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

Thanks Squish for taking the time for your detailed review! We just booked our first MSC (Preziosa September 2019) after primarily RCCL/NCL and love to get others’ perspectives!

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Thanks for coming back and super thanks for the breakfast room service menu!!

Day 4- Barcelona

Good morning from Barcelona, and a very healthy breakfast courtesy of the hubby!

We've been to Barcelona before, and did a half day tour with Barcelona Day Tours (highly recommend for a first timer). The only thing we didn't get to do that time is go inside the Sagrada Familia so that was the plan for today! I also wanted to walk down La Ramblas and maybe get some tapas. I'm not remotley interested in churches, but the Sagrada is just something else. I remember being wowed seeing it from the outside from the last time, so was looking forward to seeing inside.

I think most people know what it looks like, but here's some pictures I took!

I used to have a joke with the hubby about what would be finished first- the Sagrada Familia or his PhD. He graduated last year so I guess the Sagrada loses lol.

We did the audio tour, booked online in advance which means you must select a time slot. After taking a taxi over from the port we were there in good time- I think I booked the 10.30am slot. The audio tour was interesting but it went on a bit too long in some places. I think it took around 1.5hrs to complete. You can also pay to climb one of the towers, we didn't do this as the consensus on Tripadvisor was that it wasn't worth the money.

After the audio tour don't miss the museum section near the shop as this was actually more interesting than the tour! As soon as we finished it started raining very heavily, so we decided to get some lunch and wait it out. There was a small chinese/noodle bar place nearby that was just opening so we went in there. This was probably the best food we ate all week! Not because it was mind blowing, but it was hot, tasty and filling. I think it came to around 20EU for everything.

We both had stir fries, and also we had some crispy prawns and a bao bun on the side. Yum!

The rain wasn't stopping so we scrapped the plans for a leisurley stroll down La Ramblas and called an Uber to go to the aquarium instead. For some reason the Uber driver had no idea where they were going, ended up stuck in a one way system and dropped us off 10 minutes walk from the Aquarium in the end. Ah well.

I think it cost around 20EU each for entry. There was a fairly long queue for tickets- everyone had the same idea to escape the rain!

You buy tickets in the covered area outside the entrance before going in. Not sure how queueing outside works if it's very cold...

The Aquarium was a little limited in size but fun. The main attraction was one very large tank with sharks etc in. Apparantley there was a Sunfish in there, which I desperatley tried to spot for ages but nope. We saw one a few years ago on a boat trip in Cornwall but it was very small- I've always wanted to see a big one!

There was also a small penguin exhibit, many small tanks of fish, and a large educational area

The surprise win of this visit was finding that the cafe did Churros- with chocolate INSIDE them! These were the best. Love churros but there's always a challenge with the dipping them in chocolate evenly. My hubby is the usual culprit who uses up all the chocolate sauce on one churro! I would literally pay to get back in the aquarium just to eat these churros

The rain had let up a bit, so we walked back to the ship along the sea front. This proabably took a good 45 minutes for us, it wouldn't be a suitable walk for anyone with mobility problems. You did have to walk along the large bridge leading to the port, which would be scary for anyone who suffers from vertigo. There was a pavement the whole way though, you didn't have to walk on the road.

Back on the ship then! Unfortunatley we encountered some issues here, as Barcelona is one of the major embarkation ports for this cruise, the whole ship seemed in embarkation mode. Lots of people hanging around, muster announcements, and lots of things closed. We went up to the ropes course to try and do this- the ropes course was open, but the desk to sign the waiver was closed. Grr. We never did manage to do this as it was so awkward trying to do the waiver when the desk was shut a lot.

Giving up on the ropes, we ended up wandering round the side of that top deck- and ended up accidently in what I believe is the Top 19 deck which you can pay for access to. Well- it wasn't roped off or shut off in any way, and there was a giant hot tub up there, so why not take advantage? Several staff were around and nobody ever told us to leave. I never tried going back up later in the cruise to see if it was always open to anyone or not.

We ended up chatting for ages with some guys from Manchester *waves* and all decided to try and find an indoor hot tub to watch sail away from, as it was quite cold. Of course all the hot tubs were rammed. In the end we found space in one that wasn't working, yay. So got to watch sailaway from a cold and still hot tub.

Last time we sailed from Barcelona we missed sailaway so I really wanted to see it- there's not much to see! Very industrial.

Thanks so much for this. Did this cruise late last year and considered it one of the best we had ever been on (family cruise with Son, Sisters, Nephews).

We had better luck with the food. But, we ate in the Yacht Club every evening except one night in Eataly, which was wonderful.

The Mediterannean was rocking, but we were still in the depths of winter when we cruised.

