Estjali

Nice review, I think I will stay away from the slide with the board. One of my fears is being stuck in a waterslide LOL. I think I can sit that one out.

 

I really would like to try the bowling(Though I would almost bring my own bowling shoes) and the simulators, thinking maybe one of the package things might be good for us to purchase. Though I take it they are something we can get on board, not pre-purchased?

Hi mom2tcdx2,

Not sure whether you can pre-purchase the Fun Pass, but you can get the deal on board too (e.g. pay $50, get $65 and so on). Each of the ones we did (zip line, F1 simulator, XD cinema) cost $10 pp, bowling I think was $25 for half an hour. You can also use money for the arcade games and air hockey too (maybe for the pool table as well, not sure about that one).

That video includes a shot of someone helping themselves to the mini-bar which is definitely NOT included in the Classic package. It's only included in the deluxe (premium).

 

However, it's a great video! :)

Good catch Beamafar. Minibar is not included in Classic package, unless you take cans of beer/cider/soda from the bar and put them in your minibar. Then it's ok. :D

However, the last shot is actually from our Airbnb place in Florida - there's some food stuff on the fridge door, which you don't have in your cabin minibar. :)

Here's a sneak peek of what you'll get with your Classic drinks package:

:tropical-drink::cool:

I'm going to be potentially dining there. Do you have photos of the area at night? Did they do the same staff parades in there; was service better because of the smaller area?

 

Did you eat there on non-formal evenings as well and were the tables dressed?

I’m sorry but I don’t have proper photos of the area, only of ourselves and some of the food. I’m not familiar with the staff parade, but I didn’t notice anything other than the staff welcoming you to the dining room by the entrance. That was nice though.

I felt the service was very good and personal: our server Rory always asked how our day had been and we had small chats. He didn’t feel busy and suggested some food items for us each day. Drinks and food always came quickly and efficiently and we never had to wait for either for a long time.

Obviously I can’t compare how the service was as compared to other MDRs.

We ate there at 6pm each night other than St. Thomas night as we boarded the ship at around 6pm. The tables were always dressed, but they added some decoration (golden layer of table cloth) on Elegant nights, and perhaps some decoration on the table too (can’t remember for sure).

As others have said, we felt the Market Place was really intimate for the dinner as it was sectioned into smaller dining rooms. We had less than 10 tables in our room, some of which were empty at times as people apparently ate in the buffet those nights.

Hope this helps.

"XD Cinema: Again we used our Funpass for this ($10 each). In the XD ride you sit on a seat that moves with the movie and blast something with laser guns. You’ll wear 3D glasses as well. We chose the zombie ride (there was also a Godzilla ride and a Sheriff ride for the kids). The ride was fun and action packed as you try to escape from the zombies and blast them while you do. Needless to say, my girlfriend beat me again in this. I sound like a real sissy don’t I?"

Ok, this seems more my style no heights or water involved. Is this a solo experience and then you check points afterward. Yep, you guessed it I have never done this before.

Hi Linda,

XD cinema had seats side by side, I think around 8-10 in total. It wasn’t busy at all and we got to ride just the two of us. The game shows your score on the screen at the end and you can compare.

Have you seen photos; and you think the buffet has the best atmosphere?

 

Why aren't those in the MDR trying to get to the Marketplace for dinner than?

 

It is eating in the buffet. Plain and simple. It is not ornately decorated. It is not carpeted. Your surroundings are going to be closed down food serving stations. I'll concede that if you are there before sunset you may have better sea views depending on your location but any way you look at it this is a lower caliber setting.

Hi LMaxwell,

People have different tastes and especially prejudices if they haven’t experienced something.

I didn’t experience the other MDRs other than taking a look inside when walking by, but we enjoyed our dinners in the Market Place.

Market Place is nicely decorated for dinners with white table cloths, flowers/decoration and candles on the tables. The rooms are nice with paintings on the walls and nice wine cabinets etc. - definately you’re not seated next to a closed down food serving station! :') Yes it is not carpeted, but I don’t expect my dining rooms to be - then again we’re European.

