MSC

[Brisbanelionsfan]

In today’s Sunday paper I saw what looks like a terrific cruise with MSC. I have never cruised with them before and don’t know anyone who has. Could someone who has cruised with them tell me something about the line and would you recommend them.

thanks

 

[sailco]

4 hours ago, Brisbanelionsfan said:

In today’s Sunday paper I saw what looks like a terrific cruise with MSC. I have never cruised with them before and don’t know anyone who has. Could someone who has cruised with them tell me something about the line and would you recommend them.

thanks

 

Recently did our first MSC in the Med. loved it and have no hesitation in recommending them but be prepared for a more European experience than you get on Princess, Celebrity, NCL, HAL, RCCL, etc  There's currently a thread running that might interest you. https://boards.cruisecritic.com.au/topic/2697700-if-you-were-initially-attracted-by-the-low-prices-what-made-you-want-to-book-again/

 

 

 

 

[Gwendy]

Have done two cruises on MSC, both in Med.  lots of Italians on our cruise and lots of kids, school holidays.  Also lots of middle Europeans who love to lounge around the pool in budgie smugglers, baggy, and for women loose bikinis, no matter what size they are.

Announcements were made in six languages dependent on makeup of passengers.

Beautiful ships, food on a par with Princess, fantastic itinerary, great price.  Go with an open mind and enjoy.  I would sail with them again.

[MicCanberra]

My Brother sailed with them and said the food was not very good, the chef was booed when they paraded through the MDR, but then they have booked another cruise with them so perhaps just expect to get what you pay for. BTW, the shows / entertainment were in Italian for his cruise.

[sailco]

10 minutes ago, MicCanberra said:

My Brother sailed with them and said the food was not very good, the chef was booed when they paraded through the MDR, but then they have booked another cruise with them so perhaps just expect to get what you pay for. BTW, the shows / entertainment were in Italian for his cruise.

Your brother might be trying  to keep you away from his new favourite cruise line 🤣

[MicCanberra]

1 hour ago, sailco said:

Your brother might be trying  to keep you away from his new favourite cruise line 🤣

Perhaps, I will try them one day when timing, itinerary and pricing suit.

[The_Big_M]

I think of them as the Euro equivalent of RCL. Some advanced features, similar market/audience/passenger blend. Pros and cons to them compared to other lines, some things you'll like, some things less so, but nothing intolerable. I view some elements as the best of the mass market cruise lines.

 

I'd happily sail them again if the opportunity arises.

 

 

[lyndarra]

I'll be cruising on MSC Divina in 4 weeks and I'm looking forward to it. This particular cruise (Genoa/Miami - 20 days) is aimed at the American market and from what I have read, so far on the roll call, there will be Americans on this cruise who have cruised with MSC multiple times and loved it. The American cruiser at times (from what I have read and experienced), can be hard to please but most have said it is good, different. Go with an open mind and you'll be fine. It is what you make it.

[Bubbeh]

We did a 35 day crusie with MSC in 2015 - Fremantle to Rome.  While I loved the ports and the holiday, MSC were woeful.  I would never ever take a cruise with them again.  The food was awful, they oversold drinks packages and ran out of beer (other than Amstel Light,) Baileys and an awful lot of spirits before we reached Colombo.  They also did not correctly anticipate the food requirements and were running out of heaps of usual food stuffs prior to Colombo, as well.  At every port we waited in specific areas for between 30 minutes and two hours to disembark and after one shore excursion more than 2000 people waited on the freezing concrete of the port for more than two hours to reboard.  One elderly person was so affected by the cold and waiting times that she collapsed and had to be taken on board in a wheel chair.  This is just a very few matters which caused dissatisfaction with every passenger keen to enter into discussions about why they would never take another MSC cruise.

