Illbcruzn4life

5 hours ago, scottie99 said:

On Anthem on Sunday.

 

I realise I’m asking some basic questions for a D+ but it’s been a while since our last cruise pre covid and so much seems to have changed.

 

We are MTD and when I finally realised we should book times ( def a contradiction in my view!), we could only get 19.45 . Now the planner has been published, this clashes with entertainment we would like to attend on a couple of occasions.

 

Can we just turn up early (or later)  and hopefully get a table, or, should we try and change prior to any clash.

 

Or, is there a walk up line for MTDers

 

Thanks

 

 

on our last cruise we also had MTD. Apparently MTD doesn't start until after the people from first seating are finishing up. From years gone by we used to get MTD and eat in between 5:30pm and 6pm. If we book any RCL cruises going forward we will pick first seating.

On 4/1/2024 at 9:58 AM, alserrod said:

 

You can

 

1- Just pay the price for any game/slot/...

 

2- Buy credit for them.

If you buy credit you will have extra money as promotion but it is not refundable. In that case it will go to YOUR card (not to your daugther's card). She will be able to use it providing you are who pays.

 

 

 

can they keep grack of your playing with the band and not having your card inserted?

1 hour ago, marktwothousand said:

I think you’re probably right that I’m overthinking it, but it wouldn’t be a stretch for MSC (or any cruise line) to consider an interior yacht club room a step up from an existing regular balcony 

i'd say it's a big upgrade to most people

5 minutes ago, Agrajag27 said:

Phew. Had a near-disaster. I was on with a rep and going over some things and I mentioned that none of my add-ons are showing in the web interface. She said, "What add-ons?" I explained we paid $140 for an upgrade to Premium drinks package and she said, "I don't see that anywhere." I KNOW it was there. So I find it on my first confirmation. I explain it. She digs deeper and we realize someone on their side just refunded it for no reason. At first she was like, "Well, what if the price is higher now?" Uh, that's not my problem. So she finally got the okay to just add it back in. Good thing I saw that, but it STILL isn't appearing in the add-ons section of the web interface. 

My buddy had his gender as female. Called to get it changed and the rep wiped out his whole reservation.

10 minutes ago, Agrajag27 said:

So they have a buffet for thousands of people at ONE location? Wow. I literally had this image of food being out at every bar area and such nearly 24/7. Wild expectations reset.

 

I also didn't realize our Aurea anytime meals are in one specific restaurant. Kinda cool. Going to assume even though they're anytime, they still likely need reservations.

no reservations needed. Just show up between the hours listed and you will be good.

56 minutes ago, Agrajag27 said:

Gotta say Debbie, that this is both great and also overwhelming. My wife will implode when she sees these sheets as she'll want to go over every line item and make sure we're not missing anything. Will we really only get these the morning of? 

Somebody else already mentioned it but it's worth repeating. Don't try to do everything. If you do you will be coming home exhausted.

1 hour ago, Agrajag27 said:

We're going on our first cruise ever after a lifetime of thinking I'd get to it at some point and now, decades later, finally getting there. We're starting light with a 7-night cruise on Seashore out of Port Canaveral and heading to Ocean Cay and two Mexico stops.

 

We decided to try out the Aurea experience in a Balcony Suite with drinks/wifi and upgraded to Premium drinks. We expect we won't do that going forward, but felt the stress of spending too much was less than the angst of wishing we had. 

 

So, at this point we're both overwhelmed. What do we do immediately upon getting aboard with a 12pm boarding slot and thus 5 hours to fill in before embarking? We have no idea if much of the ship is accessible at that point. Are the buffets up and going? Are the venues all open? Are pools accessible? I do know we want to check Wifi immediately and book certain things, but that raises other confusion.

 

The thermal suite, for example, confuses both of us. What the heck do you do in a snowsuite? We obviously won't be bringing winter gear and sitting in a freezing room for any time in shorts seems an odd thing to bring one pleasure -- and still we want to experience it, but can't imagine just walking in, going "that's cold" and walking out. I love the sound of some of the showers, but is that an experience or is that a shower after a sauna? And given all this, when do you want to book them for? Immediately? That night? Times? How long do these things in there last? What will it conflict with? There seems so much competing for your time that FOMO seems inevitable. How does everyone overcome it?

 

Other non-first day questions:

 

We apparently get two Gala dinners so seems a bad idea to book a Specialty restaurant for those nights, and are we expected to dress up? If so, to what degree? Business Casual? Sportscoat and slacks okay? Truly formal? 