I was really looking forward to the Cirque show. But, because of the rockiness of the sea, we only got about 20 minutes into the show before one of the acrobats fell from the ladder and was seriously injured. Never heard anything more, other than they cancelled all the rest of the week’s shows.

Can’t wait to hear/see more.

Thanks so much for this. Did this cruise late last year and considered it one of the best we had ever been on (family cruise with Son, Sisters, Nephews).

 

We had better luck with the food. But, we ate in the Yacht Club every evening except one night in Eataly, which was wonderful.

 

The Mediterannean was rocking, but we were still in the depths of winter when we cruised.

 

I was really looking forward to the Cirque show. But, because of the rockiness of the sea, we only got about 20 minutes into the show before one of the acrobats fell from the ladder and was seriously injured. Never heard anything more, other than they cancelled all the rest of the week’s shows.

 

Can’t wait to hear/see more.

Thanks for reading! To be fair I hear the food in the YC is fantastic compared to the normal dining room so I'm not surprised you had a better experience. If MSC could fix the food and service then we'd happily cruise them again!

Dinner was in the buffet (of course). As always pictures of buffet plates are not very attractive!

I know I've complained a lot about the food, but the ship made mozerella is yummy, especially with pesto.

The little pot of chocolate mousse was very rich and tasty

After dinner we went to the 'posh bar' above the gym. The name escapes me- I think the sky bar? In here they have a menu of Molecular cocktails which I wanted to try. I ordered this one:

It didn't quite look like the picture, but it was nice and eating the little balls was fun. I forgot to take a picture until I was half way through! The glass was frozen too so that was fun.

In this bar they also have a display case of snacks and desserts. The other night we came up here it was full of chocolate! We tried to ask if it was free but they pretended not to understand us

There are also cigars for purchase here, if that's your thing

Hi guys, on a business trip for the next 2 days but will put some more up on Friday! [emoji4]

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Thanks so much for posting this. It is so helpful and very much appreciated.

This evening we attended the show 'Paz'- which was a flameno and tap dancing based show. I found it a bit dull and samey. If you are a flamenco fan you'd enjoy it more.

Along the Galleria they had some staff members dressed up and stood on platforms- not really sure what was going on here?

This was (according to the sign) the statue of David, not a crew member wrapped in a bed sheet wearing trainers

And the Mona Lisa (not sure why the missing teeth). You might be forgiven to think there was an 'art' theme going on here, but no, there was also an Elvis, a guy dressed as Avatar and some other random ones. It was a bit odd and they just stood there doing nothing.

Then we met up with our new friends for some drinks in the British Pub on deck 7 which was very fun! They do some really yummy cocktails in there. We finally caught one of the 'dome shows', where the display changes into a 5 minute animated show. The one we saw was about space and was really cool to watch- wish we'd seen the other ones. They have them 3 or 4 times in the evening but we always seemed to miss them.

The 60s party (which was actually a 60s, 70s and 80s party) was starting in the gallery so we went to join in- this was brilliant! The roof had turned into a 60s design

Had a fantastic time dancing. The place was heaving and the party was clearly popular. They had some performers dressed as the Village People and they got everyone involved.

See the guy on the right with the bun? I think he was the assistant CD and he certainly had a lot more energy and fun than the older guy

After the Galleria party there was an after party on deck, but we had danced ourselves out by that point so just went for a wander before bed.

Day 5- Marseille

I was a bad cruiser and did not research this port beforehand! I kind of assumed we could get off and have a wander around, but when we docked I realised we were docked far from the town. MSC were offering port transfers, but they were about 25EU each. If I'd have done my research I'd know there is a local bus you can take for a couple of EU- which our new friends told us about afterwards! However, they said that a lot was closed in Marseille and the queue to get back on the ship was a nightmare, so I guess we didn't lose out. When we got back on in Malta the queue was long and slow too- we've never queued to get back on an NCL ship, I don't know how MSC makes these queues appear.

Anyway, from the above you might be able to guess that we chose to stay on board! Very lazy I know. We decided to spend the money we would have spent on the port shuttle and lunch in town on a day pass to the spa instead. This cost 55EU each, but was about 63 with added gratuities etc. I should have just purchased a week pass in advance for not much more money, but hey ho.

The spa was very nice and large- I only wish it had a proper swimming pool. But it did have one large hot tub, one bubble lounger tub, several relaxation rooms, saunas, steam rooms, showers etc. We spent a couple of hours both in the morning and afternoon in there and it was relaxing. Worth the money? Not really, but I'm glad we got to see it.

Obviously I only took photos of the areas of the spa that nobody was using!

We had lunch in the buffet, where they had a grill station with build your own burgers and hot dogs, so we had that. They weren't the best quality but I enjoyed being able to build a burger how I wanted.

