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Back from the Orchestra


TupeloHoney
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Overall, we had an amazing trip. Truly amazing. But honestly that was in spite of theOrchestra itself. The ports were justamazing. This is why you take theOrchestra – for the itineraries. Ourports were Genoa, Marseille, Barcelona, Valencia, Palma de Mallorca, Malta,Messina, Civitivecchia, and Livorno. I’mhappy to go into detail on what we did at each port if anyone isinterested. I spent a lot of time researchingthe ports, and I think I did a pretty good job of coming up with things for usto do to maximize our time at them.

 

As for the ship – meh. To give you a little background, we are a party of 9 that range in agefrom 6 to 82. We cruise together once ayear. We mostly go on Princess thesedays but decided to try to MSC because they were really the only ones in the Mediterraneanthis time of year. My kids had a twoweek spring break, so we wanted to take advantage of it. And it was a great time of year to cruise theMediterranean.

 

We had two cabins in Aurea and two in Fantastica.

 

The cabins were fine. They felt smaller than normal to me, but we had mini suites last year onPrincess, so I may be comparing it to that in my head. I had brought an over the door storage thingyand a bunch of magnetic hooks and that helped. We had three people in our cabin though – so we needed more storage thanyou might otherwise – my 6 year old daughter and all her little toys andaccessories, etc!

 

Our hair dryer was broken, our TV was broken, our toilet stoppedworking a couple of times. Our roomsteward didn’t make up my daughter’s sofa bed except for the first day, so wehad to do that every night. We only had2 sets of towels after the first day despite there being 3 of us. He didn’t vacuum once during the cruise – I waswatching the crumbs on the floor. And hedidn’t change out sheets once – despite it being an 11 day cruise.

 

The food was pretty bad. I am not a picky eater, and I definitely found stuff to eat every day. I didn’t go hungry – none of us did. But I can’t think of a single item where Isaid it was really good. Mostly it was “meh.” We only had dinner in the dining room 3times. It was excruciatingly slow. It took 2 ½ hours. I know we’re a party of 9, so that takeslonger, but on Princess we are usually in and out in 1 hr 45 min. And on Princess it’s worth it, because thefood was good. We decided it just wasn’tworth it on the Orchestra to sit there that long and get such boring food. The service was fine, our waiters werefine.

 

We had formal pictures taken – we get them every year, andthey were pretty bad. He cut off the topof my husband’s head but had like 4 feet of carpet showing at our feet. Lol

 

Customer service was iffy. My in-laws did a lot of fighting with them. They needed distilled water for their cpapsand they arranged that ahead of time, but still had to fight with them everytime they needed it. But they finallyfound a woman at the desk who was helpful and nice and then after that she tookcare of them. Including when mysister-in-law fell and bent her walker and they took it back into the shop andbent the frame back for her.

 

The shows were weird. My 10 year old son has always loved going to the shows, but they peakedin at a few of them and they were all weird, and he wasn’t interested in them.

 

The all-inclusive drinks package was really nice. And I did enjoy my massages (mine and myhusband’s).

 

All in all – the ship was fine. That’s all I can say, it was fine. I was really glad I had read reviews ahead oftime so I knew what to expect and set my expectations pretty low. I think it was worth it for the itinerary,but I don’t think we’ll ever sail with MSC again.

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Thanks for your thoughts. Regarding cabin size, I think on MSC Fantasia class the standard balcony rooms are larger than many on NCL, Princess etc. Although in this class of ship I think they are pretty small (c. 170 sq ft).

 

It's funny that we had pretty much the same experience a few weeks apart but came away with slightly different conclusions - I'll give MSC a go again if the price is right, and definitely in the YC, if at least once, just to see if it's worth the extra.

 

Regarding the room servicing, that is such a shame - we had Sitti on the 15th Floor and she was fantastic - always hoovering, dusting, clearing glasses etc. The service shouldn't be so inconsistent across a ship though.

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I think *I* might give MSC another try, if the itinerary was right and it was on a different ship. From what I've gathered on here Orchestra seems to be the worst of the MSC ships. But I don't think I'd be able to talk anyone in my family into trying it again! lol

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The other complaint I'd read on here was about the other passengers. I had no problems with the other passengers at all. Yes, there were very few Americans on board, in fact I only heard one other couple with an American accent (though there were more on the ship I'm sure!). But they were fine. I didn't experience any rudeness or pushiness or anything of the like. At least no more so than on any other ship. I know the two 20 year olds with us were kind of bummed though as they like to roam and make friends in the bars and such and that was really hard because there were so few people their age and so few that could speak English well enough to communicate.

 

We did have a lot of fun one afternoon playing soccer with two 10 year old Italian boys up on the basketball court area though. My husband, 10 year old son, 6 year old daughter and 20 year old niece had a lot of fun with them. They spoke only a few words of English and my husband spoke on a few words of Italian, but they made it work. That was a fun experience, especially for my kids - to see you don't have to speak the same language to interact and have fun together.

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TH ... I wonder if where the ship sails and the current Chef has anything to do with how the food is, we sailed Orchestra from Venice to Dubai and cannot recall a bad meal.

The shows were good and most of the other entertainment, I think the Captain and how he/she deals with things can also have an effect of crew and passengers.

