A megaship lover sails the Meraviglia- photo review April 2018 Med

Some kind of DIY yogurt station, not sure why they had this at lunch?

The pasta was usually decent, I never tried the soups as the flavours didn't appeal to me. They had things like pea soup, not really tomato or vegetable. For some reason one of the soup canisters always contained rice (because that's what you want with your pasta?!)

Lots of salad options

Always a tasty carvery option here with a sauce and some sides.

This station changed randomly, sometimes it was asian inspired, sometimes fish or mexican

I think this was fish?

Desserts were okay, not a huge amount of choice. During the afternoon snacks they had a much better spread with cookies and tarts.

At lunch there was a grill section with DIY burgers and hot dogs. They tasted cheap but hit the spot. I liked building a burger and taking it over to the salad bar and cheese section to build it up.

Outside there is two stations, one serving pizza and the other with burgers and hot dogs (pre made this time)

I liked the buffet mugs. They sold them in the shop for 5EU, presumably to stop people 'liberating' them from the buffet?

So, what did we have for lunch? Well, pizza of course!

Also some meats from the carvery section and a jacket potato (these were always tasty and salty)

We sampled a few of the desserts, they were okay.

Random thought, but I really liked the long plates they used for the buffet. It seemed easier to put multiple things on than a traditional round plate, if you aren't a fan of all your buffet choices getting mixed up!

Was it scary hitting the dock?!? Glad everyone (you included) made it back safely!!

do you really think all MSC ship hit the dock? I hope it was a joke:confused:

do you really think all MSC ship hit the dock? I hope it was a joke:confused:

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Enjoying the review and great photos!

Enjoying your review. We have been cruising for 15 years but are taking our first MSC cruise next year. Hubby is not sure about it. After reading mainly bad reviews I’m hoping they up the ante by next Sept.

Hi Squish ... Thanks for the small look into your cruise on Meraviglia, I sometimes think that they do these short trips to iron things out before they get into the regular weekly/longer cruises and that things can fall short of what you would normally expect.

We have done 6 cruises so far with MSC on 6 different ships and never had the issues that those on these shorter trips appear to have had, number 7 is just under two weeks away with our second sailing on Seaside.

We will be sailing Meraviglia at Xmas 2019 when the ship moves to the Caribbean, wardrobe space is the exact same issue on Seaside and no doubt will be on Seaview with the exception of the Aft Aurea S3 Suites on the back of the ship in which we sailed and those in the YC balcony cabins one of which we had a look at on our Seaside sailing.

Of the two we preferred our Aft Suite.

Good evening!

You "sometimes think that they do these short trips to iron things out before they get into the regular weekly/longer cruises" and you are absolutely true! Been there, done that, lesson learnt!... Even if that "cruise" was only a leg from the last 7 days cruise in that particular summer season when the MSC Orchestra was preparing to what I believe have been the south America transatlantic!... Things on those cruises tend to really fall apart. Mine was the last 2 days of a cruise out of Kiel (Germany) when the ship was returning from Copenhagen to Kiel with a day at sea in middle... Needless to say that the mix of a total crew turnaround and an abusive drunken crowd that embarked in Copenhagen made "that" effect! No surprise those cruises are so cheap!...

Have a nice day!...

Nice review and even nicer photos! Many thanks!...

Day 1 continued

After lunch we had a bit of 'cruise ship admin' to take care of. Why am I mentioning this kind of boring stuff? Because it's sometimes so hard to work out the pratical details of how MSC works, so I hope this might help someone!

They don't take a credit card when you check in, you must find one of the little kiosks on deck 6 and 7 and register one. I tried to register my CC, only for the machine to ask for a pin! I'm from the UK and we've used chip and pin for years and years, so this shouldn't have been a surprise to me- but I don't use my CC for purchases usually and I have no idea what the pin is. I'm used to just handing it over when we check in for a cruise. So I had no choice but to use my debit card. This worked out fine in the end as they don't put a large hold on. You select an amount to deposit, and when your bill exceeds that they don't cut off your cruise card or anything. The balance just builds up and on the morning of disembarkation you use the kiosk to clear the rest with your debit card. You can also clear it with cash at guest services. It's worth noting that if you have an American card without a pin that there is a swipe function on the kiosks too.

I like the idea of these little kiosks as it saves at least one trip to guest services. You'd still need to go there to query any charges, but if everything is OK you can just clear the balance on the kiosk. There was never a queue to use them.

