Despite the execution issues in the Frankie/Francine cruise, I liked the idea of being able to exchange an item for a choice of two recipes. I hope that idea can be expanded to allow newer players to unlock older recipes.
Example:
Old Gem Recipe (OGR) and New Gem Recipe (NGR) are statistically identical and use the same Special Ingredient, which is dropped by New Character.
New Character is unlocked at the end of the cruise, but the cruise also rewards Token (automatically upon cruise completion, so as to avoid the execution issues encountered in the Frankie/Francine cruise). Token allows players to unlock a recipe using New Character's Special Ingredient.
Newer players can choose to unlock either the OGR or the NGR, while older players who already have OGR can use Token to unlock NGR.
And because New Character drops the same Special Ingredient, older players get it twice as often for both recipes that use it, while newer players get it at the normal rate for the recipe they chose to unlock.
Win-win