If I were speaking to the cruise line directly I would say that most of us work our a** off all year and when we take a vacation we go to relax be entertained, eat some good food and visit someplace that we can recall when we get so old that we can't move anymore, We can look back at the trip as a great experience. I think MSC dropped the ball on meeting those goals. I hope this helps some of you who are looking for the same qualities in a vacation. As for me, I will have to wait another year and try another cruise line to meet my vacation goals.
Embarkation
4 out of 5
Arrived early (10am) short wait time before on ship.
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
3 out of 5
I found that the buffet food choices did not change much during the cruise but again the Butchers Cut restaurant (if you are willing to pay extra) is a good option
Onboard Activities
1 out of 5
The pool activities consisted of rerunning excursion video over and over with no sound or music and as the cruise progressed they switched to the 1/2 hour morning show rerun over and over (it was murder), lets put it this way it was not relaxing or entertaining,
Entertainment
2 out of 5
The shows didn't follow any theme, MSC figured it they throw some singing and dancing with some acrobatics and a dash of magic you got a show. like other cruise lines, we left the show saying wow that was really good I could say the same about the shows on MSC.
Service and Staff
4 out of 5
Bartenders and wait staff were friendly and committed, our room steward was on top of our room at all times she did a good job.
Ship Quality
3 out of 5
The design except for the showers and the two buffets being in the same area the ship is well designed but the cleanliness was not up to the level of other cruise lines.
Cabin / Stateroom
3 out of 5
I guess since the showers are so small that the ship was not designed for the North American market (no offense) it was just difficult to have to open the shower door to bend over to clean yourself. It did have a lot of storage space but once you are unpaced there wasn't any place for the luggage so we tripped around it for most of the cruise.
Ship tip
Being on vacation i brought mostly shorts except my elegent night attire and found that wearing shorts to the resturant was very much frowned apon even on casual nights. that forced me to take time out of our first stop to buy long pants. If you are a footbal fan this ship has a sports bar, the only complaint that I have is we were watching a football game and the switch the game to a basketball game right in the middle of the game and when we went to the bar we were told the TVs are controlled elswhere and he would have to put a request in the switch the channel back. are you kidding me.
Arrived at port 1 hour late then it took an additional 1 1/2 hours to unload the passengers, by the time we got off the ship it was dark, we ran to buy long pants for the shipboard restaurant, we did get to see nightlife in old
with the weird schedules for times at most of our port visits, not much time to really get somewhere and enjoy the island, we arrived at 7:00 am and had to be on the ship at 1:00 pm (most resorts didnt open until 9:00 am.
The had a Christmas celebration the day and night before our arrival, trash everywhere and most of the businesses were closed due to the over partying the night before.
We were told that we had priority disembarktation so we left our bags outside our room and arrived at our designated point the next morning, When we arrived at port we were told our bags were not ready so we had to stand asside and wait. As we watched hundreds of people with there bags pass us as we waited 1/2 hour for our bags to be orginized for pickup. wasnt sure what happened but I would suggest carring your bags off the ship.
Sorry you didn’t enjoy it. Many seem to think they are getting the same experience on MSC as they are on other main stream cruise lines. There are several different levels of experiences on MSC. Those that are most satisfied seem to book the yacht club experience, while those that are most dissatisfied seem to book the cheapest level, but somehow expect the top level experience. As far as debarkation, it’s almost always best to take your own luggage, that way you are not searching for it with hundreds of other people at the same time.
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