They have people who actually man the station and hand people their plates. At our welcome dinner we had a couple pasta action stations where they made each plate to order. At our reception we had to 4 action stations - 2 carving stations, a salmon station where they prepared fish to order and the mashed potato martini bar. Each action station also had vegetables or somekid of side that was plated with the entree by the attendant. The salads were set up on a table without an attendant.