CruisingWalter

21 hours ago, CineGraphic said:

I am finally off the Nieuw Statendam, waiting to fly home. They’ve given me an offer for another free cruise, and I’ll have to take into account all of the nonsense I experienced and witnessed others going through before deciding what to do.

I know someone who was part of a large church group on that very sailing and said they all had a lovely time. Of course none of them have ever sailed VV, but all said they enjoyed the food throughout the ship and the service. I guess if you've never been on VV you don't know. I would have a hard time turning down a free cruise, perhaps book the Rotterdam when she's back in the Florida to see what the newest ship is all about. We're planning to sail her in 24 or 25 to see what she's all about and possibly join a Group on the Nieuw Amsterdam for a Ft. Lauderdale to San Diego Panama Canal crossing. It's all about managing expectations. I would never recommend anyone come off a VV cruise and directly onto an MSC cruise 10 days later like we did, but after that initial 'culture shock' we had a good time. Except the disembarkation that was an utter cluster, but we did come in 8 hours late and about 80% of the ship decided to go "Express Self-Disembark." 

On 12/16/2023 at 8:35 PM, TNGIRL16 said:

How is this ship? Considering an 18 night cruise in Jan 24, having only been on Royal Caribbean curious how you would compare? Staff available for food services, or crowds everywhere?  Is smoking permitted or is it contained to only certain areas? I have asthma, so it's a concern.  I would appreciate any and all information. Thanks so much.

As @cantgetin mentioned, you'll find some food and other reviews on my YouTube channel along with a lot of TikToks as well. 

You'll see all the restaurants in my review, excellent food for the most part. Some misses but that's true of every cruise line. No massive MDR, it's all restaurants plus The Galley. In The Galley you can simply sit down and place an order. Lots of folks are bringing their 'bad habits' from standard cruise lines and queueing up at the stations. There is literally no need to do that, wait staff will take your order and bring the food to you. Note that the Ramen and Panini stations and probably the Taco station will be closed for dinner. Dine and Dash, the breakfast joint, is your 24 hour food spot. Ramen being closed for dinner and not serving into late night is the head scratcher for me. Ramen is a known late late night food. I've always been curious why they don't keep that open till 1 or 2am like the Burger Bar. 

The trick about the Restaurants is that you must get reservations when they open up. 60 days out for Rock Star Suites, 45 days out for Sailors. The app can be very wonky so work with a good travel advisor who can make those reservations for you in the booking engine. Typically they have about 40% of reservations held back until you board the ship, but I just heard from a friend who was on Scarlet Lady this past week and they overbooked everything. Pizza is usually awesome, the Poke Bowls from the Sun Cafe on Deck 16 are often missed by Sailors because it has erratic hours. 

No crowds anywhere except when you get into the shows and of course that tiny tiny pool and small pool deck area. We sailed with a group of 28 folks, mostly Virgins, on a sold-out Valiant Lady for 8 nights for Thanksgiving. The comments we hear the most was "this doesn't feel like a sold out ship. When you're on Carnival or Royal, you KNOW the ship is sold out."  In fact one couple said "I don't know how we'll ever go back to Carnival after this" and they were probably the most reluctant to book the cruise. They only came along because their son convinced them to join us. 

The biggest surprise for many, and it was true of our Group, is the Social Club. A big, fun space full of board games, trivia, game challenges and puzzling at all hours with Karaoke at night. That area is hopping all day and all night with folks just enjoying games and puzzles 

Casino is fully non-smoking with one room off to the side for smoking. There are very limited smoking areas outside. 

Get a Sea Terrace at the minimum for your first cruise. After 18 nights with the hammock, you'll never want to leave your balcony. 🙂 

As with any VV sailing, things will change on the fly depending on many factors onboard, or the whim of the Happenings cast. We had speed puzzling times changed or cancelled, Bingo with the Diva turned into Bingo with the Happenings Cast and times changed. In general the ships are very light with daytime activities when the ship is in port.  But yes you will miss some activities that only happen once while you're in port, but that should be rare. 

36 minutes ago, tbmrt said:

I didn't care for most of this food we had and see things that look good on the menu online.  If I order from menu will my order arrive at the same time as the grilled items for others?

Order whatever you want, if it's something to be cooked in the back they will try to time it to your grilled food. I recommend the Kalbi (Short Ribs) for the grill. On Valiant a friend order the pork belly and it was flavorless, she ended up digging into some of my short ribs which were really good. 

14 hours ago, JT1962 said:

As a solo cruiser, I will continue to cruise with MSC, since the cost has been 40-70% cheaper than other mainstream lines charge for solos. If (when?) the fares get closer to other lines, I will then consider other options.

