Thank you for your great vlogs! I went on MSC Magnifica in 2018 with one daughter and in 2022 with another daughter. Both times were ofcourse very special. Tha ship had not changed is 4 years and was beautiful! It was both times very crowded and we could not always find a place to sit in the buffet. The dinner was always in the main restaurant and sometimes oke and other times not oke. The chef in the kitchen was German, not Italian and the lasagne was really bad but at the same meal the Greek food was fabulous. Overal i think MSC is value for money. Great ship, friendly crew, food mwah, very crowded and noisy, nice theater shows. Everybody have a great (cruise)life.
your msc reviews are really good. I'm torn on things. Some of my family wants to do this same ship over Thanksgiving (Caribbean sailing). Alternately, we could do a somewhat shorter, easier drive to Mobile and do Carnival. I'm amazed at how much emphasis the cruise forums place on staying in yacht club, i.e. a large percentage of forum posts on msc are all about YC. We would not be in YC b/c it's either sold out and/or the cost is exorbitant. The ships are gorgeous--but we do not care much about that. We are not into flashy things. It mostly seems like 'regular people' are treated so-so, they're not really into customer service for non-YC people. The price is good, but o/w I don't see anything all that enticing... MSC also makes it very hard to figure out the costs of their upgrade packages. So it's not a no-go--but wow they don't make it easy to figure out their system.
Tips for Travellers is the largest UA-cam channel for cruising. (And yes, the host Gary Bembridge is British so spells travellers with 2 L's.) He has a couple of good videos on the Yacht Club that would be worth watching before you pick that. I don't think the extra cost would be worth it for us. On the other hand, we are hesitant about Carnival because of the party ship reputation. So I guess I'm not a good person to advise you on this one. We have a Holland America Mediterranean trip scheduled for October and a Alaska trip scheduled for May on Princess. And we are mulling a Panama Canal crossing in January, maybe on Norwegian. Let us know how you like whatever you choose.
@@mytravelwindow3061 I've watched Gary's vids for 3-4 years, since a coworker told me about him. We're not doing the msc. I think the point you and others have driven home: if there's a particular itinerary that looks really interesting, and msc is doing it at that time, then maybe it's worth doing msc and saving a bit of money. But for a lazy 'dull port' holiday cruise in the caribbean, I don't think the hassles of msc steerage are worth it. Carnival is not really as wild as the videos of the fights make it look. The biggest negatives are that their buffet tends to be more limited in selection (maybe similar to msc). And carnival downgraded their mdr a couple of years ago and I'm not sure how it is now. Princess and Hal are both a slightly more upscale experience, and I like both better. Carnival also puts a lot of emphasis on comedy shows, and I'm not into those. To me, Princess, Hal, Celebrity (I've only done one) are pretty consistent , good quality choices, a level above Carnival and MSC.
As an IT person, the managing of the multiple embarkation ports would be an interesting problem to solve. Unless a particular stateroom is reserved for a particular embarkation port, managing upgrades is a challenge. We upgraded our outside view cabin to a balcony for our upcoming Baltic/Norway cruise, which we are boarding in Stockholm, rather than the 'main' port of Kiel. So MSC would have to have an available balcony room that is dedicated to just passengers boarding in Stockholm (which may be only 5-10% of the passengers), in order to be able to accommodate any possible passengers from Stockholm desiring an upgrade. A challenge, certainly, since they have no way of knowing for certain what percent of their passengers from any of the alternate embarkation ports - Helsinki, Copenhagen - might want to do this.
As a former IT guy myself, I agree. Consider that in the last few months Royal Caribbean has had at least 4 or 5 cruises where they were embarrassed by having an oversold the ship. And that is without multiple embarkation complications. On our trip, we changed the first port because of weather, going to Messina instead of Palermo. This means MSC had to arrange to get everyone who was boarding to the new location, in addition to all the normal logistical issues. My hat's off to them.
Great point! I would not normally know this, because my wife and I don't have hard drinks with a meal. But because MSC gave us assigned seats with 3 other couples for the week, we had plenty of time to get to know them, and this was an observation made by one of the other couples. We were paired with married couples from the US and Croatia, as well as a mother/daughter pair from Romania. It was delightful getting to know all of them. On shorter cruises like this one I am a fan of the assigned seating.
I’m not disbelieving your views/opinions after all every person can have a different experience but i have done 4 different msc cruises (in the Caribbean) and never had any issues *touch wood*
Thanks for your feedback! MSC cruises in the Caribbean are different from those in the Mediterranean, particularly when it comes to language. And I think the embarkation at every port is different. But this was our experience in the Mediterranean. At the moment, I don't plan to do another MSC ship there. Too many other good possibilities. But overall it was good, just quirky, and I would be happy to sail MSC again, perhaps in the Caribbean.
I have not done an American cruise. My understanding is that the language part is different. It is pretty much just English. But I believe that the other things are pretty much the same. Any others want to chime in on that?
