Seas2mountains

Yes, agree! Thank you to all who take us along. I’d like to add @YVRteacher and @CruzinMel for their most recent Live reviews, too.

We typically choose NCL but most recently sailed in YC on MSC Divina earlier this month. We sailed in the Haven on NCL Getaway in September. MSC excels with YC embarkation as you get escorted after dropping luggage at the YC tent to a special YC security line and then to YC check-in. We also liked how the YC experience included premium wines like Oberon Cabernet with no need to pay for P+ and also included unlimited but sloooooooow wifi. On MSC Divina, the YC restaurant is in the aft area of the ship in Le Muse. The food and service were equal or slightly better than Haven. The menu does change daily for lunch and dinner. The dress code was not enforced. People came to dinner and were seated with tank tops, shorts and flip flops. If you don’t want to eat lunch at Le Muse, the YC One Pool area can make a burger cooked to order and had buffet items. There were more food options in One Pool on newer MSC ships like we experienced on Seaside. While we had better YC entertainment on Seaside in Top Sail than we experienced on Divina, it was still nice to be in the lounge rather than in other areas of the ship. The common areas of the ship outside of YC were a nightmare at times as it was so crowded. I’ve never seen people pack in a hot tub on a ship like we saw on MSC. The bar service was close to not existent or had long waits at the bar at entertainment venues. We absolutely loved Ocean Cay and the special service at Ocean House. Our next two cruises are on NCL in Club Balcony cabins but we will cruise MSC YC later this year knowing the the trade off with entertainment in the evening. Here are some photos of Ocean Cay and room service menus. The room service pizza on MSC is amazing!

MSC in Yacht Club or not? We just got off MSC Divina in YC last month. The areas outside of YC were packed and reviews posted by those not in YC make it sound like it was not a pleasant cruise due to the crowds, lines for food and the food quality. The reviews might be helpful to know what to expect. Was your last NCL cruise before your October cruise in 2010? That’s really a long time and I can imagine a lot changed in 12-13 years.

Yes, for NCL. See article below. No for other cruise lines. https://www.travelmarketreport.com/Cruise/articles/Cruise-Lines-Return-to-Traditional-Muster-Drills

@CruzinMel Thank you so much for taking the time to provide so many details and photos! So glad to hear you had such a great time! We will be on the Escape at the end of May with one of our sons and his fiancée. Your review is super helpful to know what to expect. For your Jewel cruise, will you be going Seward to Vancouver or vice versa? I highly recommend doing the harbor tours to glaciers and wildlife when in Seward. We have done that cruise three times - twice from Seward and once from Vancouver. It’s my favorite cruise destination for sure. You and your DH will have a fabulous time.

If you are in the Yacht Club, you will have an amazing experience especially with the YC restaurant, Top Sail and the One Pool. If you aren’t in YC, you should read the recent reviews on CC for the ship so you know what to expect. We are frequent NCL cruisers and we love the YC but would not cruise MSC without being in YC. We will be back on NCL and while we love the Haven experience, we tend to choose Club Balconies and feel comfortable without the Haven, too. We have never seen so many people packed in a hot tub and it can get really crowded in lounges and common areas compared to what we have experienced on many NCL cruises. The buffet on MSC did not seem to have as many options as we saw on NCL.

Thank for your suggestions. I considered that this was only a 3 night cruise but Generation X only has one more night on a 4 night cruise. By night one, the special treatment she received from the butler on day one surpassed what we experienced throughout the cruise. We still had a wonderful cruise and will return to YC. My husband is one of the sweetest and kindest people I’ve known and he goes out of his way to treat people with respect. While only my husband met our butler on day one, it was difficult to build the relationship when we didn’t see him again until day three. While the butler offered the bottle of booze to take home during all conversations with him and he asked if we wanted anything special in the refrigerator, other than directing my husband to the room service and pizza delivery menu, we didn’t know that they could provide surprise drinks and surprise treat plates not requested. We definitely will be asking for daily cheese plates in the future now that we realize it is an option. When in Top Sail, we asked the butler on duty there if we could have a pizza delivered to be enjoyed in the lounge. The butler said they would be happy to have the pizza or other room service items delivered to our room but discouraged guests from having food delivered to Top Sail. I mentioned that we remembered guests on Seaside having food delivered to Top Sail but he was firm that it was not something they did on Divina. I do not remember seeing any guests in Divina Top Sail with any food delivery. Just a few days later, Generation X posted a photo of her pizza ordered and enjoyed in Divina Top Sail. It’s the inconsistency that is making me wonder about the difference in treatment. On our cruise, some guests wore shorts, tank tops and flip flops to dinner in Le Muse which also made me wonder how the staff chooses to enforce policies or not. How do they choose when to say yes and when to say No to the identical question is the mystery here that I am trying to figure out.

