B_A_H

So much for "live." ;) I had a bunch of works crisisis to deal with so didn't have time to post. Here are some first impressions. I'll post more detail later. Barcelona airport is a cluster. I've never seen an airport with so many directional signs that have no true meaning. Pro tip. Uber is useless in Barcelona and the cabs are plentiful and are on the floor below baggage claim although I dare anyone to find a sign pointing to them. All my flights were on-time or early so I landed in Barcelona at 7:30AM. I got to the YC check-in about 9:00AM. There's no tent, just real signage and a desk. They couldn't have been more accomodating even though I arrived way early. I waited in the YC room portside until about 11:00AM when everyone there was brought to the Top Sail lounge. Getting from Top Sail to the room was an interesting process. Groups of people were randomly approached by staff. Some were given an introductory spiel, some were escorted to their rooms. It all seemed rather random. After an hour I just went to my room on my own. It's now day two and I still haven't met my butler. The YC facilities are beautiful. YC has a Celebrity Edge-class vibe to it. The whole ship does to some affect. Pro tip. You want a cabin on the port side. There's a seperate elevator and stair bank within the YC section of the ship to get between YC floors easily and it's on the port side. I'm on the starboard side and either have to circle the entire 16th floor to stay in the YC area or exit the YC area, pass through the common folks on 16's area, and then reenter the YC area to get to the YC elevator. Convenience wise, you want to be on the port side when in YC. Every YC deck has dozens of inside cabins on it. They have direct access to the forward elevator bank. YC cabins are behind an access controlled door on either side of the main elevator bank. It's kind of an odd segregation setup. I had lunch and dinner in the YC restaurant. I was very impressed. There was plenty of staff bending over backwards to ensure everyone was served efficiently. My best YC dining service to date. I had prime rib last night and it was huge and very well prepared. If what I experienced is the standard for the rest of the cruise I'll be very happy. I didn't spend a lot of time yesterday outside of YC but from what I saw it was a zoo. The atrium isn't well designed with lots of broken flow issues. It's more compact than the Meraviglia-class which makes it exceptionally loud when its full and boy was it full last night. A lot of the dining venues have outdoor seating. I can't imagine being out there. It would be like dining in a subway station. I get what people are saying about the outdoor part of the atrium. Such a waste of an opportunity. The indoor atrium was jammed to the rafters and the outdoor portion was empty. There didn't appear to be any staffing shortages anywhere. Even though the non-YC areas were full there were ample servers and I saw no one waiting. You can tell a lot of the staff are new and there are tons of staff. Every staff member I observed seemed happy to be there and happy to serve guests. More to follow...

It's kind of a hybrid. It's not ocean facing like the Seaside-class ships. It' more atrium centric like the Meraviglia-class ships. The exception being its got a Y shaped stern that's open to the sky. The covered atrium area is like the Meraviglia-class but continues as an uncovered area with shops, food, and entertainment lining it. Some vloggers I respect shared mixed opinions. They like the concept, just not MSC's execution. They thought MSC could have done a lot more with the uncovered area in terms of what's offered and the vibe. I'm certainly going to explore the ship; especially the new concepts launched on the WE. But honestly, on a full ship with 6,000+ people on it, in the rain no less, I'm going to leave YC to experience the rest of the ship but plan on high tailing it back for refuge. 😉 Oddly, pre-purchasing specialty dining wasn't offered on my sailing. It was reported here that something similar recently happened on the Seaside. It turned out specialty dining was reserved exclusively for a big group of travel agents on a familiarization trip. I'm hoping that's not the case on my sailing.

