McHaggis69

Butchers Cut was good. The restaurant itself is lovely and the staff very attentive. My wife (not being a steak fan) chose the halibut main course, and although the fish was well cooked - the dish itself she found a little dry. Sitting on a bed of brown rice it lacked any dressing or sauce to lift the dish. I had an 8oz fillet which was cooked to perfection (medium rare). The steak comes with 4 small sauce pots so you dont really need to choose what to have. It was delicious. Overall - probably a solid 8 out of 10. I can’t actually recall the cost now, but I stuck with the red wine on my beverage plan so it was just the food we paid for. What I do recall was expressing how inexpensive it actually was.

We understand there are around circa2500-3000 passengers onboard. the vessel generally feels quiet apart from possibly the main pool/sundeck area today which was busy as we walked through. The aurea sundeck has been quiet. We’ve had comfortable seating in the ‘cabanas’ every time we’ve visited. The buffet appears to only be about half used so we always head to a quieter section to eat. spa appointments have been easy to get, but they do try and sell the unpopular 8.30am slots! Just decline and get a more reasonable time. We are not aware of any closed areas but we haven’t tried all areas. Bars and casino are very very quiet. The other night the sports bar only had about a dozen people in. The ‘white night’ event on the main pool deck last night seemed to be very poorly attended. Maybe we left too early? Service in all areas has been pretty swift. Strangely some of the bar staff dont know their own menus and you have to show them the drink - on their menu - that you’ve asked for! in casino last night I ordered a drink at the bar and the young girl clearly forgot about me. About 5 minutes later another bartender asked if i was waiting for a drink and when i explained he brought my drink within seconds.

Yup - we know the rules - I’m simply reporting the actuality on board - I didn’t intend to be critical for anyone choosing not to wear a mask. Coming from Scotland where mask use only ended 18th April and many people are still using them, it was a bit of a change to be just about the only people using.

We only have the OP’s word the ‘company messed up’… Its possibly more likely many passengers turned up ay before their allocated embarkation time that has caused the delay. We all know it happens - many people admit to it on these very forums. They get to the cruise terminal at 11.30am even although their boarding time might be 2pm. Don’t know for sure what the actual reason is - I’m only surmising a possible scenario 🤷🏼

