cruiser82

I noticed this increase as well. I believe I paid $19 for the 10 Piece plan this past October and when I checked the price for my cruise next summer it was $31. I usually travel carry-on only with the "land" part of my vacation first and send out my laundry on Day 1 or Day 2 of the cruise so I only have to pack around 7 days worth of clothing. I too may have to reconsider if I do this for my next cruise.

I bought Airtag wrist strap holders from SHEIN for me and my mom and they worked perfectly for both of us. I think they were $1.90 each.

20 minutes ago, DallasGuy75219 said:

Generally yes, unless the excursion departure is so early that they instruct everyone to do self assist. 

 

Assuming your excursion allows you to check bags, the excursion departure time is timed to give people who checked their luggage time to retrieve it and go through CBP.  So even if you carry all your bags off, you'll still be waiting for people on your excursion who checked theirs.  So IMO you might as well check bags rather than carry them off yourself since your excursion will still be waiting for others who checked bags.

This helps, thank you. We wouldn't mind waiting for people to get their bags, so if there is an option to carry our bags off we'll do that. Will definitely look into the procedure for this specific tour before booking.

1 hour ago, phabric said:

You put your luggage outside your cabin the last night with the colour disembarkment luggage tags you will receive during the week.

 

You pick up your luggage dock side and take to the Coach.

 

The driver will place luggage under the Coach.

 

Once at the airport, the driver will unload all the luggage.  You go into the airport.

 

Do you have to put your luggage outside the cabin on the last night? My mom and I are about to take our first Princess cruise and were considering a debarkation day tour, but I didn't even think to look into whether Princess has self disembarkation, which we've always done on our other cruises.

I received my cabin assignment a few weeks after I booked. About a week ago, I received a new 'booking confirmation' email and saw that my room had changed. It was still the same category, but one deck lower in a better location so I'm happy with this change. I'm about a month and a half from sailing so I wouldn't be surprised if it changes again,

I ordered pizza via the app on my Legend cruise that ended on Sunday. It arrived pretty quickly, in about 20 minutes or so, and I ordered it in the afternoon.

Yes, I saw this last night. I booked my October cruise a few nights ago in case the new changes were less favorable but it turns out everything would have been the same anyway since it’s less than six months away. Oh well, the 5+10 and 5+15 were good while they lasted. RIP 😢

Great news! My cruise was moved to the placeholder so I’m going to give myself a little bit of a break from dealing with MSC before I try to move it to the actual cruise we want. 

1 hour ago, Markanddonna said:

I have a list of MSC phone numbers as they change them daily. I also moved mine to one in Europe in Sept. Let me know how it goes. The agent I spoke with together gave me the impression that it would be MONTHS before we could book. I mentioned that I could book a brand new 2023 sailing right now and she said "it may not stick."  I have spent scores of hours trying to research, call, make changes to my insurance, flights, hotels, etc. 

 

For those souls braver than me, I just read this from someone who is presently on the ship I was supposed to depart from on Sunday:

Well, everyone wonders what happens in Covid-19 situations. We boarded on Sunday 1/9 and went to dinner. They put us with someone else at dinner. A table for six. They were found positive Thursday. At dinner last night we were removed from the dining room. Taken to medical and tested. Negative . We had to pack up and moved to another room. We are here till at least Sunday. No other details yet.

 

Moral of the story: things can happen.

 

I'll definitely keep posting updates, and I appreciate all the updates you've posted as well. 

 

I don't understand why people would be seated with strangers at dinner? I assume there are plenty of tables available due to the low passenger numbers. Doesn't seem like a smart decision by MSC, but then again not many of their decisions seem smart to me.

 

28 minutes ago, cruiser82 said:

Now they’re saying the phone number is out of service?!

Update: I was able to get in touch with them using the phone number in the text they sent me. Moved our cruise to a random cruise as a placeholder, told to call back in two weeks to move it to the cruise I actually want because the issue will definitely be fixed by then…

Now they’re saying the phone number is out of service?!