Overview There have been no reviews that I’ve found on World Europa (WE) other than Middle East and repo cruises. From reading or watching those reviews, there seems to be issues that may be unique to those markets/sailings with things like passenger mix, provisioning, staffing levels, staff training, and organization called out. I’m hoping that those issues go away or lessen because the Med is MSC’s home turf and they certainly have the resources to address them. Me The majority of reviews I’ve found are from Russian’s, Brits, and Europeans. I’m a well-cruised and well-traveled American with experience on all the mainstream and some luxury cruise lines as well as with MSC in the Caribbean and Europe. My comments will be comparing the WE against those past experiences. I’m in the travel industry, hotels currently, so have a pretty good sense of how service and operations should work. But I also know things can’t be perfect and expect the occasional flaw. I try to be reasonable when I’m critiquing something and give huge points when there is an issue and it’s properly recovered from. The Cruise I’m departing Barcelona Friday, May 12, and am in a YC Deluxe Suite on deck 16. It’s a 7 day roundtrip cruise with stops in Marseille, Genoa, Naples, Messina, and Valletta. The ship, at least for the Barcelona rotation I’m on, is 100% full. One of the things I’m most interested in seeing is how the much larger YC on the WE works when cabins span 6 decks and the YC itself 7. There are 152 YC cabins which is 304 passengers at double occupancy so figure 375-400 on average. That’s a lot of people for “privacy and exclusivity.” I’ve been following the weather and highs are in the 60’s and lows in the 50’s with rain predicted for the first half of the cruise. Yippee, 6,700 people will all be driven indoors. Getting There I’m a dare devil and tight on time so I am departing for Barcelona tomorrow and arriving Friday at 7:25AM on the day of the cruise. Scheduled departure is 6:00PM. For those that find themselves in the same position, always book no more than a single connection and a long haul flight that goes directly to your embarkation port. It greatly reduces operational risks and increases the odds of your luggage traveling with you. I’m flying New Orleans><Miami<>Barcelona on American in business class. Being in the premium cabin helps tremendously should things go south and you need assistance from the airline. I’ll post more once underway and if anyone has specific questions I’ll do my best to answer them.

Then you must have had a two device plan just for yourself. MSC reads a device's MAC address and associates it as a permissible device on whatever plan is purchased. So the hardware is what's associated with a plan, not a user ID. One device plan = one MAC address. Most cruise lines give you two simultaneous accesses based on user ID so the physical device being used doesn't matter. Just another MSC quirk. You can go to the Internet folks on board and they can change one device (MAC address) for another but you can't do it yourself. But that would be a pain because you need to do that each time you wanted to switch physical devices on a single device plan. One of the YC benefits is you get a two device plan for each person in the room.

Yes, it's normal for MSC. Not to be confused with "normal" based on definition. Whenever a booking is changed it reprices. You then have to send your original booking PDF to mscexistingreservations@msccruisesusa.com and they'll adjust it back to the original pricing. In your case, maybe forward the PDF to your travel agent to forward to MSC or just send it to that e-mail address copying in your travel agent. Whenever port taxes change it reprices everyone's booking and they usually light up the forum when they get the e-mail showing the price went up.

MSC feels like a totally different cruise line in Europe vs. the U.S. The MSC conglomerate is an 800lb guerilla and Europe is their base. I find the service, quality of the food, provisions, staff availability and attitude, all better in Europe. You most likely took a 3 or 4 night out of Miami on Divina. Better you than me. The passenger mix on any short cruise out of Florida, especially those over weekends, is just too much, at least for me. You have the folks who look like it's the first time they've worn shoes, the drinkers that start at 6:00AM and go until they can't stand up, and in general people trying to squeeze a week's worth of cruise in to 3 or 4 days. Just too chaotic and, no snobbery intended, course. In Europe MSC is usually 80+% EU and 20% other. I was on the Celebrity Apex last June and it was 80+% American. A lot of Americans complain about sailing with Europeans. They aren't behaving any differently than they would at home in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, etc. If I'm in Europe I want a European experience. You get that with MSC. Hopefully you'll enjoy the difference sailing with MSC in Europe and I hope you post more of your experiences.

There hasn't been a review of the Europa's Mediterranean sailings; only the Middle East and repositioning. To me, neither are really representative because of unique factors such as passenger mix (ME was packed with Russians) and provisioning and staffing which appear to be more difficult in the ME. The reviews I've seen are meh at best and have been from European and Middle Eastern cruisers who have different perspectives than Americans. I'm sailing on Europa next Friday from Barcelona in YC. I'll do a live or semi-live review from the ship. I'm hoping that since the Med is MSC's backyard that some of the issues reported previously get ironed out. I've done the Med with MSC before and was in YC on Divina in January so I'll have something to compare against.