Always remember that the straight cruise fare is not everything. Virgin Voyages is an amazing solo cruse line as well with most everything included except the alcohol and specialty coffees. It's more expensive, but the quality of the two cruise lines is night and day for food, service & entertainment. The big knock against VV is that very tiny pool. 

9 hours ago, peder said:

Definitely not fair to say these were MSC-specific issues

The entire topic is ludicrous to be honest. The captain is the Master of the Vessel and whatever decision he or she makes is the decision. Oftentimes those decisions are in concert with the cruise line and the port authority. I was so frustrated with idiots on the ship yesterday "well it wasn't THAT windy, the Captain could have brought us in on time."  Unless you're a qualified cruise ship captain who has piloted that particular vessel in those wind conditions, you're wasting our time. 

10 hours ago, DaKahuna said:

This is why we never self-disembark.  I'd prefer to just take my time and avoid the potential stress.

When the ship is on time, it's not stressful at all. You just walk off the ship when the gangway opens. We live in the Orlando area, just one hour from the port. When the cruise is over, we're ready to just walk off the ship and go home. Had we known how they were going to string us all out, and walk the entire ship twice, we would have waited until after the initial rush. 

Ok UPDATE! The Debacle that was Disembarkation!  Wow I should have waited to write that review until I got home.

We knew Disembarkation was going to be a cluster due to the 3pm arrival instead of 7am. We always opt for self-disembarkation so we're among the first off the ship when the gangway opens. Well because of the late arrival, it looked like over 50% of the ship was walking off with their luggage. I've never seen so many people hauling 2 to 4 full sized pieces of luggage with self walk-off. Even the Yacht Club folks were all walking off with every piece of luggage.

Get out a deck plan of the Seashore and follow along with this. They would not allow us onto Deck 6 until Disembarkation started. Imagine nearly 1000 people queuing up on Deck 7 with well over 300 jammed into the hallway on Deck 6 behind the atrium. They had the doors closed so nobody could get to the Atrium. We stayed up on Deck 7 near the Champagne Bar.  

When the process started, first we had to snake our way down the stairs on Deck 7, with our luggage, to Deck 6. That took about 15-20 minutes to get to where the Atrium started on Deck 6. Then they proceeded to have us walk all the way through the Madison Theater at the very front of the ship, with our luggage. Then on the way back they created a crazy zig zag pattern to break up the line even more. It took no less than 45 minutes of pushing our luggage all the way from the atrium to the theater and back again.

To top it off, the Yacht Club Butlers were leading their guests the wrong way through our queue so we had to keep getting out of their way. They could easily brought them down backstage like they were doing for scooters and wheelchairs. What an absolute cluster. There are so many ways this could have been done better. 

If that had been my first MSC cruise, between the elevators and that cluster of a debarkation, I don't know that I would go back. How a company responds when things go sideways shows much more than when everything goes right. 

4 hours ago, dshroyer said:

I am convinced that when it comes to food and drink they have allowances for each cruise

And that's exactly how you would run a shipping company, but not a cruise line catering to guests. They can sure build ships, but they really have no idea how to cater to the public that literally has hundreds of options available. 

As we continue to ride north towards Port Canaveral on our extended cruise thanks to the Florida storms, here's a few thoughts on our cruise onboard the MSC Seashore this past week. Quick background, we've been cruising since 2006 on 9 different cruise lines, this was our second MSC cruise with the Seaside being our first this past May. Both times we have sailed as standard sailors, this time in a Fantastica deluxe balcony on Deck 12. 

Let's just start with the really bad and rip off the band-aid, the elevators. As with Seaside this ship as the Smart Elevator system with absolutely no instructions on how to properly use them. On the Seaside they were an annoyance, on the Seashore they are so bad someone punched out one of the control pads in frustration. Waiting 5 to 10 minutes or longer is not uncommon during peak times with elevators that either never arrive or arrive packed to the walls. Smart elevators might work well in the 'real world' but on a cruise ship, when you don't tell people the proper way to call them, they just don't work. If you are mobility challenged or use a scooter and require the use of an elevator, I would honestly avoid this ship. Unless you're in the Yacht Club. 

Entertainment was far superior on this ship than the Seaside. Divas and Encore were both great cruise ship shows with much better singers and dancers. The music throughout the ship was hit or miss, I think the best ship music were the dual pianos in Times Square. But what a weird venue to listen to music. I guess they set that up as a dance floor, but the audience sits so far away, it's not a great venue to enjoy music. Le Cabaret Rouge in the back is a really cool venue. We enjoyed the Variety show that runs as a continuous 3 1/2 hour show with a variety of acts. You can drop in as you please and you don't know who might be performing. That's pretty cool and the jazz band was especially good.

