MSC Magnifica picture heavy fun review -- 12 days British Isles incl. DIY port trips

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

Hi Lena,

 

Just wanted to say that your Irish cousins Sam and Patrick think you are a very pretty princess.

 

Your story about Lena really moved me, we are so grateful that there are people like yourself and Tanya who are willing to adopt beautiful creatures such as her. There are a lot of these collie type breed in Ireland looking for homes and many end up in shelters. Some shelters do amazing work but others of course are not so great. We spend some of our spare time helping out in one of our local run shelters.

 

Both of our dogs are rescues also. The bigger one Sam came to us when my husband over heard a conversation in our local town that the man that owned him was going to shoot him because he was no good for hunting. The second or smaller one Patrick ( on the right in the pic) was straying in our area and when it was obvious no one owned him my husband again arrived home with another dog unannounced ! Of course I was delighted and the fact that they are pretty much the same breed is incredible as Beagles are quiet rare in Ireland. We went through weeks of trying to reunite him with any owner but he was never claimed. How on earth could someone not want this guy !! Some times we joke that Patrick looks like a Deutsche Bracke (what do you think ?) and we pretend that he speaks with a German accent while Sam speaks with a very broad Irish accent. I know, we are pathetic and spend way too much time imaging that these two guys are human.

 

Anyway, sorry to bore you with this long post. I'm just trying to fill the time waiting on your next installment heehee. OK i'm off to work on my own review now as I know if I don;t get some done today the rest of the week is looking way too busy.

 

Oh Cath you don't bore me at all!! I love the pic of Sam and Patrick and told Lena hello from her Irish cousins at once. She's always stoked if dogs think she's pretty --- especially cute Irish male dogs. I think your husband is awsome for rescuing both of them (and you are too for not strangling him, when he continuosly brings home new rescued dogs). My very first dog was a beagle as well....had the statur of Sam, but the colours of Patrick....He's missed dearly. Patrick does look like he could be a Bracke ... I guess he could be a hunter (unlike Sam)? Very cute guys...thanks so much for sharing! I also think it's wonderful, that you spend your free time helping at a local shelter. Patrick and Sam can show you off proudly to all of their dog friends. You rock!

 

Stef

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

I head to the computer every morning with my cup of tea, hoping for the next installment of your review. Thanks, Steph, for taking the time to let us all enjoy your trip with you.

 

Hi,

 

:)lol -- with the 6 hour time difference Germany -- Pennsylvania that means I should try to post daily no later than 2 pm here so you have something to read at 8 am....I'll give my very best:D!

 

Stef

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

Also a warm welcome to Nettee, hebbie 67 and Pluto fan. Glad you're joining us!

 

Stef

[bcnvcanada]

Joining you on this journey, and looking forward

to your reports. We are doing our first MSC

cruise soon and want to hear your views.

[AmoMondo]

Still reading and looking forward to the next instalment.

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

Like the bonus of not having to count the kilos, we also had the luxury of not having to measure the size of our carry on luggage. I was stoked to be able to take my beloved red backpack (I know – I’m so German:rolleyes:) with me on the train to Hamburg.

This is my carryon…let’s start at the bottom left. Here I have my most valuable piece of luggage…my binder (I thought it quite fitting to have a map of Europe as a cover). It carried all the information on the ports and a prepaid ticket. Pretty much my bible for the duration of the cruise. Up on top of it I put a little tiny binder with blank pages, so I could take notes as we would go along. Up above it the two books I decided on for this cruise. I’ll show you in a picture further on. My jewelry for the formal nights, my camerabag with lots of extra batteries, sunglasses, the new “Zeit”, which is my favourite German (weekly) newspaper, the passports, a doll and a book written in English – both gifts for ghosts of Edinburgh (more on that later). Three more books and last but not least money in two currencies.

These are the books I intended to read:

One English one:

George R.R. Martin “A Feast for Crows” part of the Song of Ice and Fire Series. Yes, I’m a Games of Thrones fan…..please don’t tell me how it ends, I’m still reading. Lol – I started reading it after last year’s cruise…and to find out that I snorkeled in Dubrovnik with Tanja just underneath one of the film sets unknowingly thrilled me. Apparently they also filmed a lot in Northern Ireland…but somehow I couldn’t interest Tanja in a Games of Thrones tour (they actually offer those there!). She watched the first episode of the HBO series and thought it to include way too much sex and way too much violence. So I’m alone with my fan –dom.

