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LOL great reference with the Cersei thing there! Yeah I'd love to explore the food thing some more here because for me, the pasta was good at times but too heavy handed at others... thinking specifically about their clam-based dishes here. And the coffee at the end of the meal... that just really has to come together more cohesively, because it ends up leaving a sour taste in your mouth at the end of the meal, where it really should be the opposite. And the sour taste is not from the coffee, which I will say the actual beverages on the ship were excellent! PS - BTW, with respect to the food issue and your husband, what cruise line and/or class would you be considering as an alternative? Always curious

Yes definitely... it's awkward! One of the things you look forward to when paying up is the speed that's promised, and yes that's there, but you would also like "relaxing" to be part of the equation also, and the butler shuttling you through the embarkation lines can be generously described as frenetic and anxiety inducing. Hoping the new terminal makes it less stressful for everybody, because I don't envy either the butlers, the YC passengers, or the other guests whose toes are being tread on in this situation

People like reviews and I'm here to deliver! Some quick background: Used to cruise about once or twice a year for near a decade from 2013'ish and prior... took a breather from it as our vacation focus changed, but came back for the first time a few weeks ago ostensibly for the purpose of having my GF's mother take a cruise, which she'd never done and always wanted to. Previous experience is a bunch of Carnival cruises in the Caribbean, Princess in Alaska, Celebrity in the Med and also the Caribbean a few times, and NCL in Hawaii. Ok. So... when originally looking to book in Jan of this year, my inclination was to go with Celebrity for her but... a) the prices at the time, and b) some of the reviews concerning downgrades in service, food, etc (across the entire industry) got me thinking outside of the box. After reading a bunch of reviews, and especially some of the Yacht Club v Celebrity reviews that were burning through this site at the time, ultimately it seemed like Yacht Club on Seascape was the play. And there were a lot of other reasons why that particular sailing made sense as well, but it just seemed to line up I'm going to give a brief synopsis of the various ship aspects here and I'll try to go more in depth on each of them in follow-on posts, but just to get things started: 1) The ship itself. It's a good looking ship! And it's pretty straightforward to traverse as well. There are some strange areas where you *think* you should be able to walk straight through where you come to some sort of roadblock, but overall for its size it's really not bad. This is the largest ship we've ever been on, Equinox probably being second place. 2) Embarkation in Yacht Club is beyond easy compared to even the well-organized efforts on cruises past. I think it was like 15m total for a party of 5? I don't know... it was fast. Embarkation outside of Yacht Club looked more... tense. And they do need to work on the logistics/pathways of the butler escorts to the Yacht Club, because as it stands now it's a lot of treading on the toes of others. Maybe with the new terminal come 2024 they'll be able to keep those lines separate to an extent, I don't know. But kind of being shuttled through existing crowds with a fear/panic of being cut off from the escort isn't exactly 100% there yet. 3) We were in two Grand Deluxe Staterooms and they are awesome. The closet rules, the layout is functional/intelligent, the finishes are great, and the balconies likewise feel very spacious. Certainly out happiest experience with a stateroom ever to date. One thing I want to comment on as well that I never see brought up - YES there is some sound transmission from the pool deck above from moving chairs around in the early morning, but the sound insulation *between* the rooms themselves is really, really good. I don't know if the sound insulation throughout the whole ship is on that level, but in Yacht Club at least, it was truly awesome. In my opinion. 4) Yacht Club areas. Really truly special I think, the YC pool area and the lounge. The lounge is a huge winner, and honestly one could imagine just spending their entire cruise hanging out on deck 16 Forward. Loved the whole thing. 5) Entertainment. I was prepared for terrible entertainment having read a bunch of MSC reviews previous to this trip, but... the entertainment was good! And for a cruise ship, I daresay great. Certainly on the level of cheaper Vegas productions (which is a win in my opinion). I think there were a few shows that with some fine tuning would be solid 'A's.' And the Yacht Club aspect of being able to always have a seat if we wanted one provided we got there before show commencement, was great. 6) Food. There were a couple of 'glitches' I'd say with the cruise overall (but really very minor), but I'm going to linger on the food aspect for awhile. To start off by pulling no punches, I'll simply say that Carnival Valor for instance circa ~2010 in steerage blew this out of the water in terms of the dining room experience. I don't know what else to say on that... and whether to chalk it up to the industry writ large or what. I'm just focused on the YC dining room here, as the pool deck and the lounge were always very positive experiences, largely because they met/exceeded what the expectations would be there, respectively. There were winning dishes, to be sure, and I'll focus on them in my expanded thoughts, but there were just some lackluster items as well. And for us at least, service especially was totally exasperating at times. The main culprit here was that we had a heavy rotation of servers and such, everyone helping out, yes, but no one person fully in charge it seemed. Things that would make me crazy were we were traveling with a 2-yr old, and it goes best for everyone in the party, on the waitstaff, and in the dining room overall when there's just something presented immediately to grab a child's attention... but the child's item would *always* lag. And then situations where a drink and dessert order would be placed in tandem, and the desserts come out like 20m before the drinks/coffees do, and like... I'll still never know if they showed up because we simply left after a time. It's hard to coordinate a dining room staff of course not knowing how many tables will be active at once, but there needs to be better coordination there in that space, somehow. More broadly, I need to understand what is going on with food service/quality across the industry, because again, I'm comparing this to Carnival of 15 years ago and finding it wanting, not even to the Celebrity cruises I was on. 7) Miscellaneous. The Kids Club features on MSC are great in my mind, and really worth taking advantage of wherever possible. Always nice to have an in-built daycare that doesn't cost anything additional. The ship itself had a *lot* going on, especially in the evening. Spent some time in one of the lounges a few nights, I forget the name, and we visited the white party on the aft of the ship and some of the other spaces. Didn't even think to explore some of this stuff until about halfway through the cruise, and next time we'll try to poke around more. But the reason why you wouldn't is just because really that YC lounge itself is so awesome. 8) In conclusion for the ~$2500/pp paid (child was free) I would definitely do it again, and I'm looking to get the next one on the books sometime soon. The prices *do* seem to be going up in YC generally, and some of the other cruises I was comparing it to last time before coming in favor of YC do themselves seem to be more reasonably priced these days than they were, so... some of that price motivation is melting away it seems. If it's Retreat or Haven vs Yacht Club though, Yacht Club is still winning. But the experience just really was a very positive one, and just the whole shielding from the madness provided a completely different type of vibe. Would I do MSC outside of Yacht Club? Hard to say... I think the value is absolutely there. The cruiser I was fifteen years ago would be a definite "yes." But I wouldn't do it outside of Yacht Club with my GF's mom and her aunt, for instance. You have to be prepared for frenetic activity and lines, and some people are better suited to that than others.