Admin number 2 was to swing by the photo counter to pick up our VIP photo card. I'd read the excellent and informative thread on this forum about how the card works so knew I needed to go pick the card up. Readers, I think my stress level increased about 50 points every time I had to deal with the photo counter. If only everything had worked so smoothly as it should have. On my first visit I was told they couldn't issue the VIP card yet as I had no photos to load onto it. I was told to return the next day after having some taken and they would sort it for me. At this point I believed what they said, so naive I was. Let's just say the staff at this counter have a PhD in Fobbing Off.

A word on how photos work (or don't work) onboard. This isn't like other cruise lines where you have a folder numbered for your cabin, or where you are asked for your cabin number when having photos taken. The previous system works great on NCL- photos get loaded onto your card easily, the prints go in your file and if anything is missed you track it down from the wall and put it into your file. Any missing digital files can be located on kiosks and added to your card. Oh if only this was how it works on MSC!

How is is supposed to work: You recieve your VIP photo card, everytime you have a photo taken your card is scanned, the photos go onto your VIP card, job done. If you don't have the VIP card, they scan your cabin card and it works the same way.

How is actually works: only one out of about 20 photographers will have a scanner. They have no way to allocate photos to your cabin. There are no folders in the photo gallery for storage of your prints. All photos taken are printed out and added onto the walls of the photo gallery. You must spend time scouring these walls to find your photos. Oh, or your photos may be in big boxes that you have to flick through once they run out of wall space. Once found you pass them over the desk (after queueing for 20 minutes) where staff store them in a filing system involving cardboard boxes. They must then manually add all the photos onto your cruise card or VIP card (spoiler alert: they won't).

The entire system is a shambles and this was the first of many run-ins with the photo gallery over the course of the cruise. I would never purchase the VIP card again, it honestly wasn't worth the hassle. The pictures we've always liked best from NCL are the ones they take in every port, at dinner, and after shows with the performers. MSC do not take any photos like this. We had a photo taken in the dining room once. Apart from that it was just the portrait shots in the evening. I was really disappointed as I love the variety of photos we have always had from NCL. Did I mention we didn't even get an embarkation shot?

Right, let's move on from the photo gallery. We'll be back, unfortunatley. Admin task 3 was to locate our table in the MDR. When I booked this cruise it was on Fantastica Flexible dining. We hate traditional dining and I don't think I'd have booked if I knew we'd have a fixed time. MSC for some reason couldn't cope with flexible dining (even though every other cruise line can) so they took it away, of course without informing us. We only found out on here. I contacted them to complain and the answer was basically 'sucks to be you'. I made a request for a table for 2, hoping they could honour that as some kind of compensation. At that time I was offered early dining at 6.30pm or late at 8.30pm. The late one sounded too late so we went for early.

Turns out we got allocated 6pm dining. The three different dining rooms all have different sittings. Early can be 5.30pm, 6pm or 6.30pm. Late can be 8, 8.30 or 9.30pm (I think). There was also a middle sitting in one of the dining rooms. We were allocated the Panorama dining room so went to try and find our table. If it was a shared table I wanted to know so I could try and change it. There was no staff around, no dining manager available for queries. There is no numerical order to the tables. We found the number either side of ours, but not ours. We tried asking the waiters setting up tables but they wouldn't help us. I was ready to give in after 5 minutes, but G is one of those who once he's started something he has to finish it! So around 45 minutes later we actually found our table. Good news, it was a 2! Bad news, it was in a dark corner right next to a service door, with no view and about 1 inch seperating it from the tables either side. Hmm. I don't know if the bad table is due to us being Fantastica or just bad luck. Right now I was sorely missing NCL- usually we'd turn up around 7pm and a host would escort us to a 'romantic table for 2' right by the window or next to the dance floor. Sigh. Oh by the way, there is no dancing or live music in the MDRs on MSC.

Enough complaining, there's still plenty of this gorgeous ship to see! Time to explore the sports court and arcade areas.

Arcade, not very big but nice modern machines. The games were pretty expensive so we never use them.

F1 Simulator

Flight simulator

Bowling

Sports court. I thought G would love this as he loves to play basketball but he would have preferred an outside court. He also never found a spare ball or space to play, which he was disappointed about. I couldn't drag him away from the court on our last cruise.

Bar menus at the sports bar:

Sports bar. They also sold things like gatorade and protein bars. The prices weren't OTT but G brought his own protein bars and shakes so that'll still be cheaper than buying them.

Opening times for the ropes course and slides

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Price list for arcade activities

Gym, G used this a few times and said it was OK. He had to sign a disclaimer and get a sticker on his card. Later on he said people seemed to be paying to use them gym?! I don't know if he was confused and they were paying for classes, or if the gym isn't included in the fare from some countries.

