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"There is a buffet! So you can start eating right away!" And never stop, she might have added. We'd just boarded the Disney shuttle bus from the Orlando airport to Port Canaveral, and a cast member standing in the aisle was telling us nothing that, judging from the applause and appreciative laughter, everyone here didn't already know.
In addition to the food stations that offer sandwiches, pizza, and soft-serve ice cream pretty much around the clock, cruises usually schedule breakfast, lunch, and dinner (both buffet-style and in dining rooms), as well as mid-afternoon and midnight buffets, so that nobody need ever feel peckish. The Royal Caribbean daylong feedbag-athon schedule is typical: breakfast from 6 to 11 a.m., lunch from 11:30 to 3, afternoon snack from 3 to 5 p.m., dinner seatings from 6 to 8 or 8:30 to 10:30, two separate dinner buffets from 6:30 to 9 p.m., and "Gourmet Bites" from midnight to 1 a.m.
Fruit and salads do exist, and plentifully, on cruises. And low-cal or heart-healthy options are now a staple on most menus, as are inventive international dishes. During our stay on the Navigator of the Seas, the Jade buffet offered Thai beef salad, Balinese vegetable soup, Burmese fried rice, and Sri Lankan wattalappam, a coconut-milk pudding—alternatives that regularly tempted us away from the more formal dining room with its largely meat-or-fish American fare.
But make no mistake: for most passengers, the emphasis is still where it traditionally has lain—on excess. There's a good reason why, at least once every cruise, the onboard stand-up comic is sure to say, "You get on as passengers, and you leave as cargo."
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