I don’t know which MDR has the best atmosphere, but we definitely enjoyed ours. No need to paint the negative picture for those potentially going to dine in there.

My thanks also for your review. I had a question on the zip line. I assume they require footwear, bu t wasn't sure if sandals were okay or if you had to have laced sneakers or the like. Thanks again for your insights so far! Extremely helpful.

Hi JAGR,

Thanks for your feedback!

Regarding footwear in the zipline, my girlfriend went barefoot (and I saw many others do the same) and I wore sandals (the ones with straps). I believe they only care if they are the kind that may fall off during the flight, so I wouldn’t wear flip-flops.

Thanks for your great review and making so easy to read. Question, was Gatsby night held on a formal night during your sailing?

 

Sent from my SM-G930T using Forums mobile app

Hi nautica34,

Thanks for the comment.

There was a Gatsby party on the latter elegant night on our cruise, which took place on Thursday.

There was also an Italian night (which wasn’t advertised and the only ones dressed in green-white-red were the restaurant staff) and a white party.

Thanks again everyone for the kind comments!

I could add a piece of review under the entertainment section regarding the activities on board.

Waterslides: Before going into waterslides, you’ll have to sign a waiver and you’ll get a wristband to wear until you’re done with the slides. The two (partially see-through) slides on the starboard side were really nice and fast if you lay down. I tried these on the second day and the last sea day; there were no lines on the second day and some on the last. On the latter it took less than 5 minutes in the line. Not bad and very nice slides.

The Slideboarding ride however was a letdown. It’s a game-like ride where you ride a board that has colored buttons in the handles. Inside the tube there are lights (red/green) and you try to press the corresponding button under the light to score points. Sounds fun, but wasn’t. Let me explain why.

I tried it on the last sea day and there was a line for the boards. I may have waited for 15 minutes for the board. During that time I saw the staff member coming down from the tube after the slide board 4-5 times. I thought he may have slipped into the tube as he pushed everyone in, or just pushing the younger kids for speed as they are too light. After receiving my board, I went up to queue for the ride itself. I waited another 10 minutes for the ride.

The ride started ok and I pushed the colored buttons on the way, but soon got stuck inside the tube. The tube operator slid in after hearing I was stuck (he yelled in and asked if I was) and pushed me down. Clearly there is a design fault in the ride, as many people got stuck. Anyways I didn’t get to enjoy the ride and didn’t want to try again.

Zipline: We both used the Funpass ($10 each) to pay for the zipline. For this you needed to sign a waiver and get a ticket from the 7th deck arcade cave. You can also buy it on the upper decks for $10 if it’s not included in your cruise fare. But for Funpass, 7th floor it is.

There was no line when I went, but my girlfriend had to queue for about 10 minutes.

As others have said, the zipline is rather slow and not thrilling, but provides a nice view and is worth trying out. I tried to take my GoPro tied to my wrist but they wouldn’t let us do that, as it apparently is a safety risk.

XD Cinema: Again we used our Funpass for this ($10 each). In the XD ride you sit on a seat that moves with the movie and blast something with laser guns. You’ll wear 3D glasses as well. We chose the zombie ride (there was also a Godzilla ride and a Sheriff ride for the kids). The ride was fun and action packed as you try to escape from the zombies and blast them while you do. Needless to say, my girlfriend beat me again in this. I sound like a real sissy don’t I? :')

I'm more curious about the formal night attire in there. Non-formal nights aren't too much of a worry. Were there people in evening gowns and suits or did people blow off the formality because of the setting?

Hello tallnthensome!

As someone linked my review, we just came back from our cruise and were assigned to Market Place for dinners. We loved the experience and have nothing to complain about.

With regards to clothing on the formal / elegant nights, we did dress up and so did many others, but there were also people in jeans and t-shirts there. If you don’t want to dress up, you don’t have to.

First off, thank you for this great review. We leave this Saturday for our Seaside cruise and are looking forward to it very much.

