SlickLittleGirl

First off, I stated that I didn't care that we were 15 mins late to port.  I stayed that the issue was with getting us off the ship. I have never had such a long wait nor had to deal with the process that we dealt with on a cruise. 

Second, the shops didn’t close early.  As I stated , the majority weren’t open at all.  We were told that cruise ships don’t arrive to GC on Saturdays and only a few shops chose to open.  It was a replacement for Cuba and it showed.  It was disappointing as I have heard and read that GC had excellent shopping. 

Finally, the point about having a presentation on culture (or any other topic for that matter or even any other activity besides dance lessons) was more about offering passengers things to do besides sitting poolside or taking dance lessons on an at-sea day.  Do something for your guests that might interest them ... wine tasting, anything. 

Have a great upcoming trip.  I hope your experience is better than mine.  As for me, never again with MSC. 

On ‎8‎/‎6‎/‎2019 at 2:11 PM, scottamemnon said:

I barely walked into the buffet, partially because of the seating issue, but also because of the absolute chaos that certain guests made it.  Its like none of them understood the point of a line.  

 

 

That is the truth!  I was amazed at the amount of rudeness we saw on the ship.  At teh buffet, I had so many people stick their arms in front of me or just push their way in front of me to get food.  It was rather obnoxious. A family tried that at the Gelato stand.  He took his kids up to the front pretending to look at the Gelato then the second the Gelato server handed over a cone, he just started ordering all these cones.  We all looked at each other and could not believe the Gelato server just stood there and served him.

 We had an issue at the theatre as well.  We sat in the back of the theatre and there was an aisle separating our last row from the row in front of us.  All of these people came into the show late and they all stood in front of us, blocking the view of the entire row.  Everyone asked them to move or sit down and they all refused and stood there.  There were staff members watching the whole thing but did nothing to help even when asked. They should have either closed the door after the show filled or told those people to find a seat or leave.  We ended up leaving because we couldn't see.  Sad.    

And one night, we ordered the cocktail of the day which was supposed to be $7.50.  The bartender gave us the receipt and charged us full price for the drink.  We called it to his attention and he said he'd have to call the manager to find out.  Oddly, we went after the show where they had just announced the drink special and the price.  How do you not have that written down for employees or inform them of that?!  Ugh!!

7 minutes ago, sfaaa said:

Was your delay in GC weather related? Tendering can be tricky and a time consuming affair if the sea condition is not ideal. 

Weather was fine the whole time.  Some rain in the morning that we arrived in Honduras but other than that, it was "smooth sailing".  They never stated that the delay was weather related, just that they were late in general.  I don't mind being 15 minutes.  That wasn't the main issue.  The issue was that this was not a port that you could walk off of and the wait for tenders was nuts.  They disembarked all the tour groups first, which is understandable as they are on a stricter time table.     

I do want to add that, for GC, we had to wait in line at 11:45 to get tender passes which gave us our position to disembark.  Then we had to all drag down to the 5th floor to disembark and everyone was gathered around the various clubs on that level.  It was very stuffy and nobody was happy.  They were very slow to call the tender boarding ticket letters.  I truly felt bad for the people who had the later end of the alphabet.  It had to have taken them a solid +2 hours to disembark.  I swear, I was waiting for people to mutiny!

We were on this cruise as well.  It was our first time sailing with MSC (having sailed RCCL in the past) and all I have to say is one and done with this company. 

Taking the entire Cuba issue out of the picture, here are my thoughts:

I felt that the disembarkation in Grand Cayman was an absolute disaster.  We sat and waited for over an hour and a half to disembark after arriving to port 15 minutes late.  By the time we got off the ship, we had 4 hours in port.  A majority of the shops in GC were shut down on Saturday.  Swatch, Diamonds International, Margaritaville, duty free, a couple of the high end jewelry shops that the cruise ship touted were all that was offered. It was disappointing as I had hoped we could do the beach for part of the day and then shopping for the rest.  Had we known the majority of the shops would be closed, we would have headed for the beach instead.  I figured that the area would be busy with vacationers staying on the island but it wasn't.    

The pool and jacuzzis closed at 9 pm and I did not understand that.  They also had the reclining deck chairs put away by 9pm as well.  Speaking of … the reclining deck chairs were not adjustable.  You could not raise or lower them and that was a turn off to me, personally.  Everyone was trying to come up with ways to make them more upright or to lower them flat to no avail. 

The days at sea could have had more things to do for the adults aside from pool games and bingo.  It would've been nice to do a wine tasting, or a chef cooking presentation, or a lecture on something like the history or culture of the islands. I don't know … there just wasn't much to do besides the shopping talk. 

The auditiorium where they had the nightly shows, was always cram packed.  Even when we'd show up early, there were so many people already there and seating was so limited.  We ended up not seeing a few shows because of that.  

The dining room left a lot to be desired and we decided not to go back after day 2.  We felt the food was better at the buffet as did two other couples who we had dined with and spotted at the buffet.  

All in all, the ports were great 

Double post.  Sorry!