And one German one: Andreas Eschbach “Todesengel”. Eschbach is my favourite author. I read every book he writes and wait longingly for new ones each year. Tarik has read most of his youth-books and loves him too. Well, this is the newest book…Tanja bought it for me as a Christmas gift. I heroically didn’t read it (for half a year!!!), just so I could take it along on this cruise. I’m so proud that I actually managed to withstand the temptation.

Well, and just because I was scared by all the bad reviews I decided to take this humongous, really heavy graphic novel book out of our local library along as well…Now I’d be set 12 days … even if we’d be locked up in our cabin all cruise long. I felt safe. To the left and right of this monster I brought two Italian language guides along. We would be cruising with an Italian line and after being bummed in Croatia last year, where we couldn’t talk to the locals, I wanted to get some basics down for this cruise. I had rented out an Italian language class on cd for my car (when you have a teen, you spend an impressive amount of driving the kid around) and practiced for three months. I had some basics down and was eager to try ‘em on some “real” Italians. The books were just for when I would get into a situation, where my very basic beginner’s vocabulary wouldn’t help me anymore. Would I need it? Well, at least I felt I was prepared as well as I could be.

This is my binder…see the two large books behind it? It was huge.

The very first page was reserved for our spreadsheet…this was what I had planned out for our cruise…I had some bad weather alternatives as well, but this was the favorite program, which I would like to pursue…what we did of it in the end? Wait and see.

Stay tuned!

Stef

[lorrdean]

Argggghhh your teasing us Stef :D

[Pluto_fan]

I am so impressed by your binder! I am also a spreadsheet-maker, but yours puts mine to shame. :o

I was interested to see that your spreadsheet is in English...what language do you use most at home?

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

Joining you on this journey, and looking forward

to your reports. We are doing our first MSC

cruise soon and want to hear your views.

 

Hi bcnvcanada,

 

Welcome to the fun! Once I get to the point where we embark, I'll cover the ship in all details first, all daily stuff and all port stuff will follow after that...so hang in there.

 

Stef

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

Argggghhh your teasing us Stef :D

 

:pwhy? how? me? never!:p

 

Stef

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

I am so impressed by your binder! I am also a spreadsheet-maker, but yours puts mine to shame. :o

I was interested to see that your spreadsheet is in English...what language do you use most at home?

 

:o thank you!

 

actually we only speak German at home, no English at all. Once the cruise planning starts, I usually end up in a bizarre mix between the two:o.

 

Stef

[denisey]

Oooh! I am enjoying the review so far. From your first 2 reviews, I have a good idea of your style. I think this will give me an accurate view of MSC and whether I would like to go on one of their ships someday. (no pressure! :) )

 

The bad thing is that I found your other 2 reviews after they were completed and didn't have all this suspense waiting for the next chapter!

 

Thanks!

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

Well, let’s get back to the luggage. Dragging it down the stairs….ooops, did I mention I pulled a tendon on my left ankle two days earlier and was actually on crutches the day prior to the cruise?

No?

Well, it’s true – and not even an adventurous tale behind it. We had some thunderstorms the days before and our Irish girldog becomes quite a sissy, when it comes to that….So naturally she had to sleep in our bed. If SHE is allowed in, the boys want to come too, so you can imagine the bed gets a little crowded. Somehow I had my foot crammed in between two dogs in an unnatural position and still slept. But when I woke up I couldn’t put weight on it. It was swollen for a day, but the day before the cruise it looked okay again. Still couldn’t put a lot of weight on it, but I figured if the swelling is already gone today, I ‘ll be fine limping on it tomorrow. But anyway, this meant that I couldn’t help with the luggage…

 

Tadahhh, Tanja got them down all by herself! Whoohoo!

 

Shall we weigh them?

17,9kg (plus1,5 kg backpack not on the scale) Tarik’s wasn't even as heavy as last time…good, since he would have to pull it through the trainstations.

27,4kg with the carryon as well. A little heavier than last year, but not much.

40,9kg

! Heavier, than any of us guessed. But Tanja said she would be fine to get this monstrosity to the ship somehow.

So that’s it for the packing. Mhhh, let’s see what else pre-cruise stuff has to be talked about?