Venchi Affogato was a disappointment for me after the amazing version I had on Seaside. It was Ok, but was missing the nuts, chocolate drizzle and chocolate square from Seaside. First world problems I know. 🙂

MDR was adequate, nothing to write home about, but not horrible either. I opted for the filet on Gala Night and am glad I did. The free lobster was the smaller langostino size and didn't look like a great overall entree. If you really want Lobster in the MDR, spring for the $19.99 version. French onion soup was decent, the papardelle with wild mushroom was good. Desserts were meh except one chocolate layered thing that was kind of like a chocolate tiramisu. You won't go hungry in the MDR but you won't be all that excited either.  Buffet was decent with a few good things each day. For dinner they only open the middle section so my advice is to wait at least 45 minutes into service so you're not in the 40 person line waiting on the hot food. Come in later and you'll have smaller lines. The buffet basically repeats every day for breakfast, lunch and dinner so you'll have plenty of chances to try dishes. The pizza was good, but better on the Seaside. They were running out of items on the buffet by the 5th night. Lettuce started disappearing from the salad bar at night and dressings were just about gone by the final night. Again, you won't go hungry but you won't be raving about the food either. You're paying a McDonald's rate to be on the ship so you can't expect the included food to be Ruth's Chris Steak House.

Kaito Sushi was fun, a conveyor belt sushi joint. I recommend the $39 all you can eat. There is a time limit of 45 minutes but our servers told us to ignore that. They are very small plates, we had 8 or 10 each. It's a lot of fun and decent sushi. 

Cocktails were not well made so I stopped after one pina colada. Usually I get an Old Fashioned, but looking at the cocktails that were coming from the bars I opted for coffee instead. Cappuccinos were awesome all week no matter where I ordered them. 

Sports Bar was crazy with the addition of the slots. If you're a sports fan, I don't know that there are better ships out there than the Seaside / Seashore with these massive sports bars.

The cabin was awesome. We had a kick out balcony with an extended cabin and it was huge. More like the Junior Suites on Royal Caribbean but not as wide. We spent more time on this balcony that we have on our recent cruises, it was a great view looking aft. Closet is a bit small but it worked for our needs. Shower had good water pressure and was plenty hot for me. Bed was hard and was a bit uncomfortable through the night, but more an annoyance than a problem. 

Ocean Cay was another fun day, though it was incredibly blustery with the weather in the area. The beach party was called off for good reason but the lightshow still happened on the lighthouse. 

Pools are still some of our favorite parts about these ships and again, the Jungle Pool was our favorite. It was especially fun during the downpours looking up at the glass ceiling. 

Was it the best cruise we've ever had?  Not even close, but we still enjoyed ourselves on the ship. Especially our cabin and balcony. There are a lot of shortcomings that you have to accept when you pay these low cruise fares and sail with a company that is micromanaged by the Italian home office. So long as you fully understand what you're getting yourself into when you come onboard, you'll have a fun time. We'll be back at some point in 2024 or 25.

1 minute ago, raphael360 said:

Yeah. The 17th. 
The port of Miami is currently closed and not expected to open until 11:15 with several ships ahead of us in the que. The current advisory said our ETA at the terminal will be 1:15. I suspect that is optimistic. 
 

To VVs credit, they haven’t started asking us to ‘vacate our cabins and wait quietly in the public spaces until they announce we can disembark’. 

We're on the MSC Seashore still making our way up the coast to Port Canaveral. We had you guys off our Starboard side most of yesterday and the Viking Mars on our port side. Our 7am arrival was pushed back to 3pm this afternoon. Some of the ships that were in the Bahamas were able to race back in last night, but coming from Cozumel, like you guys are doing, we could not make that run. So we're coming in much slower and staying behind the worst of the weather. 

On 12/14/2023 at 10:25 AM, cantgetin said:

In fairness, many of the terminal people wearing VV shirts are very part time people, working VV on days that they have a ship in port and other lines (meaning other rules and protocols) on other days.  BCN was great at the WTC terminal, a little less so at the newly required terminal.  

Actually most of those people in the VV shirts don't work for VV. They work for the Port Authority of Miami and are assigned daily terminal duties depending on what ships are in that day and which cruise lines they've trained with. There might be a few senior managers who are VV employees, but most everyone outside and in the terminal are Port Authority employees, that's true of most every cruise port at least in the U.S. 

44 minutes ago, Essiesmom said:

We are currently slowly passing Carnival Sunshine on our port side. The seas look a bit disgruntled. 

