alexirina

Sincere thanks for sharing your experience, lcpagejr! I wholeheartedly believe that all comments we hear on this board and all other platforms help all of us with picking our next adventure. I tried to clarify some of the points I made in several responses above, but maybe it is worthwhile for me to take another stab at this as the experience is still fresh in our minds. We absolutely appreciated a few things YC offered: - Disembarkation where our butler walked us to the very from of the line was awesome, as we had a super early flight for personal reasons - And our butler Amol was great: very attentive, very professional, we appreciated all the beautiful details he provided - Room itself, Grand Suite (not a Deluxe suite, as someone rightfully corrected me on YouTube) was awesome. Loved everything about it, the décor, the layout and just the right amount of extra space. - YC Lounge and service there was very nice. I agree, it is awesome to have that experience with an extra elbow room! - Overall YC sundeck 20 was enjoyable: we would almost always find a spot in the shade we wanted to, or room in a pool or a few hot tubs. Spending a day at a thermal spa was quite nice as well Yet again, very unfortunately many other things that I mentioned above felt very short of our expectations both in YC and on the ship overall. That is what prompted us to be extra grinchy this season. As I have mentioned above, for the reference, we are European expats (no joke, Sherlock!) who lived and cruised out of the US (primarily) for the past 20 or so years on just about as many cruises with 5-6 major lines. Cheers, sincerely wish each and everyone a very happy holiday season! Keep the blue side up!

From what we have heard in the comments above on Seashore, MSC will (hopefully) chase some gremlins out of the elevator system by next November! From what we have personally experienced, one side of elevators works better than other (seemed to be consistently "right"/starboard side at the front for us, but I'm sure it will get rebalanced with time). Patience and taking it easy is the name of the game. Despite of my harsh comments here, we would always crack a friendly joke in the elevator and most certainly try to make room for everyone. Cheers and happy cruising!

Thank you kindly for sharing your experience just like we shared ours. Sorry that you were disappointed that our honest opinion of a really poor overall experience are not aligning with you, but for someone who paid fair price for this cruise, I feel that we can state our opinion, as long as it is not personally offensive. I personally think it is good to share opinions. Good, bad or otherwise. Especially when the cruise line could not care less to listen to ours while we were still on a ship through YC Concierge or Officers. When looking for a hidden agenda, I would kindly suggest to check how many subscribers we have (very few!) and how we are monetized/get sponsored (we don't). We gave plenty of examples of what we mean by poorly prepared and served food above (two medium rare filets ordered in YC: one came out raw, another burned to crisp; seafood is beyond mystery meat quality/substance, Prime rib... I would have taken picture of it, but that is considered a crime in many jurisdictions). To each his/her own, this experience was simply not for us for many reasons mentioned here and above. Cheers!

And to get into a more positive side of things: we did have an awesome day in the Nassau, Bahamas. We simply stayed onboard and had a great time in the YC private deck just chilling in a cabana, enjoying the beautiful weather and great views. Couple days later we had even better day in San Juan, Puerto Rico. We love San Juan, so we just walked the town as we always do, checked out all those beautiful streets, took a few pictures, had a Mojito or two and overall had a great time:

Very glad to hear that your experience was better than ours! As to some specific issues we had, I mentioned a few in comments above, but here is a quick summary: 1. Service on Deck 20 was slow/non-existent. To the point that we had to stop asking for breakfast items there and simply went to the main buffet (which is super slow/busy as well). We are not fancy, nor we expected a 5 star service, but waiting for scrambled eggs for over 30 minutes (and still not getting them) is not exactly great 2. We never got a single thing accomplished by the Concierge. We asked for restaurant reservations, had a few simple questions on wi-fi, things of this nature. 3. Shows (I know that's not YC) were all very poorly done. To the point where no matter how much we wanted to enjoy them we walked away. So did quite a few fellow guests. We have never seen production shows on any of our ~15 sailings with different cruise lines on the level that was frankly simply amateur. 4. Food at YC restaurant was unacceptable. We are not picky at all, but we finally started going to the Skyline restaurant where food and service was substantially better than at YC and at the level we are used to on Royal Caribbean 5. We tried to politely talk to YC officers to make them aware of what we were experienced and they never reached back to us or tried to mitigate any of the issues. Again, glad that others are having better time than we did! Cheers!

Thank you for sharing your experienc and thoughts on RC! So sorry it did not work out for you. We have no brand loyalty in cruise world, but for us Royal and Celebrity worked out best. Before and after the pandemic. To us it was very appealing that Royal just had their act together in practically every aspect. And as for Nassau: it must have been you guys who kept banging on the balcony railings with hammers on the aft starboard side 😉 that was loud! Jokes aside, they must have been renovating aft cabins... Thanks again for your comments, you and other fellow cruisers almost talked us into giving MSC another chance 😉 Cheers, Merry Christmas y'all!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! To those of us who woke un in a frozen tundra yesterday morning (including truly yours in North Texas) a short video from the Ocean Cay MSC Marine Reserve to warm up everyone for the season. Cheers, happy cruising!

Very good to know! And thanks again for the info, will certainly be handy for future cruisers! It is certainly a worthwhile feature to use when in a hurry (for those of us, including truly yours, who fail at planning the next onboard activity while on vacation). Now, you almost talked me into giving MSC another chance! 🙂 Cheers!

Very possibly! Every time we were in the elevator one of the fellow guests would break the ice by commenting on the system. As a final note on this technology, elevators seem to have RFID readers for YC bracelets (maybe to expedite disembarkation by providing a dedicated car?) but those readers were not yet operational. We will have to wait for a technology that teleports us from deck to deck, until then, our engineering minds will keep wondering.

