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Msc divina - trip report - may 2017


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MSC DIVINA – TRIP REPORT – MAY 2017

 

 

 

MSC stands for MediterraneanShipping Company. They are very big in Europe and currently have only one ship, the Divina, sailing out of Miami year round for the past four years. This ship willbe joined by the brand new MSC Seaside in December of this year. We have been looking at the Divina seriouslyfor the past two years and originally had it scheduled for October of lastyear. This trip was destroyed byHurricane Matthew. We couldn’t fly in and we couldn’t drive because thehurricane went right up the east coast. Mr. Richard S., the CEO of MSC, USA gave us a credit for this cruise. We rescheduled it for departure on May 20th, 2017 because we would be onthe ship for our 15th wedding anniversary on May 26th. The ship is fairly large being 139,000 tondisplacement. I’m not sure what thepassenger capacity is but I’m guessing somewhere around 4,000 passengers. In all honesty the ship seemed crowded mostof the time. We were in the buffet forbreakfast most mornings by 6:30and that was the only time we didn’t deal with crowds.

 

 

 

The embarkation procedurewas fairly smooth with only one glitch. After getting our room key we had to wait in a lounge until boarding atapproximately noon time. The PA system was not working in this loungeso there was some confusion when they started calling out boarding numbers. Ournumber was 14. We had lunch in thebuffet and were able to go to our stateroom by 2 PM. We had abalcony stateroom, # 11084, which was located in an area where the wide part ofthe ship narrowed down significantly increasing the size of the balcony. I believe the balcony was 125 sq. feet. The furniture was two chairs and a smallhassock for your feet. This balconywould be quite a bit better if it had loungers like at the pool and a smalltable. The stateroom itself was spacious and beautiful. The shower had a unique feature. It had glassdoors which pivoted inward, retained by magnets. This increased the space inthe bathroom. Our cabin steward, Dexter,was great. Our room was always made up after we left in the morning. Anything we needed he got for usimmediately. We tipped him $20 on thelast morning when departing.

 

 

 

The décor on the ship was beautiful;I’d guess most would refer to it as European, Italian in design. I would put this ship in my top 3 all timefor its’ appearance, exterior and interior. One thing I noted was the absence of rustanywhere on the ship’s exterior. This is the first time after being on 30+ships that I have not noticed rust. MSCshould be complimented on this. We had the early seating, 6PM, for dinner inthe Villa Rosa dining room on deck 6 in the back of the ship. Mr. S. gave us VIP treatment for this cruiseand we were assigned the best table in the dining room in our opinion. It was in the back row adjoining the largepicture windows which ran across the complete back of the ship. Our table wasright in the center overlooking the wake. Our waiter Ashok Kumar, wasabsolutely fabulous. He spoke great English and had a sense of humor. One thingthey do on MSC is when they take your order for dinner, they take your dessertorder also. Desserts were listed in the menus. By the way the menu was in I think 5 or 6 different languages, English,Spanish, French, German, Italian and maybe Portuguese. Most nights the servicewas on the slow side. I was expecting tofinish dinner in an hour and 15 minutes but it generally took an hour and 40minutes. This was OK because I did nothave to get to the casino by a certain time to get a good shooting position onthe non-existent craps table. Theshows in the theater for the early dinner seating did not start until 9 PM so the long dinners didn’t affect that. Ourstateroom was an upgraded (fantastica) and it came with 12 free drink voucherseach. I think we had 10 leftover vouchers at the end of the cruise.

 

 

 

Despite this ship sailingout of Miami year round for the last 4 years, the majority of thepassengers were foreigners. My guess isthat only 25% were USA citizens. Some of the countries the people that we met and talked to during thiscruise were from, Argentina, UK, Switzerland and Russia. The Spanish speaking people seemed like the mostfriendly and were always smiling. TheRussians, not all, but most seemed somewhat surly or grumpy. Quite a few of theforeigners seemed somewhat rude. This was evidenced most often in the buffetarea. They had a tendency to not knowwhat a line is and you never heard an “excuse me” from them. It took a couple of days before we ran acrosssome English speaking passengers.

 

 

 

The pasta in the buffet wasexceptional! It was like your Italiangrandmother was cooking in the kitchen. My wife is very fussy about Italian food and she absolutely loved the pasta. The sauce on the pizza was also exceptional,MSC definitely has some talented chefs working for them, the sauce isauthentic! There was some difficulty forus since my wife is a Vegan and she didn’t have too many choices, but was ableto soldier on and still find enough to keep her satisfied.

 

 

 

There were 4 stops on thiscruise: Ocho Rios, CaymanIsland, Cozumel and Nassau. There were 2 at sea days and we spent time at theinfinity pool on the back of the ship deck 15. By 10 in the morning all the lounge chairs were taken. The pool was salt water and was heated to 79degrees. This was an adults only area and was very quiet compared to the mainpool area. There was a solarium poolwith a moveable cover which was very nice also. There were no lounge chairs here though. They did have quite a few tables and chairs in this area. I justremembered, this ship had 4 sets of elevators. One bank was right near ourstateroom and most times we didn’t have to wait more than 15 seconds for anelevator. This was certainly a positive.

 

 

 

Now for a summary of ourstops in port:

 

 

 

OCHO RIOS - We did a shore excursion to Dunn’s RiverFalls. This was a short bus ride from thePier. This is a 600 feet elevation climbup the cascading falls. We got no morethan 50 feet into the climb when my wife decided it wasn’t safe for either ofus, so the guide took us back down. Wespent the rest of the trip at the beach. Beware of the vendors in the shops you have to walk through on your wayback to the exit. I had a bad experiencewith one who first offered me a wooden carved turtle for free and startedcarving my name in it before I could get away. Needless to say it wasn’t freeand he followed us to the bus where my wallet was locked inside. This was veryawkward and I felt very uncomfortable. The best advice I could give is if youaren’t interested in buying anything just keep on walking and don’t engage thevendors in any conversation. And don’tgive them your name.





