squigglydownunder

Send an email to: mycruiseinvoice@msccruisesusa.com with your booking number in the subject line. They will respond with your final invoice.

The shipwreck itself is cool, but the water was pretty rough out there which meant you were spending a lot of the time making sure you weren't about to go in a no-zone or rub up against coral coated rusted metal. I'd also say at least half of that time of the excursion was taken up in the preparation, boating out, and securing the boat and the reverse. Lots of people, my spouse included, spent most of the time on the boat rather than in the water.

That seems to be the root of a lot of the little annoyances. Their backend/reservation system seems to have a lot of interconnected pieces held together with duct tape and requiring human intervention to fix which both takes time, effort, and will always lead to inconsistent results. Checked this morning to see if I have my points yet but the website is giving me one of it's common popup errors because some process on the back end isn't talking to another process so it's not possible to do anything with my account. I guess I'll try tomorrow.

Oh, and one more annoyance to add to the list. I never got my Voyager Club points for the cruise. I emailed them about it last Wednesday. They finally got back to me yesterday but with a very generic "Your points will be reviewed and updated. Any changes made to your account will be reflected within 48 hours." response. 

Sure. I had posted a list further into the thread:

Seashore was beer and chasers only on our cruise 6/20-23

They are almost to Cozumel this morning. https://www.vesselfinder.com/?imo=9843807

I'm doing one of the older Oceania ships later this year, and I hear that their showers are ridiculously small. Really? Smaller than this?

Now that we're a few weeks away and less cranky, we will adjust our expectations if we take MSC again. Some of the issues were amplified because we hadn't taken a cruise in awhile. We did enjoy ourselves. Yacht Club sounds great. We just have to decide if we want to spend 2-3x what we paid in order to get those benefits.

I'm not sure any single event rises to "blind sided" but it was more the accumulation of little annoyances that we were surprised. We were ready for one or two, but... Prior to the cruise... It was annoying that we had the drink package and wifi and it stated that on our cruise details but under "purchased" it showed nothing and tried to get us to buy both again. More than once I was kicked out of the website because it thought I was in a different country. It tried to get me to use the UK or the Italian site. They double charged us for our excursion and it took about 60 days for them to refund our card Leading up to the cruise, I used my account to log into the website and the app. The morning of the cruise, I was logged out of the app and when I logged back in, it said I didn't have a cruise associated with my account. I had to switch to logging in with my booking number on the app. On the cruise... Our friends who were in the room next to us had issues with their credit card. He had paid for the cruise and was going to put all charges on his card that he already had associated a card ahead of time during the 30 day check in, but once on board on the app, they made her the controlling account so they wiped out his billing information. Guest Services said that since she checked in first online for the 24 hour check in, it all reverted to her. They had to take his card and then assign his card to her account. And then when we got to Ocean Cay, they realized it had been removed again when they went to buy something on the island and they were told there was no card on file, so they had to go back aboard and reassign his card again at a kiosk. We had adjoining balconies with our friends that were open between us a total of 6 hours for the 3 night cruise. We were told they couldn't be open during embarkation or days at sea, and they just never opened while we were at Ocean Cay with no explanation given. The app doesn't refresh times. We wanted to stop by the MSC store before going ashore at Ocean Cay to see if they had shorts. The app said it was open but when we went there it was closed. Going back to the app, it said it was open until you actually clicked off of the list and into the store details, then it said it was closed. Elevators were always full. Confusion as to whether you are supposed to request for each passenger or not. We'd seen a video stating to do that but there were no documentation about it on the boat and Guest Services said that they weren't doing that anymore. None of the "pagers" on the tables in the marketplace seemed to work, and the employees seemed annoyed when you went up to the beverage station yourself to order drinks. General communication issues in the MDR. We got wrong drinks a couple of times at dinner or a drink order was forgotten or they'd bring a can of soda but no glass. They would always fix the order but it always took time. They dropped off the tags for us to fill out for our bags for disembarkation but without instructions and there was no pen in the room. I had to borrow a pen from a housekeeper and had to find the instructions, deadline, group locations info on the app. On other cruises I've gone on, there were always designators in some way to identify forward and aft/port and starboard. Whether it's patters on the carpet, arrows on the wall, or other stuff like that. We never found anything like that on the Seashore. And it got really confusing in places like the Marketplace where they have duplicate setups and flipped configuration and we found ourselves going the wrong way. We were never able to get our beach towels replaced by our steward or housekeeping. At one point, we even called and they said they would replace them. After 2.5 hours, we had to leave for our excursion and just were going to take damp towels when another passenger told us we could swap them out at the pool on 18. I have no idea if there was any other way to do it. All our program said was to ask our steward our housekeeper. The daily program itself is difficult to read because it's still made to be printed at 8.5x11, even though they force you to view it on your smartphone. If bar menus are in the app, I never saw them. We had to go to each location and scan the QR code to see what they offered. The showers are tiny. It was fine for us but we are considering going on a cruise with my older parents next year and that will be a non starter. We'll have to look at Yacht Club I guess we take MSC. I don't recall even interior showers being so small on our previous cruises on other lines. Once we were off the boat at the end of our cruise, we lost access to the app, which means we did not have our final bill. I called and after going through the phone tree, it told me that I had to email a special address that it read off rather quickly (mycruiseinvoice@msccruisesusa.com) to get my invoice. I had to call back again and work my way through the phone tree to get the entire address. They were pretty prompt in responding, but I was surprised that they don't send you an invoice automatically.