 

I noticed on the disembarkation times you posted that there is a special grouping for guests with transfers to the airport. Do you happen to know if those transfers are available for purchase on the ship or are they pre-arranged? We have a fairly early flight out of MIA on our return and looking for the best option to give us enough time. Planning on doing the express walk-off, but the transfer has me intrigued now.

 

Again, thank you!

Hi bren924,

Thanks for your comments.

Sorry but I don’t know whether you could buy an airport transfer onboard. I know they arranged trips in Miami (city tours, Everglades tours etc.) that ended at the airport. You could buy the tours onboard, so I would assume MSC would also sell airport transfers on board. But then again, I don’t know for sure.

Express walk off was easy and we got a taxi in front of the terminal without waiting, there were plenty available.

Thanks again everyone for all the nice comments! Makes me feel good if people find my review useful or entertaining.

I forgot to mention one important thing in my review: I talked my boss at work into getting an internet package to be able to check my emails onboard, and I wanted to charge it from my employer. ;) He was ok with that, so I got the most expensive package ”Streamer” in case I needed to access our server or something. Well, luckily I didn’t. :)

Streamer can be used with up to 4 devices and includes 1.5GB of data (+20% if booked in advance, so we got 1.8GB in total). It should be noted that as the package was booked only for me, my girlfriend had to log in with my account to use the internet on her phone. This was not an issue and she could be logged in to MSC for Me app with her own account at the same time.

I was very surprised when logging in for the first time as the system showed that I had 6.5GB of data available! That’s 3.6 times as much as I (read: my employer) paid for. I wasn’t gonna complain and we started using it. Internet worked well everywhere we tried it and was fast enough, so no issues with the access.

If you’re planning on using the internet on board, be careful to disable automatic app updates and other stuff as these may use a lot of data in the background. Also my girlfriend’s Facebook app used ~100MB every time she accessed internet, even without opening the app (it seemed to update something in the background that we weren’t able to disable). I asked her to delete the app and use the internet (Safari) version which I use, it uses much less data.

Despite MSC’s generosity, we didn’t need the whole data allowance and ended up using approx. 1.9GB after uploading pics and videos to FB and sending them to our families back home.

As a bella guest, I'm very happy to hear your review of the market place dinner experience!

 

I was wondering how were you able to request the 2 person table for dinner? Did you have to email or call them? Do you have the contact info by any chance?

 

Thank you for your help!

Hi oceantriumph, happy to hear the review has been helpful. We fully enjoyed our dinners at Market Place and didn’t request to be seated into the other MDRs after our great first dinner there.

We booked our cruise through a travel agency in Finland. I requested a table for two through them and they forwarded the message to the cruise line. Sorry but I don’t have direct contact details for this.

Thank you for your thoughtful review! I think many have had their expectations appropriately set by reviews pointing out where the ship might fall short. Any ship will have pluses and minuses.

 

There was so much excitement built up that I think the early cruisers may - understandably! - had unreasonably high expectations. We will follow your example.

 

I must compliment you on your English, not only is your grammar exceptionally proper, so is your use of "everyday vernacular" :)

Thank you so much for your kind words TrinaLC, happy to hear you enjoyed my review. :)

I agree 100% here. We never would even think to override the elevator, but did use it when we were the only ones on. However; we never could quite get it to work right. I"m sure that one was operator error.

 

OP: I love your review!! It literally glows with 'first cruise' excitement. I bet you're hooked on cruising now :). The whole thing makes me smile for you.

 

I do have one question though, Did you ever smell septic/sewer?

Hi BermudaBound2014 and thank you for the kind words. Going on a Caribbean cruise has always been on my bucket list and I’m very happy to cross that one off now! :D We loved our first cruise and would love to go back one day.

With regards to septic smell, as I mentioned in my last post on the review part, luckily we didn’t smell that anywhere on the ship. Hopefully that issue is a thing in the past now.

Thanks everyone for the lovely feedback!

