MSC Fantasia: a first time cruiser adventure!

Hello everybody!

My mother and I just returned last Monday from our first cruise and it was quite an adventure! We are very grateful to this forums as it helped us so much during our 6 months research period, so I decided to write this review in the hope to offer a fresh perspective of a cruise virgin.

I had nothing to compare this experience to, so we took it all face-value, which I think helped us a lot in managing our expectations. This review will, therefore, focus on the first-time experience and I will include, as much as possible, things I wish I had known before I took this cruise.

A bit about us

We are Brazilian but have been living in Europe for almost 12 years now. I'm on my mid-thirties and my mom on her mid-sixties and we are sociable people. We speak Portuguese, Dutch and English so we were confident there would be no language barrier between us, the crew and our fellow passengers.

This will be a diary style, day-by-day review. I'm not the fastest typer in the world, so have a bit of patience with me, specially because English is my second language. Anyway, here it goes!

DAY 1 - Traveling from Belgium to Venice

It might be a good moment to tell you that I had never heard of Cruise critic until a few months before my cruise. Actually, I knew almost nothing about cruising at all! So I really booked it blind, based only on the options offered by my travel agent - I really wanted to go to Greece, so I checked the options and the MSC Fantasia was just perfect. I then checked the 360° virtual pictures of MSC Fantasia on the MSC website and fell head over hills in love with the ship.

Anyway, without having cruise critic to help me out, I made some rookie mistakes: I flew the same day to Venice and I had no travel insurance, oops! Just thinking about all that could have gone wrong gives me the chills! Thank God it all worked out and we arrived in Venice at 1PM, Sunday 31/8/14.

After we picked up our bags, there was a lady with a medium size board written MSC Fantasia explaining in every possible language the directions to reach the MSC bus to the port. It is the funniest thing to see people following directions! She said: go straight ahead and in the end of the corridor turn left and you will see the MSC tent. Simple enough? I guess not, because everyone turned left right away on the first exit while I had to convince my mom not to follow them, hahaha. Then they noticed we were going in the right direction and started following us :D

After more or less 10 minutes, they indicated that we could board the bus and after a short ride we could finally have a first glimpse of the ship. She is huge!!!!

The cruise terminal building was very full of people but the signs were very clear showing where to go. Then suddenly I had my first cruise virgin panic attack: What do I do with my bag?! I read everywhere that some porters would collect them and that I MUST tip them! An MSC employee saw my panicked expression and told us we could just put our bags in the room next door, together with the other hundreds of bags neatly labelled. No porters, no tip. Very DYI. Crisis averted :)

Then we followed everyone to the check in line, which was huge but moving rather quickly. After I signed and our picture was taken, she gave us our card and told us to proceed to embark. Hum?! But I still had millions of questions!!!!! What about dinner seating? Then the Lady kindly explains that everything I needed to know was written in my cruise card. Ah okay, she was right!

Can you see all information on the cruise card? It contains your assembly point for muster drill, your dinner seating turn, restaurant and table number and your internet login ID. It also had the code indicating we had Alegríssimo and specified we chose the Bella experience. Because of that, we were assigned a lower deck, which was Deck 8.

That worked out perfectly, as cruise critic taught me later on that to avoid sea sickness you need a cabin in a lower deck, in the middle of the ship. Bingo! 8183 was a great balcony, roomy and we had very little motion. The tender boats were just one level below so they were kind of in our sight range but nothing that ruined our balcony. This next picture was taken during sail way:

Hi There!!

Thanks for writing this review! I will be on Fantasia in about 7 weeks--looking forward to your comments on the adventure that you had!:D

Susan

I should warn you that I am technology challenged, so this thumbnail pictures is the best you will be getting out of me until further notice :eek:

Anyway, we boarded the ship via the beautiful blue and white lounge, I believe it was called Il Transatlantico. A great first impression! We dropped our bags on our room and our lovely steward Indra came to meet us. He was a sweetheart the entire trip! My only request to him was that we needed 2 single beds instead of 1 double. He took note and it was solved once we were back for sail away.

We were starving and headed to the buffet. OMG, what a stampede! I kind of lost faith in human kind during that 1 hour and a half. People were putting a whole pizza in one plate to go, dropping drinks on the floor and acting like they never saw food in their lives. I wanted to run away but I was too hungry for that :D

So again cruise critic reviews saved me, as I grabbed my mother and we went all the way back to the kids corner. It was much better though equally full. The waiter were doing their best to have a smile in their faces but we could see their struggle. I guess this experience was a preview of the next days: Ship? Great! Crew? Great! Fellow passengers? I did expect a higher level of politeness. Oh well, we ate and got the hell out of there as fast as we could.

