Cruises, Cruise Deals & Cruise Holidays

My daughter (adult) and I were part of the Canadian contingent on the same cruise, though on a different floor. Our cabin was an ocean view (smaller port hole than on other cruise lines, but acceptable). Shows, food and service were definitely inferior to Royal Caribbean, Princess, Norwegian, Celebrity and Carnival. We encountered problems with staff service and attitude, and supervisors responded with promises, but no follow through. Many staff were from Bali, and were gentle, polite people, who seemed almost overwhelmed by the noisy and demanding mainly Italian crowd. There were many children on the ship, who were undisciplined by their parents, and would not respond to polite suggestions from staff. On several occasions, a child was skate boarding through the dining room (La Fontaine) during the busy first dinner sitting. Despite requests from waiters and the host, the parents did not stop the child. Elevators were small, and on many occasions, we were unable to get off at our level as so many other guests rushed to get on the elevator. We also found the length of time in port the shortest of any cruise line we had ever been on. Do they pay by the hour for docking time? Sure felt like they wanted to keep port time as brief as possible. One nice feature was that they did not do the incessant overhead announcements of tour departures, shop openings, special events etc that can be so distracting all day. It did mean that you had to be responsible for getting to your tours and events on time, but most guests seem to have mastered that well! Surprisingly, our life boat drill did not occur until the second day, and even then, we were not told where our boats were. The drill occurred in a large lounge, with hundreds of people, who still had no clue where their assigned boat would be! Rather frightening! We did not take any organized tours, but took the list of sites the tours would be visiting and negotiated with taxi drivers. Without exception, we got great tours, with loads of information, extra stops and generous surprises (like Greek coffee and Turkish roses paid for by the various drivers). The drivers also made great advocates in the markets, where we got much more time than the organized tours.(And we got to choose where we shopped) All this for a quarter of the per person cost of the tours! Highly recommend this strategy. Although we started and ended in Venice, there was no time allotted for Venice. We were dropped in the airport about 1000 hours, with a four hour plus wait to flight boarding time. The airport eas packed, with no place left to sit, stuffy and unappealing. Four of us shared a water taxi into Venice, and manager 2 hours in Venice, returning in time to avoid the line up and board easily. Well worth the money. We were always able to find two or more venturesome souls willing to share these various self created tours. It was a great way to meet new "kindred spirits". One of the biggest issues was water. You could not get a glass of water except at breakfast. All other times it was only sold (expensively) by the bottle. We founf the samt water on shore for 24 bottles for less than we were paying for one. I understand the rip off that happens with alcohol, but how do you justify it for water on a cruise in hot weather? Outrageous. You also could not get a latte or cappuccino at your dinner table, but had to finish your meal and go to the bar. All other cruise lines we have been on have served these coffees at the table, with your dessert course. We requested several times that the automatic tip be removed from our bill, but never succeeded. We wanted to tip specifically to the few staff who did deserve it. We spoke to several staff who expressed that staff were generally not very happy (several very experienced cruise staff told us openly that they would not be renewing their contracts). The staff from Bali ere trying hard, but obviously had language problems, and lacked good training. Bottom line for us is that we will NEVER travel on MSC Cruise lines again, regardless of price! There are just too many good alternatives at competitive prices.

From Suron in Bristol. You must have been on the ship the same week as our party of 6 (13th -20th June?) We have travelled with MSC on previous occasions (mostly on their smaller vessels) and this trip was chosen for the itinerary and dates to co-incide with two persons in our group celebrating their 40th Anniversary. From the first evening in the restaurant (La Fontaine Deck 5 1st sitting) we found problems - our waiter could not understand what we wanted and kept bringing the wrong things, he persisted in reaching across other people to serve instead of serving from the side and just did not seem to have any basic training in waiter skills. We managed to talk to the Head Waiter (Luigi) who gave the waiter a strong talking to. Luigi was from then on always hovering to make sure everything was OK on our Table and after a day or two Gede showed great improvement and he even thanked us for helping him improve his techniques. There is obviously a huge language barrier between staff but basic training is sadly lacking. The smaller ships had a much more welcoming approach, the staff were able to talk to guests of all nationalities and the senior staff set good examples. Breakfast and lunch in the dining room was open seating so you could not get your evening waiter to serve you and these mealtimes were absolute chaos. For example eggs and bacon arrived before cereals. Waiter not knowing difference between orange and grapefruit juice and trying to get a jug of cold milk was a major effort. The self service cafeteria on Deck 13 was just a free-for-all and here we came across some of the rudest head waiters we have ever met. During the afternoon tea one day there were no English Breakfast tea bags at the drinks station and when I asked for some I was told to go and find some at one of the other four stations in the restaurant - needless to say I stood my ground, pointed out that Head Waiters should ensure all stations are adequately stocked and insisted that he arrange to find the tea bags for me - which he did, moaning all the time. We feel that water should be provided free with evening meals and also coffee after the evening meals. This used to be the case on the earlier vessels in the fleet and I know that in the Caribbean MSC make no charge for water and coffee with meals - the American market would not tolerate these charges so why should the European passengers be forced to pay extra? We discovered our MSC Club Card was not valid for certain discounts - apparently they had changed th rules on 2nd April (no-one advised us) so I reported to Reception armed with my letter, a cutting from the MSC Newsletter and the information sheet in the Cabin Book which all stated 5% discount on excursions but they would not allow us this discount. We therefore decided to do our sightseeing independently and managed quite well. Will be taking up the question of benefits of the MSC Club Card with Head Office in the UK along with many other observations and complaints - doubt whether it will do any good but it will make me feel better! We were terribly disappointed that the high standards we found with MSC in their earlier days were not in evidence on this trip. The shows were nothing spectacular so did not bother to go to all of them. The bar staff were very efficient, especially those at the Mojito Bar on Deck 13 where we spent many a pleasant evening. We could not fault our cabin steward and he certainly earned his tip. We removed the tips from our account and just gave to those who gave us good service and because he improved so much over the week we did actually give a tip to our waiter. The usual hassle over towels on sunbeds was seen on several occasions but in fairness we did see the Pool Attendant take several Italian families to task over this and as you can imagine the italian tempers were really flying then! We had no trouble finding a sunbed on the occasions we decided to laze out on deck. Personally we did not join in the Bingo sessions and the dance lessons and the art auction just left us cold (not really necessary on board a ship) and the boutique stalls were very overpriced we felt. We enjoyed the various forms of entertainment in the lounges and atrium each evening but gave the disco a miss(!) but did venture into the casino on a few occasions and had some fun on the 25Cents machines. It would have to be a extra special deal and really appealing itinerary to encourage us to consider another MSC cruise although we may revert to one of the smaller vessels (Melody or Rhapsody) We have travelled with Princess, Thomson, First Choice, Star Cruise Lines, the old Airtours and Royal Olympic and whilst all of these lines have large ships they seem to maintain their standards. we feel MSC has grown too big too quickly and it is the passengers who are suffering because the staff are poorly trained and the language barrier does not help.

Totally agree My family and I (total 9) cruised this ship last August 2008 .You didn't mention the sunbeds they were a complete joke Italians took them all and put towels on them for the day even if they were not used.shows were not very good as there was no speaking in them ,only at the start when we had to sit through about a 6min intro in 10 diffferent languages.Everything was geared for the Italians. formal evening were also a joke .My family all took their tux.s etc but people were allowed into the dining rooms wearing T shirts and jeans and an array of casual clothes. we actually felt the odd one out.