Buckeyefrank100

3 minutes ago, Brighton Line said:

Well, Disney constantly scores 100 on most of their ships but you get what you pay for. Shockly Disney Dream scored 99 in April only Disney ship to fail to get a 100 on their last inspection. 

 

Even scoring a 100 does not mean CDC didn't find anything wrong, just the violation did not result in points off. Disney Wonder's inspection on 1/2023 with 100 score still had 11 violations, just no points taken off. 

I was referring to misleading stories by the news media.

On 5/10/2023 at 7:13 PM, shipgeeks said:

See the "Well this is disconcerting" post.

Yes, it is disconcerting that they can publish untruths like this.  How do they get away with it? Knowing the source, not surprising, but still......

They all do it.

You CAN make it but I absolutely would not attempt it unless you're OK missing it.  I personally would never fly in the day of the cruise.  You are at the mercy of weather, staffing issues and mechanical issues.  Friends of ours didn't heed our advice and missed their cruise a few years ago.  We had other friends who were stranded in Mexico for 5 days due to weather.

55 minutes ago, davy jones said:

Thank you for the blog.  We are booked on the October cruise, but were considering cancelling due to the poor ship reviews.  Your experience has convinced us to keep the reservation and give MSC a try.  We are OK with most of the "European" aspects of MSC and some of the other quirks. 

 

One potential show stopper is dining assignments.  We typically choose whatever form of my time dining that the cruise line offers.  Here we booked the Fantastica experience which allows us to choose an assigned dining time and chose early.  (We typically go to dinner between 6 and 7 PM).  I see some reports that people pay for Fantastica, request early, and still get assigned 9PM dining times.  We are pretty much low maintenance cruisers, but this would be a deal breaker.  If you charge extra for a preferred sitting, you should honor the request.

 

Does anyone have any experiences and/or thoughts on this?

That is the same situation as us.  We were on the Mera under Bella and we received late dining at 8:30.  I ran into quite a few Bella that were assigned to the dining option they didn't want.... coincidence or not?  There was a big sign outside the dining room that said early dining is full..  No switching.  We're booked in Fantastica in a couple weeks and requested early dining.  We were able to put in a special needs request for early dining due to some medications my wife is on.  I have been confirmed early dining for this cruise.  

Very nice hotel in a good location, but the bathrooms are a little different.

We stayed there when our daughter had her beach wedding.  The hotel is very nice with a nice rooftop pool area and a walkway across A1A to the beach.  The only strange thing about the hotel was the bathrooms in the rooms.  There was a window that was covered with slanted wood slats.  If someone wanted to, they could look in to see what was happening inside.

We loved Branos Italian Grill in Cocoa Beach

We were on the MSC Meraviglia a couple months ago and had a lot of issues.  It was only a 4 day sailing, but there were a LOT of issues...  lines for drinks, lines at the buffet, out of ingredients for drinks etc.  Due to personal issues we will be unable to go on a previously planned cruise in August so we booked the Seaside for a 7 day in May.  I have heard several times that a 7 day is better on MSC so I guess we'll see.  It sounds like for the general population that the Mera issues we encountered won't be fixed on the Seaside, correct?

10 hours ago, freeon said:

The package that I have for our upcoming cruise has gratuities included. I have the all drinks and WIFI package.

 

VAT is only added while in port at Port Canaveral because it's a US ports. Once the ship leaves VAT is no longer applied for the rest of the cruise, including other ports. 

Below is from my booking so I assume you can order from champagne bar since only 2 bars are listed under signature venue.

 

The Easy Plus Package covers all the above served at our bars, buffet, main restaurant and specialty restaurants. What?s more, it also includes private islands, but does not cover the signature venues (Venchi 1878 establishments or Jean-Philippe Maury venues, MSC Virtuosa Starship Club)

It's sales tax not VAT.  Nowhere in the US to my knowledge has anything resembling a VAT

3 minutes ago, AtSeaWithChris said:

I’m pretty sure Florida does charge sales tax. It’s Texas and NY and I think Alabama that charges alcohol tax as well as sales tax. 