I felt the need to write my review after reading all the negative ones before our cruise. With the right mindset and approach to the cruise, I’m sure everyone will enjoy it.

We saw lots of happy people on the ship every day and I didn’t see anyone complaining.

Now if it is true what many reviewers say, that some other lines provide that much better experience, I would love to see those next... But if there is a large price difference, I wouldn’t hesitate booking with MSC again!

Estjali ... Enjoyed your review and it is good to see decent reports coming back with the myriad of poor ones since our Xmas inaugural cruise.

 

I had a little laugh at your elevator experience and also at the Ferry comment at the start, many years ago we sailed on the Silja Festival from Stockholm to Turku and back with our Swedish friends, there was a very large party going on in one room so we decided to check it out and found a room full of line dancers.

Thanks for the comments sidari. I enjoyed reading your review earlier.

Nice to hear you’ve experienced a Silja cruise. Then you also know the difference in the level of service and the experience in general, when comparing to Seaside. If you’re ok with Silja, you’ll be amazed by the Seaside experince!

Kiitos! Thank you. Funny but my wife and I flew to Fort Myers this morning. Small world. [emoji289] Thanks so much for your review!

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Kiitos! :) Small world indeed. Looking forward to exploring the Fort Myers area next, before flying back to cold Finland on the 15th.

Thank you so much for this information. Ive been trying to find all this out. I am Black status and sailing in YC. I am usually one of the first off on cruises, but this trip my dh is flying into FLL and landing ar 9:15 am. He has pick up rental car and then drive to POM to pick up my mom and me before we drive to Orlando to watch my son play college ball. So, is this correct that 10:30 am I can walk off. It seems so late to me especially since in August Ill be sailing Allure And on a plane 30 minutes later lol

 

If I can really walk off at 10:30 am Im thinking about just walking out, finding a bench for my mom and waiting for my dh. I was also thinking taking an Uber to the InterContinental lobby but now rethinking if I can really start heading out at 1030 am.

 

Thanks so much.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

Thank you for the message. I’m not sure if the attached image included YC schedule, but it seems that the disembarkation lasts at least until 10:30am. When leaving the ship today (using the Express walk off), we noticed some YC guests being escorted in front of one of the lines. Seems there is more flexibility there. Hopefully you can figure things out and make it work for you.

Glad you went with the right attitude and you really enjoyed your cruise, thanks for the well balanced review.

Thanks for the comment! I recommend the same attitude for everyone. :)

Disembarkation: I posted the departure schedule for Miami earlier today (and attached the image again in this post). We were allocated 9:15am disembarkation time, but opted for the Express walk off instead as you had to vacate your cabin by 7am anyways. Also we had booked a rental car and planned to continue our trip to Fort Myers (where we came today) for a few more days so wanted to get off earlier. The process went smoothly, and although there were dozens and dozens of others in the Express walk off line, it went quickly. We left the breakfast room at 7:15am and were at the Budget by 8am.

Random thoughts:

• We had one incident in a full elevator with a YC guest, a ”graceful” lady with a need to state loudly her status and wave the wristband in the air. She used her wristband to go to deck 19 (we got on at deck 5 and were going to 11). All the other people’s selections were erased and we got up first. However, there was somekind of a glitch in the system and the elevator only went to 18, then back down to drop us off at 11 and others where they were going. The YC lady had a taste of her own medicine and got a free ride up and down again with us poor people. :') I laughed so hard after getting off (not at her), she seemed confused.
  
• I think this elevator ”cutting in line” allowed by MSC is not cool (erasing everyone else’s floor selections when a YC guest steps in). Luckily this only happened once.
  
• Other than the above, we didn’t really notice being the ”economy class”. I guess YC people stayed in their section of the ship.
  
• We didn’t have the best cabin steward. He took our used beach towels twice without replacing them. I had to go and find a crew member to get new ones, which luckily was easy. Once we run out of hand soap as he hadn’t refilled it. Had to leave a note to get it fixed. Otherwise he was very friendly.
  