This is ridiculous. I’ll be calling them shortly as well.

Just got off the phone with MSC and they’re still unable to book for late-2022 and 2023. Will try again tomorrow unless some posts today that they were able to do it.

Just called MSC to move my 1/16 Meraviglia cruise to 1/2023. We finally decided on something and were about to confirm the change when he said he wasn’t able to because of the glitch. I wasn’t too surprised because I checked this thread before calling so I knew others experienced it as well. He also said that it should be fixed by the end of the week but that I could call on Thursday if I was concerned about booking before the 48 hour period ended (I am).
 

In case anyone was following my posts on the other thread (I’ll update there once this is all resolved), our guarantee cabin was assigned and it was one cabin instead of the two it was supposed to be. He was able to find two double occupancy connecting cabins (at a higher price of course) so that’s why we weren’t able to cancel for a refund. I’ll call them again on Thursday. This rep (I believe his name was Samir) was the most helpful and he said he put all of the details in the notes (the fact that I called before the deadline, the rooms we wanted, price, etc) so I’m hoping this all works out. We did lose the $150 OBC we had because apparently it couldn’t be applied to this sailing, nor could the 15+5 discount or All In promo. I’ll ask about those again when I call later this week.

Depends on how I'm feeling about MSC on the day. Could be either Maybe Seek (other) Cruise, or Mostly Satisfying Cruise.

Wanted to give another update since today is the 22nd and that’s when I said I would call MSC again if the website didn’t show two connecting balconies.
 

It doesn’t, so I gave them a call and was on the phone with them for about an hour. Long story short, I couldn’t cancel the cruise without the penalty being imposed (even though the issue was on their end) because they are “still working on it.” I have very little faith that they actually are working on it. I was given a confirmation number which allegedly proves that we will have two connecting balconies but who knows if that number even means anything. Trying to think about our options at this point. Maybe I’ll wait until the cutoff period for the flexible travel guarantee thing (I think it’s 48 hours prior to the cruise?) and then cancel for a future cruise credit if I have to, if either the cabins(s) haven’t been assigned yet or if they have and there’s only one. I know one of the options in the phone menu is to request a refund of the future cruise credit so I’ll do some research into that to see what the eligibility rules are. I’m also going to keep an eye on Omicron to see if the cruise is cancelled, or if it would be worth contacting my credit card issuer to get the rest of the money back if we do cancel and they only give us a partial refund.
 

I have never been so frustrated with a company in my life and will absolutely never cruise with MSC ever again, not even for the free cruise that I have until June 2022 to book. There are far too many other (better) options available to put up with subpar customer service and a company that is this difficult to deal with.

I will continue to post updates.

2 hours ago, dexddd said:

Escalation in MSC lingo is you have been tossed into circular file.

I’m starting to realize that. I’m seeing my mom this weekend, so I’ll update her on this and we’ll discuss our options. I’ll give MSC until the 22nd to make this right, and if the online portal doesn’t show the correct cabins I’ll call them again and probably cancel if my mom is ok with it (and I think she will be).

On 12/8/2021 at 9:42 AM, MacMarauder said:

 

Hello, I was curious if MSC was able to resolve this? I'm in the same boat, from what I can tell they changed my FLA room to one balcony. Having connecting balconies is a big deal to me, so I'm not sure if I should just call and cancel (cruise isn't until Aug 22) or if they have some way to fix this.

Nope, still no resolution. I spoke to them again this week and I was told that it was escalated and that someone would be either calling or emailing me soon. If I don't hear from them in two weeks I'm going to call again and may well consider cancelling because this is ridiculous. I was told that if I did cancel I should be able to get a refund instead of a future cruise credit since the change was because of MSC, so we'll see what happens.

8 hours ago, Morgsmom said:

Just an FYI from personal experience that I went through the credit card registration, got not one but two .01 charges and then once onboard the ship had to re-register my card.  There was absolutely no need to do so during web check in because it didn't carry over the ship.  🙈

What a mess lol.

