peder

Yup, and I'm booked on their ship-within-a-ship after having been on MSC Yacht Club and DCL Concierge. Definitely a huge change, and I think future ships will be more purpose-built around the ship-within-a-ship and probably even take more space. I wouldn't be surprised if we see more room categories like NCL's family 2-bedroom rooms offered within the Haven. That would align with Princess's multigenerational push. The "Sanctuary Collection" will be most of Princess's strategic and executional focus for the next few years, but Park19 and other family-friendly amenities will also still be very important.

Yup. And surely they've run the numbers and realize they need a wider net or they know that cruising is changing to be more multi-generational and they are missing out on that market almost entirely. Princess would not have made such a big change with the Sun/Star Princess unless they fully intended on executing a strategic shift. It's just too expensive to half-heartedly make changes like this. Expect to see even more announcements in this direction with future ships. I think they might take Park19 in more of a pickleball/axethrowing direction to go along with the cornhole and other party games they've talked about in that area. Easy way to create a space for all ages, including yuppies and kids. Basically a "Smash Park" concept on a ship.

The loungers on the extended balconies look ok, but the little sofa in the cabana mini suites look impossibly uncomfortable. Very narrow. Some of the Sanctuary suites appear to have better balcony furniture, but it's a pretty steep price just to get a decent chair or lounger.

And I was thinking that the Sanctuary Collection is a lot like DCL Concierge, and suggests some influence from Disney.

Strongly disagree with this because (1) Carnival owns Princess and has for 21 years so you'd expect them to be able to drive innovations across multiple brands, and (2) Carnival's market analysis is likely showing them that they are failing at multigenerational cruising, which appears to be a big focus for Royal and MSC, who must be taking share from Carnival overall. If Princess's strategy was working great and growing the brand without signs of slowing, you wouldn't have seen Park19 envisioned, but that's not where we're at. And with Park19 and the new modern ship design, I was drawn in and made my first Princess Cruises booking for me and my family. If there isn't at least something fun for all ages to replace it, I'll cancel my Sanctuary Collection booking.

Why tho? The only price that matters is the total price.

People will pay what they want to pay. If they see a fare they like and buy a cruise, then nobody's getting scammed.

If the restaurant is open, it's easy to order from the restaurant and carry to your room. An extra step, but easy enough. And once you're there, they'll probably offer to help bring it to your room.

I don't understand when the bar is or isn't open on the Meraviglia class ships. We were on the Bellissima and the ship was only half full and the bar was open, and I never saw a single customer. Didn't make any sense.

We are just off the Euribia, and not a hint of marketing for Explora onboard. Seems like the future cruise consultants within the Yacht Club should be pushing that aggressively.

That google explanation is confusing IMO. It just means that you completed your checkin online and things are a bit faster during embarkation.

I know it's an Orlando / Port Canaveral departure, so there isn't quite as much time available for each cruise port, but those are very short windows at each port. I'll need to comb thru the Divina schedule to see if there are any interesting itins, otherwise I'm probably skipping MSC for that Caribbean season.

Good point on the timing of the reviews. MSC went full capacity on their ships along with dropping vaccine requirements / COVID testing pretty quickly, so that meant (1) they probably attracted cruisers from other lines that were maybe never MSC's target customer, and (2) they might not have been completely staffed up yet, or at least much of their staff was new to MSC or even new to cruising entirely. Just not a good idea to rely on ~2022 reviews.

No, it's not really that bad. Same way that the NCL Prima and Viva are not that bad (though I do not understand why the Prima/Viva wasted so much space on the race track). The Seaside-class ships are quite different than the typical cruise ship, maximizing outdoor space for warm climates. Most of the complaints are that the ship feels crowded, but I found that there were always plenty of loungers free, even when the ship was sailing full, it was just a matter of moving around to find them. Also note that many Americans' first experience with MSC was with the Seascape. Many of the reviews of the Seascape are very Amero-centric and expect MSC to be exactly like Carnival/Royal/etc.

"It's always darkest right before it goes completely black," - MSC IT, probably

I'm back in business! Maybe my hundred or so 502s made no difference, but I like to think I sent a message directly to someone on their monitoring team

Clearly I need to hammer the refresh button on my browser so their monitoring teams finally see the wave of 502 errors.

I get the same 502 regardless of whether I use incognito, so cookies aren't the issue. Based on the details of my error message, it appears MSC has migrated some of their Azure infrastructure, and MSC either needs to clear a cache of its own or it never updated user information to point to the new Azure endpoints or the endpoints are down. It should be incredibly rare for users to not be able to log in to your site, and when it happens, issues related to it should be considered a top priority. Sev 0 / Sev 1, drop-everything-until-it-is-resolved type of issue.

The above was from my Account Settings page. When I inspect the response from my "Plan My Cruise" page, I see the following: Error in GetBookingAddedCXLFilter.GetBookingAdded microservice endpoint call failed with an error: The remote server returned an error: (400)Bad Request.

lol MSC { "status": { "category": "InternalServerError", "message": "One or more errors occurred. (No such host is known. (fn-b2c-prod-northch-sessiondata.azurewebsites.net:443))", "success": false, "statusCode": 500 } } Did you do a server migration and you didn't migrate corresponding user data?

Ah drat. I'm now getting this error, shortly before departure on my next cruise. I'm planning on leaving it alone until after the cruise because I think that's less risky.

Well of course the Yacht Club posters would have access to both the Aurea and gen pop boards 😉

There are definitely discounts from time to time, but I don't think there's generally a correlation between a "sale" and discounting with MSC or any cruise lines. In my experience, a holiday "sale" tends to be mostly marketing rubbish. But some of the "flash deals" are true discounts that are specific to poorly-selling itineraries. There are also sometimes heavily discounted itineraries that are published without much fanfare (I believe there were some recent 7-night Seascape sailings with YC deluxe cabins going for only $3k with dual occupancy, and I don't think those price cuts were announced anywhere, they were simply a reflection of poor sales related to Ocean Cay being dropped from the itinerary).

"Bringing a second ship to Port Canaveral will give MSC Cruises’ guests a much wider selection of cruises. MSC Grandiosa will offer alternating 7-night Eastern and Western Caribbean itineraries. Meanwhile, MSC Seashore will sail 3- and 4-night cruises to Nassau and Ocean Cay MSC Marine Reserve, the line’s private island in The Bahamas." This is the only disappointing aspect IMO. Presumably will be the same handful of ports that we already see on 7-day Orlando and Miami itineraries. It would be great if MSC had the occasional 8- or 10-night sailing from Orlando or Miami on their newer vessel that went somewhere fresh.

And ya know, I'd argue that the Explora 1 is the largest YC.