@Norwegian Cruiser 73 you are very welcome. There was a QR code in the room that we scanned to bring up the room service menu in many languages. I only saved the English version. Have a wonderful cruise!

Do you have any suggestions for how you communicate to the butler so you receive those special somethings each day? Or do you tip up front?

Thank you for responding as it is very interesting that we had similar experiences. Was Kevin your butler, too? We did see him on Friday but not on Saturday. We did see him at Ocean Cay on Sunday. That is too bad on the Coke Zero. I am also a little confused with the roles on MSC YC as we thought we had cabin stewards but some are calling them the junior butlers. We were disappointed that the dress code was not enforced at Le Muse. The kids sure were dressed nice and in many cases much nicer than some adults! You will have to read the review of the person who is on the ship now and is posting her experience on the Celebrity boards. Her experience is so much different than ours with the same butler. I'm afraid she is setting the Celebrity people up for disappointment as she is making it seem like everyone gets VIP treatment including invites to private cabanas without having to pay for it. It sounds like she is having a great time and I am happy for her.

You are welcome! I thought it might be helpful as on our first YC cruise, I don't remember seeing a menu but we did have pizza delivered but didn't know what kinds were offered. We ordered pizza at night and it was delicious. When we asked the butler in Top Sail on this cruise if we could have the pizza delivered to Top Sail like we saw occur on Seaside, he said that they discouraged this and would deliver the pizza to our room but did not want us eating it in Top Sail. The concierge took the order and coordinated it with a butler who wasn't always our assigned butler. The person who is posting on the Celebrity board who is doing a live review on Divina posted a photo of her with a pizza in Top Sail so I don't think this "rule" is consistently followed.

Yes, I completely agree how different the YC experiences seem to be as it seems to me that in the Haven most seem to experience much more similar experiences with the butlers especially with the fairly consistent daily snacks. If you look at the NCL boards, you might find a great post by @Sthrngary that suggests giving a written letter to the butler on the first day. I think the communication is so critical in getting the extra perks. Since the person who is currently on Divina in YC posting on the Celebrity board seems to be very experienced in the Celebrity Retreat, she may have a system with how she communicates what she wants is what I assume. I don't think I expect as much as she is posting about getting as special perks. I think I may consider putting those requests in writing as even in the Haven it took a few days before the butler realized we really meant that we only wanted a cheese plate each day. I hope you have a wonderful cruise! I look forward to reading about it!

I can definitely understand how challenging it would be to get in a hot tub. I really appreciated that you were doing a live review before our cruise as it prepared me for what to expect. I agree that they can't accommodate those high numbers without it seeming like things were crazy and it was why people couldn't help bumping into each other in the common spaces. For the lounge above the casino, I think we were seated where we didn't notice the smoke when sitting but my husband definitely smelled it when we walked by that area. Yes, it did not make sense why Cruise Critic didn't work for me especially when trying to get to the MSC section. Hmmm. I'm glad you also enjoyed your cruise. Thank you again for taking the time to do a live review.

This is a great review. However, this was not the kind of service we experienced from the same butler, Kevin, on the cruise immediately preceding the cruise the OP is on now. My husband briefly met Kevin on the first night of a 3 night cruise where my husband was asked if he wanted a free bottle of wine or booze for the room. He declined as the Top Sail lounge was so close to our room. I didn’t meet Kevin until the last night of the cruise when we arrived at Ocean Cay and he asked again about the free bottle of booze. We declined. If I had known all the fancy cheese palates and desserts as this OP experienced could be delivered to the room, we would have gladly accepted. I’m curious if anyone typically receives daily unrequested treats like this from the YC butler?