The treadmills have a good view over the pool deck

There was also a spin class room. Not sure why anyone would want to do that on their holiday but each to their own lol.

I'm really enjoying your review! Love all the details and photos. :D

 

 

 

Coffee, milk and various teas are available at any time. No flavoured water or juice (outside of breakfast). The coffee was decent.

In the circles on the right, are those different types of tea bags?? Wow, I hope to see that on the Magnifica. Any idea what kind they are?

I'm really enjoying your review! Love all the details and photos. :D

 

 

 

In the circles on the right, are those different types of tea bags?? Wow, I hope to see that on the Magnifica. Any idea what kind they are?

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Still loving your review. I’ve cruised with many different cruise lines and have never seen dancers in the MDR, music yes but dancers? No.

Still loving your review. I’ve cruised with many different cruise lines and have never seen dancers in the MDR, music yes but dancers? No.

On some NCL ships (those with the MDR Manhattan Room) they periodically have dance performances during dinner. We loved watching these but also loved the live music! They also allow guests to get up and dance on the dancefloor. In the more casual MDRs they don't have either.

Time for some downstairs exploration. I'm glad we took some pictures at this time as we'd never see it so quiet again!

View from deck 7 down the galleria

Casino. We liked very much that this was tucked away at one end of the ship, and you only need to walk through it to get to the Carousel lounge. Very different from the NCL ships where you are forced to walk through the casino constantly.

The Carousel lounge where cirque is held. I forgot a piece of cruise admin we had to do- even if you book cirque tickets way in advance you still have to pop to the desk here to actually book a time when you board. We pre-booked for Viaggio but decided we also wanted to buy tickets for Sonor. I don't know why I didn't buy both in advance as it was cheaper- £12 per ticket (with cocktail) in advance, 15EU+service charge on board. The show spaces were extreamly limited, but we managed to get into Viaggio at 9.30pm that night, and Sonor at 6.15pm on our last night. At the time we were annoyed this clashed with our MDR sitting, but that turned out not to be an issue as we'd given up on the MDR long before then. There was a South African guy working the desk here who was great- one of the best staff we met.

Looking across the atrium on deck 7 towards one of the bars. I think I took this because I just like how shiny everything is!

Did I mention everything was really shiny? G was very unreasonable and said we can't have a Swarovski staircase at home

One of the deck 7 bars at the top of the atrium. I called this the 'glow worm bar' because the art instillation looks like a worm... and well it glow. I never said I was clever or witty lol. There are two identical glow worm bars on either side- one did seafood and champagne, I think the other was just a normal bar.

Looking down the galleria from deck 6. I loved this whole area. The only thing I didn't like is that this whole 'downstairs' area is spread over 2 decks, 6 and 7. And 7 is kind of half a deck. On NCL we usually go wandering around 678 Ocean Place in the evening, wanderings here felt much more limited. But still, I loved the galleria and the LED roof. It was so cool.

I hear the gelato here is very good, but we never tried it. I did eat lots of gelato in ports! As far as I could tell there is no free ice cream on board. The other ice cream location is outside the buffet and is also charged.

The speciality restaurants never seemed busy. They often had staff out trying to entice you to book.

One of my favorite places on board! It's not cheap but not silly prices either and the chocolate is GOOD.

Chocolate sculptures

I am chocolate Groot!

So much... yummyness. Check right on the cash deck as well as they had different stuff on there, including simple chocolate bars which were much more cost effective, and yummy chocolate lollypops and small treats. We bought some stuff later and it was all really good, I'll post those pics as I come to them.

Macarons. We had a macaron tower for our wedding and I think I ate my own body weight in left overs after the day, so I've gone off them for a little while lol. I'm sure they were good though.

It's cheaper to buy them single? I guess they're charging for the box?

I really wanted a chocolate ship, but they were about 18EU and I knew I couldn't bring myself to eat it. If any black card members want to send me their free ship then go ahead lol.

After this is was time for muster. Because this was not a main embarkation port, they didn't make any announcements or shut down all the facilities. Muster was held in the Broadway theatre, regardless of your muster station. I liked how this was organised compared to NCL- everyone had a seat, everyone could see, they had a large screen up with a video demonstration on. It did drag on a little due to multiple languages but that was to be expected. What was a little weird is that after they ran though all the information, you had to follow a guide to your muster station, ours being the chocolate shop. Once you got there that was it. Like they just had to show you how to walk there. No need MSC, if there's one thing I know the location of it's the chocolate shop lol. After we clarified the procedure was 'take all the chocolate onto the lifeboat' we were free to go about our day. Pretty painless in all.

