20165

Thank you and aside from Dining, is there any other areas they would not be allowed in? I thinking of NCL Haven or Celebrity Retreat where they have areas for only those guests?

Ok, wow thats a bit confusing. So i would need to book a reserve mini suite to get the suite perks?

Hi, the price of our December cruise has dropped quite a bit and we are considering upgrading one of our 2 mini suites to a Penthouse suite. My question is will the Mini suite get the same perks as the penthouse suite? On the princess website, they dont indicate if different levels of suites get different perks such as priority boarding, reserve dining, etc. Basically, we want the people in the mini suite, our two sons, to have the same benefits as us. Thanks

Thanks for the replies everyone, great info and i think we may be leaning a little more toward HAL, given after our last MSC cruise, we need some piece and quiet and less people would also be nice. And sorry, i meant we are a party of 4 people and our youngest child is 17. I have 2 add on questions, although both of our kids are fine with a laid back cruise, they do both like to work out so hows the gyms on both ships? Also, 1angelcat posted that Nieuw Amsterdam will just be coming out of dry dock and im assuming that we will be the first cruise after that give it leaves Dec 16th. anyone have experience with that and should it be a concern? We have been on previous cruises that just made the turn from Europe to Caribbean and the service was not great because i guess they were making a crew change. I dont know if this would fall into that category. Thanks again for all the great info, lots to think about.

Hi, we are trying to decide between HAL Nieuw Amsterdam vs. Sky princess for a Dec 16 cruise this year. Both have similar itineraries and the ships seem comparable. We cruised both lines quite a bit, but more than 20 years ago so we are trying to determine which will be most relaxing for our family. We are a family of 4, 52, 50, 20 and 17 yo. We are looking at 2 balcony cabins and pricing also seems comparable. We just got MSC a couple weeks ago and are looking for the opposite of that... Laid back, less young children, not overly crowded. Has anyone done these two ships or similar and have any opinions? We usually cruise RCL and NCL but our kids have outgrown those two lines and prefer less people and we dont need all the kids stuff anymore. Water slides, arcades, etc. We did Celebrity edge last year and they really enjoyed that, but there isnt a celebrity cruise that meet our date requirements in December. thanks

No, not really. My issue really wasnt about what i paid, i was just making the point that because MSC was selling the cabins a very discounted rate, there were a lot more 'interlopers' as they have been referred to on this post.

No, i disagree, i think the real question is do i feel satisfied with the price i paid for the product i got and the answer to that is absolutely not. That matters...

Thats great news and in my opinion, the main reason for the people issues. I think i mentioned this earlier or in another post, but i was talking to a gentleman in one of the bars about our cabins and he had the same Balcony we did and paid less than half of what i paid for mine. Granted, i dont know what level they had, but for them to get the cabin we got for less than $1400 total for 2 people is crazy. And he had the drink package included, although i think it was the basic one.

I dont know whats valid and whats not given they are bundled and i have have no final bill so yea, i denied all of them. So far, none have been added back to my account so my guess is MSC is having a hard time giving AMEX detail on the charges. AMEX is pretty good about making the vendors provide detail on the charges.

Actually they cant see it in the app for 2 of the 3 cabins because we had minors staying in them. And no, im not going to wait in that line the morning of departure when we are trying to get off the ship and catch a flight to try to reconcile 3 cabins. However, i will admit to 1 huge mistake and thats not researching MSC before we cruised them. It was a last minute booking for us and i should have paid more attention to the reviews on CC because they were pretty much spot on. Hence the reason im on the Princess board now researching the you know what out of our next cruise...

Sure, its on the MSC board under this title. Seascape June 11-18 review. Warning, it isnt pretty...

Thanks for the info everyone and those that asked about MSC, i would highly recommend against trying it. We have enjoyed cruising with our family for years, and this last MSC cruise really put a bad taste in everyone mouth for cruising. Luckily we had 2 good cruises last year on Celebrity so im really trying to make sure this next one goes off without a hitch to get everyone back on board with cruising. thanks again.

Im hoping the answer to this is no comparison, but we just got off a MSC cruise out of Miami and are a bit shell shocked so we wanted to ask some questions about Princess since we haven't been on them in about 20 years. We have a Princess cruise booked 12/16/23 on Sky princess and my family is questioning if we should do it or book some other vacation give the experience we had last week. We are seasoned cruisers, have been on most mainstream cruise lines. RCL, NCL and Celebrity. We have been trying different cruise lines lately because our kids are getting older. Late teens, early 20s. We did Celebrity Edge over the holidays last year and loved it. The main issues we had with MSC was way over crowding and some of the rudest passengers we have ever encountered on a cruise. Im sure overcrowding contributed to that. Some other annoyances was 22 separate charges on my credit card with no end of the cruise bill to show what they were for, making reservations for the shows, and the zoo like atmosphere at the buffet. So, like i said above, i hoping the answer is the Princess cruise will be nothing like what experienced last week, but again we havent been on Princess in a long time and it is owned by Carnival which we also avoid like the plague... Thanks

sorry no, we flew. I think there was covered parking right across from the terminal though. thx

Exactly. I dont ever remember not receiving an itemized receipt on any of the 30+ cruises we have been on. Also, the other cruise lines would put pending charges on my credit card throughout the cruise, but they would all go away and i would get one lump sum charge at the end of the cruise based on the itemized receipt i got. MSC, 22 actual charges on my credit card that dont correlate to anything we can think of buying. For the larger dollar amounts, it looks like they were bundling charges. who knows. Crazy.