 

We found the staff attitude (not cabin or buffet staff) appalling.  We had paid for a certain level of cabin (middle deck mid-ships balcony) and when we boarded we discovered our cabin had been downgraded.  Customer Service staff were not interested and we were told that as the ship was full we could either like it or lump it (I'm paraphrasing as they had limited English or pretended that they had limited English) .  We were also refused a reimbursement for the more expensive cabin.  We pre-paid laundry packages and a few days out of Rome, I put a number of bags of laundry out for washing etc, and they laundry refused to take them as they were 'too busy'.  Complaints fell on deaf ears and once again, we were refused reimbursement of our packages.  This turned out to be a blessing in disguise as many people suffered loss and damaged clothing after sending it to the laundry.

 

Look, I could go on for hours about the disaster that was a very expensive experience with MSC but if I could just leave you with the following thought; I would rather rub liniment in my eyeballs while simultaneously shoving bamboo under my fingernails, than take another MSC cruise.  In fact, it I won one in a raffle, I would refuse to accept it.

 

 

[Aus Traveller]

Wow, Bubbeh. This sounds like a "cruise from hell". 😒

[sewgood]

1 hour ago, Bubbeh said:

; I would rather rub liniment in my eyeballs while simultaneously shoving bamboo under my fingernails, than take another MSC cruise.  In fact, it I won one in a raffle, I would refuse to accept it.

 

 

So your recomendation would be not to take a cruise on them?  😁😄

I did see a fly/ cruise/hotel deal for $3990 going to the following places;

Milan, Venice, Dubrovnik, Corfu, Argostoli, Kotor, Split, Trieste, Katakolon, Heraklion, the Suez Canal, Aqaba, Salah, Muscat, Khasab and Dubai.

But I think I will give it a pass now and anyway my husband wouldn't let me book it as he was worried about the amount of smoking onboard.

[Bubbeh]

8 minutes ago, sewgood said:

So your recomendation would be not to take a cruise on them?  😁😄

To be fair, they may operate very well in their own area of expertise ie the Mediterranean.  The Freo-Rome cruise in 2015 was their first foray into the Australian market and may well the reason why they don't seem to operate out of our ports any more.  They just seemed to miss the mark entirely with Australian expectations.

[The_Big_M]

I remember Celebrity and RCL also had issues with being understocked on alcohol on their first cruises in Australia. Apparently alcohol consumption on cruises is higher here than elsewhere, so that's not par for the course on their cruises.

 

Their administration/customer service was definitely in the con category I mentioned though... you could say it's authentically Italian.

[sewgood]

I don't think some overseas companies really understand how much a ship full of Aussies can drink.

That may be why you ended up on a ship with no beer.

 

[portcbob]

We did the msc Lirica when it was brand new. Cruise in the Caribbean from fort Lauderdale. Although the ports were great we hated the cruise line and are very reluctant to cruise with them again. The whole experience was bad, customer service, food, entertainment ect.

Ps. This cruise was a long time ago and they now have some beautiful new ships with cheap cruises available however we are not game to book with them. Celebrity, princess or Hal will do us just fine.

[MicCanberra]

There seems to be a common thread with Aussies on MSC

[Brisbanelionsfan]

Thanks everyone for your input, I think we will give it a miss.

 

cheers

[Gwendy]

4 hours ago, Brisbanelionsfan said:

Thanks everyone for your input, I think we will give it a miss.

 

cheers

That’s a shame, while it was ‘different”, it was a great itinerary at a great price.  As another poster said go with an open mind and enjoy,   The staff were sometimes fantastic and sometimes disinterested, but I have found that on Princess as well.

[lyndarra]

I finally got around to doing my MSC Divina 20day Genoa/Miami cruise last November. Here is the link.

https://www.cruisecritic.com.au/memberreviews/memberreview.cfm?EntryID=678986

When trying to enter the cruise date, 5 Nov Genoa/Miami, it would would only come up as 5 day Mediterranean. Apparently there was boarding each day until we left Lisbon.

As usual my memory failed me on a few things I meant to include.