I have enjoyed "steerage" as well. I had many little annoyances from our recent cruise and I think we were very cranky by the end of it. We thought we had read up enough and had our expectations set. But with MSC, the inconsistency meant that things we were "ready for" were actually fine, and other things blind sided us. After reflecting on them another week, and especially after looking at the cost vs other comparable cruise lines packages or cost of YC going forward, I've really softened my stance.

Amazing what a difference one week makes. Last week you had NBA Finals, NHL Stanley Cup and College World Series. Now everyone is just waiting for the Olympics. We were disappointed in Sports Bar. Not just because their selection of anything but lagers leaves something to be desired, but because they got rid of cocktails entirely. The couches were weird in that the seats were really really deep so you basically sat in them like a child with your feet dangling in the air. We had one drink and then went across the street to Brooklyn Cafe. Still awkwardly large chairs but definitely more comfortable once you got in them and the music was great.

Sorry, I did not.

I didn't do it.

I was wondering if they ever enforced dress code. I was worried that wearing polos and cargo shorts wouldn't pass, so I packed dress shorts each night. We were on the 3 night so no elegant night (though I did pack some nice pants since MSC is not so great on telling you what theme nights you will get), but there were people in the MDR each night in t-shirts and jorts.

Maybe just different distributor deals? I think they actually added more gins to the menu from the previous menu, and all are larger upcharges compared to Aviation.

That seems like such an odd decision, especially because I can tell you it wasn't busy. There would be just one or two people smoking. It was just that that was enough for the whole area to smell.

While we enjoyed our cruise overall and it was a beautiful ship but there were a lot of little annoyances that added up. I can see that depending on your personality type and expectations, those things may not detract from the overall experiences or it can be death by 1000 cuts. I can totally understand now how MSC gets extremes when it comes to reviews.

We got off Seashore just as you got on. Before our cruise, we had watched a ship tour video about these smart elevators you were supposed to request the floor once for each member of your party. Of course, it was annoying: press "8", press "back", press "8", press "back", press "8", press "back", press "8", press "back" but it would register it by playing the tone for each person at the associated elevator. We definitely got lots of strange looks until we explained and everyone was annoyed that there were no such instructions on the panel. Then we asked at Guest Services and they said "we don't do that anymore." I would say we probably had to skip as many elevators as we took because of them being full because they don't tell anyone about the smart technology that the elevators are supposed to have.

We just finished a 3 night Caribbean cruise on the Seashore. This was our first cruise where we had connected balconies and were excited about opening them up for our cruise. We couldn't pre-request them to be open but it sounded like it was as simple as requesting it from our steward for it to be done while aboard and it would be done. Day 1 - we were told they couldn't be open on embarkation day Day 2 - they were opened while we were at breakfast so we saw it as we were grabbing our things to head to our excursion; we got back on the boat later and as we were prepping for dinner and talking on the balcony, they showed up to lock them back up before the ship left Nassau as they are not allowed to be open while at sea. But they promised they would reopen them the next morning after we arrived at Ocean Cay. Day 3 - they never reopened the balcony while we were docked at Ocean Cay. Is this common on other MSC ships or other cruise lines for it to be this limited?

I guess we never drilled down that far on our MDR to look since they didn't post menus for the bars. Thanks

I was surprised that they didn't glass off the smoking section because it permeates the area. We could smell it directly above the casino on deck 8 near the Brooklyn Cafe too.

One thing I found annoying about the digital only program is that they still lay them out in 8.5x11 format for printing. So you are having to zoom and scroll all over the place to read on a smartphone. Also, I never could find the program in the app. I had to scan a QR code for a printed sheet they left in the room every day. Where were you able to find the nightly menus? We never found them in the app, only by scanning the QR code at the table once we sat down to eat.

I think the minifridge comes stocked regardless. We asked if we could have ours emptied so that we could use the fridge and they just told us to take everything out and leave them on the top shelf.

We never found a menu on the app while we were on board. Not saying they aren't there somewhere but we never found them. We had to go to each venue and scan the QR code which loads up a PDF that's hosted on mscwifi.com so they could only be seen while on the boat connected to their hotspot.