[dadspet]

To be honest we don't dine in the optional restaurants when we cruise. The price seems high and the one time we tried it we weren't overly impressed to spend the extra money. We really don't cruise for the food. The service in the standard restaurants we find is superior to all restaurants in the states and food in the is good enough for us in most cases. We cruise with RCL, NCL, Princess, Orient Lines and have the same opinion on them all. An extra fee bar would be in the same category for us. We don't drink much and when we do it generally when the band is playing dance music. The standard bars really seem very very nice to us and I doubt if we would spend any extra money to frequent one that charged an entry fee.

BTW we also don't mind a inside cabin since everthing else in the ship is the same for any passengers, if that concept changed I guess we would have 2nd thoughts about our cabin .

What we did hear on our last cruise to the Baltic and Russia with RCL is the cost of fuel for that 12 night cruise increased from $1 Million last year (when many of the cabins were booked) to $2 Million...... WOW. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the the cruise line needs to make up that money some how and they are looking at ways that may indeed change the current idea of cruising. A few examples we heard from a good source were:

1.Shorter stays in ports so the ship could go slower and save money on fuel.
2.Some kind of overnight stays in ports not requiring nearly as much fuel, and of course not as many ports.

Cruising we believe still remains a great bargain and great bang for you $. And if you go to Europe its even better since the $ is a joke there compared to the Euro and you can save a lot by cruising by not requiring a hotel or as much for food.