We are first time Seashore cruisers with a couple of days to go. Currently on way to MSC private island before returning to Miami on 30th April. Thoughts and observations - The ship itself is amazing - shiny and new and very much a different layout to our former RC cruises. We are booked Aurea class with the premium extra drinks package. Embarkation was a mixed event. We arrived by taxi to the dock and were stopped and asked for our cv19 tests on multiple occasions, but not to show the actual test - just to ask that we had it - the Answer the first and 4th time was ‘yes’! We were NOT tested at the port. We joined a priority queue (but we had to ask where it was after being directed to the normal queue) and were quickly processed with photo and checks of all cv19 documents - the test results and vax docs We got on board and were a bit scunnered to find no state rooms were ready so we had an hour or two to kill (we boarded at about noon) carrying hand luggage around. We had an issue activating our cruise cards at the terminals but a quick visit to guest services sorted it out. Aurea class we thought included free minibar and free breakfast in room. We’ve been charged to refill the minibar (so I guess by ‘free’ they mean ‘until you drink it all’). We also got charged for our second breakfast in room on day two. No idea why. I guess what they mean by free breakfast in room is ‘free breakfast one time in your room’? The main dining room for us is Central Park. The food in our opinion is just okay. Nothing to write home about but generally well done. We were surprised at dinner to find you are limited to a choice of 2 red wines. Happily our waiter brought me a bottle of what I actually wanted and we were not charged. If you are used to eating higher end food, then the restaurant falls a little bit short. Service is great and the staff universally friendly. The spa (including free massage for both if us) has been great - a really nice experience. I’ve already opened another thread about our neighbours smoking on their balcony. Its taken 3 visits from customer services to get them to stop, but to be fair to MSC we got a call this afternoon to ask if it had been resolved so good follow up there. Excursions have all been well organised, but it is a real shame so many people just dont listen to what they are being told and all those small delays while they try and understand what is going on adds delays for everyone who is already in line/tickets out/knows where to go etc. The premium extra drinks package has generally been amazing - just about anything I want on the menus I can have. Menus - we are still using scanned barcodes to bring the menu up on your mobile device and its a bit of a pain. CV19 restrictions on that point still in place, but nothing beats having an actual drinks menu to look at physically. On CV19 - staff all wearing masks but very few passengers are. We did for about 4 or 5 days but have stopped now. The biggest bugbear is the buffet. We are all using shared serving utensils. Surely we should all be given disposable gloves?? Serving utensils at a buffet are the no1 cause of spread of any contagion - not just cv19 - you just dont know if the person serving their eggs has been picking their arse before doing so and you then have to use the same utensil. Further, because perspex screens remain in place, its very difficult to reach underneath and serve yourself - you have to pretty much duck down and angle your arm to get what you want. We have our own hand sanitiser we use after serving our food from the buffet. The buffet food is really quite basic and often cold. Eggs benedict with cold congealed sauce is not appetising. Having said that the choice is reasonably varied so we’ve found something to eat every time we have visited. What has been really quite annoying is the hard upsell on the ‘pay’ restaurants. It has been *incessant*. Constantly pestered by staff from the Butchers Cut no matter where you are on the ship to sign up to a signature restaurant package. As it happens we did sign (after 3 days being pestered) and are at Butchers Cut tonight, but come on MSC - 4 days of pressure selling is embarrassing. The elevators… what is everyones problem? We have found them 19 times of 20 to be fast, efficient and more often than not empty. Twice we have had to wait what I might call an unreasonable period of time for a car to arrive but as far as I can tell thats been because someone has been ‘holding’ the lift doors open on another floor - while late arriving family members get on board. The lifts are easy to operate - touch a screen to tell it what floor - the system tells you what car - and you then get on board. Simple and does away with my own personal hate of people who dont know how traditional elevator call buttons work and they press the up arrow even when they want to go down and vice versa - doesn’t happen with this system. MSC for me APP is a monster - particularly where the spa is concerned. Whatever you book at the spa should show up on your personal itinerary on the app, but our experience is its almost always wrong. Same with billing. Was shouting at the wife for spending $500 in the spa which somehow reduced to $300 later in the day with no rational explanation. The app is simply not reliable enough. Overall it has been thoroughly enjoyable. Happy to try and answer any questions if I can in next few days. Although like all ‘reviews’ it might seem I have noted all the issues/problems - we really can’t fault MSC and would happily cruise again with them.

Ok - thanks for responses. they were smoking half an hour ago again so i called guest services. They told me someone would call on them right away. guess what? Half an hour later they are smoking again. Not even hiding the cigarettes and lighter. I’ve called guest services again, but next time is a visit to guest services to ask to be moved. Its ridiculous how much I paid for this holiday and getting cigarette smoke in my cabin every time we open the doors.

Hi, so the party in the cabin next to us on MSC Seashore seem quite happy to smoke on their balcony. Problem is - I know every time they’re doing it as the smell wafts its way in to our cabin when our doors are open. Who should I discretely have a word with and will MSC staff do anything about it? I’d like to leave this with MSC staff to handle rather than directly confronting our neighbours.

Logged in today and see Cayman Islands has been added back to my itinerary! Good news.

Hi - any advice appreciated. Our cruise is 91 days away and I went online tonight to do our web checkin. All was fine with the form other than uploading or taking a security photo. The guidance is pretty basic and at first I got a message the files were too big - 250k max. I've reduced the size of the photos and am now getting an error message every time I try to upload them. When I hit next to go to the next stage I get the same error when trying to upload my wifes photo and this message - "You haven’t filled all the necessary information for the passenger of the cruise, the documents will be ready as soon as you provide all the data needed". Anyone advise what might be going wrong?