My MSC Cruise Experience

I have just returned from a short 4-night break onboard the MSC Orchestra Starting from Barcelona and porting in Genoa, Marseille and Palma De Majorca. Although the ship was an older ship for the MSC fleet she was still a lovely ship to experience.

After staying 1-night in Barcelona prior to the cruise we arrived at Barcelona port using a shared shuttle service which was very swift at picking us up and taking us to the cruise terminal. We did, however, make the mistake of checking our luggage in at the terminal and not taking an embarkation number which gave us time slots to embark the ship. However, this was soon rectified.

When we embarked the ship we made our way to our balcony cabin to receive our cabin account cards and our baggage was delivered to our cabin within a few hours. We then decided to take a small tour of the ship to get our bearings and then made our way to the emergency drill. As the ship is multilingual they had to go through this in various different languages so this did take some time.

After this, we then decided to make our way to the lido deck to enjoy a beverage in the sun and we had the All Inclusive beverage package at about £23pp per day included which I would recommend taking if you enjoy more then 4 drinks a day.

Each evening we had our main dining in the 1st sitting at 7pm and a table size of 8 which gave us the opportunity to talk to the others and enjoy hearing about their experience, as I had booked a large corporate group of around 210 guests (about 93 cabins). we were all seated close to each other which made this experience even better.

Each evening there was a theatre production and they had them for each destination and also for their guests such as a London, Italian, French and Spanish. I personally loved the French evening as they had a Moulin Rouge theme production.

They also had the White night on the lido deck later that evening where everyone dressed in white for the party. This was a great night.

We managed to secure a tour to Portofino in Genoa as I have previously been told that there is not much to see in Genoa. We disembarked the ship and had a boat ride (around an hour) to get to Portofino. You have around 1 hour 30 minutes in Portofino giving you enough time to explore the shops and have lunch.

The Gala evening as always on any ship is such a great experience and to enjoy this evening with my Husband and the whole group I had booked was such a phenomenal experience to see so much joy and laughter had by all but also to see everyone really take part and go for it with dressing up.

Personally, one of the best things about this cruise for me was meeting my MSC Queen and King (below). They book many MSC cruises every year with me and have done for the past 5 years. This is what generated the Corporate group to be confirmed. I met some fantastic people onboard and their company really is helpful and informative to customers in need of financial support and direction.

I really need to Thank My MSC Queen for all the support onboard with the Corporate group booking. She really went out of her way to becoming the MSC Connoisseur. As I say, it was great to meet everyone and the feedback has been absolutely AMAZING!

All in all, I had a fantastic experience onboard and my Husband would agree. Would I cruise again with MSC? I would certainly love to cruise again with MSC and maybe on one of their newer ships.