Royal Carbbean will place Coca Cola vending machines in their ships, activated by your ships card for paying, and the machines will have 100 cartridges of flavors with which to choose.

What next? Premade cocktails sold in neopreen bags, like Walmart, where the liquor is malt beverage, not real spirits? Maybe Little Debby will creep up and you self serve your own dessert.

Disgusting

Already there are Starbucks on some RCI ships.

I agree with you totaly, placing special orders is the thing to do if you enjoy nice and often special items.

Special ordering however is not available on the majority of cruise ships or cruise lines, however. Obviously I avoid those, have and been for decades.

Once on a cruise I was in the water wading around, and two oberse ladies sloshed up to me and asked what ship I was on, I told them, and they told what ship they were on. I asked about the food, the answer “who cares about the food as long as we can stuff ourselves. Foods food.” I walked away.

Granted, our backgrounds are not like most passengers, we were in the hospitality business, high end gourmet restaurant and inn, me being an executive chef as well as me, high school teacher.

We started out on the QE2, then SS FRANCE, Norwegian America Line and so forth, and have stayed with the luxury lines – once took a cruise on a major Miami based line, and well, that was once enough for the food for us.

I carefully read every word about the food, in brochure and on line, scrutinize every photo of the food, and look at menus, and believe it or not, look in the frozen food section at supermarkets to see what could be used on a ship, and I am surprised at what I find.

Conversely, the trend to have chain resturants selling frozen menu item in these stores is appalling. If you read the package ingredients list, take a gander at all of the artificial preservatives on the labels.

Major chains, as well as cruise ships and hotels, employ microweaves and boil-in bags and pass it off as haute cuisine. Shame on them.On a recent cruise that bills itself as “premium” their hallmark lobster mac and cheese was served to me at the additional pay for restautrant, still FROZEN in the middle .Double APPALLING.

Do ask what is made on board, if your server won’t tell you get the table captain. House dressings, made on the ship, breads, made on the ship, meats and so forth, prepped and cooked on the ship. Ever seen bread at the lido buffet from a bag, or bagels from a bag, not from the ships bakery/ Ice cream same as yopu get frozen at the supermarket, not made on the ship. You’re beeing dupped, folks.

Enough on the food and cheap chain quality “SOME” cruise lines push off on the passengers. Most would not know gourmet if they had to spell it.

A wine stewrard, well, most of them merely take an order for the wine, they know zip about wine, yet they wear the outfit, and can open a bottle. A true wine steward is a sommelier, steeped in wine education, and knows his/hers stuff.

When we dine out on land we do not eat at the chains, we seek out individually owned restaurants which often have unique menus and more than enough atmosphere, regardless of menu price.Like the MDR on a ship, you can count on meeting the fav waiter and in a restaurant, meet the owners, and can count on seeing these same people often for years, same on a cruise ship with a happy crew.