unikitty

I really feel for anyone booked on the next few sailings of the Jade. It’s a terrible situation to be in. I really don’t understand why some of the posters here feel the need to stick the knife in. 
We are booked on The Jade in April. I am struggling to see how any European ports will accept The Jade until there has been some sort of quarantine, be it self imposed or enforced. We have not reached our Pay in full date (40 days for Ireland), so I’m thinking of cancelling and just loosing the deposit. We like to play Ryanair roulette with flights so luckily have no flights purchased either. There is just too much uncertainty with the situation at present.

P.S. I purchase year round travel insurance. And just like other posters have stated , there is no cancel for any reason insurance available here.

We are booked on a 10 day Europe and Greek Island Cruise during the Easter Holidays.

its the best deal I’ve ever found, especially during school hols.

Things to note. I’m booking from Europe. Our deposits are non refundable. If the price of a cruise goes down we don’t have the option to get our deposit back and rebook.

The option we do have is to upgrade our cabin as long as the overall price is any bit higher than the original booking.

We normally deal with prices after tax in Europe.  I always get a total cruise price first and then divide by 4 to get my costs straight in my head. When I first joined Cruise Critic I remember thinking that Americans were getting all the best deals before I realised that Americans usually list a price before tax. In general, companies in Europe are not allowed list prices without tax to the general public, only to trade. 

Our cruise is costing 2,400 Euro total. That’s 4 people, inside cabin, drinks  package for 2 and associated service charge. In my mind that’s 240 a day including drinks which I feel is a great price. We booked under the latitudes 20 percent off promo.

if we booked today it would be over 4000.
 

Also our final payment is 40 days before the cruise. 

Ive never found any rhyme or reason in getting a deal. I just usually have a few dates in mind and keep checking. I do find it frustrating that the goalposts move so often. You really have to do the leg work to keep up with changes. We always book a sale away cabin. Never had a bad cabin yet. We did a 10 day on the Gem 2 years ago and that included the service charge. We have a sale away this time too. It didn’t include service charge but did include drinks package. We got cabin assigned almost immediately. Seems like a good location.  
 

l

 

I've done 5 guarantees with NCL and 1 Sale Away Rate. The Sale Away included the daily service charge and we got onboard credit (not sure why we got the credit, it just appeared on onboard account), the guarantees included nothing.

All 6 cabins were midship, high floor, good locations. They were all assigned within a couple of days of booking regardless of how far in advance I booked.

We don't have much preference regarding cabin location so it suits us to book guarantee.

On the Meraviglia private sun deck there was a small bar. This was one of the easiest places to get drinks especially bottles of water. The drink choices were pretty limited but there was never a queue.

And they served prosecco in wine glasses which was a large glass. The flutes fell over in the wind.

Downside to the sun deck was the cold hot tub, no tables for drinks and there were a lot of entrances just roped off which a lot of passengers ignored so the stewards spent most of the time telling people to leave which did not prove for a relaxing time.

There were always loungers available though which was nice.

We have done 2 MSC cruises in the last 12 months. Aurea on the Meraviglia and Fantastica on the Divina,

We had a fine times on both but only fine. It's very hard to pinpoint exactly what was missing but we have decided MSC is not for us and we are coming back to NCL.

If I had to name a couple of things:

Our kids did not enjoy MSC kids club, they went once, there were no family activities. I never had a nice cocktail on MSC, we ended up sticking to prosecco and beer. We ended up with so many left over drinks vouchers , I think we left the ship with about 10 large bottles of San Pelligrino. The vouchers are great value but if there's nothing you want to drink then it's a bit of a false economy. The hot tubs were all cold. There were no free crepes, no free scoop ice cream. Buffet was boring. Staff not too helpful. The balcony room on the brand new Meraviglia was the worst. Depressing decor and nowhere to put anything, cigarette butts all over the balcony every morning.I actually preferred our inside room on the Jade. All small things I know, but all the things we enjoy on NCL.

And yes, some of my fellow Europeans were quite difficult to tolerate. I've always come across a couple of rude people on cruises and they are usually easy enough to ignore. Not so on MSC.