Thank you for your great vlogs! I went on MSC Magnifica in 2018 with one daughter and in 2022 with another daughter. Both times were ofcourse very special. Tha ship had not changed is 4 years and was beautiful! It was both times very crowded and we could not always find a place to sit in the buffet. The dinner was always in the main restaurant and sometimes oke and other times not oke. The chef in the kitchen was German, not Italian and the lasagne was really bad but at the same meal the Greek food was fabulous. Overal i think MSC is value for money. Great ship, friendly crew, food mwah, very crowded and noisy, nice theater shows. Everybody have a great (cruise)life.
Thanks for the great feedback.
your msc reviews are really good. I'm torn on things. Some of my family wants to do this same ship over Thanksgiving (Caribbean sailing). Alternately, we could do a somewhat shorter, easier drive to Mobile and do Carnival. I'm amazed at how much emphasis the cruise forums place on staying in yacht club, i.e. a large percentage of forum posts on msc are all about YC. We would not be in YC b/c it's either sold out and/or the cost is exorbitant.
The ships are gorgeous--but we do not care much about that. We are not into flashy things. It mostly seems like 'regular people' are treated so-so, they're not really into customer service for non-YC people. The price is good, but o/w I don't see anything all that enticing...
MSC also makes it very hard to figure out the costs of their upgrade packages. So it's not a no-go--but wow they don't make it easy to figure out their system.
Tips for Travellers is the largest UA-cam channel for cruising. (And yes, the host Gary Bembridge is British so spells travellers with 2 L's.) He has a couple of good videos on the Yacht Club that would be worth watching before you pick that. I don't think the extra cost would be worth it for us.
On the other hand, we are hesitant about Carnival because of the party ship reputation. So I guess I'm not a good person to advise you on this one.
We have a Holland America Mediterranean trip scheduled for October and a Alaska trip scheduled for May on Princess. And we are mulling a Panama Canal crossing in January, maybe on Norwegian.
Let us know how you like whatever you choose.
@@mytravelwindow3061 I've watched Gary's vids for 3-4 years, since a coworker told me about him. We're not doing the msc. I think the point you and others have driven home: if there's a particular itinerary that looks really interesting, and msc is doing it at that time, then maybe it's worth doing msc and saving a bit of money. But for a lazy 'dull port' holiday cruise in the caribbean, I don't think the hassles of msc steerage are worth it. Carnival is not really as wild as the videos of the fights make it look. The biggest negatives are that their buffet tends to be more limited in selection (maybe similar to msc). And carnival downgraded their mdr a couple of years ago and I'm not sure how it is now. Princess and Hal are both a slightly more upscale experience, and I like both better. Carnival also puts a lot of emphasis on comedy shows, and I'm not into those. To me, Princess, Hal, Celebrity (I've only done one) are pretty consistent , good quality choices, a level above Carnival and MSC.
As an IT person, the managing of the multiple embarkation ports would be an interesting problem to solve. Unless a particular stateroom is reserved for a particular embarkation port, managing upgrades is a challenge. We upgraded our outside view cabin to a balcony for our upcoming Baltic/Norway cruise, which we are boarding in Stockholm, rather than the 'main' port of Kiel. So MSC would have to have an available balcony room that is dedicated to just passengers boarding in Stockholm (which may be only 5-10% of the passengers), in order to be able to accommodate any possible passengers from Stockholm desiring an upgrade. A challenge, certainly, since they have no way of knowing for certain what percent of their passengers from any of the alternate embarkation ports - Helsinki, Copenhagen - might want to do this.
As a former IT guy myself, I agree. Consider that in the last few months Royal Caribbean has had at least 4 or 5 cruises where they were embarrassed by having an oversold the ship. And that is without multiple embarkation complications.
On our trip, we changed the first port because of weather, going to Messina instead of Palermo. This means MSC had to arrange to get everyone who was boarding to the new location, in addition to all the normal logistical issues. My hat's off to them.
Why would you have hard liquor with dinner? Savages. 😂😂😂
Great point! I would not normally know this, because my wife and I don't have hard drinks with a meal. But because MSC gave us assigned seats with 3 other couples for the week, we had plenty of time to get to know them, and this was an observation made by one of the other couples.
We were paired with married couples from the US and Croatia, as well as a mother/daughter pair from Romania. It was delightful getting to know all of them. On shorter cruises like this one I am a fan of the assigned seating.
I’m not disbelieving your views/opinions after all every person can have a different experience but i have done 4 different msc cruises (in the Caribbean) and never had any issues *touch wood*
Thanks for your feedback!
MSC cruises in the Caribbean are different from those in the Mediterranean, particularly when it comes to language. And I think the embarkation at every port is different. But this was our experience in the Mediterranean. At the moment, I don't plan to do another MSC ship there. Too many other good possibilities. But overall it was good, just quirky, and I would be happy to sail MSC again, perhaps in the Caribbean.
Is it like this on their ships in America?
I have not done an American cruise. My understanding is that the language part is different. It is pretty much just English. But I believe that the other things are pretty much the same. Any others want to chime in on that?