A bad cruise line

Review: 1

Helpful Votes: 107

Review summary

MSC- Magnifica OVERALL Terrrible and Unpleasant experience. I will never, ever cruise with MSC again. I would like to caution any family and fellows cruiser to NOT go on any MSC cruise. Here are some of the problems: 1. You have to pay for everything (including water and coffee - even in the dining room at lunch or dinner!!!). It feels like they're nickel-and-diming you to death. Then, on the last night, they actually REMOVE all the water bottles from your room and LOCK the minibar - for fear that you will leave the cruise ship without paying for it. So from 9:00 p.m. onwards, you don't have ANY water in your room. You have to call the reception desk and ask someone to deliver water to your room and sign for them. 2. Staff are exceedingly rude and unhelpful. They don't treat you like customers at all. Rather, it's like you're a bother to them. Not once did I hear the word 'please', 'excuse me,' or 'thank you' coming out of their mouths, and they are prepared to argue every little point, or just outright ignore you. In talking with some of them (not Italians) it was explained to me that there is a lot of internal fighting going on among them. Simply put these non-Italian waiters, pool attendants, bar attendants etc. are underpaid, overworked and mistreated by their Italian supervisors. I was told that the average pay for them is about $ 1,800/months while an Italian coworker in the same capacity makes 3,000 Euros!!!. This internal fighting is then reflected on us, CUSTOMERS!!!! 3. We complained to the guest relation manager about our unhappiness, a very young and inexperienced guy. Instead of listening to our complaints and apologizing, the guy actually started to argument with us and justifying our complaints saying things like: "Well we are overworked, the ship is simply overcrowded and is impossible to please everyone." ONBOARD ACTIVITIES: Poorly organized and too crowded. The ship was at full capacity (almost 4,000 cruisers) but many of the venues are held in areas that could not accommodate that many people. The two swimming pools were very crowded and it was impossible to find a chair to sit. So unpleasant!!! Again, it would be a cultural thing, but I found people generally to not care about personal space. They tend to push their way through and parents tend not to discipline (or even take care of) their kids so they're going wild all over the ship, and what I considered as common decency was missing among many of the cruisers (e.g.: pressing the 'door close' button while people are still stepping into or out of the elevator, spitting into the swimming pools, letter toddlers go into the swimming pool with diapers on even though there are signs that clearly prohibit that, cutting into lines, etc.). Entertainment In the main (royal theatre) area the shows were good but very short (about 30-35 minutes at the best) so to push you out towards activities were the company can take more money out of our pockets (bingo)

Ship experiences

Food and Dining

Entertainment

Children's Programs

Service and Staff

Ship Quality

Cabin / Stateroom

Pros: the itinerary

Cons: rude staff-terrible food

Recommends MSC Magnifica? No.