 

How do most people go about planning out their detailed itinerary? It sounds like we won't really know what the schedule is until we're on the ship and given the WiFi restrictions, I planned to use my phone for the device, but doing itineraries on it seems like torture. Is there a third-party app that helps with organizing this? Their own app is barely working for us 87 days out. Constant errors and it doesn't seem to know about our upgrades though Support swears they're still in there, but in another area. Given all this, I'd be surprised if it's a good tool for handling itineraries. I just HATE not having a detailed plan. Just running into things around the ship isn't my cup of tea.

 

Thanks for ANY insight in helping to make this a better experience. Already signed up for Voyagers Club (though the app doesn't seem to realize it).

We were on the Seashore for 2 weeks last month and we only had 1 formal night each week. Also the appworks so much better once you are onboard the ship.

55 minutes ago, Tierun said:

Isn’t Amber Cove owned by Carnival? Or is it just that only their cruise lines (i.e. Princess, HAL) dock there.

I believe you are correct. Went there on the Carnival Celebration last year. Was at Taino Bay last month

Taino Bay and imho Taino Bay is a lot nicer than Amber Cove. 

On 4/6/2024 at 12:44 PM, rikitikitavii said:

We have been on 7 MSC cruises and never had that experience. In fact, my wife and I are not messy people and tell the room steward to skip our room for the day, if he looks busy. We don’t need fresh towels daily, we hang them up to dry. We also make up the bed, just like at home. Maybe your expectations were geared more to one of the luxury cruise lines!!

Our first msc cruise last june on Meraviglia our cabin steward was not very good either. Never saw him the whole week until the last night. Room was also never vacuumed all week and towels forgotten. Not as bad as OP but geez justdo the basics and I’m happy.

11 hours ago, perakcruiser said:

You are right. Actually there is absolutely no need to tell anyone you are not coming the next day. But one can make the life of the waiter a little bit more easy if telling him that you will not be here next evening. 

Most times we don't know the day before. How can we handle that with notifying the waiter? If we are exhausted from a day at the beach or something we may just opt for the buffet.

37 minutes ago, ajoneen said:

Does the 1 free change include a price reduction?  if so will that work for YC also? 

My quandary: 

I want to book now, as exactly what I want is available, but will also be on board Memorial day do might get better deal with Mday sale and/or onboard booking credit- but desired cabin might be gone.  

(I don't have a TA yet- am hoping to talk with other folks on this cruise to get input on that) 

do you details of the Memorial day sale?

9 hours ago, simplelife said:

If you switch to get the drink package for the two of you instead of all of you, won"t you lose the casino offer for the 2nd room?

So nobody that has the casino offer has to be booked in the cabin? That doesn’t right.

1 hour ago, epanchenko said:

 

Purchases I made appeared relatively quickly in the app.

Same here but not usually instantaneous. Usually within 15 to a few hours on Seashore

1 hour ago, alserrod said:

 

Hi, 

 

No....with Easy pack beer is MAINLY BUT NOT ONLY Heineken.

 

as draft beer, definitely you will only have Heineken

But as bottle beer, in Sports bar they have a longer beer menu and some out of them are also included in Easy Pack.

 

Depending on where you are travelling (port of departure) you will have one or other offer. This is.... not only heineken in some bars (only heineken in pool bar, buffet or so)

 

 

 

 

that does not apply to cruises in the U.S.

On 3/28/2024 at 12:03 PM, jdvmd said:

Today, the Magnifica is anchored and no tendering because of the winds. The World Cruise Poesia is sitting there. My friend onboard is not happy.

I didn't know they tendered there.

1 hour ago, tnaegele said:

Hey!

Can you really only get Heineken with the easy package?  It says in fine print sometimes it's another beer...has anyone ever been on a cruise and given something other than Heineken?

are you sure you only have the easy package? As stated already Heineken draft is all that's available on the easy package? 

On 4/21/2024 at 12:02 PM, dbrown84 said:

does MSC, especially the Seashore, have made to order stations in the buffet for lunch/dinner?  I'm thinking pasta station, stir fry, or noodle bar.  I'm assuming they have omelet/egg stations at breakfast

On Seashore they had an omelet station. Only 3 choices. Ham,cheese, and something that looked like pico. 
 

they had a fried rice station at the buffet.

On 4/18/2024 at 5:53 AM, 80sGal said:

Wait, what?  Our status match went through about a month ago and our 1st cruise is in October.  My account still shows the same balance due as before we got bumped to Gold.   Do I have to call to have the discount credited?  

Good luck. Some of the phone reps are not very good.