The

roll call

is definitely more fun when you have more people joining it. Luckily we had Pat and Steve from Arkansas join in, so we at least had one couple to meet on embarkation day. But other than that the MSC roll call on cruise critic was pretty dead. Bummer, I so much enjoyed the very active roll call of our Serenade cruise. The German forums weren’t any better either and my newly acquired Italian sure wasn’t enough to look for and find Italian cruiseforums. So I can’t say if they (if they existed at all) were more active.

Bodyweight

. Because of our budget, new formal dresses were out of reach. Okay, Tarik had to have a new suit, since he’s grown a bit (yay!)So of course he got one. But for us that was a different story. Well, during the winter we (always) tend to be a bit lazy and a bit glutton. We had to diet in order to fit in our dresses again. To make a long story short: We both did, we both fit again, so all is good.

Formalities

. We managed the web check in fairly easily. I’ve heard of Americans having loads of problems with that. Maybe their website works differently from overseas. Here it was no problem. It’s true though, that if you’re used to for instance the RCI website, this MSC one will not live up to your standards. They’re in no way even comparable. This didn’t really bother us at all though. The web check in went smoothly for us --- way before the final payment – that surprised us a bit. We were well checked in before Christmas 2013! (We got the actual cruise papers and luggage tags via email about 2-3 weeks prior to sailing)

Also we are travelling with a fosterchild… In my last review I told you, just how much hassle, bureaucracy and downright fear (only mine – I tend to worry) was involved with that for the RCI cruise. So I tried to contact someone from MSC, so that they could tell me what we would need. The email I sent to their international website never got answered. Grrrr. I then tried to contact their Italian email address near Naples (see how brave I got with my new skills?). Here I got an email back (in the cutest broken

English

I have ever seen) that I should call a certain telephone number (attached) to find out more. Lol -- So much for my attempts to write Italian:rolleyes:. I guess they figured out I emailed from Germany, since it was a German number with German speaking MSC personnel at the other end of the line. Anyway, the lady I spoke to was really friendly; she just had a hard time to understand my problem.

“He’s living with you? His legal guardian is okay with Tarik travelling with you? Well, then I guess you could bring something that says so and all is good.” She really said COULD not SHOULD or HAVE TO!

No notarization, no formal documents, nothing!

 

:DDid I mention I am in utter love with the Italian way of life?

 

Next post we’ll actually get going! Promise!

Stay tuned!

Stef

[Elmartellama]

In many latin languages, "can" is actually supposed to mean "have to", so in her mind he was thinking "you can either do that, or not get on the ship at all" :D She was just being polite.

 

I always tell my customers if they "can" sign here and there. I'm not being relaxed, just trying not to be rude.

 

Also, we don't say please all the time, courtesy is transmitted through the tone of language and other things like using "can" instead of "have to" etc.

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

In many latin languages, "can" is actually supposed to mean "have to", so in her mind he was thinking "you can either do that, or not get on the ship at all" :D She was just being polite.

 

I always tell my customers if they "can" sign here and there. I'm not being relaxed, just trying not to be rude.

 

Also, we don't say please all the time, courtesy is transmitted through the tone of language and other things like using "can" instead of "have to" etc.

 

lol -- I could have sworn she was very relaxed --but don't worry. Of course I brought the desired piece of paper with us. I'm way too chicken to attempt to ditch something like that. But it really was a relief not to do the whole notarization and translation stuff beforehand. 2 more posts in between and I'll tell you how the embarkation actually worked out for us:D.

 

Stef

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

Oooh! I am enjoying the review so far. From your first 2 reviews, I have a good idea of your style. I think this will give me an accurate view of MSC and whether I would like to go on one of their ships someday. (no pressure! :) )

 

The bad thing is that I found your other 2 reviews after they were completed and didn't have all this suspense waiting for the next chapter!

 

Thanks!

 

Hi Denisey,

 

welcome to the new review! I'll try to hurry up with the posts, but as you will have notived this is going to be incredibly long...so I can't spare you all of the waiting:o. I'll definitely try to describe the Magnifica as accurate as possible, yet there will always be a bit of personal experience mixed in....so just because we liked and or disliked some things, doesn't necessarily mean you would feel the same way too.

 

Stef

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

August 13th … Embarkation day! Whoohoo!!!!!! Early in the morning my parents came over and we took our mandatory let’s go on a cruise picture:

My dad drove us to the train station in Hildesheim.

Oh no – rain! I sure hope this is not a bad omen.

 

Naaahh, just a little sprinkle.

