MSC Fantasia Winter 2017-2018 cruise area changed!

MSC have changed the location for MSC Fantasia for the winter of 2017-2018. It is now going to the Caribbean and MSC Orchestra is being transferred back to the Med.

PLEASE NOTE: Their 2017-2018 brochure will now have to be changed, so watch what you book for out of that brochure as there will in all probability be different brochures flying around!

Having booked a back to back from this brochure, they informed me yesterday of the change and offered a 200 euro on-board spend. Pretty mean for 23 nights onboard!! They also took no notice that my bookings were for the Yacht Club, which Orchestra does not have. They appear confused as to why I want a refund of my deposit when they are offering the same cruises, albeit that they are now on the Orchestra and have ignored the Yacht Club element of my booking.

They have broken the contract, not me, so it should be an easy refund. Or will it? Probably end up in the small claims court once again. They are notorious for delaying any form of repayment.

With the lack of the Yacht club what cabin did they offer you seeing as YC cabins are more expensive ?

Oh Dear...... that started sooner than I expected.

Sidari,

They did not offer any alternatives, just the change of ship. I presume that they have just sent out a blanket email to all who are booked and will wait until they send out a re-booking form, supposedly within seven days of them cancelling the cruise. Fine chance!!

As a retired travel writer, who has sailed with MSC many times, I know that they very rarely get involved with individual passengers until they absolutely have to. Even looking at MSC Orchestras information on the substitute cruises they propose, it actually says that their suites are fully booked. The difference in price for the two back to back cruises, by the way, is several thousand pounds.

Even as a retired travel writer, I still occasionally write for the travel writers in-house magazine and having heard that many travel agents will no longer deal with MSC and with my latest experience, which was a present for my wife's seventieth birthday, I will no doubt be contacted by the MSC press office in an attempt to still the waters. Let's wait and see.

I hope you keep us updated on this issue, looks like they may have shot themselves in the foot somewhat with their advance bookings for Seaside many sold on the pretext that their private island would be ready for the first cruise on 23rd December 2017.

Hi will this impact on our booking for October 2017?

Will Fantasia sail out of Miami or Ft Laudedale for the Caribbean ?

Will Fantasia sail out of Miami or Ft Laudedale for the Caribbean ?

I was interested in this change as we have a cruise booked on Fantasia in March 2017, now I see the change will not effect us.

Looking at the future itineraries the Fantasia will be based at Port de France, Martinique.

Wonder if they will do a repositioning cruise back to Europe in 2018, that we would be interested in!! Be nice to do a Caribbean cruise followed by a TA.

I was interested in this change as we have a cruise booked on Fantasia in March 2017, now I see the change will not effect us.

 

Looking at the future itineraries the Fantasia will be based at Port de France, Martinique.

 

Wonder if they will do a repositioning cruise back to Europe in 2018, that we would be interested in!! Be nice to do a Caribbean cruise followed by a TA.

I did exactly that on Orchestra in March/April this year.

You can read my review at the link below

http://www.cruisingmates.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=270&t=11371

Pete

MSC have changed the location for MSC Fantasia for the winter of 2017-2018. It is now going to the Caribbean and MSC Orchestra is being transferred back to the Med.

 

PLEASE NOTE: Their 2017-2018 brochure will now have to be changed, so watch what you book for out of that brochure as there will in all probability be different brochures flying around!

 

Having booked a back to back from this brochure, they informed me yesterday of the change and offered a 200 euro on-board spend. Pretty mean for 23 nights onboard!! They also took no notice that my bookings were for the Yacht Club, which Orchestra does not have. They appear confused as to why I want a refund of my deposit when they are offering the same cruises, albeit that they are now on the Orchestra and have ignored the Yacht Club element of my booking.

They have broken the contract, not me, so it should be an easy refund. Or will it? Probably end up in the small claims court once again. They are notorious for delaying any form of repayment.

Hi,

We were booked on the Fantasia for the 9th December 2017 for 10 nights in Yacht club and have also been cancelled.

There will be a lot of disappointed people as the place was fully booked months ago!

We have looked for alternatives but non available at this time. The replies we got back were not helpful and offered no real solution {take it or leave it}.

However they did offer full cancellation with the 200 Euro on board credit for the next cruise if we see something we like but have been put off a bit by their attitude.

Not the first time we have been cancelled this far out but is annoying when the cruise companies change plans after selling the cruise.

Hope to get our deposit back without any issues as used a cruise agent.

David

MSC have changed the location for MSC Fantasia for the winter of 2017-2018. It is now going to the Caribbean and MSC Orchestra is being transferred back to the Med.

 

PLEASE NOTE: Their 2017-2018 brochure will now have to be changed, so watch what you book for out of that brochure as there will in all probability be different brochures flying around!