We headed to our cabin and after the master drill, which was quick and painless - we experienced sail away from our balcony. It was just magical! You can check out the amazing Elmartellama review for some great sail away pictures. I was too entranced to even remember to take out my camera!

Once the ship was really at open sea, we packed and got dressed for dinner. We had the first seating, which was at 7PM, perfect for us! Second seating was at 9:30 PM. We were seated in a table for seven with fellow European people who also spoke Dutch, phew! The service was quite slow, the slowest of the week but I expected that. I forgot to take pictures but for the remaining dinners you can expect some food porn :D

The food was not very hot but it wasn't cold also. We skipped desert in favor of a relaxed coffee on Il Cappuccino to be able to see what was up at the atrium until show time, at 10 PM.

The show tonight was Zorro, I really loved it! Full of energy, acrobatics and visually elaborate with nice costumes. It lasted for about 40 minutes, which I liked. Our cruise director Daniella did take around 10 minutes to welcome everyone in 7 languages but it wasn't as bad as it sounds because she is so fun and engaging.

We left the theatre happy and exhausted after such a long, intense day! We were up since 5AM so we dropped in our beds and had a gentil motion rocking us to sleep like a giant cradle.

Hi There!!

 

Thanks for writing this review! I will be on Fantasia in about 7 weeks--looking forward to your comments on the adventure that you had!:D

 

Susan

DAY 2 - Bari, Italy

We woke up and ran like kids to open the balcony curtain. It was the weirdest, beautiful thing: The sky right above us was clear blue but far away we could see stormy clouds with lightning. Fascinating!

We are early birds and after yesterday's fiasco at the buffet, we decided to head there for breakfast at 6:45 PM. It was heaven! Only around 10 people there and we got a lovely table looking over the ocean. We had a lot of time ahead of us, as we were scheduled to arrive at Bari around 12AM.

We had already planned our morning so we had our swimsuits on underneath our dresses. So after our nice, relaxed breakfast, we headed straight to the indoor jacuzzi. The pools opened at 7AM and there was N.O.B.O.D.Y.! Yay! We relaxed there for 1 hour more or less and left once the 'breakfast traffic' started to increase.

We then took our time to get to know the ship from the highest deck up to the 4th, which is as low as you can go. The only thing there is the medical center, so we headed back up to get ready for our excursion.

I should tell you that everyday we did an MSC excursion - as first time cruises, I thought it was the safest option. We don't speak Italian or greek and once we compared prices with our table mates who did it all DYI, I though we had quite some good deals. I will talk more about that as we go.

So for today, we booked a city trip in the historical center of Bari, that lasted approximatelly 4 hours. Our guide was very friendly and knowledgeable - she explained everything in English and Italian. We were around 15 people and while she was busy in Italian then us English speakers would take advantage to take pictures of the sights.

For the excursions, I would always wear a backpack containing a bottle of water brought from the ship (why waste my allegrissimo), my wallet with ID, a small umbrella and sunglasses. That worked perfectly, as it rained a bit that day!

Disembarkation was easier then I expected: if you didn't have an excursion, you just went out once the doors were opened. They scan your cruise card and off you go. The excursions group always had a meeting point published in the 'Daily' so you have to keep an eye on it. An MSC employee would take your tickets and join the guide during the tour. It was well organised and the last hour, more or less was free to wonder about. We knew exactly what we wanted to do: Italian ice cream!!!!!

We took note of the time and meeting point of our bus and went for the most delicious ice cream ever. Suddenly I see my mom looking at me a bit scared and she goes 'when you finish this one, you can have another one if you want' hahahaha, I can only imagine the unladylike way I was murdering that ice cream for her to say that :D

We did have another one, it was just so good! So far, 4 ice cream balls each - for now....

I'm enjoying your review immensely, so far. You have a lovely writing style - I'm imagining being there with you it's so descriptive.

You made me laugh when describing those who took the first left in Venice Airport - I did that, too, when I was there on Aug 30th. However, I got to the MSC assembly point quicker than had I gone straight to the end before turning left as there was what seemed like a huge queue formed trying to exit from there.

Also enjoying reading your review. Brings back fond memories of my first cruise, also from Venice.

