Not up to Princess and Royal Caribbean standards

MSC Opera Cruise Review to Europe - Western Europe

Cruises: 7+ cruises
Review: 1
Helpful Votes: 100

Overall rating:

2 out of 5
Verified Review
MSC Opera

10 Night Western Europe (Southampton Roundtrip)

Sail date: July 09, 2014

Ship: MSC Opera

Cabin type: Inside

Cabin number: 8190

Traveled as: Couple

Reviewed: 10 years ago

Review summary

MSC has a long way to go to meet the standards of what experienced cruisers have come to expect from  Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, and Princess. Food on the Opera was poor quality and frequently poorly prepared. This included bones in the fish dishes on 5 of 8 orders. Coffee and tea was not even available during or after meals in the main dinning rooms, only at the buffet. Selection was also limited. The pizza kitchen was the only consistently good. The tendering process was very inefficient as it took 2 hours and 40 minutes finally get to shore and with a stop of only 4 hours, we were left with only 1 and one-half hours on shore. The library was a joke with approx. 20 books in each of 5 different languages, and it was only open for four hours per day. The entertainment was actually pretty good for this size ship. Overall, I would definitely not recommend this ship. MSC as a cruise line is still not ready for prime time.

Ship experiences

Food and Dining

1 out of 5

Entertainment

5 out of 5

Children's Programs

3 out of 5

Service and Staff

3 out of 5

Ship Quality

1 out of 5

Cabin / Stateroom

3 out of 5
Clean and in good shape for the the age of the ship

Ship tip

The pizza is the best thing on the ship.

Ports of call

Southampton (London), England

3 out of 5

Ijmuiden (Amsterdam), Netherlands

5 out of 5
The time here was too short as it required a 90 minute bus ride to the city.

St. Peter Port, Guernsey, Channel Islands

1 out of 5
Not nearly enough time to tender.

Vigo, Spain

3 out of 5
Highlight was access to Santiago de Compostela

Lisbon, Portugal

5 out of 5

Bilbao, Spain

3 out of 5
Unexpectedly large city.

Le Havre (Paris), France

3 out of 5
Ship did not provide excursion to D-day beaches.
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1 Comment

Gwbigdog    2 years ago

Thanks for sharing your cruise.

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