Most people who cruise enjoy the all-you-can-eat aspect of cruising.
As part of your cruise fare on cruise lines like Carnival, Royal Caribbean and MSC you get access to the main dining room, a buffet, a pizza place, and usually another restaurant or two.
It's not necessarily about gluttony. Instead, it's a chance to have someone else make your meals, clear your dishes and ensure you have everything you need at mealtime
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On the other hand, for many passengers a cruise is also a chance to indulge. You're on vacation so it's okay, maybe even expected, that you're going to eat a little more — maybe a lot more — than you usually do.
Some cruisers love Royal Caribbean's Windjammer Buffet and Carnival's Lido Buffet. Both cruise lines serve breakfast, lunch and dinner on their buffets and offer a lot of choices.
There are, of course, differences.
Royal Caribbean offers made-to-order omelets in the Windjammer during breakfast. Carnival used to do that but now its buffet offers premade omelets (although you can get one made to order in the main dining room).
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Another noteworthy difference: Carnival serves only what most Americans would consider a breakfast staple — bacon — every other day. That was supposed to be a temporary change but it has quietly become permanent.
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Carnival Cruise has a bacon problem
Carnival has always had a bacon problem on its buffets.
Before the Covid pandemic, the cruise line used to have a worker serving the bacon rather than letting passengers take it on their own as they could every other item on the buffet.
Presumably, it did that because passengers could not be trusted to serve themselves. After the cruise line's Covid shutdown, Carnival said that it was having trouble sourcing bacon and it made a pretty major change.
"Like many companies in the hospitality sector, we are having some supply chain sourcing challenges, and bacon is one such item," Carnival Brand Ambassador John Heald said in August 2021. "We have notified our guests that we will serve bacon on alternating days at our Lido breakfast buffet ... and our guests have been very understanding and cooperative."
The language used then implied that the change would be temporary, but during his July 11 video Heald confirmed that bacon was still being served in the Lido Buffet on an every-other-day basis.
"Bacon is served every other day from Lido," Heald shared. "I'll see what we can do about getting that back."
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In this video, he cited "food-waste reasons" as to why the cruise line has kept the every-other-day schedule.
"But it's available every day in the dining room," he added.
Carnival passengers push back on breakfast
Heald brought up the bacon issue in response to a passenger suggesting that Carnival's buffet does not have enough items to choose from.
He listed the long list of available items but conceded that it had removed biscuits and gravy because guests complained about them.
He said that perhaps the cruise line, which now works with the celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse, would consider bringing that offering back. Many passengers commented on the Lido breakfast offerings, and most were positive.
"Insane! I am having breakfast as we speak and the choices are amazing," Dee Homes wrote.
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Some passengers, however, did question the bacon rationing.
"Bring back the daily bacon on the buffet! What’s the reasoning behind that?" Jody Candella Studt posted.
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Heald did, of course, cite food waste as the reason, but that seems like a hard one to believe.
Some passengers were less nice about it.
"Boo bacon every other day. The sausage is nasty," shared Catherine M. Sardeson.
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