On 4/17/2024 at 10:13 AM, Fergus said:

I would recommend making yourself an MSC account.  I did that at the same time as booking my cruise and, even though it's not the sleekest/best functioning website out there, I've been able to book excursions, purchase a drink plan, look up port times, and get lots of information about the ship.  And as of this past weekend, did our online check in.  I think all of those things will save us time once we board the ship.

Was the drink package more expensive buying it after you had already booked?

Was on Seashore from 4/14 to 4/28. Had the lobster tail and filet both weeks. Wasn’t charged extra.

Was on Seashore from 4/14-4/24. Still the same muster drill.☹️👎🏻

8 hours ago, squigglydownunder said:

Keep in mind that Ocean Cay is closed for upgrades but only for 46 days.

That doesn't feel like sufficient time to increase dock/turnaround area for a second ship to me.

Scheduled to reopen May 23. They are making the dock bigger to accommodate the World America

10 hours ago, jcollin said:

Just off the Seashore.  What we thought (4 of us) were the good and not so good things.

Good:

Embarkation - We had Aurea so we went through the priority line about noon time,  Didn't really need it as the lines were small at that time. Total time from arriving to on the ship was less than a 1/2 hour.  The room keys are in a little envelope hanging on your door.

Dining room - We ate in the Manhattan room. The service each night was great.  The food was good as well.  We always sat in the same area each night.

Room - we were on the 15th floor.  Our room was cleaned pretty quickly in the morning, and we also had turndown service each night.

Cocktail bar on deck 8.  The best drinks we had. Some we had to pay extra for as our package only covered up to $10.  The jungle bar was fun too but humid. We also liked the sports bar.

The Spa - It's nice and not crowded.  We enjoyed the saunas and steam rooms.  We made reservations the first day but just walked in at other times with no issue.

Hola Tacos - specialty restaurant - we did the all you can eat.  It was $42 for two and the food is outstanding, great service too.  

Top 19 - Great place to relax.  Hardly anyone up there and tons of room.  It did get really hot as there is little to no shade.  The two hot tubs are a good size and were empty most of the time.  

The rectangle shaped hot tuns on 8.  They are on both sides of the ship so one is in the sun and the other shade.  They aren't super-hot but they were the best tubs on the ship.  They are right against the glass overlooking the ocean.  It was fun to sit there and look out over the ocean.

La Cabaret Rouge - Fun spot we stopped into before the 9:30 shows.

Disembarkation - They do want you out of your room at 7 which seems early, but the process was smooth.  We ate breakfast, went to Cabaret lounge and about 15 mins later our number was called. We walked off grabbed our luggage with no issues.

 

Not so good

The buffet - The food is fine, but this is your only option on embarkation day as well as port days.  The area for the buffet is big but trying to shove 5000+ people in there doesn't work.  Why no dining room for lunch?  One of the enjoyable parts of cruising is having someone wait on you for meals.  Lunch felt like we were back in school visiting the cafeteria.  

Breakfast service, or lack of - Breakfast was served in Central Park.  It was complete confusion each day.  I think we had 10 different people from that start to end of breakfast one day.  None of them knew what the other was doing.  One day we had already ordered and yet we got menus again.  Coffee refills were hard to get.  Orders were usually missing something.  They had plenty of wait staff but couldn't seem to figure out a process that works.

Muster - It's bad.  We went to our room to watch the video, that never came up on the TV.  Then we joined the mad rush, on the stairs, to our muster station to have our cards scanned.  Here's a tip - Only 1 person needs to make the trip.  Just bring both cards and they will scan them.

The elevators - We actually had no issue with them.  Just select the floor you want for the number of people, in our case 4 for 15.  We heard lots of other people complaining about them.  I think it would help if MSC stationed a few of their team near the elevators on day 1 to tell people how they work.  It was close to the last day and someone jumped on our elevator and asked is this going to 16.  Someone said did you select 16 and they seemed confused by the question.

 

Overall, it's hard to have a bad time on a cruise.  This was our 3rd on MSC and we would do another.  We heard lots of people talking about how nice  the Meraviglia was so maybe we'll try that next.

We were also on the same cruise and couldn’t agree more with the dining room. Breakfast was like the keystone cops. We didnt have as good of luck with the elevators. So many times one person hit the button and 6 pushed in. Wrote on the survey to post instructions at the elevators.

10 hours ago, mz-s said:

 

Glad it worked well for you. The MCO reserve appointments really make that airport a breeze. Hope you had a good cruise!

The best part of clear at MCO is it's free. The cruise was excellent.

Thanks again