That was actually an interesting move by the Sunshine. She cut across in front of us and then turn to proceed north alongside of us. We had the Scarlet Lady off our Starboard and the Viking Mars off our Port most of the day yesterday. That was some wicked weather yesterday but I'm absolutely gobsmacked at how well this ship is handling the seas. Incredibly smooth with barely a hint of rocking, even in the worst of it. Easily the smoothest ship we've been on in a while.

33 minutes ago, jinpasco said:

Are they still.saying 3 pm disembark ing ?

3pm Arrival. Disembarkation to begin shortly thereafter.  You can track the ship on Cruise Mapper. We're just passing Port St Lucie now. 

8 hours ago, ghrider said:

Was it the correct call by other cruise lines to regularly depart Saturday and bring their Sunday arrival ships (both NCL and RCCL) back tonight to get into port for tomorrow? If so, why did MSC make the opposite call?

I'm on the MSC Seashore now as we're passing by West Palm Beach.

The decision by MSC and the Port Authority of Port Canaveral was simple. It's geography. Wonder came back from the Bahamas. Disney came back from the Bahamas. NCL was coming over from Europe, already on the eastern side. MSC Seashore is coming back from Cozumel in the Gulf of Mexico, south and west of Florida. Take a look on the map at the distance required to cover that. IT takes a full day and night to get to Port Canaveral, not just a few hours like the Bahamas. 

If we proceeded as planned, at top speed, from Cozumel, we would have arrived at Port Canaveral in time for the 40 knot winds and a closed Port Canaveral. Those winds make it too unsafe for the ship to proceed into the channel, not to mention the Pilot to come out to the ship. Go back and read up on the NCL Escape running aground in the DR due to high winds pushing the ship out of the channel. Then read up on the Japanese Pilot who died earlier this year trying to step from the pilot boat onto a container ship in rough seas.

Thus the right decision was made to keep the ship south of the weather in the interest of safety and we will be coming in at 3pm. That decision is made in coordination with the pilots and the Port Canaveral Port Authority.  We could have arrived a little earlier, but not early enough to miss the 40 knot predicted winds. 

8 hours ago, ghrider said:

We're going to have to eat this in the name of safety, but was it really the right call by MSC?  

What an interesting thing to say. Safety is the ONLY right call. Would you prefer MSC tried to come in at 4am and ran the ship aground instead? I really don't understand how people can question the operation of a cruise ship when it comes to the safety of the ship, the passengers and the Pilots who have to jump onboard. 

On 8/30/2023 at 11:24 AM, Midnatsluskeren said:

Apart from suites (which I can't afford), are there any "secret" especially desirable cabins on Virgin Voyages' ships?

 

Henrik

 

The triangular Sea View cabins up front intrigue me. They look like very interesting cabins. And the Limited View Sea Terrace is a much better view than I expected. I visited a fellow Sailor's cabin on the Valiant to have a look and the lifeboat basically blocks you from looking down into the water, But otherwise it's a really good view out from those balconies. The lifeboats are further away from the balcony than I thought they were. 

On 8/30/2023 at 12:13 PM, FFMilesJunkie said:

The accessible Sea Terraces have the same footprint as the seriously suite but none of the bells and whistles.  However they are fully accessible which means roll in shower with curtain and ramp to balcony.  You will sometimes be assigned one if you have a Lock It In rate and they were not booked by those who require them.  I would not want to take one away from someone who truly needs it, but you might be able to ask at check in if any are going out empty and see if they will move you. 

We had a friend who got one of these on Valiant over Thanksgiving and the room was really dirty. So much so she had to request another room. It was not a pretty sight. I would not want one of these to be honest. 

12 hours ago, Tolkmit said:

You are trying to compare the biggest ship in the world, and one of Royals most expensive, that offers far more onboard activities, to a ship less than half it's size. Your cherry picking to make Virgin look like a good deal for some reason. Well, I can make Virgin look insanely over priced doing the same thi

Sure you can play that game all day long with balconies.

For the price of an interior on the largest ship in the world, that gets you the cabin, some of the activities, not all since they are now adding rates to some of those activities, and the included food. For less that than price I can put you on any VV sailing, in the same interior category for less. I've yet to find an interior on a VV sailing that's $6k. $5k is the max for some of those really long itineraries. But to really compare apples to apples, then you have to add a full specialty dining package, WiFi, Refreshment Package and the Gratuities to the Royal Caribbean fare. Comparing straight cruse rates isn't how you compare VV to anyone else. You have to add in all the extras. 