You are correct.  It's a Friday and been a long week.  They do not have an income tax, but they do have a sales tax.

1 hour ago, AstoriaPreppy said:

 

Not sure if this is still the case, but in NYC, Carnival never used to let you purchase a beverage package the first day... whereas NCL did. Royal at Celebrity in NJ had no restrictions.

 

At least in NY the lines offered a full beverage menu before departure. In Galveston, the lines have a super-limited menu, with only six or seven brands of liquor available, and like five specialty cocktails. As soon as they hit international waters, those Texas TABC-tagged bottles get locked into a special cabinet at each bar, and the full bars are unlocked.

 

It's very odd.

Yeah it is odd.  It has to do with state sales tax.  In Florida there is no issue because they do not have a sales tax.  Each city / state handles things differently and cruise lines each react differently.  

16 hours ago, Holly31307 said:

My family of 5 (3 kids, ages 11, 13 and 16) are sailing on the Seaside next month. I have questions about the dining. On other ships, when we dined at the specialty restaurants, my 2 younger kids ate from the kids menu and it was free. Does anyone know the age cutoff for the kids menu and if it is free in specialty restaurants?  Can reservations for dining be made in advance- on the app or anywhere? 
 

Can show reservations be made in advance?  If so, how? 

 

also looking for some info on the different kids clubs. Have your teens enjoyed it?  
 

lastly, if I want to purchase the fun pass for the games for the kids, can this be done prior to or only on the ship?  Any idea the cost of the various games? 
 

This is our first time on MSC and I can’t seem to find answers to much online!  

I've heard that bowling is $30 for 30 minutes and the F1 simulator is $10 for 10 minutes....  Feels like their standard is about $1/minute

29 minutes ago, JamieLogical said:

 

Yes, of course you can. Why wouldn't you be able to?

There are states that make it illegal or difficult for cruise lines to offer drinks under drink packages while in port.  One of them is Galveston.  Other states will require a sales tax to be charged on the value of all drinks while in that state's waters...  Some cruise lines will pay for that out of the package proceeds, others pass that charge onto the customer.

The 2023 menu I found on google shows the tropical treasure section drinks are all $10.  As such, yes they would be included in the easy plus package.

1 hour ago, JamieLogical said:

Once out of the terminal, we had to head to the left, down to a sheltered area where taxis and ride shares could pick people up. I couldn't get Lyft to work on my phone. It said it only had "E" signal. What does E even mean? I had to restart my phone and once I did, I had 5G. I ordered our Lyft and we were on our way. We got to our friends' apartment at 9:50.

 

Typically the E means you only have Emergency calling available at that time.  It happens sometimes when going in and out of service.  A reboot typically works to reset the connection when in range.

Drinks on MSC vary in price but are generally priced at either $7 or $10 to fit into the packages.  There are some drinks that are $14 or more, but almost everyone can find a drink for $10.  You'll just need to weight out how much you'll drink and whether it's worth it or not.

How are the lines for drinks during the day?  Are they experiencing shortage of anything at bars?

This isn't only a Carnival issue.  We're booked on the Icon OTS and a cabana at Coco Cay is $1500 for the day.  It's everywhere.

8 minutes ago, Mum2Mercury said:

I have two cruises booked, and they're not treated the same: 

 

- Cruise 1 -- the price says BOBO-half off, but the actual numbers are about $5 less than they were a few days ago. 

- Cruise 2 -- no mention of this Beer Day price, and the cost is the same as it has been.  

 

Do they discount more heavily for the older /smaller ships and charge more for the larger /newer ships?  Just wondering.  

I know for the Icon, it's $87.99 today and has been since we booked.

51 minutes ago, Luvtoeat said:

Our cruise is in November and will be in the Caribbean so hope we can change our dining time if we need to. But no sense thinking about it until we see what has actually been assigned.

You generally will not know until you get your room key.  It's listed on their.  If you're booked with Bella experience you likely will not get your preferred.  We talked to quite a few people who were given the opposite of their preference.  It started to feel a little like they were intentionally doing it.

14 hours ago, hurricane0226 said:

Remember, if you use a Birth Certificate, you have to use a different line when you disembark,

it takes a little bit longer.