I tried doing the web check-in on Thanksgiving for me and my mom for our Meraviglia cruise in January. The credit card step did not seem to work for my mom so I tried it again- it still didn't work. I then tried to do my check-in using my credit card and it also did not work. Tried again and still didn't work. At that point I gave up and decided to try again later. A few moments later I received a notification on my phone that my credit card was charged $0.01 (despite the website saying nothing would be charged to the card when I entered it- I do realize that some companies charge a small amount just to make sure the card is active but they explicitly said nothing would be charged). Then, I received an automated email showing that we we now have a $75 balance when our cruise was paid in full back in October. Also, instead of the FLA room category (Super Family Balcony- 2 connecting balcony staterooms), our category was now just a balcony, and appears to be only one balcony.

I called them the next day and spoke to a guy who didn't really seem to know what was going on. He was doing an online chat or something with a supervisor and I was unable to speak with them directly. First they tried saying that we were charged $75 because I tried to change one of our names during the web check in. Not only did I not do that, the option to change the name wasn't even possible during the web check in (the name fields were grayed out). Then, they said that there was a recent change in cabin categories and that's why it changed. I was not notified of this and only learned of this in this thread. I asked him if we still have the two balconies we originally paid for and he couldn't answer, so he gave me an email address to contact and I am currently waiting for someone to call me back. He said I should hear back in 48 hours so I will be giving them a call tomorrow. I checked our reservation later that day and the $75 charge is no longer there, which is good, but the cabin category is still a balcony.

This would be my second cruise with MSC and I have always tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, but this is ridiculous. I have the option to book a free cruise with them due to my casino status but I'm not even sure I want to go on a free cruise with them at this point. I guess we'll see how they resolve this situation. I'll keep you guys updated in case anyone else is in the same situation.

Thank you for your trip report.

I will be sailing in January so I understand things may be different by then, but were you required to take a COVID test 3 days before the cruise as well as being tested at the pier? I thought they were no longer testing at the pier.

I called about an hour ago and had less than a minute wait. I did use the Yacht Club line though, I'm not sure if that made a difference.

Thank you for posting this. I was planning on cruising with family on the Divina in March 2021 and saw the announcement on the website but I didn't know our sailing would be moved to Armonia. My mom had already decided she wanted to cancel due to all of the uncertainty but knowing that MSC would be moving us to Armonia would be a deal breaker for her (she doesn't like older, smaller ships). Now I have the fun task of letting the rest of the group know lol. 

17 hours ago, cellfree said:

Everything should be refunded that has already been paid, if a cruise is cancelled before the 90 day deadline. You do need to call MSC to cancel a cruise. And due to all the drama going on, the refunds are taking longer than usual, even for a "normal" cancellation. I have cancelled cruises in the past and received the funds back onto my credit card within a week. I did cancel a cruise for October 2020 last week and was told it would take up to 60 days to see the funds on my cc.

 Thank you! I’m not looking forward to them having to call MSC if they do decide to cancel but I will say the last time I called was pretty painless.

5 hours ago, Até said:

I cancelled a US booked cruise in mid March that I had paid in full.  The refund for total amount paid was sent for "processing"....

 Can you please let me know how this goes? I hope you get your refund soon.

I’m planning a family cruise on the Divina for March 2021. Two family members sharing a cabin ended up paying the full cruise amount when making the booking online instead of just the deposit due to not fully understanding the website. They haven’t reached out to me yet about cancelling the cruise due to being scared about everything that’s going on but they are first time cruisers so I want to be prepared in case they do ask. I know you can cancel the cruise up to 90 days before the final payment date and receive a full refund but is that only if you haven’t paid for the cruise in full? I’m not sure if the fact that the cruise is already 100% paid for changes anything as far as if they can still cancel without penalty even if we’re well outside the 90 day period.

Thank you in advance!