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Freedom of the Seas Main Dining Room / Head Waiter Experience


bigburlyjohn

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After checking in for our recent cruise, we noticed that our linked reservations for the purposes of dining were no longer linked and our group of ten would not be sitting together.

 

Once onboard the ship we immediately headed for guest relations who directed us to a station across the way where one of the head waiters was set up to answer dining questions.  Upon explaining our situation, Aleksandar Stankovski immediately set about correcting our arrangement. Within just a few minutes he had our group all together for our chosen dining time.

 

That evening both we and Aleksandar, as a Head Waiter, were surprised to find that he had been assigned to our section.

 

Aleksandar deserves huge prompts for his professionalism, courteousness and willingness to help. As a Head Waiter should, he checked with our group to ensure our dining experience was excellent.

 

With Aleksandar, what really impressed me was how he went out of his way to make certain that the six-month old in our group had freshly pureed vegetables or fruit from the chef. Every evening at dinner Aleksandar would ask which we preferred and where we would like to have it served. Even though we had both dinner and breakfast in the MDR, he offered to have it available in the Windjammer if needed. On the morning of one of our early excursions he even offered to have it delivered to the appropriate stateroom.

 

Also, dining room staff members not even assigned to our table really seemed to enjoy seeing our grandchildren. At both dinner and breakfast, multiple staff members would stop by our table to see the children.  Two of those whose names come to mind, but not assigned to our table, are Donovan Reddy and John Hernandez. We met both at breakfast in the MDR, John would make napkin dolls for our six-month old and Donovan even sought us out at dinner to say hello to the kids.

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Thank you for sharing this experience because I think it's normal for Royal Caribbean to address issues quickly to make your vacation great. I have to say that we have experienced both excellent and disappointing service, especially in the main dining room on our sailings. The biggest mistake that we and others make is not making our expectations known (in a courteous manner or course). On Brilliance recently we had slow MDR service the first two days and I'm not certain whether it was a waiter issue or an issue with the system of feeding so many people at once. We were traveling with family and friends and none of us wanted to complain. The third night we ate in Chops and the head of food and beverage stopped by our table to check on our Chops meal, which was excellent. He then asked about our MDR service and he could see the sour look on my face. I explained our MDR experience and he apologized and promised to fix the issue (based on our Chops reservation he could identify our table and wait staff in the MDR). The next night our waiter personally apologized for the slow service. The head waiter (who hadn't checked on us the 2nd night) came by and apologized and was very attentive the rest of the cruise. Even the MDR supervisor pulled me aside as I passed by his station and wanted to make sure that our experience had improved. The entire team had stepped up to make our MDR experience great for the rest of the cruise.

 

I truly believe Royal Caribbean wants you to have a great experience. They can't help you if they don't know about your issue. Speaking politely to your head waiter or other supervisor will normally get things resolved quickly. Then again it's really special when you have a head waiter like you experienced, someone who anticpates your needs and goes the extra mile to deliver the Wow thar RCCL promises.

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I do believe you're correct Steve. When we were on the 12 night Brilliance cruise, they had a mid cruise survey so that they could be made aware of any issues so that they could address them, which I appreciated rather than them waiting for the post cruise survey.

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I do believe you're correct Steve. When we were on the 12 night Brilliance cruise, they had a mid cruise survey so that they could be made aware of any issues so that they could address them, which I appreciated rather than them waiting for the post cruise survey.

Wow, I didn't know they did mid-cruise surveys on longer cruises.  That's great!

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