Dining on Royal Caribbean’s Quantum-class ships, debuting with the 4,180-passenger Quantum of the Seas in November, will represent a sea change.
The cruise line is eliminating the massive main dining room in favor of smaller venues, eliminating formal night (though a couple of restaurants will require formal attire), debuting an expanded buffet, and partnering with celebrity chefs including Jamie Oliver, officials announced at an event in New York.
So what does this mean for the rest of the fleet?
Don’t expect wholesale changes in dining, but do expect some of the features to migrate to other ships, Adam Goldstein, Royal Caribbean’s president and CEO, told USA TODAY.
“People on our ships are very happy with what we’re doing. Our food ratings and our service ratings are basically at all-time highs,” Goldstein said.
Still, officials decided to do something different with Quantum.
“We were looking for ways to put the customer more in control of their experience, and in order to do that we came to the conclusion that on Quantum-class we should deconstruct the main dining-room experience into more or less component parts,” he explained.
Goldstein said some of the features being introduced on Quantum might work on the line’s other ships. Others won’t.
“No, we’re not going to split the main dining rooms that we have ? these beautiful main dining rooms with their chandeliers, these impressive spaces ? we’re not going to wall them in and wall them off,” Goldstein said. “But what we can do, assuming this is as successful as we believe it will be, is begin to think about what elements we can take.”
Royal took a similar approach with its 5,400-passenger Oasis-class ships, the largest cruise ships in the world, moving some of the popular dining and entertainment features to other ships in the brand.
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Source:?Fran Golden (2014). Royal Caribbean rethinks its ‘dining-room experience’, USA Today http://www.usatoday.com/story/cruiselog/2014/03/27/royal-caribbean-quantum-dining/6953499/ published Mar 28, 2014. Viewed Mar 31, 2014.