Overall, I'd sail with MSC Again. We got a great deal with a free balcony upgrade when we booked, so there was decent bang for the buck there. The food
Embarkation
1 out of 5
Overall this was terrible. Line was out the door and wrapped around the building. Not sure if this is the norm, or if they were delayed arriving in port from prior cruise.
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
2 out of 5
Buffet was a mad house and they didn't offer ANY other places to eat besides dining rooms that didn't cost money, whereas Princess had places for Pizza, Burgers, etc all over. Also the quality of the food in the dining rooms was lacking on certain nights. For example, you'd think an Italian cruise line would make a decent chicken parm. Nope. This one was not very good. Fazolli's has better chicken parm. The regular menu that didn't change was solid though for the most part. Steaks weren't always cooked consistently, but were never so far off as to be unpalatable.
Onboard Activities
4 out of 5
Hot tubs were nice, and not too hot. Kids club was awesome for my daughter who is 7, and she loved the ropes course and water park.
Entertainment
3 out of 5
We enjoyed the two shows that we saw. Not happy that several others required paying for tickets.
Children's Programs
5 out of 5
Top Notch
Service and Staff
5 out of 5
Everyone we interacted with directly was great, especially our cabin steward Ruben. Flavia in the kids club was awesome as well.
Ship Quality
3 out of 5
The elevators were extremely slow and the buffet was WAY too crowded no matter when we went.
Cabin / Stateroom
4 out of 5
It was a tad small for 3 people but that's to be expected to a certain extent.
Blue Lagoon was a nice visit, but access to the ocean side of the island was either closed, or restricted to "Elite" Guests. Also, the island was a good 20-30 minutes by boat from the cruise terminal, so we only had a few hours to relax once we got there before we had to head back.
This was an issue from the get go. We had booked a Yacht Club Cabana online after being told it was accessible for the day regardless of cabin, and then when we were on board, they said no we're going to have to cancel but we can put you in a standard cabana. OK fine. Then we get to Cabana Check-In to discover we had NO reservation in a standard cabana so the person I spoke to on board clearly lied (wish I could've remembered her name). Fortunately, one of the tour folks, Olivia I believe, from South Africa, was able to get us into a cabana that hadn't been reserved yet, so we ended up getting it, but it was a hassle up to that point. Thankfully, Olivia went above and beyond to help us out and was very patient and polite. I teased her about being from South Africa, since I am a die hard New Zealand All Blacks rugby fan and naturally she was a fan of the SA Springboks.
We were called early, and once we started moving, we really didn't have to stop or even slow down much until we got outside to the port. The worst part was having to change the pickup time of my LYFT to JFK airport, which took about 10 seconds on their app (First World Problems)
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