I recall sailing the Opera to Norway from Southampton and the crew were in general mostly unhappy but not with the customers, one told us MSC stood for Mafia shipping company! that told us a lot about how the crew were feeling.

Then of course you have the likes of Pier Paolo Scala and Marco Massa, great with the customers but no idea how they are with their crews.

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We are sailing a similar itinerary in a few weeks so I would love to hear about your ports. We are a group of 6 (including my 4 and 5 year old and my parents in their 70s).

 

We have sailed this ship before, so hope it's ok. We found that the lunch buffet was always pretty good on MSC ships (especially the pizza and pasta sections) and have learned to load up on that even if it's at 3pm or so from getting back to the ship. I hope it's still ok. I agree the dinners in MDR are not that good. Sadly, we tried the dinner buffet one night as we thought it would be similar to lunch, but it was not as good.

 

 

MSC does have good itineraries for the Mediterranean and the price for our cruise was hard to beat! We really just use the ship as a traveling hotel for European cruises. Have never sailed MSC for Caribbean.

 

Thanks for your review!

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We tried talking to our room steward, but his English was so bad that it was sort of pointless. He had no idea what we were saying to him. Honestly, I change my sheets at home every two weeks and vacuum about every two weeks, so I wasn't too concerned about it. i'm just used to better service than that on a cruise.

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Tampagirl - We mostly booked private tours at our destinations, and I was happy with all of them.

 

Marseille - we went with Tour Designer in Provence and they took as to Arles, Les Baux and a small olive oil farm. They were great.

 

Barcelona - we did this on our own, went to La Sagrada Familia and Las Rambla - could have done better on this one though.

 

Vallencia - we did the ship's tour to San Jose Caves. It was interesting, and not a bad tour, but I just hate ship tours in general - rushed and crowded.

 

Mallora - we rented a car from arash car. This was really fun, probably my favorite day. We went to Bellver Castle, Valdemosa, and Soller.

 

Malta - we used Amy Pace. She took us to Mdina and the Blue Grotto, along with a little fishing village I didn't catch the name of. She was a great guide.

 

Sicily - we used Sicily with Mario - he took us to a place to sample olive oil and honey and wine near Mt. Etna, then to Castemola and Taormina.

 

Rome - also Sicily with Mario - he actually followed us. I couldn't believe it was him at each stop! He has other people that work for him, but I think the primary one was his brother and he had just had a baby like 3 days before. He took us to The Vatican and Colosseum and Roman Forum.

 

Pisa and Florence - also Sicily with Mario - we did the leaning tower, then Galleria dell'Accademia to see David, then the leather market.

 

Genoa - we ended up having our taxi drivers that took us from the ship to the hotel give us a tour of Portofino, then they recommended a lunch restaurant, then took us around Genoa.

 

If you want more detail - let me know. I was pretty happy with all of it. Though if I had to do it over again I think I'd find something else for Barcelona and Valencia - maybe private tours like we did everywhere else.

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Thank you so much! Was your time in Messina short? We are only there from 8am - 2pm, so I'm thinking of doing the ship tour (they have a do it yourself tour) as I'm nervous about the short amount of time there.

 

Did you get a discount with Sicily with Mario since you used him 3xs? I'm curious of cost.

 

Any more details you have, I would love to hear!!

 

Thank you so much!

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We did have a short time in Messina, but Mario was able to handle it. Although he did drive like a bit of a maniac that day to make sure we got everything in and it did feel rushed. My husband assured us it was safe and legal and just how Sicilians drive (he's driven all over Europe), but my sister-in-law did not like it. lol He drove normally the other two days! Mario is a character. I liked him a lot, but he was a bit of a nut.

 

I'm honestly not sure if he gave us a discount or not. He has his prices on the website, but then we customized each tour, etc. So it was hard to know. I think he did.

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In case you are interested, I put together a video for my kids of our trip. There's really nothing of the ship in the video though - it's all about the ports. And turn the volume down. lol - I set it to my kids' current favorite songs, and they are a little loud! ;)

 

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Well, thank you for the review and that video- I fee very hip now!;p

 

When we don’t travel with the kids and family, I am a DIY port person mostly, so I am wondering what you would have done differently in Barcelona? Our plan is to taxi to the Sagrada Familia. We have tickets to climb a tower at 1030. Then walk back through the Gothic Quarter, using Rick Steves audio guide. We are in port 9-6pm.

 

My husband and I are on the Orchestra in 3.5 weeks. We are pretty low maintenance, which I expect will be a good thing on this ship. :D

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If it were just me and my husband, or even us and our two kids, I think doing it on our own would have been just fine. We would have been more mobile and more flexible. But we were really slowed down by the other people in our group who have mobility and fatigue issues. It just seemed like the private tours worked better as we didn't have to fool with figuring out the transportation. And the other people in our group were less interested in just wandering around and looking at stuff. I had wanted to get to Park Guell (is that the right name?) as well, but there was no interest from the other people in the group.

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In case you are interested, I put together a video for my kids of our trip. There's really nothing of the ship in the video though - it's all about the ports. And turn the volume down. lol - I set it to my kids' current favorite songs, and they are a little loud! ;)

 

 

Thank you so much for this! I'm going to show my kids in the morning!!

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