Meraviglia Part 2 – Dining and Drinks

If you read my last blog you will know that I have recently returned from a cruise on MSC Meraviglia. This time I want to tell you about the dining, food, bars and drinks onboard.

We had opted for the late dining but were allocated 9.30pm in the L’Olive d’Oro restaurant. We thought this was too late and probably could have got it changed but decided to opt for the other options available.  We used the Buffet on a few evenings which had a good selection of food and was laid out really well  with 2 sides open so you didn’t have to wait in big queues. There was a good selection of Salads and breads to choose from and then there was an Ethnic section that had a mix of Asian, Chinese and Indian food. There was always hot meat to choose from, cut from the bone and served to you by staff. There was also a wide selection of desserts every night.

This goes for the breakfast and lunch in the buffet too and as you expect there were the dispensing machines for tea, coffee and fruit juices, although the juices were only available at Breakfast.

We booked into Butchers Cut for one evening and enjoyed it so much we went back again. The food and service was excellent and was very like Chops Grille on the Royal Caribbean ships. This can be booked as part of the dining package if you book to dine in one of the other restaurants, Teppanyaki or Eataly. If you had this on the package it was 39 Euros per head but we  bought everything individually and this gave us more choice as there were certain things on the menu that wasn’t  included in the package. Out bill was 118.45 Euro for 3 courses each and a bottle of wine. Butchers cut was also open from 8am-3pm for Brunch.

As part of Cirque du Soliel we had booked this with dinner which we had pre -booked before travelling. This was great value as included a 3 course meal which was around £25.00pp. This was a  fixed menu for starters and desert and then a choice of main course of fish meat or vegetarian.

A couple of mornings we also decided to have breakfast in our cabin and this was complimentary. We had to leave the menu on the door before 2am in the morning and the delivery time we wanted it and both times it was delivered on time. There was also a room service menu with a selection of food. This was very reasonably priced at 3 euros for 1 dish of your choice or 5 euros for 2 dishes of your choice.

The Brass Anchor English Pub also had a choice of 4 “Pub Grub” dishes to choose from with a small cover charge. This was 3 Euro for the Sir Burger, 3 Euro for Cheeseburger and Fries, 2 Euro’s for Special Hot dog and fries and 4 Euro for the fish and chips. I have to admit we did have that twice for dinner as it was so good! The staff in all the bars and restaurants were really friendly and the service was great.

We had pre-paid for the Bars and restaurant drinks package before we travelled and this was great value for money. There was plenty of choice of draught beers and cocktails and there  was  a choice of 2 red ,2 white and 1 rose wine on the menu which was ok. I did find it strange that the only bottled beer that was included was Heineken and all other bottles had to be paid for unless you upgraded the All Inclusive Deluxe package which is £43.00 per person per day. This also seemed a little strange as a good selection of cocktails were included at 6.75 euros each and the bottled beers were 4.80 euros each and not included! Beertails were also on the menu, which was something new to me, cocktails made with beer! Cherry Orchard was my favourite made with Strongbow Cider, Marachino Cherry Liqueur and Chambord

The drinks package wasn’t applicable in the Cirque du Soliel and you could only purchase drinks inside the lounge, no drinks were allowed to be taken in  although the drinks package was applicable in all the Speciality Restaurants.

The Sky Lounge had a Mixology Bar Menu of Molecular Cocktails but these weren’t included in the package and had to be paid for individually. These also had a 15% service charge added to them.

The drinks package doesn’t have a value “up to” on the drinks, they are either included or not ,so you are unable to pay the difference if you wanted something that wasn’t included.

Overall I found the dining really good  and the drinks package was great value for money as its at least half the cost of packages on other cruise lines.

MSC definitely gets a thumbs up from me and I will be looking for another cruise with them in the near future.