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12 Responses to “Alaska cruise with no set meal schedule or assigned meal seating?”
i believe norwegian cruise line has freestyle cruising…i just remember seeing a commercial about it. here’s their website:
Freestyle Cruises.
Most of the cruise lines have multiple dining choices, although the ones I’ve been on all have the main dining room assigned seating and times. (But you can eat in other parts of the ship as well.)
Have you been on a cruise before?
Really, the assigned dining works out okay. You get to know people you wouldn’t otherwise have met, which actually is a lot of fun. My wife and I on our first cruise wanted a private table, but instead were with 4 other couples, and it was fabulous. After that, we always asked to be part of a big table.
Dinners usually aren’t at times with competing activities, so having a fixed time works out okay. And if it doesn’t work for you some particular night, skip dinner in the main dining room and enjoy some of the other choices.
You can eat all over the ship.
24/7
Princess does personal choice which is open seating, NCl is also good.
Princess has what they call anytime dining and that is just what it means. Also the food in the buffet court is the same as what they serve in the dinning room, just not fancy looking.
princess cruises has a buffet around the clock like all the other cruises, but the dinning room on the princess has early and late dinner as well as anytime dinner. But you may sometimes have to wait up to a half-hour for a seat with choosing the anytime dinner.
What you are looking for is Norwegian (NCL), which offers Freestyle dining. Each ship has several restaurants, and there is no set dining time. You are not assigned a table and you can choose to eat by yourself or share your table with other (I always like to share – but that is still a choice made by the passenger, not the cruise line).
Here is a link to Norwegian’s website …
NCL will have three ships in Alaska this summer, the NCL Sun, the NCL Star and the NCL Pearl.
Enjoy your cruise.
Zef H is right. NCL is convenient and based on talking to a lot of ncl passengers, norwegian pearl was considered best of the line.
Enjoy!
Majestic Gems
Juneau.
Both Norwegian Cruise Lines and Princess Cruise Lines offer this type of service on a regular basis. Royal Caribbean and Holland America are testing this out with certain ships in that region right now.
Of the first two lines, Princess is more experienced with Alaska. They have a better offering than Norwegian.
Norwegian is only one of the three (3) cruise lines that offer “dine any time at dinner” on your cruise. Princess also has that option and its called “personal Choice Cruising” and Holland Ameirca also has it and its called “As you Wish” dining for dinner. Allthree cruise lines also haev “specialty” restaurants that are in addition to the regular dinig room. These specialty restaurants all require a fee to eat and you will be required to make a reservation for them.
So you have three options:
NCL
Holland America
Princess
We just went on the Norwegian Pearl in November for the first time with anytime dining and I have to say we LOVED IT! We didn’t do any tours this time so I guess it was easier to get to dinner earlier but it worked out so well for us.