Motegi

Additional photos:

And the wings are from the Sports Bar on Deck 8:

Hopefully this makes the "food police" in the forum happy!

My opinion of the food onboard the MSC Seaside and Divina remains the same as I described in my post #74

OK so here are some more photos of food for those who were upset that my last set included photos from Eataly on the Divina.  

The following set is from our cruise on the MSC Seaside.  I believe that these are all from the main dining room.  

Just an update to this post since we returned from our cruise last week.

The parties onboard were:

Glow (White Hot)

and 

70-80's MTV party.

They never had a formal night and didn't really advertise the Captain photos either although apparently they did have an opportunity for photos with the Captain on the night of the Key West stop buried in the Freestyle Daily...

One other thing we noticed was that they only offered one showing of the theater performances each night.  We were used to having an early and a late showtime in the past.  Having only a single showing made it a little harder to plan other activities and dinner. 

Thanks for the updates!

Hey everyone!

We have booked a block of 4 cabins for our family for the Sky this October.  

We’ve been in the Sky six times before, but this will be our first since the drydock refurbishment and are very excited to see all of the new additions.  

Does anyone one know what the theme parties have been recently on the Sky?

I know in the past there has been a Norwegian’s Night Out (formal) and a White Hot Party.  

Will there be a 70’s/80’s night, Caliente, or a Latin night? 

We enjoy dressing up for the parties and like to be prepared.

Thanks for any input in advance!

Pam & Koji

On 7/9/2019 at 7:25 PM, April42749 said:

Did you know that until the 20th century only poor people and prisoners ate lobster?

April is correct!

We’ve been on the Divina and the Seaside and found the food to be quite good.  We particularly liked the Cantina/Eataly Pizza aboard the Divina and missed having that on the Seaside.  

We prefer the MDRs and avoid the buffets not just on MSC but on all of the cruises that we take.

The MDR food was on par with NCL and much better than Carnival in our opinions. Pam feels the food on MSC was much better than NCL and I think NCL is a little better.  

We will be on the Meraviglia in December and are excited to experience that ship and all of its amenities.

We got the Villa for our cruise in October for just $269 after our Latitudes discount.  At that price we couldn’t pass it up!

We’ve been to GSC many times before but have never been in a Villa or Cabana so we’re pretty excited.  

We just got off the Epic and the cabins were in dire need of a refurbishment.  The carpeting was pulled up along several edges in our cabin and our family members cabins as well.  Also the laminate countertops in the cabins were in bad shape with vinyl tape hiding the missing chunks.  

The public areas were still in very good condition though. 

8 minutes ago, phissy said:

It takes 3-5 weeks for MSC to review NCL status before they will status match. 

Wow!  Weeks!?!?

It took us just a day or two when we did it.  

We called them first and then emailed them the NCL Latitudes screenshot.  

Even if if you don’t get a status match I would strongly consider MSC options to fill the gap left by the Pearl cancellation.

I also think the NCL Epic 7 day western med would be an easy alternative.  Especially since you can embark from Civitavechia or Barcelona. It’s a shorter cruise but it’s still a cruise!

18 minutes ago, ronbe65 said:

Last minute alternative:

MSC Cruises • MSC Seaview

Rome/Civitavecchia, Cannes, Palma de Mallorca, Barcelona, Ajaccio, Genoa, La Spezia, Rome/Civitavecchia

Departure date: Jul 10

 

Cabins are available at the moment.

 

There are a few other options (availability not confirmed).

 

 

Exactly,  there are many European cruise lines departing from a variety of ports in the Mediterranean so I’m sure that there will be options available to fit the dates needed.

If it were me I would definitely be looking at the options on MSC right now.  

So sorry to hear about this.  We just got back from our western med cruise on the NCL Epic a couple weeks ago.  Our ship also had some undisclosed mechanical issue that required a short delay in port mid cruise but we were still able to make all of the ports on the itinerary.

For those who are already in Italy, perhaps you could look into either the NCL Epic or any of the European cruise lines like MSC, Aida, Costa, or Tui leaving from any of the European ports.  I’m sure there are plenty of options that would fall within your dates.  

Good luck!

Don’t recommend them. Too restrictive.  Go with the regular certs instead.

We bought 4 CruiseNext Lite certs a few years ago in anticipation of a family group cruise to the Bahamas later that same year.  Unfortunately NCL decided to change the itinerary a few months after to Cuba rather than the Bahamas.  The family members that were cruising with us were not interested in Cuba.  Since NCL restricted CruiseNext Lite to just 3-4 day cruises on the Sky and it now was going to Cuba we ended up not using them and booking on MSC instead.  MSC turned out to be amazing!

But then Pam and I were stuck with 4 Lite certs.  Resale options would’ve incurred a loss of 10% at the very least so we held onto them.

We like the Sky but didn’t want to cruise it 4 times back to back.

So what ended up happening is we put together another family group cruise for later this year with Pam’s family.   We paid for everyone’s cabins and it allowed us to use the certs all at once. 

12 hours ago, NutsAboutGolf said:

 

I'd say the 70s and 80s party would be the only parties you could dress up for, I didn't see many dress up yet it appeared to be the older folks showed up dressed up at the start of these events, retired early and were progressively replaced by the younger folks not dressed up.  In most cases the party didn't really get started until 11pm if not midnight.  I was at Bliss almost every night but often didn't show up until later.  For the glow party, they gave out glow gear at the start which was 1030pm

Excellent!  Thanks so much for the information!

