LMaxwell

75% REFUND and 75% FCC if you stay onboard for the revised itinerary? 3 Full days to Explore San Fran and use the ship as a hotel? Not the sights and experiences people signed up for, but that's a very considerate offer and I'd take it in an instance.

Yes, I got more frequent and clear communications from Carnival than I did from MSC. Exact same circumstance and conditions; two completely different styles of leadership on display.

Yes there's basically 4 food options at the Dock Mezze Cart with small plates, grab and go. Looks like a push cart. Maybe 5 options Grab and go Refrigerator across from Juice Bar (similar items to Grab and go in the Galley) The regular Dock menu all day w the shrimp skewers, steak, etc. 4:30-6:30 Happy hour menu with another 5 or 6 new food options.

I have no specific issue with Carnival that drove me away. I had a great cruise on Magic in autumn 2019 just before Covid. I had FCC's from Covid-era with Royal and Celebrity I needed to exhaust first; and glad I did as prices continue to escalate. I got to sail a few Disney, Holland America, Virgin Voyages, and MSC since cruise restart as well. Carnival has pricing power now, which is good for the industry, but their older ships (anything more than 1 generation beyond current or 10+ years, IMO) aren't worth, to me, paying what I can get on a newer ship from a more premium line (very mixed results with this, btw.). I think I am just not a mega, mega ship person. Anything over 4000 people is just too much for my liking it seems. I am very intrigued by Celebration/Mardi Gras but continue coming off mega ships not really wowed and definitely not relaxed (other lines), so am reluctant to pay the premium. I'm glad some areas of the industry are trending to new mid-sized ships. I understand why carnival is not. For the right itinerary and right price I never say never. Carnival still offers excellent space in standard category cabins, the food is always good, they offer great kids club. I have no distinct loyalty to any cruise line really; although I do appreciate the perks I get on other lines that I don't get on Carnival. I understand why Carnival doesn't offer reciprocity, but it does weigh in on the overall value proposition. The best solution for me doesn't exist: Carnival family attractions and great standard category cabins, with Royal's Wow factor and easy to get around ships, Celebrities indescribable numerous small premium touches, Holland America's service and food, Virgin Voyages upscale vibe, all food included, and zero nickle and dime approach, MSC's live entertainment and relaxed dress codes. Disney operates on brand equity...okay, I'll give them this, their "system" for keeping flow works pretty well. Mix all those up. You still won't get pool side Horse Races. What's a guy to do.

Looks like that's in the morning after they just power washed everything. I've got soot on my hat, my swim shirt, and my book still after just 20 minutes. Dry wiping the soot does nothing. If you have a solvent it quickly turns back to "goo". Anyways, that's a design issue that can't be overcome because of the location of the pool. Leave a towel on a chair by the Marina pool for 20 minutes then show us all the speckles on it.

They do not deliver A final bill to your room; you can view the bill on your television. Whoever signed for the account can also view on their app (non signers can view what they have charged, but totals show as 0). You can get a copy of your bill from guest services anytime. The final 12-18 hours of the cruise guest services is packed so try to do it a day ahead of time and then just reconcile against the TV on final night.

That's up to Hotel Director and Food and Bev manager. Captain is responsible for maritime operation of the ship.

At 10:30PM with no MSC employees present at either West or East entrances to terminal C, more Miami-Dade Police were called out. There were 13 police cars at West terminal alone to manage the crowd/mob. From 3:30PM - 9PM we did not have a single word from MSC. At 330 they said boarding was from 6 to 930. At 9PM they said extending to 11PM. If they would have been a bit more direct or provide updates we would have left port and found dinner on our own. NO ONE KNEW WHAT WAS GOING ON. There were people who wanted to leave and get a hotel and board in the morning figuring ship would not leave at night. There were people guessing at everything. I watched a guy have a full blown meltdown in the terminal begging a terminal agent to address the crowd and tell them anything. However this is a Miami port worker so he just laughs and tells the guy we don't know anything just like you don't know anything. We actually managed to get food delivery service to the port around 9PM because we had no idea what MSC would actually do regarding departure only that check in ended at 11PM so at that point we didn't want to chance leaving the terminal area. We heard the muster drill alarm around midnight and we *still* were not in the terminal. Carnival and NCL ships departed hours earlier than MSC did. No one knew what would be optimal, because there was no communications for us embarking. The best we got was asking people coming out of the terminal how long the lines still were for people getting off. We finally boarded right about 1:30AM with hundreds, if not a solid thousand, still behind us. Terminal C is an embarrassment, I can't believe the Port Authority runs such a small old building barely capable of servicing a 1500 passenger ship let alone 5000 people. I can't believe MSC would leave thousands outside without communication. The police presence was for mob control, not just order, more than a few decked out in their riot gear.

