Speciality Restaurants - I think they should be free.

Having just recently been on board Norwegian Epic I came away questioning whether cruise lines should charge for Speciality Restaurants.

When you book a cruise holiday you pay a lot of money, but some of this is offset by the fact that your meals are included. However I do find it cheeky that more and more of the restaurants carry a cover charge to dine in them. On Epic - Cagneys Steakhouse charged a $25pp cover charge and then some of the dishes also carried a supplement. La Cucina, which whilst being an Italian restaurant was basically just a pizza and pasta place and again charged an extra $10pp.

One of my last land based package holidays was to a Sandals resort in Cuba. Being a 4* All Inclusive hotel my food in the main restaurant was included. However they also had 3 speciality restaurants. I was allowed 1 night in each of these restaurants during my 10 night stay free of charge - and could book more subject to availability. This is fairly standard to hotel holidays - there are sometimes a la carte  dishes that you can pay for but generally you can dine in other venues as part of your holiday package.

This I feel is a much better way to run the system, cruise lines are alienating customers by charging for the privilege of dining in a smaller restaurant. It's great that with each new ship there are more choices of dining venues, but as they have a captive market I personally think its just a clever way to take more revenue on board.You've paid for food and service anyway so why pay more?

 What do you think?

Why are the swimming pools so small?

I was also one of the lucky people who got to sample NCL Epic's launch party last week. The weather was fantastic and on Wednesday, I was able to chill out by the pool.


The main pool area, as shown in the photo above, consists of two separate swimming pools and lots of cooling blue tiles around it. It looked amazing and my colleague Sian and I enjoyed dipping our toes in the water. However there was a huge amount of wasted space and we questioned why they hadn't made the whole area into one giant pool. Individually you could probably fit around 20 people in each pool to cool off, and the ship holds over 4000 passengers.

This isn't just an NCL design fault but seems to be the case on many ships. This photo shows a pool area on P&O's Ventura - again look at the space of the pool compared to the deck area

What I'd like to know is - are the pools small because cruisers don't like to swim and would prefer to have more deck area? Or is it an economical reason - ie does it cost too much to keep maintained or to build? Or is it an actual physical limitation - does a large body of water weigh too much for a ship to sustain. Please excuse me if these questions sound a bit daft (you can see that I am blonde) but if anyone actually knows why cruise ship pools are small please let me know.

Epic coming to Europe...Royal Caribbean watch out!

NCL have just announced that there new flagship Epic will be based in Europe for 2011. This is fantastic news for UK cruisers, especially as she'll be based out of Barcelona.

With great innovations on board for all ages she is going to be a real hit. Featuring the Aqua Park, with the only tube slide and largest bowl slide at sea. A 33 ft high rock climbing wall and the most bowling lanes at sea, she will really give Royal Caribbean a run for their money.
She also has 14 restaurants and 18 bars and the first squash court at sea to work the excesses off.



Her new single studio rooms are hugely innovative with no single supplements and their own lounge area, making it much easier for single passengers to meet other guests, whilst enjoying big ship facilities.

Finally, NCL have made a very clever move basing her out of Barcelona. The easiest post of call for UK passengers wanting to arrange their own flights (especially if you’re travelling from Dublin or Belfast) she will sail a typical Western Med itinerary.

She goes on sale shortly and pre registrations are being taken now, so if you’re looking for a change to Royal Caribbean for next summer and suggest you look no further that Norwegian Epic.

Single cruising just got easier.

Cruising is the one of the best types of holiday for a single traveller but even this can be daunting. Those clever people at NCL however have just made it a whole lot easier with the announcement of 'Studio Staterooms' on Norwegian Epic which launches in May. The beauty of these rooms is that they share a public area purely for Studio residents - offering a bar, snacks, big screen TV and DVD players. This makes it so much easier to meet other single passengers.  The rooms are smaller than normal, but ample size and they aren't charging ridiculous single supplements

I think this is a fantastic idea and hope the other cruise lines catch on and follow suit soon. I am certainly going to offer them to all of my single passengers.