styles27

Today’s MDR menu and seating times. Very nice menu tonight!

Todays daily

Wow that’s a lot more. Definitely not worth that.

Hi everyone! Arrived in Miami yesterday at noon. Checked into Hampton Inn & Suites Downtown Miami/ Brickell. Location was great. Close to many restaurants and shopping. I know a lot of people on CC stay at this hotel before cruising which is why we booked it but other than the location it’s pretty basic and needs some updating. Pool area is especially tired looking. Probably wouldn’t stay there again. We like the Intercontinental better for about $75 more a night than the Hampton we think it’s much better. Our check in time to board Divina was 11:30. The hotel contracts with a company to offer shuttle service to the port for $8 a person. You book this with the hotel concierge. we took the 10 o clock shuttle as the Concierge felt we had a better chance of arriving before our 11:30 embarkation time and he said the 11 o clock shuttle is usually very full. MSC Divina was at terminal E today, which is one of the last to be dropped off by this shuttle service. We breezed through security and check in and were on board by 11:15. (We were given group 1) An announcement was made that this sailing is sold out and no upgrades are available. Rooms should be ready by 2. Our first stop is Ocean Cay tomorrow. Will try to answer any questions I can (all dependent on WiFi strength!)

This happened to us for our 01/2022 Seashore booking. I too happened to log in and noticed the departure date had changed. If you booked your air through MSC they will cover it. If not then you will have to either take a credit or use the flights hopefully for another cruise that works with the flights. They changed the dates less than a month before the cruise and didn’t notify us. It worked in our favor because we were in the midst of the Omicron Variant and wanted to cancel anyway. MSC did refund the full amount of the cruise because they made the change. By the way we received an email from them notifying us of the change of dates a week after I called and requested the refund. Ridiculous.

That’s very reasonable. I wonder if it will be the same on Divina. We’re not in YC but have the “all in drinks and WiFi browse only for 2 devices”. Also on for 14 days starting Friday.

@morpheusofthesea hope you have a wonderful cruise with nice warm sunny weather!

Ugh that stinks. I always feel more confident that our bags will make it on a direct flight never considered an entire cart will get left behind. What ship are you going on? I don’t remember seeing a shop like that on Divina.

Great pics and love the smiling lifeboat! Safe travels and stay healthy! We’ll be on Divina for NYE so we’ll be toasting you guys from the Caribbean! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

You’re very welcome! MSC’s website is a little frustrating. I had to really dig to find that in the FAQ section. I knew I had read it on there at some point, finding it was the difficult part lol

We usually get on board after being at an Airbnb so we have taken an unopened box of crackers and an unopened bag of chips (on Divina 11/21) in our carry on bags. We were told unopened packaged snacks are okay. Note…last sentence in pic above. This is from MSC US site. People can pre order bottles of wine for their rooms but other than that bringing beverages of any kind on board isn’t permitted.

@morpheusofthesea👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 Couldn't have said it better! Sailing one week from tonight on Divina and we can’t wait to “get out of Dodge.” I live in Rhode Island and right now we’re listening to strong howling wind gusts and praying our power stays on and our decorations don’t blow away (or worse a tree come down on our house)! We were fortunate that it was almost 60 deg here today so we got all rain but temps are dropping to the single digits overnight and everything will ice over. I’ll take a cruise over this stuff any day of the week! Merry Christmas everyone! Happy Hanukkah too!

Near perfect for sure. I’ve seen these types of posts in the past and it seems like wind is the enemy. Sorry you missed it entirely. It’s really the highlight of these itineraries in my opinion.

Same! I find if I do watch a video I’m constantly fast forwarding it lol

I definitely will report our experience. I usually do a live review if the WiFi signal is strong enough 🤞 We ended up booking this tour through MSC. I wasn’t comfortable doing the hop on/off bus on our own after doing further research. It seems the aggressive vendors tend to go easy on people who are with a tour guide.

Looking forward to your review as I just booked my brother’s family on this cruise 2/2023 I appreciate the video and agree that it doesn’t seem as big and open as I expected it to be for a ship this size. The casino layout looks awful and the smoke issue would definitely bother me if it spills out to other areas. Also we’re fans of aft facing balconies and those are awful. No privacy yikes!

Completely agree. I won’t even click on their videos.

Check the website for the latest info for your particular cruise and your place of residency. I know for our upcoming cruise in our paperwork it says if anyone in our party tests positive for Covid 14 days before we leave or during the cruise a full or prorated refund will be given. It also states this on the MSC US site for our cruise region

I consider myself to be an experienced long time cruiser as I’ve been cruising since the 80’s. I tend to look at the glass half full especially when on a vacation. I am extremely organized and have saved paperwork from every cruise and land vacation we’ve taken the last 40 years. It may come as a surprise to some of the “green”/newcomer cruiser’s but on average, we’re paying the same price for a cruise (in a balcony) today that we paid in the 80’s. Give or take a hundred or two. That’s insane. So of course something has gotta give. The place we’ve noticed the largest drop in quality on every single line is the MDR food. We used to rave about it, now it’s mostly good, not great, with some bad mixed in. That’s not enough to make me stop cruising or to complain on these boards with negative comments, especially at these prices. Our land vacations are usually double the cost of what our cruise vacations are. We’ve cruised once in the YC on MSC and while we had a great time with wonderful service, for us it’s not worth paying double or triple the price. We didn’t find the service or food to be that much better than the non YC cruises we’ve taken. That’s just our personal opinion.

Yikes I’m sure a lot of folks missed flights because of the delay which only adds to the stress and lack of patience that some of the general public suffers from lately.

So very sad. It’s reported to be a 36 yr old female who fell/jumped whatever happened it’s tragic. Prayers for the family.

That stinks (literally) I know you cruise a lot so I believe everything you’re reporting and it’s disheartening but not surprising. We figured with MSC’s bargain pricing it was only a matter of time before the party crowd started finding their way on board. I hate short cruises for this reason and it’s not unique to MSC. I’m really concerned with the last 4 days of our upcoming 14 day cruise on Divina (12/30-1/13) We booked it as a 14 day cruise and didn’t realize that it’s actually a 10 day and a 4 day combined. Really hoping the 4 day part doesn’t turn into a party ship. We’ve even considered getting off after the 10 days that’s how much we’re concerned about that part of the cruise. We said we’d never book another cruise that’s less than 7 days and here we are ugh I don’t understand how people are getting marijuana on the ship. That smell really makes me sick and triggers a migraine if I’m around it. (We were at an outdoor concert at Fenway where people were passing the joint down the row of seats right in front of the Boston police who turned their heads) couldn’t believe it. I’m 56 not 86 but still surprised when I see people my age acting like unruly teens. I will not hesitate to say something if our balcony neighbors think they’re going to smoke that crap and expose us to the smell. Nope not happening.

It stinks that you only got to enjoy the YC for half of your cruise but I’m glad they refunded you so quickly. I agree about the aft balcony rooms. We love the aft facing balcony rooms on Divina and agree with you that those rooms are better than the YC balcony rooms. We were shocked at the size of the aft balconies. They’re 3 times the size of the balcony we had in the YC. I know that isn’t important to a lot of people but we actually use our balcony a lot. We’d much rather sit out there on a sea day and read with some music playing than be with hundreds up on deck lol

It will so be sure you use a card that doesn’t charge fees for International transactions.