They probably have not assigned a dining room yet; there is a slight stagger to the start times for early dining depending on if they assign you Cala Jondal, Green Wave, or Aegean.

For each cabin?

We have more than that amount.

I'm convinced you could carry on a Keg if it's Port of Miami

Reasonable variety/choices, glad to hear cheese plate coming back (that would often be an app for me). I see some items I'd like to try, a couple of days that look meh, but overall sounds appealing

My wife are joint owners of our investment account; looking at upcoming cruises we need to book multiple cabins. If my wife is booked into a separate cabin from myself, do we both qualify for the shareholder benefit on each cabin? Put one parent and one kid per cabin.

Kudos to Carnival maybe; the others....not to MSC and how they handled it. Carnival handled it so much better I'm willing to price them out again after several year hiatus.

Looking at same ship/itinerary. Live in hot weather climate. Used to wearing hybrid shorts/golf shorts and on rare occasion golf pants so will bring 2 or 3 pairs. Tie not happening, jacket maybe. Jeans...not looking to shovel snow. Button up short sleeve or polo shirts. boat shoes or walking sneakers. Hasn't really been an issue at any land or cruise ship restaurant since COVID restrictions ended. They just want your money.

Good, bad, or indifferent all these companies just want your money. I've sent complaints to entire C-Suites at a Cruise Line and still get the same promotional emails daily. We are just numbers. No sense suffering a poor experience without voicing a concern.

Fair Disclosure: MSC has extended an offer of 10% FCC of cabin fare paid for this cruise to all cabins; letter on our door final morning. I don't know the actual terms or deadline; I am not saying I would never use it, but I doubt it would be for their next, newest, bigger ship, IJS.

Well, ours certainly was not $100 per person per day; significantly more. You are right on the space ratio, but even that number is a little janky because the space obviously skews towards YC, with disproportionately less in Gen Pop. However, it does not account for exterior unenclosed spaces like Marina deck, or deck 8 exterior. I may even start looking for some of the older ships as I find the more expansive lounges and venues to be more comfortable, versus many small, tight lounges. Providing 20 different bars isn't so impressive if they are all tiny and packed. 10 spacious, comfortable choices would be better. Just my opinion

I addressed your hypothesis in my opening post and blew it away; I recognize that a pleasure boat accident is not in MSC's control. Their communication and handling at the port is within their control. Was it poorly run and set the tone for what to expect from MSC? Yes. Was I able to "get past" it? Sure. I addressed this. But I also addressed the itinerary changes that they knew could not be met and my opinions on those. I find it hard to believe, to the point of incredulousness, that you experienced no crowds on your cruise if you were not in YC. People bonded across language barriers this week; me understanding no German or Portuguese, could understand the frustrations at the elevators for example. We would leave the show room on Deck 6 or 7, depending where we sat, and the forward bank of elevators would have NO cars available to allocate; either port or starboard bank. How can it be you can't call a single one of 8 elevators? One night we go ok, take steps to deck 8, let's go outside on port side (non-smoking) and walk aft to midship; well, turns out that Infinity Bridge is closed, and there is only one entry door between where we got outside and the bridge, and that's roped off for maintenance, so we have to back track to where we came outside. So we walk back to midship, then another 3-5m to get an elevator up to 18. Then we have to walk forward through the arcade to get to kids club to do pick up. On a Celebrity ship that's a 3 minute push button, go here, e.z. process. On Seascape that is at least 20 minutes if not more sometimes. At least once you learn deck 8 has maintenance all week, you skip that walk and try to go through Liberty Plaza or Casino instead. It's just a really poorly laid out and designed ship. Long lines, crowds all over, and nonsensical elevator/stair situation all feels like a waste of time on vacation to me. "Well, you're on vacation, slow down!". If there's a couple of things on schedule you want to do, MSC provide no break in time so you really have to choose 1 or the other, because you can't leave one and get to the other. Who thinks its a good idea to have 1 long snaking buffet line if they have been on (any other) cruise ship in the past (15) years? People will twist themselves into gold medal winning Olympian gymnasts defending the indefensible when someone comes here and says they didn't like something and here is why. I do agree that shoulder season COULD be better, and I knew I was sailing in summer, but any traveler should look at what week and what's going on. You say November shouldn't matter...and you're from NJ? You all don't still have Jersey Week for teachers at start of November? That's always a pretty packed week for family cruises out of FL. So it does matter.

