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Brian1958 Cruise Review on MSC Seaside on Sep 01, 2018

MSC Seaside Cruise Review

Reviews: 21
Helpful Votes: 263

Overall rating:

4 out of 5
MSC Seaside

Sail date: September 01, 2018

Ship: MSC Seaside

Reviewed: 5 years ago

Review summary

We just returned yesterday on the MSC Seaside. We had a great Cruise and enjoyed the food in the specialty restaurants, main dining room, and Buffet. Overall the ship is gorgeous and kept clean. The theater shows were very good, the singers, dancers, and other entertainers were very talented and outstanding. The shows themselves are a bit quirky and don't make much sense as far as storylines, however they are very entertaining and the skill and talent of the performers are probably the best I've seen on any ship ever! The staff that we encountered including our wait staff, room Steward, and other staff members were excellent. We didn't encounter any of the rude behavior of other passengers that we had read about. We had an inside cabin on Deck 13, and the room was always kept clean, there was more than enough storage space for us, the beds, pillows, and other amenities I would consider to be excellent. If you like bars of soap then bring your own. There is a soap dish but only shampoo and shower gel is supplied, which is fine for us. We had breakfast a couple of times in the main dining room and it was very good. We had lunch once or twice in the main dining room and it was very good. We had dinner in Butchers cut or the main dining room both were very good. Other times we ate at the buffet on both deck 8 and deck16. We found the food selection and quality to be very good and enjoyed many of the Italian pasta dishes and desserts. We felt the food quality was equal or better than buffets we had experienced on other ships. There were ample activities to keep you busy during the sea days. The pool areas are very nice, and we were generally able to find a lounge chair without much of a problem. The strange thing is that the pool depth is six and a half feet. So people either sit on the edge or hang on to the bars on the side or sit on the steps it's tough to tread water in the middle for long periods of time. The hot tubs surrounding the pool areas were clean, however the water temperature seemed a little on the low side. We used the thermal Spa, which was very nice and we enjoyed it. The gym is nice but we didn't use it. And there was never any problem with long wait times to get drinks at the various bars. We had coffees and Gelato at Venchi and they were very good. We enjoyed our cruise on the MSC Seaside, and we are already booked to go again in March 2018. The boarding and disembarking was flawless and quick. Shortest muster drill ever. Now for a few of the negative points. Many times the crew seemed to be understaffed, and unable to keep up with Maintenance, Cleaning tables in the buffet area and maintaining the public restrooms. There is a low staff to passenger ratio, if you look at the ship statistics as compared to other Cruise Lines. Many times at the buffet it was difficult to get a clean table during the busy peak hours. On three occasions we actually sat with somebody's used cups and dirty dishes which we pushed to the middle of the table after we waited a long time for a clean table. There were many unoccupied tables available, but nobody to clean them. Obviously this should never happen, and it's unsanitary. But during peak hours there wasn't many tables available. Other times they were many tables and they were all clean. Increasing staff in this area would go a long way to remedy this unsanitary situation. Another issue, is that the bathrooms are very under sized for the amount of passengers on the ship. I've never encountered wait times in the men's room on other Cruise Lines, however after meal times and showtimes the sometimes were lines in the men's rooms. The restrooms are definitely under sized. The design of the sinks of which there are only two is ridiculous. It's sort of a nice high-tech design but really doesn't work well. The soap, water and hand dryers are sensor types and built into the top bezel of the sink. The soap dispensers either didn't work or dispensed hardly any soap. The water temperature was cool not even warm and the Hand Dryers were uneffective. Usually the result was a puddle of water on the floor in front of the sinks and people using the paper towels anyway. Without soap and hot water and vigorous hand washing it's a disaster waiting to happen. To add to this issue is the fact that many of the hand sanitizing dispensers located throughout the ship were frequently empty. As you enter the restaurants, and Buffet areas there is nobody observing the passengers and encouraging them to wash their hands at the available sink at the buffet or use the hand sanitizer as they do on other Cruise Lines. I observed many people using the restrooms not washing their hands afterwards, then going straight into the buffet without using hand sanitizer or washing their hands. I also noticed some people grabbing food with their bare hands. However, when the crew noticed this they were told to please use the tongs. Of course this occurs on any cruise ship not just MSC, but there usually is staff members to enforce hand sanitizing. The main dining room had three dinner seatings which I believe was two seatings originally on the Seaside. We had the middle 7:15 seating time which was perfect for us. When the Seaside debuted I believe some passengers were assigned for dinner at the buffet area which they had a table cloths to the tables and I suppose that people aren't happy with this so they now added an extra dinner seating in the MDR. Both yhe Seashore and Impanema MDRs are nice but not much space between the tables. Several times our table cloth had stains from the previous diners and it was apparent that they were rushed to get things ready in between the dinner seatings. They actually play bass beat type music, not very loud but definitely Audible, and generally this type of music is used because Studies have shown that people will eat faster when this is in the background. On a cruise you would prefer a casual relaxing dinner not really a fast food type of experience. Butchers Cut played 80s music which I preferred. Coffee at the end of the meal with dessert is never offered. I didn't see coffee being served at any tables that surrounding us either. I believe this is due to time constraints. We are not slow eaters and the lights would generally go on right as soon as we finished with our dessert which means, ok you are done now get out... Lol. I suppose if we had asked our waiter for coffee he would have gladly brought it to us. The wait staff that we had was excellent. I don't want anyone to take these negative observations as a reason to not book with MSC, because the bad was very small in comparison with the outstanding! It really was a beautiful cruise at a great price with wonderful shows and very good food and I can't wait to go back on the seaside again in March. If MSC were able to rectify some of these minor issues I would have easily given it 5 Stars.
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