Correct, no itemized printout on any of our 3 cabins. When i called monday, they said the matter was already settled and they wouldnt email me a detail report of what those charges were for. And im sure some of those charges are valid, i just have no idea which ones. There were 22 charges on my amex ranging from $5-$400+ dollars. The lady i was talking to at AMEX said she was surprised it did set off fraud alerts there were some many charges last week.

Not sure what credit card you used to book, but we denied about $3k of charges on our AMEX from our cruise last week. MSC wouldnt/couldnt provide me any detail as to what those charges are for so let them duke it out with AMEX.

It really didnt block the hotspot but rather dropped me off the ships wifi when i connected the mac to the iphone. i tried several times, but ever time it dropped my wifi connection. Again, could have very well been user error and i didnt mess with it much other than trying a couple of times

I tried last week on seascape. Unsuccessfully. When i connected my Mac to my iPhone hotspot, it dropped my wifi connection with the ship. When i disconnected the mac, the phone reconnected with the WIFI. Could have been something i was doing wrong, but i couldnt get it to work.

Thank you. We are on Sky Princess in December. Hoping for a better experience...

Im going to keep this ‘relatively' short because most of you read some of my rants on Morpheusofthesea’s post last week so you have a gist of how I feel about this cruisline… Quick background, 5 family members traveling in 3 cabins. 14141, 14139, 14133 We booked this cruise last minute, about 2 months ago, due to the fact that we were worried about not having one of our passports in time and we could use a birth cert for a cruise. We, hubby and wife, have about 30 cruises under our belt from pretty much all of the cruise lines, kids have about 10ish. Loved RCL when the kids were smaller, but have been doing more Celebrity lately now that they are late teens/early 20s. We live in NC, but grew up in FL hence the reason we have rack up so many cruises early on. The good Beautiful new ship with lots to do Service staff was very good. Cabin steward and MDR waiters were excellent. Bar staff was good once they knew you were tipping. We did the Mexican, Sushi, and Seafood restaurants and they were all very good. The not so good Embarkation was a not good. Partly because they seemed a bit unorganized, especially once you had your ship card and are waiting upstairs to get on. People pushing and shoving to get to the front of the line. We booked 1 minor in a cabin and that did not work well at all. We couldn’t see anything on his account, he couldn’t make show reservations, card didn’t work in the arcade etc. This was more on us the MSC. We knew it would be a challenge doing this, but when we talked to guest services about getting some of it resolved, it all became our fault even though MSC allowed us to book that way. Loud music at the pools. People brought their own speakers and started doing karaoke. Im not even kidding… I didn’t think the buffet was bad, but it was packed every day to the point where people were just getting nasty with each other. Grabbing food with their hands, kids running everywhere, nowhere to sit. The ugly It’s hard to describe the mix of people, but it wasn’t good. Extremely rude, witnessed people shoving others out of their way in the halls/elevators and buffet. I used the word ‘thuggish’ on of the other posts and that wasn’t an exaggeration. There were some pretty rough looking people on that ship that I would not feel comfortable letting smaller kids out of my sight around. No end of the cruise statement so I have no idea if our charges are correct. There are 22 separate charges on my AMEX throughout the week. I did deny all of them so let MSC explain them to AMEX. Amex thought my card was stolen there were so many charges… Disembarkation was also bad. The room with our son it it apparently had a $106 balance on it even through they had my credit card on file for it and had been charging it all week. They couldn’t tell me what the charge was for, but would not allow us off the ship unless we paid cash. I finally convinced them that I didn’t have the cash and they let me put it on my credit card which I promptly disputed once we got off the ship. Bottom line, this is a carnival type of cruise on a nicer ship in our opinion. If you get a heck of a deal on a cabin, give it a try, but if the costs is close to RCL, NCL, Etc, I would avoid this line like the plague. I know YC would have made this cruise better for us, but I also don’t like to be confined to one area of the ship, especially a ship that had a lot to offer. We have done haven and retreat and didn’t stay exclusively in those areas, but if we were in YC, I’m sure we would have never left that area. Just a bad vibe with the masses on that ship. Happy to answer any specific questions anyone has.

Oh we have definitely gotten errors in the past. Has anyone reading this thread sailed MSC not in the YC and if so, did you get a statement at the end of the cruise? If we just had 1 cabin and we didnt get one we would just think oversite, but none of our 3 cabins got one which leads me to believe maybe they dont provide a final bill at the end of the cruise?

Thanks and didnt mean to use a bold font. It wouldnt let me change it. Guess when i copied your name it made it bold for some reason... Well, we got nothing in the way of a final statement on any of the cabins and when we tried to leave, they said my sons cabin had a balance of $106 even through it was also on our credit card. No explanation as to what it was but we just paid and get the heck off the ship. There are a total of 22 charges on my AMEX all processed, not pending. Ranging from $4 to $454. I denied all but 1 this morning given the amount looks like the shore excursions we purchased. Guess MSC will have to explain to AMEX what all those charges are for... Even the lady at AMEX i was talking to said this was crazy and she had never seen anything like this before. She wanted to turn it over to their fraud department, but i told her that some are valid, i just have no idea which ones and it looks like they may have bundled some of the charges. Example, we didnt spend $454 at one time anywhere on the ship. Crazy

morpheusofthesea, Did you get a final invoice yesterday before you got off the ship? We usually get a final bill breakdown the last night or disembarkation day and we didnt get anything on any of our 3 cabins. And the charges on AMEX are all over the place. Looks like they were randomly charging items throughout the week. Some individually, some lumped together. Did you experience the same?

Yep and shame on us for not researching that prior to the cruise. This was a last minute cruise booked 2 months ago. It’s a shame. Msc has some real potential. Beautiful ship, great staff but the people it’s attracting with those fares is not good. And it wasn’t just rudeness. Some looked boarderline thuggish…