Longimanus

You can take the direct train from bologna to Ravenna. Takes about an hour. From Venice you would have to take a train to Ferrara and transfer there to Ravenna. I believe that takes about 2 hours in total. cruise port in Ravenna is quite a wat from town so from there you will need a taxi or take the local bus.

Interesting to read through this live report. It almost completely lines up with our Divina experience last November. We are a young couple (both 31) from Belgium and have cruised MSC a couple of times before in Europe. We've always enjoyed what they offered at that price point in Europe. We booked our November cruise when they still had the 20% Voyagers Club discount, so that was great and the Colombia, Panam, Costa Rica itinerary pulled us in. For us there is no comparing MSC in Europe to MSC in the Caribbean. I can't put my finger on it, but something just feels off. Service at bars was spotty (at best), our waitstaf seemed uninterested and a lot of people on board were really loud or wanted to be noticed. It felt like the Carnival cruise we took 6 years ago and that made us realise that the low fares MSC is marketing might be attracting the wrong crowd (not that all Carnival cruisers are bad fellow passengers). Our cruise also had a lot of cruisers from Latin/South America (Puerto Rico, Cuba, Argentina, Brasil) and without them being rude per se, their way of behaving just didn't match up with ours. The embarkation/desembarkation was also quite the same. When we got on the ship it had just done the 4 night Ocean Cay cruise and we were on the ship by 11:15 (arrived at the port at 10:45 and it only took 30' because of computer issue at check-in). After our 11 night cruise however, things didn't go that smoothly. Immigration seemed overwhelmed, the process was halted about 4 times because of the amount of people in the terminal and 'extra checks'. We were off the ship only around noon. Seems like they double or triple check the cruises that go that way, but just forget the amount of work that takes. Reminded me of our experience at Miami airport, where we were in line for immigration for over 2 hours. I can assure you that's not what your waiting for after a 10h+ flight. It just felt like a power-play and we were being treated like criminals, even though our personal immigration check only took 2 minutes. A few flights from Latin/South America came in around the same time and the people from those flights seemed to be given a harder time at immigration. It might just be me, but I'm starting to sense a pattern there.

The dutch MSC website has been updated to reflect the changes starting October 1st. Both for caribbean and European cruises. From the wording used I assume all travellers will from then on be treated equally.

The dutch MSC website has been updated as well to reflect changes starting October 1st. Belgian website hasn't been updated yet, so probalby work in progress.

I get what you’re saying and it’s probably going to change pretty quickly (one way or another). But it is just not logical to make a difference based on nationality. We’re just as vaccinated as vaccinated US residents are. Not cruising from an international Port is not an option for someone from Belgium. Plus weather in Europa is pretty bad end of year Rant over 😎

Yet, the US doesn't require a test for international travellers anymore. So it makes 0 sence for MSC to say that US residents don't have to test, while all other have to. Just plain silly, borderline stupid if you ask me. We'll be sailing out of Miami with MSC in November (I know a lot can change by then), but I'll be pretty annoyed if we have to test because we're Belgian, while all the US residents don't have to worry about it.