DON'T DO IT!!!

Cruises: 4-6 cruises

Review: 1

Helpful Votes: 40

Review summary

If you are American, have cruised before, and are considering MSC... DON'T DO IT!!! We had read the bad reviews but decided to give it a try thinking it couldn't be THAT bad. It was. The Meraviglia is new and spotless. So there's that. The food was AWFUL! EW, just thinking about it turns my stomach. AND...the buffet was the same food... EVERY DAY. If you have cruised Holland America, Celebrity or Royal Caribbean you will be EXTREMELY disappointed. There was not enough space at the buffet lines so most times it was 5 - 6 people deep with no seating in the restaurant. We had to laugh at the FEEDING FRENZY and tried to stay away. People were pushing and shoving as they filled their plates with the same disgusting food every day. You would have sworn it was the last meal ever to be served due to the intense nature at feeding time. We reserved a suite and based on MSCs website we thought we could at least avoid the morning feeding by ordering room service. Room service is available, but there is no hot food (continental breakfast only and cold sandwiches during the day). We ended up eating on shore most days. We also booked the Tryptic dining experience. The Butcher's Cut was marginal (that was the best of the three specialty restaurants). But, you are only offered a very limited menu and have to pay extra if you order anything different. The food at Eately was unpalatable - it still makes me queezy to think about it. The sushi restaurant was equivalent to the sushi you can buy at your local Publix or Kroger. The clientele on the ship were low rent (worse than Carnival) - I watched a woman lift a baby out of a full hot tub and change it's dirty (feces) diaper on the side of the tub, then put the baby back in the tub. She threw the dirty diaper on the deck below. So many rude people... who pushed their way in front of us for the simplest reasons...and treated the crew like dirt. We were stunned at the absurdity. Our cabin was a suite with a hot tub on the deck. It would have been amazing had there not been a 4 inch brown ring around the top from the previous guests filth. We called our cabin steward and he said they didn't use any chemicals or clean the private hot tubs, they simply drained the tub 1/2 way and refilled it for the next guest. Since the tub didn't heat above 35 C (95 F) it was completely unsanitary and therefore unusable. Our wristbands (for cabin purchases) still showed the previous guests for the entire time we were on the ship and we received a notice daily that there were issues with our credit card. We had to go stand in line at customer service 5 times (for ~45 minutes each time) to provide the exact same credit card, which they used to close our account and then reopen it - each time telling us it 'cleared' the problem. It didn't. There were 5,500 guests and only ~1,700 crew who were overworked and not happy. We asked a bartender how his day was going and he flat out said his day was 'crappy' and he 'hated this place'. We did meet a lovely girl from the Philippines (Delilah) - it was her third week on the ship. She said she liked us because we were nice to her. We asked if other people were not nice and she started to cry. It was heartbreaking. We ended up getting off the ship early, changing our return flight and hanging out in Barcelona for a few days. We had street food that was better than any meal on the ship, enjoyed amazing music and atmosphere (even in a city that just experienced horrible terror), and felt immediate relief to be off of that floating Walmart/Motel 6. Save your money. Do ANYTHING else.

Embarkation

Ship experiences

Food and Dining

Onboard Activities

Entertainment

Service and Staff

Ship Quality

Cabin / Stateroom

Ports of call

Genoa, Italy

Naples, Italy

Messina, Sicily

Valletta, Malta

Barcelona, Spain

Marseille (Provence), France Did not visit port

Disembarkation