9 hours ago, NutsAboutGolf said:

I was just on the last Epic cruise which just so happened to be the first west med for 2019; it somewhat depends on what you mean by theme.  The main “club” is Bliss where they host:  “The Night Out”, 70’s Disco, Night Owls with your DJ (which was the most popular) on my cruise, the awesome 80s & the glow party.  They had some Latin line dance in the afternoon-early evening in the atrium.

Thanks for the information!

How many passengers dressed up for the themes?  Or was it just the cruise staff?

On our Bliss cruise we dressed up for several of the themes as did some of the other passengers.  

On the MSC Seaside many more passengers participated with costumes for the theme parties.

So we were curious how the participation was in the Mediterranean.

Thanks in advance!

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Hello everyone!

Pam and I will be onboard the Epic in the Mediterranean in June and were wondering what the theme nights will be.  We are putting together our packing lists and wanted to get an idea of what to bring.

I assume there will be a “Norwegian’s Night Out” or two during the seven days.

Should we count on a “White Hot Party”?

How about 70’s? 80’s? Latin? 

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

• Okay, very dumb question - how do I see the dailies? There's no link or am i missing something Thank you

I just reviewed the thread on my iPhone and all of the images are still coming up for me.

Is anyone else having problems?

Seaside had some terrible reviews initially.

Pam and I sailed onboard her in September and had a wonderful time.

Each ship and each cruise line has its own pros and cons.

Nobody’s perfect.

One can choose to make the most of their vacation or they can perceive the worst of it.

Or one passengers information was mistakenly transmitted and they don’t know who that passenger was so they sent the letter to everyone.

On another note how did they access the recipient’s email account to “permanently delete and erase your electronic ticket from the other guest’s email account and trash folder”?

If the dates in the letter were correct it would seem that MSC found out about the breach on Sept 3rd while those of us who were affected were onboard the ship.

The breach apparently occurred on August 17th.

I don’t think that the credit card info was part of the breach. If it was the cruise ticket as they mentioned in their letter the compromised information would include:

passenger name,

nationality,

date of birth,

gender,

place of birth,

passport number,

passport date of issue,

passport date of expiration, passport country of issue,

passenger address,

passenger home and mobile telephone number,

passenger email,

passenger emergency contact,

MSC booking number,

MSC guest number,

cabin number, itinerary,

prepaid services,

excursions.

Lunch in the buffet and a drink from the bar are priority number one for us on boarding day. Preferably seated outside, weather permitting.

Until reading this thread we didn’t realize that the MDR was open on embarkation so we might try that out for our upcoming cruise!

Another cruise tradition for us is formalwear (tux and dress) even for NCL’s Norwegians Night Out. And costumes for the theme nights! Single suitcase travelers we are not!

The only noise we heard was the toilets flushing. Sounded like thunder lol

That’s true of all cruiseship toilets! It’s a miracle that passengers don’t get sucked into them... LOL!

And they all were absolutely amazing including our steward and butler!

Agree 100%!!!

Pam and I were on the Bliss in June and on the Seaside in September so reading your perspective is very interesting.

We had a wonderful time on both ships. The Seaside is a much more elegant ship than the Bliss but they each have their own strengths and weaknesses.

We found our midship balcony cabins to be laid out very similar between the two ships. However the cabin was noticeably roomier on the Bliss than the Seaside with many more storage cabinets and shelves. The bathrooms were also much larger on the Bliss. We weren’t the only ones who noticed this as our dinner companions on the Seaside mentioned the same when we sat down for dinner on the first night.

The hallways on the Bliss are wider and the ceilings are higher in almost all of the public areas. And there are more public areas with direct ocean views on the Bliss. The Bliss has fewer elevator banks than the Seaside but the Seaside’s elevators felt smaller and some were not properly ventilated making some uncomfortably warm when full. But overall there was less waiting on the Seaside.

We did appreciate the separate lounges and bars on the Seaside. Although we found that many bars ran out of certain items (fresh bananas) very early in the day. This was surprising to us because it was never a problem on the Divina when we sailed on her last year. Adding to the confusion were the many differences in the bar menus from location to location on the Seaside. There was much less variance on the Bliss. On the Seaside, the Jungle pool bar was our favorite. On the Bliss, our favorite hangout was the District Brewhouse mainly because of the pianist/comedian Jim Badger.

The first Starbucks stand alone location at sea on the Bliss was a great addition and we loved being able to use our Starbucks cards onboard. But the Venchi on the Seaside was absolutely amazing and the fact that the specialty coffees and gelatos were included in our drink package definitely made MSC the winner in this category.

In our opinion, main theater shows were shorter but overall better on the Seaside. The female vocalists on the Seaside were absolutely phenomenal. We attended all of the shows on both ships. However we did really enjoy the Happy Hour Prohibition performance on the Bliss as Pam got pulled on stage.

Overall we definitely love aspects of both cruise lines and wouldn’t hesitate to cruise on either again. Actually we will be back on NCL in a couple weeks! Now we’re trying to decide on which to book for the Mediterranean in 2019!