Just to give you an example. People embark and disembark the Meraviglia at every stop in the Med. We were at a port in Italy and I was going up in the lift. The lift stopped and about 10 passengers got in with suitcases. However they wanted to go down. When the lift continued up they all started yelling and pointing at me. Then the lift stopped at the next floor and they held the lift open with a suitcase and kept yelling at me. I only speak a bit of Italian but I think they had been stuck on an express lift for a while and they thought I had an override card or something. It was scary. So I climbed over a few suitcases and got out of the lift and continued up the stairs.

In retrospect it's kind of funny, but at the time it was a bit intimidating.

MSC is great value though, if you can sail Aurea to get the private sun deck and dont have kids I would recommend it.

I travel at least 4 times a year with my kids. This includes 3 different cruise lines and about 30 countries over the last 10 years. I've been on Ncl as a solo parent twice in the last 3 years. I've never once been asked a single question about my other half in relation to my kids.

US immigration did ask where my husband worked once but that's about it.

I've never even thought about having to have a letter.

I do have one friend who was stopped in an airport because her son has a different surname. Other than that I've never heard of anyone I know getting a document signed.

I'm only speaking from personal experience though. If you feel better with a letter than you should certainly go ahead and get one.

Are there any occasions when free drinks are handed out anymore? I may be mixing up cruise lines but I thought one of the nights drinks were handed out in the atrium area before dinner, compliments of the captain?

I was beginning to wonder if that is the case although it was our P.C.C. In the U.K. who originally told us about it.

You should send them a quick email to confirm. I'm 40 days out and I know I haven't been able to bid unfortunately. I'm in Ireland and my PCC is in Malta. I've been using her since it was a generic .eu booking site for European guests so I find she is usually pretty clued in to

what's going on.

Please can someone tell me how you get to bid for an upgrade. We are due to sail in 62 days time. There is still availability for all types of cabins/suites. I paid the final payment a week ago but still haven't heard anything.

 

Thanks in advance for your help.

I was told by my P.C.C. that the bidding process is not offered to European guests. If you want to upgrade you will just have to ask for the price to upgrade I,d say.

I have booked the 91dollar package but I cannot find pic of what wine it is anywhere. I found the house wine okay on The Meraviglia so I'm going to chance it. Usually I'm fine with simple Vin de Table, I'm not too fussy.

I will be sailing on Divina in 3 weeks and will try to take note of the exact wine types available. Let me know if you have better luck.

We got pints of Tiger and Franzikaner on The Meraviglia. We used to bring them back to our balcony during the day to drink. The staff were bit weird about the glasses though. They used to make us promise to bring them back to the pub. They reckoned the cabin attendants would throw them away if we left them in the cabin.

On The Meraviglia we were not offered a kids Menu in the Italian restaurant but they gave my son plain spaghetti and didn't charge. It's a tiny kitchen, I don't think they have food that isn't on the menu.

We didn't bring our kids to Butchers Cut but the kids next to us there were eating off the main menu. I can only speak to The Meraviglia though. It could be different on the other ships.

Wow, the hot tub looks great.

Btw, the only scoop ice cream we could find that is included in the drinks package is at the water park.

There's only 5 or 6 flavours but they do change 1 or 2 each day.

Have a great time.

We went to The Viaggio Show this week. I booked it on the app the morning of the show.

The show was good and we enjoyed it but I'm not sure it was worth the price. We queued up about 35 mins before the show and still only got the back seats. It was quite short too.

We found the shows in the main theatre to be just as good to be honest. The dancers were great and really upbeat. And we only had to arrive a few mins before the performance and there was no problem bringing a drink in.

We got the dining package and found it a bit of a mixed bag. Butchers Cut was the best. Great food and service with one disappointing dessert. Sushi was nice but they forgot our dessert, we asked a few times but in the end gave up as we wanted to go to a show.

Italian was not enjoyable. Maitre d yelled at us for asking for a table by the window and told us that we couldn't sit there because we were 3 and it was a 4 top? We asked him what other table suited a party of three and he glared at us, picked up the phone and started talking and waved us away towards a male waiter who seated us at a table away for the window. Then our server came out from back of house. She was oblivious to what had happened and suggested we move to the window to see sunset as we were the only customers in the entire place. We told her we would love to but then the Maitre d yelled at her. It was terrible. He was a real nasty piece of work. Then we tried to order 3 courses from menu but it's not allowed. You have to have starter and dessert and only 1 choice from the pasta and the meat course. And then the food was pretty plain in the end. It was an unpleasant experience.