Not a true statement at all.  Some ports do have different lines and some do not.  We have done both and never had an issue or delay getting off a ship.  If it takes a little longer... it's like 2 seconds.

On 3/30/2023 at 10:26 AM, JamieLogical said:

Okay, I promised a post about my pre-cruise experience(s) with MSC, so here goes!

 

First, a little history. Way back in early 2019, my husband and I decided we would try to book an MSC cruise. The first thing I did was try to get a status match for Voyager's Club. At that time I believe I was Silver with NCL. I was EXTREMELY frustrated and disappointed that my status matched to Classic (lowest level) and I had exactly ONE whole point with MSC. Not sure what the tiers were back then, but right now it takes 2200 points to go from Classic to the next level, Silver, so you can see how I would be disappointed that my (at that time) 5 sailings-worth of points on NCL had matched to one point on MSC.

 

I tried to argue with them. I tried to withdraw my status match application, since you allegedly only get one lifetime match and it seemed like a shame to waste it on one whole point. But they said there was nothing they could do, so that was the start of my battles with MSC customer service.

 

Next up, the actual booking itself. I had nothing but problems. We were trying to book the Seascape for September (this was now March 2019). When I booked, I was supposed to have two discounts applied: 5% for my Classic status and 10% for a promo code I had received by participating in the Bellissima pre-launch activities online. I initially did the booking myself and all went fine. I got a booking confirmation that showed both discounts applied and the correct total. However, later that same night, out of the blue, I got another booking confirmation and that one did not have my 10% promo discount, so the total price was much higher.

 

I spent over a month going back and forth with customer service on the phone multiple times and responding to several email chains and eventually just got fed up and canceled the booking. We were pretty determined never to sail MSC after that whole experience.

 

Fast forward to this past October. I met @ESCARGO on my NCL Breakaway sailing and learned that the Meraviglia was going to soon be homeporting in NYC. He had had great experiences on the Meraviglia before and told me all about them. We had a fantastic time together with the other solo cruisers we met on that cruise. So, when he told me he had booked the first sailing on the Meraviglia out of NYC in April, I looked into pricing and the prospect of joining him.

 

I decided to try to re-submit my status match application. By this time I was Platinum with NCL and I figured the worst that could happen was that they would reject it. But, it got approved and I was matched to Gold with 4300 points. A significant improvement over my one point from before. MSC was definitely looking better in my book.

 

Next up, I booked the 4/22 solo sailing out of NYC and it was only $1007 total with drinks and wifi in a Fantastica Balcony. Hard to beat that pricing! My husband and I started looking at the 4/9 repositioning sailing and pulled the trigger on the Balcony Suite with the hot tub on the balcony. The first cruise I ever took with my husband, we had docked next to an MSC ship (might even have been the Meraviglia?) and my husband saw the hot tubs on some of the balconies and got pretty obsessed with booking a room like that someday. During the COVID shut-down, we learned to not take anything for granted and decided to do some of our "bucket list" stuff sooner than later, like our Alaska cruise in September, our Panama Canal cruise in December, and now this cruise with a hot tub on our balcony.

 

So far, I have to saw the whole process of status match and booking has been much better than it was back in 2019. Fortunately, we haven't had to deal with customer service much at all. I did call them earlier this week to cancel our Sept. 24 sailing and that went smoothly. We decided we wanted to switch to a different room on that sailing and since pricing was similar to what we already had, we thought it would just be way easier to cancel and rebook rather than try to go through customer service to switch rooms. Way too much potential for something to get messed up.

 

Let's talk a little about the website. Booking through the website wasn't too bad at all. It's a little slow and clunky, but so are most cruise line websites. After booking, managing your cruise is definitely NOT a great experience. It's hard to switch between multiple cruises, because of how slow everything is and right away I was having to do that, since I booked two cruises at pretty much the same time.

 

The web check-in was buggy and I had a very hard time getting my security photo uploaded, because photos from my phone were too large. The file size limit is prohibitively tiny. I also had a horrible time getting it to accept my credit card for my onboard payment method. It worked for one of my two sailings, but not the other? It was so weird.