Very healthy I know. We did enjoy the lunch buffet, it was better than the dinner buffet. Before returning to the spa I paid a visit to the chocolate shop as I fancied something sweet. Got this chocolate covered marshmallow lollypop which was very yummy!

I also bought some goodies to take home. Another marshmallow pop, a brownie pop, some coffee flavoured chocolate beans, a little chocolate plaque and some caramel chocolate bars (the second one was for my parents!)

This all came to around 21EU so not over priced in my opinion. I'm still working on eating it! If you like coffee I can highly recommend the coffee chocolate beans.

This is the little chocolate plaque, I thought it was dead cute. Only around 2EU and they had various designs to they would make great little gifts

I thought these would make really nice gifts too, they were around 8 or 9 euros I think.

After spending the afternoon in the spa, we headed back to the cabin to find luggage tags for disembarkation. Huh. On NCL you go and pick up whatever colour you want depending on what time you want to get off. This turned into a problem as... we'd been given a time of 11.20am!! I've never heard of getting off a cruise that late. We had tickets to Genoa aquarium booked for 10am as I assumed we'd be kicked off the ship early!

Soooo down to guest services for me. Hurray. The queue wasn't long but it just wasn't moving. There was one guy trying to sort people out before they got to the desks, but lots of people were just ignoring the queue and going right up to him... no organisation at all. Eventually I got to speak to this guy, and he was happy to swap my tags but the earliest he would offer me is 9.35am which was the earliest time for independant guests.

Sorry these pictures aren't great, but here's the disembarkation times and procedure:

So, if you're not with a group and you don't have black status good luck getting an early disembarkation time. What I did like was that if you were paying via debit card and owed money, you could settle up using the little payment machines. However if you'd deposited too much money and MSC owed YOU, you had to queue at guest services for them to return it in cash. So yeah, don't do that. Our on board spend was around 300EU which is the most we've ever spent on board a cruise, including the 10 day one. BUT we normally pre pay the grats, which MSC doesn't have the option to do, so there's a big chunk of it right there.

Now comes the part that had really started to hack me off- the Photo Gallery. I don't know if you remember, but we'd bought the VIP Photocard in advance, and so far the system of getting our photos had been shambolic, to be kind. On the instruction of the gallery staff, we'd been gathering up our printed photos every night, handing them over the counter where they were storing them in a very sophisticated filing system involving a big cardboard box. We had been instructed to return on our last evening, where they would process all the photos onto the VIP card for us (which we had not yet been given).

So, it was our last night. I went to the gallery. They dug out our big folder of photos, and told me it would take around 2 hours to process them all onto the VIP card, and to come back later in the evening for them. Okay, so far so good. I think we all know it won't be that easy though, don't we?

It was time for a mid afternoon snack so we headed up to the buffet, where they had these very nice little chocolate tarts, and also cookies!!

Why can't they have this stuff at dinner?! Anyway, we had two lots of entertainment planned for tonight- Cirque Sonor, and the last of the shows, which I think was called Meravissima Armor or something along those lines.

Cirque first- I enjoyed this warm up act of the violinist with the affect of rain

Can you tell we had MUCH better seats this time? Second row back in the main body of seats. Different cocktails were on offer, we enjoyed these ones more. The same macarons.

The first half of this show was kind of meh. There seemed to be lots of faffing around and build up without any proper acts. There was a long segment about a guy coming out of a spaceship and just kind of stumbling around the stage.

Then there was a very long bit with a guy beat boxing, which I had been warned about via other reviews. I didn't really understand why it was in there. After that it gets going, there was some fantastic tumblers and some other acts.

We didn't take lots of pictures as we were watching, and it's so hard to capture them in action anyway.

So which did we enjoy more? I think they're both worth seeing. I really enjoyed the second half of Sonor more than Viaggio, but I didn't like the first half at all. If I had to pick just one to see I'd probably pick Viaggio.

We had some dinner in the buffet which I guess I didn't take photos of, then stopped by the photo desk. They hadn't done the card yet, grrrr. It'd been way over the time they said too. So, off to the theatre show while we wait. This show was all themed around Love, and had some fun costumes.

Nobody knows what was going on here. Something to do with 70s pirate gypsys at a rock concert?

These girls didn't get the 'casual dress code' memo

Annnnnd back to the photo gallery again. Where they gave us our VIP Photo card, finally!! They also offered us all the printed photos to purchase, and said it would be cheap, but we declined. They only go in the bin so why not just include them for free, I don't know. They took the printed photos away to dispose of.

While waiting to meet our friends for some drinks I checked on the photo app, and hurray, our photos were there! But wait a minute... we were missing loads! There was none in one particular outfit (so all the ones from that evening), plus we were missing our staircase photos from the first formal night. BACK TO THE PHOTO GALLERY YAY!!

