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Because it's a remnant from early Covid-19 and really has little purpose now. Most people will start their own review thread or post it in the reviews section of Cruise Critic.

Are you going to try the Oriental Palace restaurant? Interested as to differences between Galaxy/Kaito Sushi on other ships.

Do you know the hours of the Asian Night Market? Since I see prices on that one coffee drink menu I assume those are not included with the basic fare. But it's nice they include sodas. What's your opinion of the free coffee, tea and fruit drinks?

* MSC was the first to restart cruises in August, 2020 in the Med. Celebrity restarted in June, 2021 by subverting US rules and sailing from St. Maarten. But I am surprised MSC didn't think about it to capture the anxious US market.

It's typically not offered on South American and South African round trips. Sometimes when a Med or Northern European sailing is first listed MSC won't have it offered but a few months later it will be. I'm surprised it's usually offered on the Mideast sailings.

819 out of the 990 sailings currently listed on the US website offer Drinks and Wifi promotion. So it can happen that you must book Cruise Only.

You might get more information if you also post this question in the France forum. https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/462-france-ports/

Your cruise is the end part of Orchestra's normal 10 day itinerary, which has embarkation in six or so ports. So only a portion of cabins are ever available from any location. It's not uncommon for MSC to not be offering (or run out of) the lower cabins. Similarly they also often only allocate Yacht Club cabins to certain embarkation ports in those newer class ships. The last 10 day embarks in Marseille on November 1st. There's a few lower cabins and plenty of balconies left, it's fairly well booked but obviously has cabins available that aren't being offered for your shorter sailing. An additional complication is that when you get off November 10th it will be the beginning of the three embarkation ports for the Transatlantic.

Beat me to it. They will also show for two passengers as sail date approaches and there are less cabins on the lower decks.

MSC just denotes "In Transit" in case the itinerary has people disembarking at that port. Some itineraries have both types of passengers. Since you are continuing on with the cruise you are fine booking that excursion.

Interesting, the Falmouth and Georgetown excursions are the same price as brochure prices. The Cozumel ones are more expensive than in the brochure, at $879 and $1052 respectively. YC Ocean Cay cabanas on the brochure are also a little less, at $422 and $475 respectively. So it seems in some cases the pre-purchase price is less than the on board prices. A lot in the case of that El Presidente Villa. SC20240824MIAMIA.pdf

Then you should have the choice to book the Drinks &WiFi Incuded rate. Or you can take your chances and book the Cruise Only rate and hope they offer the drink package discount through an email or online in their website booking planner under add Drink Packages. See the Cruise Critic thread I linked to in post #6.

Agreed, an inclusive package rate is usually the easiest and most available drink package discount. Most often working out to about $40 per day, but $20 per day pops up on certain itineraries. Plus you are usually getting WiFi, and as you said, for the last couple months some OBC. The OP's Australian market doesn't get the same offers, currently they only have one called Last-Minute With Drinks that does include Easy Plus and WiFi. It seems to add about AU$70 ($40 US) per day. Unfortunately it's quite limited to 61 "select" Mediterranean only sailings - out of the 145 available in this time frame. So only for booking on a last minute sailing from now through Oct, 2024 being the furthest out.

I've never been able to find any logical reason to why or when MSC makes the excursions available to book online.

Also, people are reporting that MSC US has been making offers for discounted drinks packages after booking without the inclusive rates. It may be available in other markets. https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/3014547-msc-40-drinks-sale/#comment-67643150

As long as it's not a Yacht Club booking, there you will lose your deposit. On regular cabins they will usually require another deposit while the first, cancelled deposit is refunded in a few weeks. Rarely you can move the deposit. You cannot do this after final payment and and watch that you are not in a penalty period. See Terms & Conditions Section 12. ETA: Above is true your Canada bookings, many other countries lose their deposit. CAN_BTC master_20240530-ENG.pdf

Did you say that when you made the reservation or were being seated? Or did you try just offering the two Diamond cards and say you were covering the non-Diamond, not mentioning the cabin situation?

I've been able to get approval from the specialty restaurant manager in this situation. In hindsight there's no easy way for them to tell if you don't offer up that information. Just use your card for the two meals and and we've never been asked to see the other card to match cabin numbers. Better to ask forgiveness? In this situation I doubt they will hassle you since it's their protocols that made you book that way. When your wife becomes Diamond it will actually help because each of you can bring a child.

Here's their Virgn forum thread.

In the US and many countries MSC always has a special for drink the Easy Plus drink package. Usually it's called All Inclusive or Drinks & WiFi or something else. In UK you can get the Premium package as an inclusive rate item. The various special occasion sale usually only adds some OBC. Assume you are booking in Australia?

Wow, people wishing a corporation would store data on their devices.... They could likely do it themselves by logging your MAC and or IP address, but that would be creepy./illegal?

The on board currency will be Euros. You can use other currencies but they will give you a bad exchange rate.

Thanks for sharing your experience and all the ship information.

A note about the "sideways" interior cabins on Fantasia class ships. There are two sets of forward elevators, the most forward set with two elevators are for staff and the set with four (just aft of the other set) is for passengers. Cabins such as 11070 and 11087 are near the staff elevators and cabins like 11082 and 11099 are near the passenger elevators. The cabins near the staff elevators get LOTS of complaints due to movement and storage of luggage in that elevator area, which is particularly an issue on a Med sailing with multiple embarkation ports. You will hear them moving the luggage almost until dawn every night before the several ports of disembarkation. The ones by the passenger elevators are a bit better but that's a steward's storage closet between the two. This is true for all decks with this layout. While all Fantasia class insides (not the Junior insides, which Fantasia the ship doesn't have anyway) are larger than most MSC's other ship classes. To many the most desirable of the insides are actually the square ones like 11045 to 11057 or those like 11083 and forward (particularly with other cabins above). They're actually a couple square feet smaller but the layout makes them feel roomier. Oops, I remember you have three people and the square insides only hold two. Well, I'll leave that info in here for other's information. Fantasia Deck Plan.pdf

Ship and dates? ETA: Often when looking at the cabin classes on a PC the Yaht Club selection is over to the right and you need to click the right arrow to move over to them.