No matter what you pay on Royal Caribbean, Virgin is almost always going to be the better value once you add everything to that Royal cruise that you get on VV. Princess is going to be the closest in terms of monetary value with their Plus and Premier packages but even there you don't get the specialty dining unless you go Premier. 

12 hours ago, cantgetin said:

Wow, that's quite awful.  THe Galley is good, especially ir your cruise has the nightly dinner specials, but a week of eating there would get old.

The Galley for Dinner is honestly not that good. We did that one night and it was disappointing. No Ramen, No Paninis, No Tacos. Basically burgers, breakfast, bento and salad.  The Dine and Dash did have butter chicken and a few other things, but the buffet on the MSC Seashore that we're just finishing up on had many more choices for dinner than The Galley. She was hugely disappointed after hearing so many great things about the food on VV and how casual the cruise line is. She had also heard that there were supposed to be many reservations still available when you got onto the ship. But nothing. I don't understand how that happened, but it sounded like the hostesses did not offer much help at all. Completely different than our Valiant sailing at Thanksgiving where people were walking up around 8 or 8:30 even on a sold out ship.

8 hours ago, raphael360 said:

No announcements regarding our arrival time on Sunday but I can’t imagine we will be on time. There are approximately 10 cruise ships fighting to dock on Sunday mornings. 

We're on MSC Seashore and have been watching you guys all day off the Starboard side. We have the Viking Mars on our port side. Seashore has been handling everything remarkably well, much better than Valiant did a few weeks ago. Ride has been incredibly smooth thus far, but the worst of the weather will be upon us much later. At least y'all just have to get to Miami, we're going up to Port Canaveral.

I've heard the Wonder of the Seas is making a fast run tonight to get to Port Canaveral tonight before the worst of it. She's only coming in from the bahamas, whereas you and this ship are coming across the Gulf to Florida from Cozumel. Safe travels, I hope y'all get in at a decent time! We're scheduled for a 3pm arrival with 3:30p walk-off. If that holds. 🙂

1 hour ago, cantgetin said:

If you can't get a reservation somewhere that you wish to eat, get one elsewhere....then a little earlier than your reservation OR at about 6, do a walk up.  At 6, you can ask whether they can work you in about X time...or a bit before your reservation, ask whether they can take you.  If the response is positive, you just got in.  If not, you still have your back up reservation.

Just heard from a colleague that she was turned away from all walkups this past week on Scarlet Lady. She booked this last minute so could not make reservations in advance. I mentioned that they usually have at least 40% of reservations available once onboard. Not this time.  From her: We tried to make reservations once being on board and was told that every restaurant was OVER booked. We tried to do a walk-up at 6 pm when the restaurants opened and also couldn't get in for the same reason, despite being told that we could do a walk-up.

3 minutes ago, jame_g said:

I had to switch from Edge to Chrome. I get lots of errors on Edge, although I'm still typically able to get into my account. But if I want to search for a cruise to book, I have to go to Chrome because Edge gets an error if I try to open or book a specific cruise from the results. Been this way for a couple months now.

VV's website is definitely optimized for Chrome as is just about every other cruise website these days.

1 hour ago, Tolkmit said:

For those wondering, he is cherry picking the Christmas sailing of the newest, biggest ship in the world.

Actually no, I wasn't. It was some of the first cruises, but if this is better for you. $4843 for an August 2025 sailing for the base Interior. The cheapest rate for the interior is about $3700 for 2. Now if you want to go on some of the smaller ships, absolutely you can get great deals on the interiors, sometimes right around $1000.  

1 hour ago, Tolkmit said:

While a cruise on Virgin of a similar size ship doing a similar itinerary in the same month costs 8k.

I'm curious which of these 12 day cruises you're mentioning have an interior for $8k. That's the cabin I'm showing for the Star. I think the highest interior I've seen is $4800 for some of the long TAs. Can you point me to the VV 12 day sailing that has an $8k interior cabin?  Thanks!

On 12/13/2023 at 10:15 PM, Morecruisesplz said:

Is anyone concerned about flying into Miami and cruising Scarlett Lady on Sunday considering the weather predictions?

We are currently on the MSC Seashore headed back to Port Canaveral. Our 7am Sunday morning arrival is now going to be at least a 3pm Sunday afternoon arrive. It's probable this weather is going to affect port operations in Miami on Sunday morning as well, you should get a notification from VV if things will be delayed for a Sunday departure. 

On 12/13/2023 at 11:25 PM, Roel94 said:

Awful today but should clear by Monday. Plus they will switch ports 

They don't switch home ports unless it's physically impossible to come in. The ship either goes to Miami or it doesn't come in. 🙂