want to book a cruise. Amy Post, his wife's phone number, is literally on

00:27every article we post, and you can text her. You can get an appointment with

00:32her automatically to book all your travel needs. But we're at the Schooner

00:36Bar on Voyager of the Seas, and we're going to talk about something a little

00:40bit unique today, and that is specialty dining. So, as part of your cruise fare,

00:45you get to eat in the main dining room breakfast, lunch, dinner every day if you

00:49want to. Lunch only on sea days. You can also eat at the buffet. There's also

00:54usually a couple of other included venues, depending on the size of the ship.

00:57But there are added fee specialty restaurants, and you can book them three

01:02different ways. You can pay for each individual restaurant. You can book a

01:06small dining package, maybe three nights on a seven-night cruise, or you can book

01:10the unlimited dining package, which entitles you to lunch on sea days and

01:14dinner every two hours. So, if you really wanted to, steakhouse at 6, Italian

01:19restaurant at 8. Don't do that. You will die. That is a bad choice. But you could

01:23do steakhouse at 6, dessert at a different restaurant at 9, if it had like

01:27a dessert you like. But Dennis, what do you recommend to clients when they're

01:31coming on? So, if they're new to cruising, we recommend to stick with the main

01:35dining, what's included with the ship. No need to go to a specialty

01:39restaurant. The service and the food is great. Every ship, regardless what

01:43cruise line it is. And we like to say, if you're having a special occasion, maybe

01:48treat your spouse, maybe treat your loved ones, family, whatever, to one of the

01:53specialty restaurants, if you want. Later on, as you get more experience, it might

01:57be an option for you, because now you start to find your favorite steak,

02:00your favorite Italian, your favorite Japanese restaurant at sea, and then you

02:04kind of enjoy yourself. So, I'm gonna go a little bit different here, because I

02:07would argue Royal Caribbean has excellent main dining room. It's a good

02:12meal most nights. Carnival and MSC, a little bit not always the same, and it

02:18can vary based on cruise lines. But what I recommend, if you're new, you should go

02:22through the main dining room restaurant lineup at least once. Now, you might want

02:26to look in the app before your cruise, and look at the menu, and maybe there's a

02:30night, like it's Caribbean night tonight, and I looked at the menu, and I'm

02:33like, there's some things I like, but we're gonna go to the Italian

02:36specialty restaurant. So, you want to plan, and maybe pick one, if you're new to

02:40cruising, where you just don't like the menu, and you want to do it. But, I'm an

02:44experienced cruiser. I've had the main dining room menu on Royal Caribbean, I

02:47don't know, a hundred times? Yeah. So, I'm a little bit tired of it. So, when I'm

02:51alone, I do the unlimited dining. It's not that expensive for one person,

02:55probably less money than I'd be spending if I was home, eating out a couple of

02:58nights in the weekend, and I get to eat at a different specialty restaurant

03:01every night. But there's something, when we're together, when we're with a small

03:05group, we usually do the mid-tier package, and we'll look at what nights

03:09were in port, what nights were in different places, what night we don't

03:12like the main dining room, and on this trip, we booked three nights. Now,

03:15oh no, we booked two nights. We did the steakhouse the first night, we're doing

03:19Giovanni's the Italian restaurant tonight. What did we do in the last ship,

03:22on Wonder of the Seas? Yeah, we did three, and another specialty, we did Wonder. Oh,

03:27we ended up doing four. And now, each ship has a different lineup of

03:32restaurants. The newer the ship, the more restaurants you're going to get, and

03:35certainly, if you're on a ship that has Wonderland, or Central Park 150, or

03:41something that you're maybe not going to see everywhere, don't miss the opportunity

03:45to do that. The one that everyone loves is to do the Izumi hibachi, and that's

03:49actually the one that I recommend against. It's a good restaurant, it's a

03:52good meal, but I haven't been to any city in the U.S. that doesn't have a hibachi

03:55restaurant that's pretty much the same, whereas some of the restaurants are

03:59actually really special. Wonderland is not something you're going to find

04:03anywhere else. Central Park 150, some of these restaurants, even Chops is a very

04:08high-quality steakhouse. I put it at like a little bit above the Ruth's Crisp, but

04:12at like half the price compared to what you're going to spend on land. And one

04:17last point, seven-day cruise versus a three-day cruise. We were on a

04:21seven-day cruise, and we had more specialty nights. Three-day cruise, you may

04:24only just want one or four days. And we're on a five-day this time. I am Dan

04:29Kline, he is Dennis Post. We hope you come cruise with me very soon.

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