If you go in with no expectations it’s a lovely surprise. My husband said “MSC fed me, housed me, and didn’t sink - it did a great job!” I was irked in the beginning but lots of things not in anyone’s control. I made lovely friends tho and I can’t say that wasn’t worth it.
Embarkation
2 out of 5
Once we arrived to the actual drop off point, handing off the luggage to the porters was easy and not worrisome as there was only one ship in port. Getting on the line to have our identification checked and then going through the X-ray all pretty easy and standard. The next line was to the check in desk - all standard. Once we cleared the desk and received our cruise card, you move to the obligatory embarkation cruise photo. Yes you can skip but they do have two backdrops set up. Then we are thrust in a large seating area and we were lucky to have found two seats together. There is a small cafe with coffee and pastries and pre-done breakfast sandwiches and decent bathrooms. Then they made an announcement that only one gang way was in use and they were still debarking the previous sailing. We were there from about 10:30am in the sitting area (where they stopped check in) until 12:30pm when they started to board the people in the room. We finally made it on about 2pm. We went to holas cantina for food. I didn’t care that it was extra money. I wasn’t fighting 4500 passengers at the buffet.
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
4 out of 5
Service was hit or miss. The lunch service was amazing one du and the pits the next. Our main dining team was disjointed. Individually lovely, did not work well as a team. Only tried the holas tacos on embarkation day and the service was adequate. The buffet was very good after embarkation day. They had neat little desserts. Main dining wasn’t good but wasn’t bad. We didn’t go hungry.
Hola! Tacos & Cantina
5 out of 5
The absolute best on embarkation day. It’s fast and not slammed. The price point is good - all you can eat for $18 per person or super reasonable a la carte prices.
Onboard Activities
4 out of 5
I’m a big spa fan. I met the loveliest person at the spa. I wandered up and Wilmah greeted me with a warm smile and walked me through some of the services offered. I booked a body scrub and manage with her right away! She is magical! Please request her if you get to sail before November 2023!
Origami was a disaster. Regular letter sized paper strewn across some tables where one had to cut down the paper to squares. I left.
They offered a lot of Latin dance classes and I was super bummed I missed the silent discos.
Entertainment
4 out of 5
We did most of the shows. They were ok. The djs and live music were all good!
Service and Staff
4 out of 5
I think the misstep from the waiters seems to be the constant changing of the guards. Every month there are people leaving and coming. So there is never an opportunity to cement the level of service that is on other cruise lines.
Dalen our room steward was always on the go. He had a massive list of rooms to take care of. Most nights he was vacuuming or running something somewhere.
Both the servers and room stewards were always doing something. It’s never that they are just standing around. But that also left a lot of times where we had no water on the table or getting a refill was near impossible. And trying to track the room steward down was sometimes difficult.
Ship Quality
4 out of 5
Ship is beautiful. People are sloppy. I saw food left at the top of the banisters, coffee cups full left In stairways, elevators and corridors. Why are people like this? It wasn’t the room service dishes - just random things left.
Cabin / Stateroom
5 out of 5
This was a lovely room. It was the corner of the bump out. The couch in the room looked tired but I presume they get a lot of mileage with the massive turnover each week. For two persons it was plenty of room. Three would have been tight.
Ship tip
Don’t sweat the small stuff. It’s a beautiful ship going to a beautiful place and everyone is there to help.
My husband was very impressed with the MSC island. It was clean, pretty and laid out nicely. Food had an obnoxiously long wait so we went back to the ship for lunch.
I have to agree with your crew statement. I've mentioned the same thing before in some of my recent comments. There's a LOT of new crew on staff, and they don't know what the seasoned crew before the pandemic knew. People just come and go now. They're stress out with too much work. I wish it was the same as before, but it will take some time. My cabin steward has been here for only 2 weeks and is not doing a very good job, because he doesn't grasp if someone ask for something it doesn't necessarily mean immediately, but it sure doesn't mean the next day. He still hasn't opened my minibar I asked about yesterday for example. My advice, unfortunately, is to figure out things on your own instead of asking one of the staff members or you will be walking around in circles. Instead of them simply saying, they don't know they will say anything.
Wow, I was impressed they served food for the people waiting to board. They know they will make you wait hours to board so at least they feed you so you’re only angry and not hangry. So many of the MSC issues are easily solved but they either don’t listen to their guests or don’t care to improve. Fortunately they are cheap or they wouldn’t be hear in North America.
Thanks for this amazing review! Great pictures also ~ everything you described was on point! And based on your detailed review, I felt like I was back there again, on my 1st ever MSC cruise/albeit my 13th cruise voyage. I believe the issue w/ the embark/disembarking is the Brooklyn terminal. These issues don’t occur at the Manhattan Terminal…at all! Back in May when I cruised w/ MSC it was the same lame excuse “there’s only 1 gangway functioning”….and in 4 month they still haven’t corrected this problem? Like Seriously 😑⁉️
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