peder

We added a second cabin once we were on board and that did count toward Voyagers Club

No, not too windy. Breezy for sure at night, but during sunlight hours I assume they slow down? My wife and I made a habit of hanging out in the cabana things after dark with wine that we had brought from up ourselves after the bar had closed.

Yep, it's exclusive. You can access it from outside and also from the elevator area that would lead to the Yacht Club. There's a bar there that's open most of the time (though it does close a bit early). The exclusive solarium was pretty quiet and typically had open seats when we were there. Sea days it fills up quite a bit. Also yes, there's a separate dining room.

Who knows? We never saw ours! 😅 Note that I'm not complaining about above, we had mostly great service. My impression is that everyone in YC was willing to help with anything.

That self-service area might be specific to just the Seaside (and possibly Seaview)

I would use chat for nearly all customer service interactions if I could. I think it's easier for both the agent and the customer to be on the same page with the written word... much less opportunity to be misunderstood.

I know there was a bar, but are you talking about self-service beer/wine/soda dispensers?

When we were on the Seascape and Seashore I never once saw these. I'm totally baffled.

Wait a minute, they have soda machines? Where?

Why would MSC not offer chat support in this day and age? It seems like it would cut down on the vast majority of their communication issues and reduce their costs significantly at the same time.

And just to add to the nonsense. It looks like some sort of batch processing job has now run and a different set of adjoining cabins on the same deck is now showing that had never previously appeared at all!

OMG, I was in the process of switching cabins around, but booking one cabin caused another cabin to disappear from availability. This happened 2x to me today! MSC had not published availability for the Grand Suites Aurea on the Euribia for Summer 2024 until 2-3 days ago (which is super weird... I think they simply didn't notice that they had scheduling issues until a couple days ago). I quickly moved one of our bookings to one of the 2 cabins available. The moment we booked 1 of the rooms, the other disappeared! Not an issue for us, but very bizarre that it would go away like that. Next, I was in the process of moving two of our cabins around so that 2 of our families could have adjoining rooms. The second I booked one, the connecting cabin disappeared! Meaning our families could not be next door to each other. And of course, customer service says there's nothing they can do. I'm assuming they accidentally took a hold on both of these cabins while getting pricing info for me, but now they say they're booked. lol. And all the while, the Premium Suites Aurea with Terrace and Whirlpool have NEVER shown as available for any of the Euribia Summer 2024 sailings, even though they're consistently available on travel sites. Ridiculous! MSC, fix your damn website issues! And stop putting in these asinine scheduling rules!

Exactly this. There was a complaint about MSC's muster drill on the NCL forum here--apparently NCL doesn't require you to take the stairs--so the NCLers thought MSC's muster drill was backwards. But all I was thinking about is how many NCL cruisers might end up stranded in the event of a real emergency. Honestly, I think the muster drills are too easy still on MSC. What happens when one of these ships inevitably sinks someday and passengers don't even know how to get their life jackets on? Will the cruise ships share in liability for passengers who die in that situation? Or in situations where passengers drank to excess and couldn't reach the muster stations? Once there's an emergency that directly leads to mass casualties, we'll probably see a much more stringent muster drill and safety practices become mandated.

Yes, interlopers to the lounge/sun deck/restaurant = bad. But I still find it odd that there's disagreement about visitors to your cabin.

No, not in the dropdown list.

There are so many threads pinned in this channel, making it hard to see threads with activity. Maybe this one should come down?

And maybe the shortening of the itineraries is one step closer to competing in that space? And Explora 3+ are still a ways out, so maybe there's wiggle room for upsizing those ships a bit and adding some mass-market amenities?

I had read an interview a while back from maybe an Explora marketing exec saying they were targeting around 60-70% capacity? So this would be closer to 40%, for one of their first sailings. Doesn't suggest that sales are off to a strong start.

And my comments are coming from someone that will now be more likely to book with Explora. 10+ day cruises hold limited appeal for us, but 7-9 days means it'd be a toss-up for us to book YC or Explora for similar itineraries.

Those represent a small % of MSC's revenue and though I've never been on one, when you do a mock booking for these, it looks like there are almost always YC cabins available right before the sail date, so I assume these are never very full to begin with? I'm not sure how MSC was going to survive simply by poaching customers of other lines. Their entire strategy almost certainly relied on converting existing Aurea and YC customers, many of whom are relatively new to cruising and have only ever sailed with MSC. In other words, they've always been a line that has drawn in folks that otherwise never sailed, they found a new niche. And there's a lot with Explora (i.e. the kids club) that suggest they're trying to find Explora's unique niche also.

Maybe MSC's customers were already accustomed to shorter cruises, and they were not finding many MSC customers interested in Explora. So they're further MSC'ing Explora to cater to current Yacht Club passengers?

I seem to recall that the kids menu was different each night both in the Mediterranean and in the Caribbean (have sailed on the Seascape and Seashore)

Thanks! I had asked because my sailing on the Euribia June 1st disappeared before reappearing a few days later with just a few and different cabins (i.e. overnight it went from nearly every cabin available, to zero, then to just a handful). I assume someone reserved a big chunk of rooms, so I've been searching for any mentions of a Euribia charter. Nothing so far, but I'll now also check the site you mentioned.

RE: charters. Is there a way to know if your cruise has a chartered group aboard? Seems like something that could be nice to avoid, assuming that areas of the boat would be reserved for guests of the charter.

Yes, especially the royal suite, which has a significantly larger balcony on Virtuosa/Bellisima/Euribia. And of course, with MSC being MSC, sometimes the room diagrams/pictures they show do not reflect the larger balcony size.