• There were never long lines for bars, food or getting on or off the ship. All of this was handled very efficiently by the crew.
  
• We were very lucky with the weather (very warm all the time, no winds to rock the boat). All the water slides, zip lines etc. were open each day for the people to enjoy.
  
• We never noticed the sewage smell or poo odour (which someone had reported), other than when standing behind some pensioners in a breakfast line. ;p
  

Wrap-up: I appreciate people can have very different experience on the same cruise, depending on their expectations. We had realistic ones after reading the initial reviews and when comparing to our local cruise experience in Finland. Despite some of the poor initial reviews, we were happy to see that many of the initial issues had been fixed. Also we were lucky to not having to visit the Guest service desk once. At the beginning of our cruise, we decided to tune into a vacation mode, not let minor issues bother and have a great time. This is exactly what we did and had an amazing first Caribbean cruise.

Nice review. Thanks for sharing. Did you go see any of the entertainment?

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Thanks for the comments! I believe you saw my post re: entertainment. In short, we found the evening shows to be very good.

Great review ! Thank you !

 

Did you go to the Casino ? And did you take any excursions at the ports ?

Thanks for the comment!

We visited the casino a few nights, mainly for drinks and watching people play (read: lose money). There were two roulette tables, a few Blackjack tables, a couple of different poker games (sorry I’m not an expert in these). And of course plenty of slot machines.

Roulette tables had a minimum of $1, some of the other tables had higer stakes too.

There weren’t any crab tables or I didn’t see anyone smoking there (I remember someone asking about these earlier).

There were also several tv’s with different games (basketball, football) to watch in the casino.

With regards to ports and tours, please see my previous post. Ask further questions if needed.

Ports: It was our first time on a Caribbean cruise so we were excited to visit all the ports of call.

After doing some research beforehand, I was least excited about Nassau. We basically walked around the town to see the main sights, visited some shops and the Straw Market and then went to Junkanoo beach. Ok day but we were a bit underwhelmed. Been there, done that.

St. Thomas was great. We took the Ultimate Island Experience tour through MSC. The highlight was the awesome Magens Bay with turqoise water and white sand.

In Antigua, we participated in a private horseback riding trip where we also went swimming with the horses. This was arranged by my girlfriend and was definitely one of the highlights of the cruise! After that, we visited Nelson’s Dockyard and the close-by beach.

Ship and the amenities: As others have said, the ship is gorgeous with lots of nice details. The atrium and the Swarowski stairs provide a great photo opportunity.

The ship is huge and it was nice to be on the largest ship in all the ports we visited. Yes I know there are larger ships out there, but Seaside is big enough.

At first the ship seems like a maze and it took some time to get used to. However, we got used to it quickly and didn’t find this to be an issue. I.e. if you want to get to deck 16 pools, we knew not to go to deck 16 with the front elevators, as you could only access the specialty restaurants from there...

The pools were great with plenty of loungers around. I didn’t like the fact that people booked their loungers early in the morning with their towels and came around noon. The staff did nothing to prevent this. I was ok with this as I woke up at around 8am and went to read a book and have my morning coffee by the pool. My gf joined me an hour or so later once she woke up. To wrap up, on sea days all the loungers were booked soon after 8am, so be early if you want one!

As a proper vacationer, I never visited the gym (although I thought I might if I got bored, which luckily didn’t happen)! :D

MSC has done a great job with people flows. There were 5,000 or so guests on board but the ship never felt crowded. There were many places for people to be in, many times for shows and many slots for dinners etc. It was amazing how empty the ship felt at times. There was a lot of privacy if you wanted that.

Okay, I’ll add some negative issues to give my review some credibility:

• Some of the showers by the pool didn’t work properly - they stayed on after people left and gradually flooded the deck. The staff worked with these throughout the week but they still seemed to have issues at the end.
  
• The two hot tubs at the aft on deck 16 were out of order during our cruise. Still there were at least 4-5 that were working.
  
• The panoramic aft elevators were out of order a couple of times during the week, but they were fixed quickly.