It was a disappointing cruise that lacked activities, there was no food variety in the buffet, and frankly the ship was unsanitary in certain areas. The bartenders were good, some shows were Ok, but the ship was crowded in some areas even with 2000 no-shows. We are probably going to cancel our next MSC cruise and take our business elsewhere as this is a very discount cruise line running beautiful ships badly.
Embarkation
5 out of 5
Embarkation was rather efficient. No issues.
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
2 out of 5
The same food, day after day in the buffet. Every day. Room temperature and the same. Really.
Onboard Activities
2 out of 5
The ship was rather boring. By trying to accommodate so many different nationalities and languages, activities were reduced to dance classes, musicians, and sales of the same stuff on every other cruise ship. Every day. Very little variety. And if you’ve been to other Cirque shows outside of cruising, these upcharge shows are a bit meh. The pools were nice.
Entertainment
2 out of 5
The show “Virtual” was a horrendous waste of very talented entertainers. What the heck was up with dancers jumping around with emojis all over their bodies? Other shows were ok, but nothing was particularly compelling. The shows were much worse than what we saw on the Seaside.
Service and Staff
2 out of 5
Good bartenders, but our room steward Amy was terrible! She never stocked our minibar though it was part of our drink package, left garbage in the corner of our cabin from the previous guests, left someone previous guest’s garment bag under the bed, no toilet paper on day 3, no tissues until day 3, drink rings on the counter in the room for days, and didn’t vacuum the floor after day 4. We talked to customer service on day 3, and she then tossed minibar drinks on the counter instead of the fridge and stopped talking to us. We removed the gratuities (tipped certain people directly) on day 6 and showed the room with garbage and an un-vacuumed floor and someone else’s trash on the balcony to the floor steward manager on day 6, and the room STILL wasn’t cleaned. Workers in the buffet just looked on blankly as children pulled fruit out of bowls with their hands.
Ship Quality
2 out of 5
There are three entrances to the buffet, but no hand sanitizer available on the two on the sides of the ship. So people walked in without washing their hands. Considering our cruise was from March 1-8 in 2020, to have people serve themselves in the buffet was a Coronavirus catastrophe waiting to happen. There was little cleaning going on that we could see in the public areas, and fingerprints always on the elevator buttons and dirty tables. Public restrooms were irregularly cleaned. I call BS on MSC’s “deep cleaning” claim.
Cabin / Stateroom
3 out of 5
The cabin was nice, except for a near unusable closet. The bed was fine and the bathroom good.
Ship tip
I see on Cruise Critic that someone received a notice from MSC that a person on our sailing tested positive for Coronavirus. We never received such an email. My advice is to go on the MSC Meraviglia if you like long stretches of boredom and sketchy sanitization.
A disorganized mess - took us three hours to get to our excursion. There really is little to recommend in this port that isn’t in every other Caribbean port, and this one requires a tender.
I went on this ship last year in February with my wife and daughter and we absolutely had a great time.
I had past experience from 3 other cruise company and this one was the best we had.
The ship is gorgeous, service was great and the food was good too.
I know you can get better service and food in some other ships but you'll be paying 5 times the price.
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