Louisiana Cruise Guests Decry Controversial Dining Change at Sea

Ask anyone who is planning or who has already booked passage on a cruise ship out of the Port of New Orleans and they'll tell you that one of the things they are most excited for on their journey is the food. That's a pretty big statement considering Louisiana is home to great food cities like New Orleans and Lafayette. But we do have to give the cruise ship culinary wizards their "props" Most of the time the food on board is outstanding.

Of course one of the perks of cruise ship dining is that it's supposed to always be available. In fact, the "Midnight Buffet" is a time-honored tradition among many cruise lines. It's where guests who have been living it up in the ship's bars and nightclubs go to have a stomach-settling midnight snack. In most cases, the buffet line would stay open for a couple of hours or until about 2:30.

Now if you missed the midnight buffet there was always pizza. Cruise ship pizza is usually pretty good too. I guess that's because a lot of the ship captains around the globe come from Italy. In most cases, you could get really good pizza in the middle of the night but apparently, that has changed. Okay, on at least one cruise line they've changed things up.

Carnival Cruise Lines has taken some flack for a recent change in the way they offer pizza to late-night diners on board their vessels. The ship's Pizza Pirate and Pizzeria del Capitano are now closing at midnight. Those restaurants offered freshly made, hand-crafted pizzas that were really good. Instead, Carnival is now offering guests a different kind of pizza, it's more of the prefab, premade sheet pizza and many of Carnival's guests are not happy.

That's because instead of a freshly made New York-style slice of pizza, they're getting something the Red Baron might pick off of his Tombstone. And since you're on a cruise ship there aren't other places you go to in the middle of the night in the middle of the ocean.

But then again, cruise passengers seem to like to whine about everything. You won't believe the pushback some of the cruise lines got about making people use a clean plate at the buffet. I think folks just like to argue, which is all the more reason to give them good pizza. It helps keep their mouths shut.