Reporting back: Wi-Fi calling worked fine/great! Sometimes coverage was a bit spotty/weak, but overall worked really well. Have an iPhone now vs the Android I used to have, and with the Android it would indicate Wi-Fi calling was active on the main screen of the phone - here it didn't do that so I was having some anxiety. But in the end, yes totally serviceable I upgraded to the Stream package as well and though things like streaming YouTube TV to my laptop worked perfectly, sending/opening photos/vids via text still really didn't work. Instagram worked, but slowly when uploading. I think that the data/bandwidth/capacity is there, but the way it's allocated and/or set to prioritize certain apps or services leads to these differences we see between functions

To loop back to this, yes the package can be upgraded - what I paid to upgrade vs the Browse package was $70 for 2 devices.

No, but should I? I just figured it wouldn't allow me to make any calls period in that mode

As of this afternoon, I'm on Seascape for the week, and I have to say I am completely confused by whether my phone is triggering Wi-Fi calling or not I've got an iPhone, I've set my cellular data to "off," my roaming to "off," but I'm still getting service bars out at sea, and I got a text from T-Mobile asking me to dial a certain number to kill data and texts at sea I guess vs asking about any of that, I'll just ask: have people succeeded at enabling Wi-Fi calling on their phones while on an MSC Internet plan, and/or what are people doing generally otherwise? MANY thanks for any insights anyone might have here! :)

Well - I can verify that both 19005 and 19007 *do* in fact have the walk-in closets

Yup interested in knowing about 19005 and 19007! :)

Not having cruised in seven years or something, and certainly not MSC before, I was wondering if at Port Miami it would be possible to swing through and drop off luggage with the porters, and then come back again a bit later with us actual passengers? I've got a rental car rented and I just don't see it accommodating all of us *and* the luggage in one trip. Maybe it simply gets dropped off beforehand and we Uber over, but that itself is going to have to be a pretty large car - borderline on the XL's even. Is that scenario possible do you think? And that aside, what are others doing?

Does appealing to middle America have to be a 'shtick'?

Ok another question related to maybe not-so-common situations... Looking to book an excursion for our cruise, leaving in just over a week, and we're traveling with our 2-yr old son. Does he need a "ticket" on these excursions, or is he essentially an accessory? 2/3-yr olds tend to be treated as essentially carry-ons for a lot of things in this world, and didn't know if cruise excursions were handled similarly, or if he needed a full excursion package to his name. Thanks for any insights! :)

Yup that's the question - but it does sound like in some instances, the regular "browse" package will suffice. I just don't want to pay the entire fee for the service when I've already got 60% of it in place or whatever

Question to anyone that can help... Is the base Internet package strong enough for social media purposes? Instagram and such... And, if it is not, can the base package be upgraded at some nominal fee if the base package is already included in the cruise fare? Many thanks for any insights! :)

Ack what a shame, right before our November sailing as well...