peder

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.

Right, but it looks like there are small changes on the Euribia (greenery/plants, better loungers).

Looks great! The only YC video I think we're still missing from the Euribia is of the Royal Suite... I'm assuming they didn't have one of those available for folks to walk through?

Increasingly, multi-child households are wealthy households. I would forgive the posters on here for not noticing, because this is a dramatic shift: kids are becoming a status symbol of sorts. Wealthy millennials are getting older and will become the primary market segment served by Explora within a few years (certainly before their fleet is even fully deployed), and they like to travel with their kids and will have the money to travel to every corner of the globe. So that demographic will feel ignored by lines like Viking. What doesn't really make sense is that there are zero cabin configurations that work well for families with 3+ kids IMO. You end up needing two cabins even if have a Penthouse or Ocean Residence as the first cabin, so the entire vacation starts to become cost prohibitive.

Yep, could easily just be mistaken since there are two-bedroom suites, and they are great! Aurea-only, but I would pick that room category again over YC in this class of ship for my family of 5.

The Royal Suites across the Seaside-class ships are all basically the same. Lots of videos on YouTube. Large living room separate from the bedroom. 1 bathroom.

From a travel agent that posted on the MSC Virtuosa Forum Facebook group. I don't know about the rules for linking these things, so I'll just mention it by name if anyone wants to look up that post.

Most Florida late 2024 and 2025 itineraries now seem to be posted. Per a Facebook post, also some significant fleet positioning changes: "MSC Virtuosa Nov 2024 - Apr 2025 Maiden Caribbean season!! MSC Preziosa Nov 2024 - Apr 2025 UK weekly sailings! MSC Euribia Nov 2024 - Apr 2025 Dubai/Emirates" Looks like about half of the entire fleet is now published into 2025.

Many of the Aurea "suites" on the newer boats will have them. I would recommend searching CruisePlum: you can filter by "Lines and Cabins" for the rooms with a whirlpool:

Interesting that the Euribia is called out, and presumably the Seascape (they mention that another MSC ship, built by Fincantieri, used the same panels, and I'm guessing it's the Seascape since it was produced around the same time). Also mentioned Meyer Werft, so I even wonder if other recent launched ships like the Disney Wish are impacted. And then if they are impacted, would we expect them all to be taken out of service for a few weeks?