Nothing you're saying or have said should have any impact on the issues in the report. Sanitation and food safety have nothing to do with passenger volume. Focusing on food safety, the ship was certified to to carry up to 5,336 per MSC and food storage, preparation, and service are designed with that in mind. So a full ship has nothing to do with basic hygiene and proper food handing procedures. Other cruise lines and individual ships have staffing issues. No ship in decades got a lower score than the Seaside. There are areas you don't compromise in and this is one of them. This was a major management and leadership failure on the Seaside. That needs to be fixed more importantly than checking the boxes off as complete on the list of failures. If someone who is immunosuppressed eats bacteria laden chicken that wasn't stored properly they could get seriously ill or die. I work in a hotel so understand the seriousness of this. If our kitchen gets 95 out of 100 in a state or brand inspection which is above passing we're still concerned. We serve hundreds for banquets and one food safety or handling lapse could make people ill, ruin our reputation, and open us up to liability. Those of you blowing this off don't understand the implications of what the Seaside's abysmal score represents and the impact it has on passenger and crew safety.

Sanitation and food safety aren't episodic. Meaning, they should be an integral part of the operation and culture of the ship or venue. "Wasn't prepared" shouldn't matter. They should always be prepared, not just in case of an inspection but for the health and safety of passengers and crew. There's no legitimate excuse for the ship's score.

Second.

This isn't an "MSC thing" per se. It's an individual ship management thing. There's nothing about the Seaside vs. Seascape physically that would make one cleaner than the other. It's the culture and oversight onboard set by the ship's management and leadership that allowed for all the Seaside's lapses. And regardless what anyone says about the insignificance of some of items in the report, no mainstream passenger ship has missed that many in decades. Sanitation items and food not being stored properly or at the right temperature are a pretty big deal on a floating city of 5,000 people.

If ships work like hotels, the Head Chef is responsible for every element of the kitchen. Hopefully who ever s/he is on the Seaside doesn't represent the same lack of operational discipline on other MSC ships. If other ships get a similar rating MSC will have a bunch of work ahead of them and PR damage to clean up (no pun intended). I did laugh where it said "MSC didn't respond to the report." That's not a shock to those of us who travel with them frequently and have to deal with their shambolic processes and half ass answers; if they answer at all.

There's also not a lot of logic behind what's offered and how the bids are processed. Just because an offer got e-mailed doesn't mean there's any inventory to back it up. I think it's just boiler plate and not tied to actual ship inventory. I just got upgraded at the 14 day mark to a YC1 on a nearly sold out Europa 5/12 sailing with a bid that was comically low and rated "weak" on the upgrade site. From a financial perspective, I'm sure there were many other bidders that would have netted MSC a lot more revenue. The whole process just feels really random vs. scientific.

I didn't even notice that. Here's the deal. MSC supports regionalized documentation based on where the ticket is issued. Here's my passport info from the MSC USA site and MSC Italy site. It's presented in the correct format based on each countries date entry standards. I really don't think you have anything to worry about.

Did you sail Europa in the Middle East? There were clearly service and provisioning issues that seemed unique to the types of guests onboard and challenges of operating in the Middle East. I'm hoping that now that Europa's homeported in the Mediterranean, MSC's home turf, some of what has been reported from Middle East sailings correct themselves. YouTube reviews for the European portion of the repositioning cruise seemed much better than previous reviews. Here's hoping. I'm in YC on 5/12. 😉

Lots of black and white discussion here but MSC is really gray. Compared to each other, all of the mainstream lines have fairly consistent offerings, marketed in similar ways, with similar policies ashore and aboard. Someone evaluating MSC and seeing the gorgeous ships and splashy marketing material would assume MSC offered a similar product. Their product, service delivery, and policies are different. Go on a Celebrity cruise in Europe and you'll receive an American product. Same thing for the other mainstream U.S. focused cruise lines. MSC is a European company with a European product with European service standards. They've Americanized their U.S. departures but it's still a very different experience than what U.S. based cruise lines provide. Some appreciate the difference, some don't. Some don't know it's different until they are onboard an MSC ship. MSC is very top down with very little latitude given to customer-facing staff to address customer service issues when they occur. Paradoxly, there's a lot of inconsistency from ship-to-ship in how centralized policies are applied. That inconsistency can be frustrating. MSC's pricing isn't bargain basement anymore. The starting prices are higher, the promos aren't as rich, they've eliminated low single supplements, and YC pricing is up considerably. Hopefully with their move upmarket they'll be able to invest in the product and technology to bring them more inline with their mainstream competitors. They can still be "European" but it would be nice to have mainstream technology to make researching, booking, and customizing your cruise easier. I like MSC because they are different, especially when sailing with them in Europe. But no matter how much anyone likes MSC you can't say that some of what they do isn't odd at best and downright annoying at worst. Some of the negatives shared here are overdramatic but there are nuggets of truth in many of them.

