As an experiment, we deserted our usual smaller cruise ships, and went for a short holiday on the second biggest cruise liner in the world. You can get an idea of the size on
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When it is full, which it was on this occasion, it is carrying about 3800 passengers plus crew. You can imagine the logistics of trying to feed that many people about three times a day. It is a slick production line with a very American slant. The way the pricing of some cruise ships work is that the basic price is quite good, but you have to pay a bit extra if you want to go to some specialty restaurants, and in the case of the IotS, the drink is pricey, with a cheap bottle of wine costing over $30 including 15% service. Wine by the glass is about $10. Whilst these prices may seem expensive to UK eyes, this is seen to be the norm for US customers. Drink on board some of the UK favoured cruise lines is more in line with pub/restaurant prices. Expensive bottles don't bear thinking about.
So, if you don't want to pay extra (and what you get by paying extra does not really seem worth while unless you have a very special occasion), there is no problem. There are four levels of breakfast service ranging from coffee shop type outlet, to buffet, scrum buffet and silver service. At best there are three types of lunch: pizza cafe/sandwich, served and appalling scrum buffet. There are three dining rooms open for dinner. There is either the traditional two sitting multipassenger fixed table, or a much sought after choose your own time with potentially tables for two. So on paper it sounds ok.
We had chosen what is called 'my time' dining where we had designated time for dinner well in advance. For some bizarre reason the restaurants are named after Shakespearean tragedies and we found ourselves placed in the King Lear restaurant. What we did not bargain for us having to queue for a table and at 8 o'clock, which was a popular time for my time dining, we often had to join the queue about 20 deep. It looked a bit more scary than it actually was and once the staff came to know us as a couple wanting a table for two in a particular area they usually plucked us out of the queue and positioned us in our desired area fairly quickly. There was one particular evening after a very popular show in the theatre, when the queue promised to be particularly long. By queueing before the main crowd came out I managed to get our table and the staff left us to our own devices. One disappointing element was the formal nights, and I think it was not reasonable to make people queue up in their formal dress. I guess if we had opted for a fixed table at a fixed time, none of this would have happened. The choice of food in King Lear was excellent, and we were mostly pushed to make up our minds. There was always a fish, vegetarian and hunk of meat option. Whilst portion sizes are not huge, because there is so much food served in the day, the meal sizes are more than adequate, and if you wanted something in addition, the staff did not make it a problem. Staff in the restaurants were universally excellent: I could find no fault.
Here are some examples of dinner served in the King Lear.
The departure meal of soup, a big hunk of American steak, and Bailey's Creme Brûlée.
On another night there was a traditional (not for the ship or the crew, but for the largely British guests) steak and kidney pie. I found no kidney in mine, but there was no point in sending it back, so I put it down to 'lost in translation' and regarded it as steak and mushroom pie.
I have to say that we what are delighted by and large with the food in the King Lear restaurant. However hot seem to be an alien concept, with food rarely scoring over 7 the CHOF scale. We mentioned this to the staff, and for one night, there was a marginal improvement, mainly because the plates were scorching hot. As the food was plated out somewhere in the bowels of the ship, transported to deck 5, we just accepted that this was simply going to be a lost cause. I think that because few people complain the thing is just accepted, that the food is never going to be hot.
One of the tricky aspects of IotS is the Windjammer cafe and Jade. This is the big open self service buffet that operates at breakfast, lunch, tea and probably dinner (but we never used it for that). It is huge and for days in port and early breakfasts, it was the only choice. It is a very slick operation, geared up to dealing with feeding huge numbers of people in the minimum possible time. In fact it makes the point of reminding the customers that they should vacate their tables as quickly as possible to allow the next guests to take their place. This is not exactly what you want to hear when you're eating. Coupled with the huge number of people is a huge choice and although there is a bit of a scrum in getting served you will succeed eventually. Somewhat perversely for breakfast it seems to be the place where you could get freshly cooked eggs, but not necessarily what you wanted, more what the cook was prepared to do, and whether you were prepared to wait. If you have not done this kind of eating before, there are huge numbers of people, some of whom are old or disabled, milling about trying to fill their plates as high as they can. I was amazed at the quantity of food that some people seem to be prepared to eat. I guess others were somewhat amazed at the permutations of food that I was prepared to eat
This was breakfast served on a day with a particularly early start somewhere about 7 o'clock. They did not seem to be any time too early for the restaurant to not be full. One could only assume that there were significant number of insomniacs on the ship or people we never went to bed at night. Another issue is that one had to learn one's way around the various containers of food and the layout of the restaurants and it was only towards the end of the first week that one was able to assemble a logical mix of food for any particular meal. You will notice on the place of birth the somewhat small portion of scrambled egg. Scrambled egg is notoriously difficult to find any decent state on any buffet. I guessed right at this particular type of scrambled egg was both overcooked and cold. No meal in the Windjammer restaurant scored a CHOF of greater than seven. We got to the point was waiting for the servers to put fresh tureens of food in place. Even that didn't help and food was not hot even at the point of service. The unlikely solution was to come at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon when tea was starting and find that there was a full meal in place which had been so long in the serving bays that it had heated up. The Windjammer restaurant was clearly the refuge of those who felt uncomfortable in the mainstream restaurants. From all appearances it was difficult to work out how some of these people had gathered together the money to pay for the cruise (based on their appearance). Fine dining it wasn't.
Another weird mix once we had worked out that the Jade side of the restaurant served Asian specialities. The curries were actually very hot but not in temperature.
So the question was whether the quality, variety and quantity of meals outweighed the downside of food that was not hot enough. Despite trying to raise the issue with staff, we failed to make any noticeable impression. However overall the eating was a good experience given the shortcomings.