 

There is no way to pre-pay your daily service charge online, which is annoying. I really like to have everything pre-paid so I don't have to worry about it onboard. And I am terrified to call customer service about anything, for fear of them touching my booking and messing something up. So I guess I will just pay that with my onboard balance at the end of the cruise(s).

 

I find it DEEPLY annoying that there are no times listed for excursions. Duration is listed, but not the actual times. I don't feel comfortable booking any of the excursions online because I don't know if they are going to leave at something crazy like 7:00am, run through lunch, run into dinner time, etc. We are planning to meet up with a friend for lunch in Aruba and I am afraid to sign up for any excursions there online, because I don't know if they will interfere with lunch time.

 

The Beverages link at the top was a bit confusing at first, as it was showing the full price of packages even though we have the Easy Plus package included. It did eventually give us an option for just an upgrade to the Premium.

 

Up until a couple of weeks ago, the Specialty Restaurants link at the top for both of my sailings just so "No Items Found". Finally, the specialty dining packages and Carousel shows showed up. I feel like that may have had something to do specifically with the Meraviglia.

 

Also, like NCL, but unlike Celebrity, it does not seem that you can pre-purchase anything with your onboard credit. We have $200 of OBC for our first sailing and I have $100 of OBC for my solo sailing. I guess that will all just get applied to our DSC.

 

I downloaded the app and that leaves a LOT to be desired. You can't log in with your website username/password. You have to log in with your booking number instead, which means having to look that up. Despite what it says, you don't seem to be able to manage your check-in through the app at all. Even once Specialty Dining was showing up (like the website it did not show up until recently), there doesn't seem to be a way to actually make reservations.

 

I am hoping that, like some of the other cruise lines, the app becomes much more useful once actually onboard.

 

 

Be careful you know what you're getting with the dining packages.  There are generally limited options for selection on the packages unless you want to pay even more for higher level food.

Also be prepared for walkways closed causing traffic issues, long lines at the buffet / bars and out of stock items.  Hopefully you don't have the issues we did.

On a positive note, the app on the ship wasn't bad at all actually.

6 hours ago, SakeDad said:

I hope RCCL does the right thing and stands by this entertainer who was violently attacked during his show and so far nothing has been done. Check the link out for video and more info. https://www.queerty.com/watch-jealous-man-attacks-gay-magician-for-getting-too-close-to-his-female-partner-20230323

and what do you expect RCCL to do for the entertainer?  

On 3/19/2023 at 9:46 AM, dleahy4444 said:

Wow that is awful. I’m sorry all of that happened to you.  It is terrible that they would not issue at least a credit for a future cruise, just as a matter of good will. I’m sure my group member and her son wish they had gotten the insurance but this would be only her second cruise and his first. It just didn’t occur to them. I know the rules are the rules, but there should be some compassion for someone seriously ill. 
  I myself am Diamond Plus, but if they do not offer them some type of an accommodation under the circumstances I’m not sure how “loyal to Royal” I’ll be in the future. As it is, the customer service for the group booking had been a nightmare. This would be the final straw. Hopefully I’m worried about nothing. She is awaiting some tests results this week and im praying that she be well enough to travel. If she isn’t hopefully RCCL will issue at least a partial refund or credit. I guess we will see…

If you're Diamond Plus you obviously know that there is no cruise line (not just Royal) that will refund or give a future cruise credit for an issue like this.  I am earnestly praying for the healing and ability for them to cruise.  I have been in that exact situation when a friend of my son's couldn't go and he lost the cruise fare and airfare.  It really stinks, but it's not a compassion issue and all lines are the same.  It's too late for this trip but travel insurance is the only way to guarantee recouping of funds this close to travel.

On 3/18/2023 at 4:11 PM, heatherb1958 said:

MSC do pizza much much better and make there own Mozzarella onboard .

 

 

 

On our sailing I didn't see fresh Mozz anywhere for the entire cruise and their pizza wasn't all that great.  Almost every time we got pizza, we had the option of pizza with crust and cheese (no sauce) or pizza with crust and sauce (no cheese).  And the flavor wasn't there for me either.