I'm sailing on Europa out of Barcelona booked via MSC's US website and my passport is MM/DD/YY both on the site and on my e-ticket. In all my check-ins with MSC they've never even looked at my paper e-tickets. All they've ever gotten from my paper documents is the booking number which they use to pull up the reservation in the computer. At the YC tent all they look for is the cabin number which they use to cross reference against a printed list they have. I don't know how important a transposed passport number on an e-ticket is in the greater scheme of things.

I was on Divina in January. I had stream and the majority of time it was fine and I was connected via remote access to my work systems. The times it won't be fine is when everyone's on it at the same time. Early morning before everyone's up is the best time to do anything bandwidth heavy. Good luck trying to work on anything heavy on a sea day.

I can understand why some travel agents wouldn't want to book MSC. MSC's fares tend to be lower and they are difficult to work with because of their systems limitations. The commission's the same or higher by booking other lines and there's less chance of falling down an MSC refund or customer service rabbit hole which can be time consuming and exhausting. Many of MSC's challenges are based on technology limitations. They don't have an online cruise personalizer in the truest sense which limits what you can do on a self-serve basis and forces calls to their call center. You have a 50/50 chance of getting a competent agent or even the same answer each time a question is asked. Something as basic as MDR reservations are black box and usually what's confirmed in advance is modified onboard based on passenger levels. You won't know your true dining assignment or if you're seated with your traveling party until you get your keycard. As an example, I'm sailing on Europa 5/12 and specialty dining hasn't been available since last year when I booked the cruise. I'm sure calling MSC would get me multiple differing explanations and send me down a rabbit hole. I'll just deal with it onboard knowing calling would just result in frustration. There have been horror stories shared here regarding modifications, cancellations, and especially refunds. No one can say that those areas aren't a huge problem for MSC. But here's the deal. 90% of people end up doing exactly what they reserved so those areas don't impact them. It comes down to this. There's been enough discussion here so that people researching MSC know there are quirks and limitations both in booking and sailing with them. Many of us repeat with them anyway. If someone's OCD and wants to see their cruise in detail online and granularly manage optional features and choose specific MDR and specialty dining times then MSC isn't the cruise line for them. The lack of those things doesn't make the overall MSC experience bad, it's just different than most major cruise lines. Just hope you never need a change, cancellation, or refund. 😉

Here's my upgrade story. I was in a YC interior on the 5/12 Europa sailing out of Barcelona. I booked it way in advance and paid an insanely low $1,856 all-in as a single. I bid the lowest upgrade price possible ("weak" on the offer gauge) for a YC deluxe suite which was $550 per person, $1,100 total (singles are charged double). My bid was accepted today at 14 days out. This tells me there's no rhyme or reason to the upgrade process. I've been watching and there have been 4 YC1's left to sell for a couple of weeks now. That means YC1's are close to sold out; at least on the Barcelona><Barcelona portion of the round robin. Right now, the only cabins available on the entire ship are my old YIN, 4 YC1's, and 1 YC4. I'm guessing a YC1 was upgraded to a higher YC category which is why there are 4 YC1's still left after my upgrade. There have to be people in Aurea balconies and suites, heck even regular balconies, that booked after I did that paid multiples more than what I paid. And I'm sure plenty of them bid on YC upgrades at far more than my $550 per person. So me getting upgraded ahead of others who paid more originally and offered more to upgrade makes no sense. I'm happy my upgrade went through, especially because YINs on Europa are the size of closets, but it's odd that it did and makes you question the upgrade logic.

