Seine dinner cruise

Sport coat and tie will work. Buy a cheap, tacky one at St Ouen flea market if you must.

Second option is to skip the dinner cruise which has rather awful grub anyway.

I have not taken the dinner cruise, only the deck cruise. But I'm surprised to hear that jackets and ties are required. Are you on a private cruise or just taking one of the public offers? I looked on their website and saw pictures of men wearing open-collared shirts and slacks - no jackets. Maybe others can confirm such a requirement.

Many contributors here have echoed Ed's advice - they didn't think the dinner was worth the cost. The cruise itself can be beautiful and a great introduction to Paris. But there are many opportunities to have a good dinner onshore first and then take the cruise.

Steve is partly correct. The english version does say "smart dress". The original french version, however, says "formal dress", which, when translated idiomatically, means coat and tie, not tux/morning suit/etc. Idiomaticaly translating the spanish version gets the coat and tie business again. German goes back to snazzy but not coat and tie as I read it. Personally, I'd claim I was Japanese, since I think their version says dress so as not to offend others.
I can read neither Korean nor that brand of Chinese.

None of this makes the food taste any better.

Edit: What I was going to say before I started fiddling with the stupid flags was that the batobus (hop on/off boat) covers exactly the same chunk of river at a fraction of the cost without grub, narration, or music. If you used it for transportation earlier in the day, the ticket is good all day and night and you can reride to see the lights -- which is really the big deal, anyway. Batobus.com has prices, route, stops, etc, but be sure to check the hours since I'm not sure it runs real late.

In my several stays in Paris, I have usually taken the river cruise but skipped the dinner one due to figuring out how much extra it costs and what that added cost would buy me in a nice Paris restaurant. The Paris restaurant choice has always won.

Sonny, You can do Le Capitaine Fracasse dinner cruise without the jacket and tie. We did it in 2007 for 50E pp. That being said, the food was not worth the money and would have been better spent at a nice cafe. I would recommend a nightime cruise without the meal.

Thank you all for the wonderful info, we've decided to skip the dinner cruise. It's funny that I've wanted to do that since my only other trip to Paris in '01, but getting feedback from people who've been there is priceless!

I agree with Ed on the Batobus. Hop on and off as you please, use it to get from one place of interest to the next, and ticket is valid for the entire day.

The batobus is a fantastic way to get around. We bought a 5 day pass. It costs about the same as buying two 1 day passes. One thing we found was that it stops running before it gets completely dark. That was the case in 8/06 anyway. If the batobus doesn't operate in the dark you may want to consider doing the regular boat trip. The river at night is fabulous! I agree it is not worth taking a dinner cruise.