Food plays a huge role in how people enjoy a cruise.
Royal Caribbean International (RCL), Carnival Cruise Line (CCL), and Norwegian Cruise Line (NCLH) all offer an incredible array of dining options that come with your base fare.
Without spending an extra dollar you get access to the main dining room, which offers three meals a day. That includes an elaborate multicourse dinner with a menu that changes every night.
On a longer cruise, you will most likely get offered both lobster and prime rib at least once as well as countless other dishes (and you can order as much as you want).
If you were allowed to eat only in the main dining room, you would still have an unbelievably diverse experience (and maybe gain a few pounds). But your basic fare also lets you dine at the buffet, eat free pizza, have snacks from a cafe, and eat at a handful of other options that vary by ship.
Included dining offers a lot of choices, but all three major cruise lines also offer added-fee restaurants. These can include everything from fancy steakhouses and sushi/hibachi restaurants to wings and nachos at a sports bar. And while the free options are plentiful, many passengers opt for a meal or two (or more) at an added-fee restaurant.
Royal Caribbean actually offers a package called "Ultimate Dining," which gives the people who buy it unlimited access to specialty dining. Or, at least, it used to, as the cruise line has made a change to that program, which was first noticed by Matt Hochberg of the Royal Caribbean Blog.
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Here's How Royal Caribbean's Ultimate Dining Works
Americans are fairly used to the idea that unlimited does not really mean unlimited. That has been true for phone plans and internet packages, where unlimited actually often means "a lot, but with restrictions." Even Carnival's all-you-can-drink offer, Cheers, actually comes with a limit of 15 alcoholic beverages.
That was generally not the case with Royal Caribbean's Ultimate Dining Package. The deal, which isn't offered on every cruise, let you eat in any specialty restaurant essentially as often as you want. You could literally eat two dinners at sit-down restaurants each night (and multiple lunches on sea days when those eateries open as well).
In addition, Royal Caribbean has a number of a la carte restaurants, again varying by ship, A good example, however, is the Playmakers sports bar. That venue offers wings, burgers, and other bar fare on an a la carte basis. Ultimate Dining package holders get a $20 credit at these restaurants but previously could use that credit multiple times a day.
Technically, you could order $20 worth of wings, close out your tab, and then open another one to order the famed Campfire Cookie dessert. More important, you could get a burger during a Sunday afternoon football game and then return later at night for an evening game and get some wings.
That's not how it will work going forward.
Royal Caribbean Tweaks the Meaning of Unlimited
Royal Caribbean has quietly tweaked the Ultimate Dining offer, making it slightly less attractive. Instead of offering unlimited $20 credits at a la carte restaurants, it now offers one per day.
"For restaurants with a la carte pricing, you'll receive a $20 food credit, which can only be used once per day," the company said on its website.
No change has been made at Izumi Sushi, the cruise line's sushi restaurant. It offers an a la carte menu where Ultimate Dining holders can either order from a prix fixe menu or get a $35 credit. In theory, even with the change, people with Ultimate Dining could eat multiple meals in one day at Izumi.
"Based on my own experience with the unlimited dining plan, it's possible this change was made to cut down on guests overusing the package benefits at restaurants such as Playmakers," Hochberg wrote.
"Being a sports bar, often guests may linger at the bar to watch more than one game, or return later on for the evening game and order more food."
The change, he suggests, may be more about reducing crowding at the very popular venue than cutting back on a benefit.