From here we took a regional train to Hannover. Although it was rushhuor time, we managed to get our trolleys in okay. We had to stand until Hannover though…Thank God my ankle was getting better by the minute. I could limp, and I had the feeling the limp got less and less over the day. After arriving in Hannover all we had to do was hop over to the adjoining platform and wait for our ICE to Hamburg.

I don’t mean to brag, but out of all the trains we ever took worldwide, our German ICE’s still are my favourite.

They’re like a Mercedes (oh yay – another brag:rolleyes:) you hardly notice how fast they are (and they are!) because the inside is nice and incredibly silent. Although we were on a budget, we treated ourselves to first class tickets. Here you have tons of space and get served food and drinks at your seat (against charge) if you wish. You also get complimentary newspapers of the day. So we had breakfast on the way to Hamburg and loved it. The coffee was quite good. I wondered how the coffee on board the Magnifica would be like.

Stay tuned!

Stef

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

Once we got to Hamburg, we spontaneously decided to take a taxi to port. Originally we wanted to walk. It would have been a 15 – 20 min walk (downhill) from Hamburg Altona train station…but I wanted to pamper my ankle a bit and Tanja had that gigantic heavy trolley to pull. So we tried to find a taxi, which would be able to transport not only us, but our insane luggage as well. 2 drivers tried to maneuver everything in their cars….no success. The third one was driving a VW Touran and finally we got everything to fit. He was a weird fellow. Tried to convince us that our ship would be at the other Hamburg cruise port --- oh no dear friend you will not drive us all through Hamburg, just to find out you were wrong (intentionally or not). I did do my homework and definitely knew, which cruiseport we had to drive to. He grudgingly complied.

The Magnifica was expected in port around 10:00, so I wasn’t sure, if we would already see her or not…but sure enough, getting closer to the port, there she was in all her glory….but why was she already all tied to the pier, headed inland (she never did that on the last Hamburg stops) had people disembark and lots of new supplies already being hurled on the ship???

Well, it turned out, due to bad stormy weather the ship had to sail back into Hamburg a day earlier than planned. This was really a hassle for all the passengers who planned to embark or disembark in Amsterdam… since this port just didn’t happen the day before. So it was a little chaotic at the port. MSC provided free bus shuttles from Amsterdam all the way to Hamburg and vice versa…but still I was glad we didn’t have to use it. The weeks before I already told you that I checked the weather forecast continuously…I also checked the current webcam pictures of the Magnifica. The morning of day before they were scheduled to reach Amsterdam seemed to be the worst…You could see scary waves in front of the ship and no one out on the pool deck (I guess they closed everything off). In the afternoon the waves still looked scary, but apparently they opened up the decks again…you could see many people literally sitting on the floors, leaning against walls looking very miserable….Aaahhhh --- I tend to seasickness as well and really hoped the storm would be over by the time we embarked. During our cruise we met some nice New Zealanders. They were actually on that cruise before ours (they actually took three cruises on the Magnifica in a row – said that the airfare to Europe was so expensive that it just wouldn’t be worth it for only one cruise). One lady of their party said the waves were so high, that the dining room windows in l’Edera restaurant on

deck 5

!!! were constantly either above or below the water line!!!!!! Aaaaarrrggghhhhh!!!!!!!! Thank God we didn’t hear that story until we were in Belfast and the worst weather was already behind us….but more on that later.

Where was I -- oh yeah, the cruise port! Sorry for the little digression. We were way early and we knew it. Somewhere on CC I had read, that you can leave your luggage somewhere before embarking. We asked around and were told to go on past the entire cruise terminal. There was a crane there at the time, which made it easier for us, since the drop off place would be right next to the base of that crane. It was quite a way past the terminal and we’d have had a hard time finding it without that crane.

I think all the luggage carts were still needed for disembarkation, but we were able to leave our trolleys here. This meadow of trolleys grew triple in size over the next hour.

We decided to get a better look at our ship. The cool part about the Altona cruise terminal is, that you can ascend some steps at the right side of it and get to this really wonderful platform on top of the roof of the terminal:

Tadahh! There she is in all her beauty (Tanja as well as the ship of course:D)

It was quite windy. Tarik had to hold his cap, so it wouldn’t fly away.

To the right of the terminal, after going around a small fence, they additionally had this nifty platform:

I bet the view of the ship from up there must be nice…but my ankle….mhhh, we have a kid with a camera. It didn’t take much to convince Tarik to head up there to shoot some pictures. See him already half way up? I still don’t understand, why he wanted to take his backpack all the way up there.