...Where they told us to return at 11pm because they were busy and did not have time to deal with us. Ugh just ugh. We need a drink. We went to the pub again and had some fun drinks with our friends, but left at 10.55 to return to the photo gallery.

When we got there it was chaos, so busy. It was impossible to find someone to help us. They all seemed to be helping 3 different customers at once. Once we got to the front of the queue, one guy asked us what the problem was- which we had to go over again, from the start- and then he just turned around and carried on dealing with the guy next to us!! So frustrating!! I was getting really mad by this point.

Imagine a further 30 minutes of us stood there trying to get any sense out of anyone, and eventually, guess what- they tell us to GO AWAY because they are closing!! Can you believe it. They told us to return at 7am the next morning when they would be open, and our photos will be waiting for us. No. Nononono. By this point I'd reached the end of my tether, I was NOT going to just go away. I did not believe anything they said, including that they would be open tomorrow morning. Honestly we had to be really forceful and stand our ground.

Eventually... lets skip forward another 45 minutes or so... and a long search for our discarded printed photos... we had them on the card!! Or, most of them. I'm still pretty sure we're missing some. And they told us we weren't allowed our ones from the MDR, despite the VIP card marketing stating it's ALL your photos. I just did not have the energy to argue about that.

People, DO NOT BUY the VIP photo card. It's so not worth the stress. I wish we hadn't bought the bloomin thing in advance and we could have just said 'screw it' and walk away without any photos. They didn't even take any fun photos at ports or on the activities like NCL do, and they claimed the MDR photos weren't included. It also ruined our last evening on board just trying to get what we had paid for.

I'll finish my rant with this- got to love a last night line at Guest Services!

When I waited 30 mins to change our luggage tags I was stood about where the blue rope ends. Yeah good luck with that wait people.

Coming up.... yet more chaos and stress at disembarkation! Or, "How to ruin a cruise in the last 2 hours, according to MSC"! How fun!

I enjoyed your review even the negatives. I am cruising Meraviglia next year for the first time on MSC. This had some good tips for sure. I hope you finish the disembarkation part.

I enjoyed your review even the negatives. I am cruising Meraviglia next year for the first time on MSC. This had some good tips for sure. I hope you finish the disembarkation part.

She is a stunning ship, so if you get luckier than us with food and service then you'll be okay!

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Really enjoyed reading all your posts Squish, thanks. We've not been on MSC yet, but are on Divina in Caribbean over Xmas & New Year, then Meraviglia next Sept /Oct on a transatlantic over to NYC via Rekyavik, then onto Quebec.

Hoping the MDR food will have improved-this ship will then be based in USA so with lots of Americans on board hopefully it will be a tad different, but hey, if not, the pasta & pizza in the buffet will be ok we hope. I could do with losing weight! Or We will just drink more( drinks package inc)

I just booked the Meraviglia for March 2019 and loved reading your review. I hope you come back and finish it because I feel like you really left me hanging with a cliffhanger :)

Thanks for taking the time to write this review. I know it's a lot of effort and I appreciate it.

Hey Squish!

Sorry that we never did get the chance to meet, as we were both on the same ship/sailing. We boarded and ended in Barcelona, whereas you had started in PMO.

Anyways, I just booked another cruise on Meraviglia next month. (Oct 2018). So i thoroughly enjoyed reading your review here w all the fantastic photos. It definitely gets me more excited for my cruise.

We ate in a few of the specialty restaurants and loved it. If you do sail Meraviglia again, you should try those out too. We ate in Eataly Food Market, Eataly Ristorante Italiano, Eataly Chef Table, and Butcher's Cut.

Ciao!!

BTW, the bar w the "Glo Worms" is called the Champagne Bar. And the other fancy one is called the Sky Lounge. ;)

really enjoying this review thank you. we are on Meraviglia in November so are finding this really useful.

Worldtravelista1 - how was the embarkation - disembarkation in Barcelona - we join there too and wondering what time we could get on the ship?

Hey Squish!

Sorry that we never did get the chance to meet, as we were both on the same ship/sailing. We boarded and ended in Barcelona, whereas you had started in PMO.

 

Anyways, I just booked another cruise on Meraviglia next month. (Oct 2018). So i thoroughly enjoyed reading your review here w all the fantastic photos. It definitely gets me more excited for my cruise.

 

We ate in a few of the specialty restaurants and loved it. If you do sail Meraviglia again, you should try those out too. We ate in Eataly Food Market, Eataly Ristorante Italiano, Eataly Chef Table, and Butcher's Cut.

 

Ciao!!

 

BTW, the bar w the "Glo Worms" is called the Champagne Bar. And the other fancy one is called the Sky Lounge. ;)

I will dig out my photos and finish this review off, promise!

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