Wilde Adventures

Mexican Riviera & Sea of Cortez Cruise: December 10 — December 21, 2024

We often selected the Main Dining Room for Breakfast, Brunch, Lunch, and Dinner on this cruise except when dining in the Specialty Restaurants. Fixed dining on this cruise (if you select it) was 5:00 pm and 7:30 pm. We selected late fixed dining so that we would have the same wait staff for all dinners.

Several items on the menus appear daily, and fresh fish is usually available for dinner every evening. In terms of additional cost items, we had freshly squeezed orange juice for breakfast every morning and cappuccino every evening. We really enjoyed the freshly squeezed orange juice - much better than the standard orange juice. We had the fresh fish (purchased by the ship in ports along our cruise) on several occasions, and it was outstanding. In terms of specialty items I had the Crab Louie Salad for lunch and Lobster 2 Way for dinner, and both were excellent.

We do miss some of the Dining Room features on Holland America cruises long ago. The Baked Alaska Parade was always a great celebration at the end of every cruise and flambé items were always a hit. Unfortunately, fire restrictions put an end to these great events. In its place we now have the parade of the dining room and kitchen staff on the last cruise evening. The banner video on this page shows this parade on the last night of our cruise - just look at the large number of dining room and kitchen staff (and that is not all of them).

On a previous Koningsdam cruise we had a Neptune Suite which entitled us to access the Club Orange Dining Room for Breakfast and Dinner. On this class of ship there is a separate Club Orange Dining Room serving breakfast and dinner to Club Orange passengers . On other classes of ship Club Orange passengers eat Breakfast in the Pinnacle Grill and Dinner in a special section of the Main Dining Room. Club Orange hours and menus are identical to those of the Main Dining Room (except for one or two additional dinner menu items in Club Orange). The wait staff of Club Orange on our previous cruise was Indonesian, just like the Main Dining Room staff. The service of the Indonesian staff was exceptional in both dining rooms, and the quality of the food was very good.

The Main Dining Room is a much larger, grander, and more exquisite dining venue than the Club Orange restaurant, but Club Orange does offer additional flexibility and a few additional menu items for Neptune Suite passengers and passengers who have purchased Club Orange privileges. We found the main advantage of Club Orange to us was the ease of selecting dining times on short notice and having the same waiters for all breakfasts and dinners, although that is not always the case.

The dinner menus in the Main Dining Room and Club Orange change daily. Club Orange is not open for lunch and the Main Dining Room only serves lunch on sea days.