Here is the room service menu and pizza menu from the Divina YC as of Monday of this week.

Final thoughts. Our most recent cruise before this one was on the Haven on NCL Getaway in September. MSC has perfected the experience and special treatment for check-in and security for YC. It is so smooth and easy for MSC YC guests compared to the Haven security and check-in experience. The staff in YC really are fantastic and they all made us wish we could have stayed longer and we will definitely look at returning to MSC YC once or twice this year. Sorry NCL. As this was a holiday weekend cruise from Friday-Monday with 4000+ pax, it was absolutely crazy in some areas of the ship. I have never seen so many people crammed into a hot tub in my life. In the evening in the Jazz Club area, some parents who were distracted by their phones or life let their kids do whatever they wanted including jumping on sofas with other guests on them, climbing on top of tables and other furniture and jumping from furniture. We were relieved we could go back to the YC area where the kids were so well behaved. There were some really well dressed kids in YC, too. So adorable! On our last morning, we appreciated being able to hang out in Top Sail until just before 10am as we had an afternoon flight. It was super easy and fast to do the facial recognition in customs and be at our Uber. If we were to do this cruise again, we would probably ask our butler for afternoon or evening cheese trays and some other special requests as we did not take advantage of the options available with room service.

Room service and drink menus.

Sunday dailies when at Ocean Cay.

Ocean House appetizer salads and a few more photos from the YC beach. We did bring water shoes and they are definitely needed on the YC beach.

While our Ocean Cay stop was reduced by a day, we made the most of the scheduled stay on Sunday which was extended from 1pm to 5:30pm. For us, the weather was perfect in the 60’s as that meant it wasn’t too hot or humid. We waved off the butlers who tried to get us to ride in one of the big golf carts to get to Ocean House. We easily got 18,000 steps wandering around the beautiful island and the cruise ship when we returned. Lunch at Ocean House was really nice and makes the island very special for YC guests.

We really liked Alta Duo in La Luna bar. We listened to them two of the three nights. We were spoiled by a duo and pianist who rotated on Seaside YC in Top Sail early 2019. We wished Divina had more than the pianists who rotated inconsistently in Top Sail. While the daily listed their performance times as being from 6:45pm-11:00pm, when we arrived about 7:30pm on Sunday night, we were told by the pianist that he had finished his first set. When we asked when he would be back for the second set, he said it would be at 9:15pm. On Saturday night the pianist never returned after the first set. When we asked the concierge, we were told the pianist had to fill in at another venue. We would have appreciated a sign to indicate that he would not be returning as we waited, and waited, and waited until we finally thought to ask. We cruise frequently on NCL and appreciate how their dailies list the specific performance times for each musician, duo or group so we know when the performers are performing or on a break.

Lunch in Le Muse.

We had a great cruise on Divina in YC. The staff and food at Le Muse were top notch for each meal. The Wi-Fi connection did not like going to Cruise critic so I could not update the attempts to continue the live review.

@GenerationX are you using the ship Wifi to post your updates or your cell phone plan? I attempted to do a live review on the cruise before yours but got blocked going on CC on both devices (iPhone and iPad) after making updates. I could go to any other website or social media site but it would not connect to the MSC pages on CC. This was reported to have been a problem for another CC live review poster before me, too. I was using the ship wifi the whole time and had my cell phone on airplane mode so I would not use the data from my cell phone plan.

First, this is an excellent review! Thank you, @GenerationX! We just got off this same exact cruise with the same butler, Kevin, on Monday of this week. We definitely need to do a better job of communicating that we would love a cheese plate every night or even in the afternoon along with our other preferences. We did not realize that was possible. @mnpurple The staff will treat you well especially in Le Muse and on One Pool. I wish @GenerationX had cruised before me as we would have known to make these special requests.