Interested to hear your cruise director was called Daniella. On my 2nd & 3rd cruises, the lady in charge of the Entertainment team was Daniella and she was wonderful. I got quite friendly with her and she told me her ambition was to be a CD. A few years later I met her at the airport on the way to a cruise and she came running over to greet me and tell me her great news that she was now the Assistant CD. Haven't seen her since, so I'm hoping it is the same Daniella and she has finally made it to CD. She was not very tall, with long dark hair and the most infectious of smiles.

I'm enjoying your review immensely, so far. You have a lovely writing style - I'm imagining being there with you it's so descriptive.

 

You made me laugh when describing those who took the first left in Venice Airport - I did that, too, when I was there on Aug 30th. However, I got to the MSC assembly point quicker than had I gone straight to the end before turning left as there was what seemed like a huge queue formed trying to exit from there.

What a nice compliment for this first time reviewer, Thanks Bea!

Also enjoying reading your review. Brings back fond memories of my first cruise, also from Venice.

 

Interested to hear your cruise director was called Daniella. On my 2nd & 3rd cruises, the lady in charge of the Entertainment team was Daniella and she was wonderful. I got quite friendly with her and she told me her ambition was to be a CD. A few years later I met her at the airport on the way to a cruise and she came running over to greet me and tell me her great news that she was now the Assistant CD. Haven't seen her since, so I'm hoping it is the same Daniella and she has finally made it to CD. She was not very tall, with long dark hair and the most infectious of smiles.

Hi AmoMondo! I found my daily from welcome day and her full name is Daniela De Nicola. Your description matches her perfectly, it must be the same Daniela. She is indeed loads of fun, just watching her dancing around while doing bingo was already entertaining.

The infamous ice cream:

We saw that it was time so we headed back to the bus. Each bus had a visible number and the MSC logo, so we could always go back inside if we wanted to. Bari is a sweet, little town; It is worth going inside the churches and enjoying the architecture.

When back on the ship, we wanted to try the Zen area on Deck 15. Let me tell you, it is the ship's best kept secret! It is not visible from the main pools on deck 14 so you really have to know it's there. It is sort of in a corner of the ship, right after the entrance that would go to the liquid disco. You keep walking and there's not much there besides some sun lounges but if you just keep walking you come across this nice, 1,80 cm depth adults pool in front of a bar, yuhuuu! There is also a jacuzzi and several sun loungers protected from the wind. This was without a doubt our favourite spot for a strawberry daiquiri and a nap after a long excursion, in this particular order :D

The rain made another appearance, so we went to get dolled up for Italian night: the suggested team was to wear green, white and read. We did our best to comply and most people did an effort too.

Dinner was hot and delicious:

We continued with our little routine of finishing dinner and having an expresso coffee on Il Cappuccino while people watching. The show tonight was Sogno Italiano, an Opera show with a Soprano and a tenor guy who seemed to have been the winner of italian X-factor. The audience was very enthusiastic while for me it was okay, not the best of all. Music makes me sleepy, specially late in the evening, oops.

To recover the fun level, we decided to go to the atrium bar for a B-52's. Aaaah, B-52's, we get along so well, hehehehe. It was almost midnight by then, so we went to sleep. The next day was a big day, our first stop at Greece!

We are first time cruisers on Fantasia in October and I'm loving your review. Any further tips would be great. I loved the ones so far about how to get away from the crowds. I'm also interested to know how disembark went in Venice and when you were off the ship, though if you have your flights/transfers through MSC I guess you get priority.

Eagerly awaiting the next instalment of your review!

Thanks for the review I am first time cruiser on Fantasia in a few weeks so appreciate the tips :)

Sent from my GT-P5210 using Forums mobile app

I am enjoying your review - thanks for taking the time to write it :)

Great first review from a first time cruiser! Loving the pics! Keep it coming! :)

Thanks for the encouraging comments, It means a lot! I took all my pictures with my IPhone and my Ipad so the quality is not always optimal. But I think it is with to show them anyway :) If you have any questions about anything you feel I didn't mention, well, fire away and I'll do my best to answer them!

DAY 3 - Katakolon, Greece

I was super excited for this day! The Daily informed it would be our first Gala night, yuppie! And also it would be our first shore excursion in Greece. We were only due to arrive at 12:30 AM so we could take it easy in the morning.

We decided to do again our breakfast+jacuzzi time quite early as we intended to have lunch in the buffet before going ashore. I know, I know, lunch at the buffet at such a prime time needs to be undertaken with caution but well, it couldn't be worst then embarkation day. We said a little prayer under our breaths at 11:45AM and went for some pizza.