A couple of comments. You don't talk about your cruise experience so it's hard to know what to share in terms of MSC's uniqueness in general. They are a European cruise line and even on their ships sailing from the U.S. do things differently. You can go through some "my first time on MSC threads" to get an idea of what I'm talking about. MSC's European cruises can almost be equated to ferries. Each port you'll visit is also an embarkation/disembarkation point for passengers. So there's no traditional beginning and end to the cruise and the people you're sailing with will change with each new port. The World Europa has been in the Middle East up until this week. It's a very different market and the reviews have been few with many people pointing out the large number of Russian passengers aren't the greatest in terms of fellow sailors. I have a lot of MSC experience and am sailing on the World Europa on 5/12. I'm hoping once it finds its rhythm on its home turf things will be better than the reviews I've read. Provisioning seemed to be a problem in the Middle East with lots of things out of stock and causing some food choice and quality issues. The ship itself is a huge departure from MSC's previous ships. From what I've seen and read it's a beautiful ship. I guess we'll know soon how well the new design works on MSC's more traditional European circle routes.

"Have been offered" makes the upgrade option sound exclusive. It's not. They can throw out a 1,000 offers and end up accepting none. I'm guessing there's a potential upgrade list that's maintained by the third party and at some or multiple points it's compared to what's available on a specific sailing. If balconies are at 60% a couple of weeks prior to sailing it's doubtful they'll get to 100%. So you're talking about a significant number of cabins with upgrade potential. If you're talking about a handful of YC cabins, if I were MSC, I'd hold them out for last minute full price purchases. There are dog sailings, like those out of NYC, that are going to go out 50-75% full. If I were MSC I'd leverage the upgrade program to make as additional revenue as I could. And here is the rule on purchased or included options that would be included in a YC upgrade.

If you're sailing out of Athens the ships MSC uses are older and from their smaller classes of ships. You're not talking about big ships with lots going at the same time or with a lot of dining options. I was on the Lirica a while back and truly enjoyed the smaller less chaotic environment. YMMV so I'd do some research on the Mistral class (smallest) and Musica class (next size up) to make sure they meet your expectations.

The "democracy thing" being introduced here is beginning to annoy me. What's being discussed here is 180 degrees from populism. "Exclusivity" is used by MSC to market and differentiate YC. They charge a premium for it and people pay that premium to experience it. Those who haven't paid that premium shouldn't dilute or diminish the experience for those that have. That's what's being discussed here. It's not gray - it's very black and white. If some here think the two class system that some cruise lines have in place is undemocratic or unfair, bully. That's a different discussion. From what we know from what's been posted, onboard staff have used their positions to allow YC access to people who haven't paid for it. And on sailings where YC was already at capacity with paying passengers. And in @morpheusofthesea's case, it affected their experience. I'm sorry, that's just totally wrong. What we don't know is if it's sanctioned by MSC corporate. I'm guessing it's not; at least not to the degree shared here. A vlogger on a MSC Seaview cruise to the Mediterranean that wasn't in YC had a pretty horrible MDR interaction with the staff their. As a make good, his party of 3 was offered dinner in the YC for one night. To me, that seems like a reasonable and non-intrusive use of extending access to the YC to non-YC guests. Letting a large party with multiple cabins but only two in YC have full time access for 7 days to all the YC features on a sold out sailing shows no regard for those who paid a lot more money for MSC's promised "exclusivity." If this is the new normal, I'll stop booking YC. And if I'm going to sail in "standard class" it won't be with MSC. Hopefully this will get the attention of MSC corporate and policies will either be changed or tightened to control how onboard staff manage YC access.

I'm really enjoying the style in which you're writing your review. It's coming across as fact based and balanced where some can have so many adjectives and so much emotion they bury the lede. MSC has always been dinged for their food. Some of the pics you've posted show portions that are a little on the small side but the quality of the proteins, freshness of the vegetables, and presentation seem above average. I was on Divina (but in YC) and noticed the same thing. Ironically, MSC seems to be stepping up their food game just as other lines are diminishing theirs. I hope you enjoy the rest of your trip.