Here you go:

See how small we are? I loved the fact that the weather got nicer and nicer. I even got a small sunburn that day!

Stay tuned!

Stef

[russianmom]

Stopped over here to read Gambee's review of Divinia. Saw your title and decided to take a look.

I'm totally enthralled and can't wait to read/see the rest. :D

[earn]

Enjoying your review and pictures. Hoping you manage to tell me a bit about the ship before I leave for Hamburg next Friday :), but please don't rush it, as that would be a shame.

[wnycruisefam66]

Hi:

 

I found this link in a post you made & I'm happy to read another trip report from you! I've read your other 2 when researching for our Med cruise that we took this past June. I too have a 13 yr old boy & I'm glad to know we were not the only ones w/a grumpy teen! (well, not glad, but you know what I mean!) I don't remember our daughter being as moody as he is! We finally got some real smiles on our last day when we took him to Camp Nou in Barcelona to visit the soccer stadium. Can't wait for more.

 

Tina

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

Stopped over here to read Gambee's review of Divinia. Saw your title and decided to take a look.

I'm totally enthralled and can't wait to read/see the rest. :D

 

Hi russianmom!

 

Welcome to the review! Yeah, running a thread next to Gambee's is sort of a mission impossible...but I'll certainly give my best anyhow. Glad you're enjoying it!

 

Stef

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

Enjoying your review and pictures. Hoping you manage to tell me a bit about the ship before I leave for Hamburg next Friday :), but please don't rush it, as that would be a shame.

 

Hi earn,

 

I'll get started writing about the ship today. Promise! I probably won't be done with it all by the time you leave, but at least you 'll get to see some parts. If there's an area of special interest, that you'd like to hear from in advance, just tell me...I'm quite flexible with shuffling the ship stuff around to write about.

 

Stef

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

Hi:

 

I found this link in a post you made & I'm happy to read another trip report from you! I've read your other 2 when researching for our Med cruise that we took this past June. I too have a 13 yr old boy & I'm glad to know we were not the only ones w/a grumpy teen! (well, not glad, but you know what I mean!) I don't remember our daughter being as moody as he is! We finally got some real smiles on our last day when we took him to Camp Nou in Barcelona to visit the soccer stadium. Can't wait for more.

 

Tina

 

Hi Tina,

 

welcome! After the cruise we found out that each one of us liked something else best (of all the port activities). We did manage to fascinate Tarik (some of the times)...It was hard work, but it can be done! It's just odd that we thought it would be completely different stuff that would blow him away....but with a teen you never know I guess.

 

Stef

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

We had at least another hour (or so we thought) until we would be able to board the ship. So we decided to stroll around a bit. For all you Germans out there: Isn’t this the funnest commercial?

My lousy try of a translation: water of the Alster is for sissies. It’s a double meaning thing…Alsterwasser is both an implication on houses near the river Alster and also it’s a diluted beer drink (with Fanta) (yuck!). So it advertises offices next to the river Elbe, the real thing … okay, okay, the joke is lost in the translation. Sorry about that.

This boat somehow seemed out of place too

But it sure was pretty.

But enough of that…it was time to get back to the terminal to check in.

We got back to the terminal at 11:30 and they had started the embarkation already. There was hardly any line and it moved really quick. We stood in line no longer than 5-10 minutes! We got checked in by a nice young lady who only wanted to see the papers, which we had gotten 2 weeks prior to the cruise and our passports. No web-check in docs, nothing about Tarik’s fostersituation or his guardian’s approval – nothing! We were literally done in less than 5 minutes! We held our cruisecards in hand, looking like idiots because we just couldn’t grasp that we should be done already! Wow!

I think we might have just lucked out though. The line was getting longer and if the whole terminal building should fill up, I think it would have been a different experience. There were no places to sit, apart from the window sills behind the check in counters.

But for us it was the nicest smoothest embarkation we ever had! Now we just had to have our carry-on luggage scanned – again no lines at all and off we were to board our magnificent ship for this cruise:

Aargh, come on guys – turn around for me!

Thank you!

 

So now we have finally reached the ship. I think I’ll interrupt our daily adventures here to give an exhausting report on the MSC Magnifica – at least how we’ve experienced it. Part by part. If you have any questions…go ahead. All our daily activities on board and in the ports will follow after that.

Stay tuned!

Stef