What is the difference between free style cruises and not free style?

Question

And also are there any cruises where tips are only recommended and not automatically billed or charged?

Answer 1

Free Style Cruises are great. They do not require you to get all dressed up just to sit down and eat. They offer many different styles of food plus an excellent buffet. Tips are required. They usually are $10.00 aday which is for the crew.

Answer 2

The answer preceeding mine described the differences perfectly.  I would never go on NCL with the Free-Style.  I think there would be too many people in shorts, flipflops, and tshirts at dinner and this would take the elegance away.

You would not go to a nice restaurant in your city wearing shorts, would you?  

As for tips, NCL and some others automatically charge you for tips on your bill that you will pay at the end of the cruise.  Celebrity does not.  However, most people do pay the recommended tips since this is the main salary of the service staff.  Do not go on a cruise and say you are not going to tip any of the service staff.  That is just plain cheap and is not right.

Answer 3

Free-style means you come and go to dinner when you like.  non-freestyle you would have an assigned table and time.  There are other restaurant on the ships that have non-freestlye where you can eat.  

Holland America Line charges the tipping on your account, but it is removable whe you settle your bill at the end.

Answer 4

There is actually not a big difference and it actually only refers to the dining arrangement for dinner.  Before NCL started the Freestyle Cruising a few years ago all of the cruise lines gave you the option of having dinner at 6:00PM or 8:00PM and then they assigned you to a table.  You got to know your waiter and all of the people at the table with you.

Freestyle Cruising  means that you do not have to specify a dinner dining option when you book your cruise and thus don't have a table and waiter assigned to you. "FREESTYLE" means you can go to dinner in the main dining room, or any other alternative restaurant, any time of the evening after 6:00 PM..  But you will have to reserve a time in the alternate restaurants.  It also means that you don't have to "dress up" for dinner, but just go "sports casual".  But it also means that you may be standing in line awaiting a table on some days (like we had to do a couple times); not what you want on a cruise.  Since you go when you want, you rarely get the same waiter and so never really get to know your waiter and he/she never learns what you prefer as is done on “traditional” cruise lines.

I have been on many Norwegian ships and at one time NCL was my favorite cruise line.  However, after NCL was bought by Star Cruises and they instituted the "Freestyle Cruising", I do not care for their cruises and do not recommend them, especially for people who have been on  a number of cruises and prefer traditional cruising.

The option to traditional dining being pushed on NCL is their optional dining restaurants. However, these dining options can cost $10 to $20 a person for dinner each night. The cost is called a gratuity or service charge.  This is not what you want after paying for a cruise which is supposed to be all inclusive.

The optional restaurants are very nice, including French, Chinese/Sushi, Tex-Mex, Italian, and steak house restaurants. But who wants to go pay $20 to $40 each day to eat on a cruise ship where all the meals are supposed to be included. The last time wewere on an NCL ship we always skipped the optional restaurants and just got to the main dining early. That worked fine, except on "at sea" days when everyone wanted to go eat early.  We later found that we could reserve a time in the main dining room, but we still got a different table and waiter for dinner each night.

NCL is just like all of the other cruise lines except on this one point.  All cruise lines, including NCL, have an optional leisure dress dining option, usually a buffet area where you can go in shorts and "T" shirts.  However, NCL and all of the others also have a requirement that you cannot go into public areas like show rooms, the casino, and the formal dining hall in shorts and swim wear after 6:00PM in the evenings.

Princess also has an optional dining format that they call "PERSONAL CHOICE" CRUISING.  This means that you can select traditional dining or opt for unscheduled dining in any of their restaurants.

Cruise line tips are not really optional and most lines will automatically add them to your ship's tab.  You should not skip the tips because they are the majority of the salary for the people cleaning your room and waiting your table.  The high end cruise lines may have tip included in the price of the cruise.