If you haven't been on one of Royal Caribbean's newer cruise ships, you haven't seen yet the next-gen take on specialty restaurants known as "eatertainment".
Extra cost restaurants on cruise ships aren't new at all, and they've been a fad in and of themselves for many years. Every cruise line saw the demand for other types of cuisines and cooking styles, and it's made them a lot of money too.
With the top cuisines covered, Royal Caribbean wanted to delve into something greater than just a new restaurant based on a region or country. Plus, Royal Caribbean sees themselves competing against major tourist destinations on land, such as Las Vegas or New York.
That sort of thinking lead them to explore a new approach to specialty dining that has arguably gotten better with each iteration. In fact, I love combining food, entertainment, and even destinations and coming up with something totally new.
With more new ships on the horizon, you should expect more restaurants delving into this hot trend of going beyond a restaurant by offering experiential dining.
Mason Jar
Royal Caribbean calls this new trend "eatertainment", and its first foray was with the Mason Jar on Wonder of the Seas.
Launched in 2022, the Mason Jar was a traditional specialty restaurant with a twist. There was a typical sit down specialty restaurant with a cover charge, but they included a bar area with a band performing.
The idea was to combine a meal with musical entertainment so that guests could enjoy country music with their southern American foods. By adding live music, Royal Caribbean wanted to make the vibe reminiscent of a meal in the south.
Instead of dinner theater, Royal Caribbean wanted to give its guests a meal they could enjoy with something more. That something more would be more apt to create memories and be an experience, rather than just something you ate. The goal is to makes passengers talk, and have them longing to enjoy it all over again.
"I don't want you to get bored when you're having dinner," is what Royal Caribbean Vice President, Food & Beverage, Linken D'Souza said when coming up with an idea like the Mason Jar.
"We’ve been leaning into this notion of eatertainment where we’re really trying to blend entertainment and great dining together."
The success of the Mason Jar lead Mr. D'Souza and his team to think even bolder with its next idea.
Empire Supper Club
Icon of the Seas has revolutionized the cruise industry in many ways, including its approach to dining.
If the Mason Jar was version 1.0 of eatertainment, the Empire Supper Club was going to be version 2.0.
The idea was to create Royal Caribbean's most elegant restaurant to date, with fine dining, musical entertainment, and impeccable service.
Unlike the Mason Jar where the music was on the periphery of the dining experience, Empire Supper Club would put diners and entertainers in front of each other.
Royal Caribbean Chief Innovation Officer Jay Schneider described it once as, "a blend of best of entertainment and best of culinary."
A live three-piece jazz band performing music that connects with the meal you're being served. The combination of premium food, paired cocktails, and live music, put Empire Supper Club in a different category of dining.
Mr. D'Souza called it a "full immersive dining experience" that goes well beyond a typical specialty restaurant.
"Empire Supper Club is what I would say is the most elevated dining experience we've created at Royal Caribbean."
"It really is an elevated food experience that's tied together with a really elevated beverage experience."
While pricey at $200 per person, the experience stands out something unconventional that does exactly what eatertainment is all about: makes memories.
"It was hands down one of the best meals of my life and can't recommend it enough," wrote TheMaxRebo on our message boards.
"The creativity with the dishes and the cocktails, the amount you got, made the food alone worthwhile but the music just made the event."
If it feels like specialty restaurants tend to feel repetitive and uninspired, the Empire Supper Club stepped away from that trope.
Royal Railway
Once again, Royal Caribbean sought out to come up with something radically different for itself on Utopia of the Seas that would be as compellingly different as Empire Supper Club, but go even further.
Building on eatertainment was a trend Royal Caribbean first noticed on land. Mixed reality immersive dining experiences were popping up in various cities, and it caught the cruise line's attention.
An early such concept was "Sublimotion" in Ibiza, Spain. It was a new high-end Mediterranean dining concept with virtual reality and immersive film projections.
Since no one had really done thematic immersion on a cruise ship, it seemed like a good opportunity with the launch of Utopia of the Seas to give it a go.
The concept Royal Caribbean came up with was Royal Railway, which offers a meal inside a classic train car that looks, feels, and sounds like a real train.
This immersive train dining experience was going to be more than just one restaurant. It could transport you to different areas of the world, with different menus.
"What if we put a train on a cruise ship that could take you to more destinations?" posed. Mr. Schneider near the launch of the new ship.
The area has a classic train station platform, with separately numbered dining cars, and real train steam. Guests would dine in the train and blend entertaining performances with amazing culinary dishes.
The result has been one of the hottest tickets right now on any Royal Caribbean ship. Reservations regularly sell out almost as soon as they become available because of how many passengers want to try it.
Traditional restaurants aren't going away
This new trend is exciting, but it won't replace regular restaurants. Rather, it's there to augment them and offer something different.
Mr. Schneider explained recently the company's guiding credo is "tradition, evolution, and revolution," which means they want to always offer familiar, evolved, and different on all of its ships.
"There's no reason that you wouldn't expect to find a Chops on every ship that we build in the future...And then there needs to be experimentation."
Not every passenger on a ship wants the same thing, but expanding the variety allows Royal Caribbean to stand out from other vacation choices.
"New cuisine also then takes you to new experiences," Schneider said.
Part of the rationale for developing new concepts is food is a major reason why people go on a cruise. On a high level, Mr. Schneider says the two predominant reasons people book a cruise are for destinations and food.
"You want that kind of diversity, given again, people want destinations and food is their two drivers to go on a cruise."