 

Having booked a back to back from this brochure, they informed me yesterday of the change and offered a 200 euro on-board spend. Pretty mean for 23 nights onboard!! They also took no notice that my bookings were for the Yacht Club, which Orchestra does not have. They appear confused as to why I want a refund of my deposit when they are offering the same cruises, albeit that they are now on the Orchestra and have ignored the Yacht Club element of my booking.

 

They have broken the contract, not me, so it should be an easy refund. Or will it? Probably end up in the small claims court once again. They are notorious for delaying any form of repayment.

Thanks for the heads up.

Hi,

.............. is annoying when the cruise companies change plans after selling the cruise.

Hope to get our deposit back without any issues as used a cruise agent.

I booked a cruise through a TA back in 2013 for a sailing in the Black Sea to Odessa. MSC changed the itinerary to a Canaries route. This was at a time before trouble flared up in Ukraine so this was not the reason for the change - the ship had two outings prior to our dates and were fully booked so we couldn't be accommodated. Needless to say, the Canaries was not a viable alternative for us so we cancelled. It took our TA almost NINE MONTHS to get a refund of our deposit!!

Bea ... Are they as bad if you book direct with them ?

Dave ................. I've only booked once directly with MSC which is for Meraviglia next year. Here's my experience to date:

On the day that bookings were to open, rather than risk trying a TA, I rang MSC in the morning. I was really curious about the prices for YC, especially as it was supposed to be the maiden voyage!! I happened to get a rep who I've dealt with before (some issues I'd had :rolleyes:). She told me bookings wouldn't open 'til 12pm, asked what I was interested in (bear in mind - no deck plans at this stage nor did she have any!) and told me she'd ring soon as. True to her word she rang me back just before 12pm. At this point the 20% Black Card discount was still in existence, so that, coupled with an Early Booking voucher (gone now, too :mad:) I had, which gave me €400 OBC, made the price very attractive, so I went ahead and booked a guarantee YC1 with fingers crossed.

The next stage was to get the voucher to them. I didn't trust posting it so held off, knowing that the cruise wasn't for another 2 years. As it was playing on my mind, I emailed and asked if I could send it as an attachment (up 'til then they had always requested the original). In the meantime, I discovered that there would be a sailing date prior to the one I booked, plus Tunis was then pulled from the itinerary, so I considered cancelling. Here's the response

If you did decide to cancel this cruise completely, then this would technically be at loss of deposit, however, i would reccomend a cruise change considering this departure is very far in advance.

Cruise changes can be permitted up to 14 days before departure, and i can see you've made this booking with us direct. There would be no charge for the cruise move being booked on Yacht Club

In this case as your booking has been made direct with MSC Cruises, changes to your booking would have to be made by us directly. Should you prefer to make your amendments through your agent, we would be required to cancel the original booking, and rebook this with your agent, although as per our terms and conditions, this would be at loss of deposit

I decided to stick with it and emailed the voucher. I received an emended invoice which omitted DH's clubcard number. I replied back and asked for this to be included. The following, on May 5th, is the reply I got

Sorry about that. Mr Beamafar's MSC Voyagers Club number has now been inserted into the booking

On Sinfonia, 3 weeks ago, discussing (more!!) issues with the Cruise Consultant, this time regarding problems we had with the ship not being notified of our Black Card status, thus having problems with priority boarding, despite our TA having tickets re-issued to include the info as the originals weren't showing it, he decided to check our future bookings so as to prevent any further, similar issues. Lo and behold, Mr Beamafar's clubcard number was absent on the Meraviglia booking!!!

I'd be here 'til Christmas if I listed the issues that I've experienced over the years. Some may be minor, but they're all straws that one day may tick me off enough to say "Enough is Enough"! As you know, the onboard experience is fantastic and I find it very difficult to go elsewhere, though I did with X last January (only because it was an Asia itinerary with no MSC as an alternative) - never again!!

Bea ... You really do have to wonder why they find it so difficult to carry out the easiest of tasks ? My own thoughts are that they want to have Italian staff in points of power and the UK office is no exception.

I recall the guy they poached from Princess as CD for the Divina who told us that he was not allowed to print out some posters in colour without first having it cleared by head office! this perpetuates throughout the organisation and so it is little wonder you cannot vet a straight answer out of anyone.

Sidari- we had a similar situation on Lirica 4 years ago. We missed our disembarkation port (Cork) and had to sail the whole way to Amsterdam where we disembarked and MSC flew us home. It took an age for them to confirm they would fly us home. My point was that if they weren't please let me know so I could make arrangements myself. The kept saying they flights were booked. I said great can I have the booking confirmation please. The guest relations manager could not as she was awaiting permission from Genoa! :eek::eek:

MSC regularly mess folk around by changing the location of the ship. There has been

1) Moving Armonia from the Red Sea to the Canaries

2) Moving Opera from the Canaries to Cuba

3) Moving Lirica from the Med to Chiina

4) Now Fantasia!!!

Only thing is that Costa does it too! Reason give 'Operational Reasons' aka 'Greed! More money to be made elsewhere'!