Chippertrips

Hello!  Is anyone else super excited about our upcoming June 22-26 sailing on Serenade of the Seas?  I am!!! It will be my first cruise EVER and my 65th birthday!  Can't wait!

Sure Max, I will take a look when we are on board!!
 

I love Ben and David and just watched their MDR review.  YIKES! With three upcoming RC cruises scheduled I am worried.  First time cruiser here. I wonder if it varies by ship and time of day? Early vs late dining I mean. Any thoughts from cruisers currently on Grandeur or Serenade of the Seas?

I love Ben and David and just watched their MDR review.  YIKES! With three upcoming RC cruises scheduled I am worried.  First time cruiser here. I wonder if it varies by ship and time of day? Early vs late dining I mean. Any thoughts from cruisers currently on Grandeur or Serenade of the Seas?

I haven't cruised yet with RC so I don't have any experience with the prior MDR menus.  I know people really look forward to the food on a cruise (I am too!).   But anything that reduces food waste is a winner in my book. 

It's sounding like Royal, or at least their servers, are working around the 1 entrée at a time limit by giving guests what they really want from that steak order. And it's not a second piece of broccoli. Allowing a surf and turf order makes sense to keep people happy, since the introduction of the additional lobster charge, if we take Royal at face value with the cost of lobster skyrocketing. 

This wasn't mentioned in the thread header, but I do want to touch on the reduction or elimination of duck and lamb on the menu. People have complained Royal's going cheap by their removal. However, I wouldn't be shocked to learn there was plenty of food waste with both as they're notoriously difficult to cook properly and not overcook. Since Royal is plating and serving thousands in their MDR, the odds of not receiving overcooked lamb or duck (due to residual cooking while waiting to be served) meant people expecting a perfectly cooked dish sent back the entrée. Combine the sent-back dishes with those which people didn't eat, as they were trying the meat for the first time and decided it wasn't for them, and inexperienced cooks overcooking the meat at the start make lamb and duck an easy target for removal. Yes, it saves Royal money, but it also means they avoid passenger complaints from dishes not meeting expectations and can work in inexperienced cooks easier. The braised lamb on the current menus should be moist enough to withstand the rigors of platting and simple enough to withstand preparation by new staff. A duo of grilled lamb and lamb tagine is being offered nightly in the Solarium Bistro on ships which have the Bistro without an upcharge (or at least is listed as such for my sailing next week on Anthem).

I really enjoyed the new menus last month.  It was the first week Oasis had them, and the overall food consistency/quality was the best I could remember in a while (at least since the restart).  It also cut around 15-20 minutes off the time of the meal, getting to around an hour or so.  
Royal Caribbean has not in recent years had the reputation of the best food in their class.  Repeating the same processes over and over doesn't make sense, when they can identify methods to improve the product and the costs associated with it.  There's still lots of choice, and the classics are still there, they are just not labelled as such.  Most of them can be found on multiple nights.  I was much happier with the menus that the past ones.  They did well in my opinion.  
 

I don’t discount the cost savings aspect of this change.  Like it or not, and most here don’t, we ain’t sailing the Queen Mary anymore.  But can you imagine the amount of food waste on a ship?  The meals in the MDR aren’t fired as they are ordered, there most certainly has to be X number ready to go at any given time.  Some of the dishes that have been removed, although near and dear to someone’s heart, were probably not popular enough to make the cut.  If at the end of the day, nobody’s ordering the eggplant parmigiana, why keep it on the menu?  

They made the change because they had too many options and too few people eating the less popular options.  Too much waste and too much wasted time spent prepping meals that people weren't eating.

Hello!  Is anyone else super excited about our upcoming June 22-26 sailing on Serenade of the Seas?  I am!!! It will be my first cruise EVER and my 65th birthday!  Can't wait!