CarbonRiver

We just got our upgrade offers for our summer Med sailing on Splendida and I think I'm going to try for the YC upgrade as the ship will likely be sold out and pretty packed. There doesn't appear to be any actual YC inventory available for our sailing (and I've read on here that sometimes they might use these offers just as a way to collect marketing data), but the "offer strength" gauge says that even the minimum bid is in the "Excellent" chance range. It doesn't really change wanting to put in for it, but just curious if anyone has a sense for if the gauge has any actual bearing on reality? I couldn't find anything about that in searching on here. Interestingly all the cheaper upgrade categories, like for a sealed window suite, show as must less strong offers on the gauge so it seems they are also trying to steer towards the much more expensive YC offer. Also, we are family of 4 so need the sofa bed for the kids (who upgrade for free which is nice), but on deckplans and other sites it isn't clear that the YC Deluxe Suite rooms have a double sofa bed. I assume they won't take the upgrade request if they don't have a room that actually fits us, but anyone know if those sofas do pull out or otherwise have horror stories of not fitting in an upgrade room that we should be worried about? Generally happy with the cabin we currently have picked (the x-large balcony where Splendida curves in at the middle), so wouldn't want to mess that up for anything except the YC experience. Thanks!

Not sure if you are still looking but we just booked on Splendida, which is the sister ship I believe with the same general cabin layout. Saw a tip on here for some of the cabins where the forward and aft sections bump out from the middle. That reviewer said the balcony in those cabins was as large as it looks on the map and amazing. The deckplans link below shows cabin 10087 with a note that it has a 124sqft balcony. That is the cabin we booked on Spendida for our Med cruise next June. Had to sort of hunt through the options to find it while booking. Giving a tip and hijacking thread a bit in hopes anyone might have thoughts on if the noise from the adjacent lifts will be so bad as to outweigh the larger balcony space. We're traveling with 4 in our cabin, so the extra space has a high premium for us. https://www.cruisedeckplans.com/ships/deckbydeck.php?ship=MSC-Preziosa&deck=10

Thank you Adam! That is the same trip and it sounds like the process is fine. Looking at each of the ports that was my impression as well that there appear to be lot of things we could do independently or potentially with a more private tour (easier when taking young teens in tow). Anything that was particularly good or not worth seeing? I expect the MCS shipboard experience will be great, if not over the top, but have been trying to convince my wife not to worry about the reviews. "Will we be able to actually have any time in these places" was the biggest sticking point, as we're both a bit worried about feeling "trapped" on a ship no matter how much there is to do. This itinerary seems to have a lot of interesting stops though where can scratch the itch to go explore somewhere new each day.

Newbie to both cruising (we did Alaska on RC back in 2007) and MCS in particular. Looking at a 9 day Med cruise on Splendida based largely on the ports (Greece and Turkey) and price - almost half the cost of a comparable 7 day RC cruise through Greece for family of 4. We're focused more on the "moving hotel" aspect and getting time in the destinations than the ship experience itself, so comfortable for the price with ignoring most of the negative MCS reviews and not having the RC rock wall and mini-golf etc. That said, it sounds like getting off the ship can be slow/disorganized (or worse, depending on the reviewer). I believe that most ports on the itinerary would be docked rather than tendering (not doing Santorini). Can anyone provide experience with how bad the lines are for exiting the ship and how long we should budget for that before we are actually able to start touring? Is it significantly worse if you are not going through the process of getting onto an MCS sold excursion? YC is full for the sailing we could make (at least for 4 beds and two cabins there is not an option), otherwise would have upgraded just for the priority exits. The time periods in most of the ports seem like they'd leave us plenty of time for what we'd likely want to achieve assuming we can get off the ship within an hour or so of when they say it is in port. We can live with a bit of a disorganized shuffle to get off, but worried that we should be assuming we're loosing more than an hour because of poor crowd management. Sorry if has been asked before recently, but couldn't find anything that was much more specific than "it was disorganized".