I'm a native New Yorker and despite it being primarily a tourist experience, I've been a fan of the Bateaux for several years as it offers much better quality food and entertainment than the typical rubber chicken dinner cruise. That said, potential guests should be aware that the Bateaux enforces a strict and rather archaic dress code that is not prominently displayed on their website. In a city where only a handful of the finest restaurants still have a strictly-enforced dress code, the Bateaux denied boarding to some of my clients for wearing jeans, and decent ones at that. The fact that they were with a corporate group from an organization that brought them a fair amount of business after 9/11 was not deemed relevant. They exhibited no flexibility in the situation and do not have any sort of ""loaner pants"" available as one might expect given the extremely remote location of the Chelsea Piers, they essentially stranded my clients at the dock. I still think the Bateaux onboard experience is good, but they badly need to better disseminate the dress code rather than rely on people checking 6 layers into their website and they also need to develop a customer service-oriented contingency for this kind of situation, as one would expect at the sort of fine restaurant they aspire to be.
Pros: Nice boat, good food, great views
Cons: Inflexible and poorly-disseminated dress code, lack of customer service-focused attitude
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