It was not just a matter of a few hundred dollars. There was several thousand dollar delta to Royal Caribbean, and this MSC cruise was not what I would call bargain basement either. Over $2500 per cabin for a standard category balcony. Our last few cruises were Virgin (amazing, adult only experience, worth it!), Holland America (good food and service, but super boring with few activities, lack of entertainment), and Celebrity (very nice overall but that was 2022 and their recent cut backs are a bit too much to reconcile with price increases, plus with young kids this time we wanted a few more attractions for them to enjoy (slides, bigger kids club, a private beach day). I purposely said NO Carnival because I believe they only keep their latest and greatest ships maintained/cleaned well but I had no desire to be on a Carnival ship with 6000 guests. I think I'm just not a mega-mega ship type. The ships don't really get longer or wider (in fact the new trend is narrower hotel section with more decks stacked like layer cake) so newer ships are only getting more and more densely packed - all the mass market lines. We are not high end luxury types, and $10K a week cabins are beyond our means. 4000+, 5000+, 6000+ pax ships simply can not deliver high levels of service to everyone on board. I've been on a lot of megaships and find the gimmicky attractions aren't of much value to me personally, nor do they have the space and bandwidth to truly move people around and keep it "flowing". I don't pine for the days of 1st and 2nd seating for breakfast, lunch, and dinner; strict dress codes and forced fake formality; but I am coming to understand my sweet spot is probably the midsize ships from Celebrity, Virgin Voyages, Holland America (I would return for specific itineraries, wife will not, until they add some entertainment and I can't really blame her - Read a lot of books on holland america!) that hold 2500-3500 guests. I've been on the older Divina numerous times and although I recognized it was a value proposition, it never felt as chintzy or like a cattle call like Seascape did. I am reluctant on YC because it is significantly more money and I'm not sure how much of the problem areas MSC can really improve on in the YC enclave. Being in YC won't fix the obnoxious guest behavior in shows, bluetooth speakers in the thermal suite, ridiculous lines for a slice of pizza, or elevator situation (unless YC cards somehow override other elevator requests as I have seen on older ships - I am unsure about this). Standard Balcony to Standard Balcony, with all Virgin Voyages includes, and MSC does not include - I am not even sure there was an actual per person, per day costs savings on MSC (although again, this was an all ages family cruise, not possible on VV).

An example of not-so-sophisticated - At the first comedy show (Stand up comedy being relatively new for MSC) people in front of us kept getting up, leaving, coming back, making phone calls, recording the show, getting up, finding more people, then coming back, then EVERYONE left, then you could hear the group fighting at the top of the steps, then one lady came back to continue recording the show. It's only a 40 minute comedy show and these clowns got up and came back like 3 times. Then the second night song and dance show a lady was on her phone, then standing up waving the phone halfway through, to flag down her late friend who had nowhere to sit because the row was full, so of course they started arguing with each other. Finally I told her to sit down and be quiet please and she gave me the look of death to which I responded with "thank you". People smoke/vape everywhere on the ship. Yes, there are designated sections but this means absolutely nothing. I even saw people vaping in the arcade. Never saw that before. People vaping in buffet because why not? The bluetooth/cell phone speakers have been mentioned. I didn't see any fist fights between guests, but I did see a guest try to start one at the pizza corner because the staffer would not give them a to go box (these cost extra).

Seascape might be the worst ship out of Miami I have ever been on as well. Management onboard can't fix the lack of service staff, bad elevators, chokepoints in buffet, or figure out a faster way to get on and off at ports, I am sure they are sick of annoyed guests weekly, so they smile, turn their heads, and turn off their ears.

Not telling a service provider when their amenities don't match what is advertised not only ensures you will get the same lackluster experience in the future, it is a disservice to others, and doesn't actually allow the company to do anything to correct it for you. Staff don't "get in trouble". They do what management asks/allows them to do. If management doesn't know, nothing will improve.

Butchers Cut: We used our Diamond Dining Experience here. Food and service was excellent. They hit us for $4 charge on a side dish though and wasn't worth the discussion. Goat cheese app was excellent. I get that they can't provide that level of dining and service for the whole ship; but the differences between included and upcharge dining are pretty big. Teppenyaki always looked busy. Spinning sushi bar was almost always empty and they tried some creative specials to get people to book. Hola Tacos is basically a rip off in the dining packages; better off doing that a la carte if you must as they offer numerous specials there also, it's a part of the atrium, not a separate restaurant, with no ambiance and limited menu. Ocean Cay restaurant looked gorgeous and would expect good quality but we ran out of time.