We spent some time in the pool, then went to get ready for dinner. Tonight was formal night (or 'elegant night'), and luckily our luggage had turned up by now! It was all a bit of a rush to get ready for our 6pm dinner sitting.

Had a bit of trouble at the start of dinner. As it was our first night our waiter was supposed to be showing us to our table. Just like we struggled to find it earlier, he also couldn't find our table. He first of all tried to take us to a table for 8 before realising it was the wrong one. I was letting him show us to be polite, but eventually we told him we knew where our table was. He said 'Fine, you know' and walked off, leaving us in the middle of the restaurant. Charming. Someone else we spoke to had a similarly charming experience where the waiter originally took them to one table, then told them this was reserved for 'more important guests' and took them to another.

Anyway, we got to our little table crammed into a dark corner. Our waiter seemed OK but his English wasn't great. We both had walked in with a drink from the free fizz being handed out from formal night, which caused our wine waiter to walk off in a huff when we said we didn't need anything.

Menus:

What was a little weird is that after they ran though all the information, you had to follow a guide to your muster station, ours being the chocolate shop. Once you got there that was it. Like they just had to show you how to walk there. No need MSC, if there's one thing I know the location of it's the chocolate shop lol. After we clarified the procedure was 'take all the chocolate onto the lifeboat' we were free to go about our day.

:DLOL! Thanks for starting my day off with a good chuckle!

I'm really enjoying your review.

On some NCL ships (those with the MDR Manhattan Room) they periodically have dance performances during dinner. We loved watching these but also loved the live music! They also allow guests to get up and dance on the dancefloor. In the more casual MDRs they don't have either.

Oh this would be so much fun watching the dancers and being able to join in.

Thank you so much for your review. I really enjoy every word.

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Sorry for the delay in continuing- we have some unusually nice weather here in the UK so I've been outside enjoying it!

So I ordered the Oxtail soup and G ordered the Rock Lobster Bisque. Both were only OK

I don't know if you can see but there was a rather tatty silver table runner on our table. Like the kind you buy in the Pound Shop at Christmas. Why they have such a beautiful ship and then scrimp on the linens I don't know.

G had the beef for his main. He said it was alright, not bad but not memorable in any way.

I chose the Risotto, thinking that any Italian choice would be a good choice. Nope, bad choice. It was cooked fairly well but it was just so plain- even after I got the waiter to cover it in parmasan.

As there was nothing in it at all, it was just like eating a bowl of rice. I consider myself a totally average cook and I make way nicer Risotto. So much for Italian cooking on an Italian ship!

We had a reservation for the show Way at 7.15, and then Cirque Viaggio at 9.30, so we skipped dessert in order to make the show. A word on shows- you must reserve all the theatre shows, even though there's really no need and they are never full. We saw people being directed to make reservations on the screens right by the theatre before they could go in. The shows were normally on 3 times a night and it was easy to get any time, or even to change your time on the night.

Of course, sods law kicked in after we rushed our dinner, and just as we were leaving they did an announcement that Cirque had been cancelled that night due to a technical fault. Great. As we were cutting it super close for the 7.15 show we used a screen to change it to the 8.45 showing instead now it wasn't going to clash with Cirque. The announcement said we'd recieve a refund automatically. I wanted to try and re-book instead, but on using the screens there was no availability for any show.

We spent the time having a bunch of photos taken around the ship which was fun! It was elegant night and lots of people really went all out- I wore a nice floor length dress (like something you'd wear to a wedding) and I felt a little under-dressed. Many women in satin evening gowns and also it was nice to see a wide variety of traditional dress, like Kimonos and Korean dresses (my reference for them being Korean is Team America so you know, I could be wrong).

The galleria is a lot busier in the evening!

You can see lots of people dressed up (and also the odd one not). They had a live band down on deck 5 in the atrium. I found the atrium layout a little weird as there's nothing else on deck 5 really except Guest Services.

After that we headed to the theatre show Way. I think we enjoyed this most of all the theatre shows. It was mostly covers of different bands and songs, with some opera randomly thrown in there.

While the singers didn't quite have the range to take on some of the choices such as Whitney, they made up for it in enthusiasm. Other sections included Elton John, Grease and Lady Gaga so it was a bit of a mix!

The best bit by far was a Dirty Dancing section at the end- I'm sure you can guess which song!

See the girl doing the lift? She is crazy good. They brought her out on most shows just to do some insane lifts. All the dancers did a few lifts but the ones she did were bonkers.

The final number was My Way so I'm guessing that had something to do with the title of the show? To be honest none of the show titles made much sense. After that we had a couple of cocktails- can reccomend the Coco Loco- and went to bed! And that's the end of Day One.