Oh, people were behaving quite normally, phew! The pizza was always popular and delicious and the chef's did a great job in replenishing them as soon as they were up.

With our bellies happy, we headed to the L'insolito lounge on deck 7 to meet our excursion 'a taste of ancient Greece'. It is such an elegant lounge, very tastefully decorated. And the views are incredible, look at this:

Katakolon was one of the most beautiful ports of this journey, just look at this water:

Today we were going to see the ruins of Olympia and then go to a tavern to have some food and drink while enjoying a folkloric group dancing some local dances.

Our guide was kind of sad that it was only 26° that day when normally it should be 40°. :eek: The greek Gods must have been watching over us because I wouldn't have lasted long if it was 40°. I am the worst Brazilian ever, I know nothing of football and I burn easily in the sun. (sigh)

Anyway, the bus ride to Olympia was loads of fun. Our guide wanted to test our Greek mithology knowleadge with some questions and the geek inside me wanted to answer them all :D

Today we were around 20 people, half German speaking and half English speaking. It was quite a walk, not to be underestimated even under a 'mild' 26° sun. I had full gear on, Hat, sunglasses and sun cream.

We were there for around 2 hours, I believe. Then we headed to the tavern, which was in a great looking house with a swimming pool at the entrance. We all looked at that swimming pool longingly, hehehe.

There was already some snacks, white and red wine and water available on the tables for the whole group. We would then sit back and enjoy the show. They changed costumes once to a more traditional one and broke some plates around. Very neat!

The best part was when they attempted to teach everybody their dance, I laughed so much my belly hurt :D

My mom and I danced along for a while and then just enjoyed the others having fun. It was a blast!

We were back on the ship around 5:30 PM and I was on a mission: We needed some lanyards for our cruise cards. The reception desk rarely had any lines, there were always 4 people there to answer any questions. They told me lanyards needed to be purchased at the logo shop. So off we went to the logo shop! My mom picked a navy color lanyard with MSC Fantasia written in it. I was about to take the same for me (€2,50) when I saw a sparky, black strass lanyard. oh-oh, it was € 7 but I could use it year-round at work so I went for it! Isn't it great looking? hihihihihi...

Tonight was the gala night, so we got dressed up and went for some professional pictures by the Swarovski stairs with one of the ship photographers. We paid €40 for 3 picture, 1 big one and 2 normal size. EXPENSIVE! But then again, we don't have much chance to dress up gala style so we thought it was a nice souvenir.

Dinner was really great, but because I didn't want to carry my bag around I don't have any pictures :D

By now our waiter already knew what we liked and our natural water and sparkly wine was already waiting for us. Our entire table had the alegrissimo package. It didn't disappoint me, only the water, coffee and soft drinks we had during the day already covered the initial investment. I saw some people complaint that no coffee was available on the main dinning rooms. But why should it be? With so many lovely lounges full of coffee why would you want to be stuck in the restaurant instead of enjoying a bit of each space? Anyway, at least that's how we felt about it.

The show tonight was 'tribute' with famous italian songs. The daily informed that the first 15 minutes would be to introduce the captain and officers. Our CD Daniella did a great job of keeping it entertaining through 7 languages.

The show was very good and when we went back to our room this little guy was waiting for us:

We headed to our cabin and after the master drill, which was quick and painless - we experienced sail away from our balcony. It was just magical! You can check out the amazing Elmartellama review for some great sail away pictures. I was too entranced to even remember to take out my camera!

Thank you :) We actually enjoyed the sail-in the following week much more, as there were not as many people on lido deck.

A pity that we missed the El Zorro show, since sail-away was delayed and it was our priority thing to do.

Glad you had a good time, keep it coming! The MSC Fantasia had such a good itinerary this year! What a lovely cruise we had.

It is a funny thing: I heard of towel animals for the first time on cruise critic meaning I spent my whole youth oblivious that such thing existed. And then, suddenly, I open the door to enter my cabine and there it is, a cute towel animal; it does make you smile. Sadly, I had to kill it in order to shower as there wasn't an extra set of towels to compensate the ones he used for the little guy - but he will live forever in this picture :)

DAY 4 - Santorini

Wow, Santorini - I don't even know where to start. I don't want to be too dramatic but it is by far the most terrifying place I've ever been :eek:

But first things first: We woke up to the most beautiful sky! Is it just me or does it look like a few UFO's hanging around the clouds?