One was the announcements in six languages. This was ok in theory but in practice it does not work. Whether in a bar or the theatre, there is usually a lot of noise due to people talking which is normal. When an announcement starts,  English first, English speakers stop talking to hear what is being said only for the information to be drowned out by the chatting of all the non-English speakers - and so on for each language. Very confusing. This was especially annoying at the beginning of each show in the theatre. The Cruise Director would do his preamble, in 6 languages. Introduce whatever artist/s, in 6 languages. Something as straightforward as this would normally be over quickly but not on MSC. The shows were usually over in about 30 minutes, including the lengthy introduction. I don't know what the answer here is. The languages were English, Italian, German, French, Spanish and Portuguese.

Port information sessions in English were given by a German speaking lady and she was quite hard to follow due to speaking in a monotone, without phrasing, and a heavy accent. Some information was incorrect, possibly due of translation but more often it was lack of knowledge due to poor research. She also had trouble using the audio visual remote, flicking screen shots back and forward. I happened to watch the same presentation done in Spanish and the Spanish presenter had know trouble at all with the remote.

 

 

 

 

 

[lyndarra]

I would really think twice now about booking an MSC cruise. With their removal of tissues from the bathrooms what next, toilet paper? Italy is now a virus hot spot so there's every chance of passengers taking the bug on board. Same would go for Costa and any other cruise line picking up Italian in Italian ports.

[The_Big_M]

2 hours ago, lyndarra said:

I would really think twice now about booking an MSC cruise. With their removal of tissues from the bathrooms what next, toilet paper? Italy is now a virus hot spot so there's every chance of passengers taking the bug on board. Same would go for Costa and any other cruise line picking up Italian in Italian ports.

 

Unfortunately they've also now been impacted with passengers held up on MSC Opera in Greece, following a passenger who left in Genoa found to be positive for the virus.

[MicCanberra]

On 3/4/2020 at 4:16 PM, lyndarra said:

I finally got around to doing my MSC Divina 20day Genoa/Miami cruise last November. Here is the link.

https://www.cruisecritic.com.au/memberreviews/memberreview.cfm?EntryID=678986

When trying to enter the cruise date, 5 Nov Genoa/Miami, it would would only come up as 5 day Mediterranean. Apparently there was boarding each day until we left Lisbon.

As usual my memory failed me on a few things I meant to include.

One was the announcements in six languages. This was ok in theory but in practice it does not work. Whether in a bar or the theatre, there is usually a lot of noise due to people talking which is normal. When an announcement starts,  English first, English speakers stop talking to hear what is being said only for the information to be drowned out by the chatting of all the non-English speakers - and so on for each language. Very confusing. This was especially annoying at the beginning of each show in the theatre. The Cruise Director would do his preamble, in 6 languages. Introduce whatever artist/s, in 6 languages. Something as straightforward as this would normally be over quickly but not on MSC. The shows were usually over in about 30 minutes, including the lengthy introduction. I don't know what the answer here is. The languages were English, Italian, German, French, Spanish and Portuguese.

Port information sessions in English were given by a German speaking lady and she was quite hard to follow due to speaking in a monotone, without phrasing, and a heavy accent. Some information was incorrect, possibly due of translation but more often it was lack of knowledge due to poor research. She also had trouble using the audio visual remote, flicking screen shots back and forward. I happened to watch the same presentation done in Spanish and the Spanish presenter had know trouble at all with the remote.

 

 

 

 

 

My brother had much the same experience.

[NSWP]

MSC Opera was denied entry to Malta yesterday, probably Valletta.   Local doctors protested against the ship visit and threatened industrial action so the Maltesers barred the ship.🤐

[Kiwi Kruzer]

14 minutes ago, NSWP said:

MSC Opera was denied entry to Malta yesterday, probably Valletta.   Local doctors protested against the ship visit and threatened industrial action so the Maltesers barred the ship.🤐

The effects are going to be far reaching . Already tourist towns are questioning the arrival of bus loads of cruise passengers breathing germs over the locals . 

just  imagine Sydney having to close down for 12 days .

[Dobby_The_Ship_Elf]

On 9/30/2019 at 12:21 PM, sewgood said:

But I think I will give it a pass now and anyway my husband wouldn't let me book it as he was worried about the amount of smoking onboard.

 

just walking around Italy was bad enough, I can only imagine what it would be like onboard

 

as they say in racing parlance .......... prefer others