We found the main dining room food to be perfectly pleasant. They were always flexible in the main dining room and let us order as much as we liked. So just like the Cirque show I don't think the package was really worth it.

We had been worried about the main dining room but we ended up really enjoying it. We found all the servers in all the dining areas to be lovely.

Hope I'm not coming across as too negative, we just had one bad experience tbh. We found all the included services to be great.

I'm a bit further south, I,m looking at the Galtees. Funny how similiar it is.

I was just about to reply to you, Mark, when the sunset here distracted me

 

 

 

 

 

Anyway ....................... I hope they'll have them on Divina. She's stocked up in Miami; Meraviglia gets stocked up in Genoa so is probably Italian sourced lamb. I must say it's as good as Irish lamb .............. and that's saying something! ;p

Wow Beamafar,

I have a very similiar aspect from my home and I watched that very same sunset. I wonder if we are neighbours😀

It was a lovely end to a pretty dull rainy day.

L

Hi Ross,

I hope you all have a great time on the Meraviglia. We will be onboard in

3 weeks and we also have a nine year old boy. I am interested to know how he gets on in the kids club if he decides to go. My son is worried there won't be English speaking kids to hang out with. He used to be fine playing with anyone but now he's suddenly become more self conscious around kids he can't understand. C,est la vie!,

Also is it really that difficult to find somewhere to sit on the pool deck. I was thinking of bringing a fold up chair and mini table but that may be over kill?

Looking forward to your review. We are pretty close to Marseille this week and the weather is lovely. Not as crazy hot as June.

L

This beach break looks interesting. Which beach is it at, how much is it to get there by taxi?

Thanks Laura

I'm worried when you say there was bad behaviour towards your kids Luigi. Is this from the staff? It sounds terrible. I can deal with bad food and premixed drink but I really can't accept bad behaviour towards my kids.

Or maybe you mean other children were badly behaved?

wow,

The food in Butchers Cut looks so much nicer than the MDR. I think I might have to splash out on the 3 restaurant package. Is it just me or do all the MDR meals look like canteen meals.

To be honest, normally we just eat in the buffet in the evening on cruises. With kids I always found it the easiest option. Now the kids are getting a bit older I would really like the chance to sit down and relax and be served dinner.

Is the sun deck adults only or can the kids join us up there? It looks perfect for me, nice and shaded.

L

Thanks for that info.

Heineken isn't my favourite but I do like a few of the options in the pub.

Although my husband has this idea that the Heineken in mainland Europe is nicer than here in Ireland. Mmmmm! Not sure about that.

I will have to give it a try at least once.

L

Hi Kikki,

Still enjoying your review.

Bread and desserts are my weakness so I'm not sure if it's good or bad that they are the highlight in the MDR lol!

I was wondering if you could ask them a question if you happen to be in The Pub. I was would like to know if all the draft beers there are included in The Basic Drinks Package and especially if the Cider on tap is included,

Hope you have a lovely day in Italy,

Thanks L

Great review so far, your aerial pics are amazing. It's really getting me excited for our trip in August.

I think you might have snapped a pic of the Disney Magic at the port. That's the ship that got our family addicted to cruising.

We have the Aurea package too and are looking forward to reading your review once on board.

I hope you have a wonderful cruise, keeps the pics coming please.

L

Hi,

I think I read that there will be a rope walking/zip line area near the water slides? I would like to know what the age and height restrictions are for this.

Also if it would be possible to find out if the kids club can provide phones to parents of kids with disabilities. My son has ASD and on NCL they were able to provide us with a phone and call us if he was ready to leave. I have asked MSC phone reps this but I have been given a few different answers.

TIA

L

Funnily enough the only ship I've ever seen rubbish dumped from was The Disney Magic. Woke up on a transatlantic cruise to see dozens of frozen chicken floating past the window. It was quite surreal. I just assumed a freezer had malfunctioned so the lot had to be dumped.

Can't speak to MSC yet, have 2 booked in the next 6 months so I guess I'll find out.