 

 

 







 

 

 







 

 

 







 

 

 







 

 

 







 

 







 

 







 

 







 

 







 

 

 







 

 

 

 







 

 

 







 

 

 







 

 

 







 

 

 







 

 

 







 

 

 







 

 

 







 

 

 

 







CAYMANISLANDS– We took a $5 cab ride to 7 mile beach. We went to a private beach club, Calico Jacks;it used to be Sea Grape beach. Two lounge chairs and an umbrella only cost us$15 for the whole day. We got there around 10 and stayed until 1:30. Thebeach was nice, the water warm, the people we met were fun to talk to and itwas a great day.
COZUMEL – The ship docked in a different locationthat we had docked previously on Carnival and Princess cruises. We didn’t know this until we got off the shipand didn’t recognize where we were. Itwas so hot and humid that we all we did was walk around visiting some shops foran hour then it was back to the ship where we went to the pool and pretty muchhad it to ourselves for hours.
NASSAU- We were excited about this stop because we were going to visit the newBaha Mar casino and resort on CableBeach. We’vebeen waiting years to visit here since it was delayed due to a bankruptcy. The property was beautiful and so was thecasino. I posted a separate report onBaha Mar.
CASINO on the ship - The casino was smaller than Iexpected and tended to be lightly visited most nights on the ship. There wereonly 128 machines and the following table games:
Roulette – 2 tables
3 Card Poker – 1 table
Ultimate Texas Holdem – 1 table
Dream 21 -- 2 tables (This is Spanish 21)
Blackjack -- 3 tables
NOCRAPS TABLE ON THIS SHIP!
Most of the gameshad a $5 minimum. One blackjack table was a $10 minimum. All of the blackjack games were handshuffled, no continuous shufflers in sight.
Disappointing forme was that this ship removed the craps table about a year ago due to lack ofplay. Therefore the casino did not have very much attraction to me. The first evening I lost $50 at blackjackplaying with a super fast dealer. This was not fun and I never went back toblackjack when she was dealing. I playedeven a couple of more times during the cruise. My wife played a lot of Ultimate Texas Hold Em but never had a hotseat. I think she donated about $150 tothe casino. There was a Poker Pro tablewhich only had players for the first tournament. The rest of the cruise it wasempty. Toward the end of the cruise it was removed from the casino. My wife was disappointed with this since pokeris one of the games she always plays on a ship. The second night I hit a slotmachine for $100 which recovered my losses from the first night. Since therewas no craps, for most of my time in the casino I played penny slots whichaccounted for probably 90% of all the machines. I was mostly up and down for theweek and I think my total donation to the casino was around $75. This was more than made up with my $200 winat Baha Mar in Nassau.
There were someadditional perks that we encountered! When we got to our stateroom there was abottle of champagne and a plate of fresh fruit. The next night there was chocolatecovered strawberries, another bottle of sparkling wine and more fruit. This was amazing and we took the wine to ouranniversary dinner. We had prioritytender boat tickets and an invitation to the captain’s cocktail party. Itseemed like every day when we returned to our stateroom there was asurprise. The maitre d’ sent a plate ofchocolate covered strawberries also.
The assistantmaitre d’ Lelanni was attentive and came every evening at dinner to make sureeverything was ok with our dinner, etc. The head waiter David also came every evening to make sure there wasnothing that we needed. The treatment inthe dining room was exceptional! Twiceduring the cruise the guest services desk called to see if there was anythingwe needed and if there was anything that they could do for us. We felt very important!
The internetpackage that MSC offers is brilliant! All other cruise lines offer a package very expensive, not MSC; theyoffer a package for $19.95 for the entire cruise for social media. That was the best because you can post allyour pictures to your social media and even talk on messenger to the folks backhome. We loved it!
We were very closeto booking the Seaside for our anniversary next year while we were still on board, but thedetermination of whether or not there would be a craps table on board held usoff.
My wife woulddefinitely do another MSC cruise in the future. She says it is like you are transported to a European hotel when you areaboard this ship. My feelings are notnearly the same as hers. Theentertainment that I crave on a cruise is playing on a craps table where I feelI have at least a 50% probability of winning most nights. This was absent for me, so despite all thepositives we’ve mentioned above, and the very relaxing nature of this cruise, Iwould have to say that there is no real incentive for me to book this shipagain. MSC offers good pricing and thismight be the only factor that would sway me. I am certainly interested in the new Seaside ship but I don’t know if it will have acraps table or not.
When I first heardof MSC it was 4 years ago when they first started sailing out of Miami. Atthat time the CEO of the whole MSC cruise division, based in Europe, did a question and answer session on the CruiseCritic Message Board. I sent in a question concerning whether or not therewould be a craps table on this ship since European ships do not have them. Heresponded and said yes it would have a craps table since it would be sailingfull time out of the USA.
Bob Miller(Dicenator)

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This is an apology for how my trip report is garbled. I write it in Microsoft Word and then copy and paste it here in my posting. I previewed it before submitting and noticed some of the problems but I did not see any way to edit it.

 

Dicenator

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The casino is non-smoking and really quiet and the slot machines are few and far between in a large space. I played some, but because I was the only one playing, the staff followed me around and watched me and clapped at any wins, which were also few and far between. Needless to say, the usual casino it isn't.

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

Spideybabe,

 

The Roulette table had 0 and 00. On the Divina the Roulette table had a lot of action the whole week. There are 2 tables.

 

For the most part the casino was not as crowded as Norwegian's casinos most nights.

 

 

Dicenator

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