Nancy, yes I meant to say the only casual dining alternative was the pool snack bar in the evening. The speciality restaurants were wonderful & easy to get into even for a second visit. We enjoy Regent's casual dining alternative, LaVerandah very much & were expecting this on Crystal.

Even with our table for 2 we found the noise in the main dining rooom deafening. On our first Crystal cruise we had a table of 6 but one couple never showed up which made for hard conversation as the 4 of us were all sitting next to each other in a row. The other couple was very nice & we saw them on some shore excursions but they were missing many nights as we were also going to the speciality restaurants. Plus, there were two evening shore excursions that had special early dinner serice for those going.

I believe we were so happy with our first Crystal cruise as we had only sailed the Mariner once as our other Regent cruises up to that time had been PG & Explorer II. So we were not as aware of the differences the first time. When we went in March of this year, we had sailed Regent 5 times & the contrast was "crystal" clear.