Thank you and agree with your point. I have heard similar comments from fellow guests. Unfortunately, on Seascape they have not fine tuned the algorithm and car would stop on just about every floor. Especially noticable on the long rides. I feel silly complaining about such a small thing over and over again, but it is a significant enough annoyance that would make me consider picking a stateroom on lower deck so that we could use stairs... Next time I'm picking deck 17 on MSC 😉

Thank you so much, we are glad we have been able to add just a small layer of cruise anticipation experience for you! We love that feeling ourselves, we read tons of reviews and watch way too many videos, but it is all part of the experience to some of us! I'm sure you and your family will enjoy the cruise: from what we see, most of the companies do work kinks out in the first few months! Despite of a few acidy things we said, this ship has a lot to offer! Cheers and Merry Christmas!

Thank you, sabres431. Cold blasts honestly don't not bother us: I'm not making money from my videos, we are very aware where our videos are compared to some professional reviewers out there. This is just a hobby and it feels that quite a few folks here and on the Tube 🙂 found them helpful, so that's all good! Thank you for staying in the spirit of holidays!

I'd say elevators were unreasonably slow/busy/non-functioning any time of the day except in the very early AM hours. Real shame that MSC decided to go with this approach (outside call buttons) for elevators. It sounds like a minor nag, but it really is a major inconvenience on a ship this size... May be a reason enough to consider booking a lower deck so that walking stairs is more practical...

Thank you very much! We all have a preferred way to absorb information. Irina and I happen to like watching cruise reviews vs reading, so we are contributing to the chaos that's out there.

We did not have any noise issues. Deck 19 is the topmost deck with staterooms and right above us is a YC pool area, so all was quiet. Views from the balcony are much nicer than from anywhere on Deck 20 in our opinion, as naturally all public areas have very high glass barriers above railings...

I love Nespresso coffee as well and we were quite disappointed that MSC folks never made it work for us even after replacing the machine. They eluded to some "onboard power weakness", but as an engineer I'm not sure I buy that... Bottom line, very unfortunately we never had a single cup of in-room Nespresso (and coffee at the YC lounge is very meh). As for the value for the money: we are still on a fence on how to answer that question for ourselves. On one side, we paid for the YC room about what we paid for the Wonder of the Seas Balcony (Inaugural earlier this year). Give or take 500 depending on how you count tips, drinks, etc. YC is indeed twice as expensive as a regular balcony on Seascape (even more, I'd say). All of that said... If I knew what I know now, I would not have sailed on MSC to begin with. If I was forced to sail on Seascape 🙂 then I would have picked YC again. There are enough small things about YC that were worth it for us. - Priority disembarkation. Disembarkation is a joke on Seascape. 1 security dude to check out 5000 guests on the last day... With YC you ask a butler to walk you out (as silly as it sounds!) and you get to cut the line. - Dedicated seats in the theater. Shows did not work out for us, but it was nice to have an option to just walk in and get decent seats - YC lounge up front is neat - YC deck 20, private pool and free cabanas are nice - Getting to the thermal spa any time you want is nice too Cheers, enjoy your cruise!!!

Hey Av8tor, 1. We only had the Nespresso machine (and plenty of coffee pods, as well as tea bags they provided). As I eluded in my sarcastic captions in the video, Nespresso machine never worked for us even after they replaced it (and they DID replace it, not just said they did). That machine theoretically provides hot/boiling water, so if it works, it can be almost as good as a kettle 2. a. Cabanas on Decks 20 and 19 (deck 19 on the left/port side) are indeed at no extra charge for YC. They are 1-st come 1-st serve. Two (out of total of about 10) cabanas are reserved for the owner suite guests. b. Yes, very unfortunately, many folks throw their books/bags in cabanas at 0745 (right after I did the walkthrough :)) and are nowhere to be seen. That being said, we managed to enjoy cabanas 3 times on a 7 night sailing (without hogging, as I do believe that what goes around comes around :)), so it is not as bad as it may seem. Overall Deck 20 experience worked out well for us, the main YC pool is reasonably deep and large, plenty of loungers outside of cabanas. There are several hot tubs around and 2 bars (bar on the port side on deck 19 is not busy at all and mini-cabanas there are quite nice as well) Cheers, enjoy your vacay!

You made me look at a deck plan 🙂 I think I happened to had a glance at 19033 (I remember because it was at that weird corner deal they have close to elevator) and that suite looked way too wide. Almost not kidding: there can be such thing as too much room in your stateroom

Not only that, but experiences undoubtably vary depending on guests you meet onboard (that actually saved this cruise for us) and many other contributing factors from the weather to the overall vibe onboard. We personally are never discouraged when we read/watch reviews, but rather project experiences others have into our universe (if that makes sense). So, cheers, I'm sure you will have fabulous cruise and say HI to Amol -- he was our butler and he is absolutely fantastic!

Thank you kindly! I honestly did not know that even though I thought I researched ship and offerings thoroughly. Indeed there are suites that almost doubled size of ours (we snuck a peek into one as we were walking by), but frankly suite we stayed in was more than adequate for us.

Thank you so much for your kind thoughts! Just to let you know, our videos are not sponsored or monetized, so either way we appreciate your input!

Check out our tour of the beautiful Yacht Club suite we stayed in. Suite is beautiful and we enjoyed it very much! Hope this makes up for some of the negative vibes we shared in the original video and few comments above 🙂 Cheers!

I could not have put this better! I think it finally clicked with me that MSC simply does not have SOP for anything. Which is fine for many ("fake it until you make it" seems to work for some industries), but somehow bothers folks like myself. And, thank you for tying this together, this is most likely a problem with the food we had. When there is no procedure in place in the kitchen you are very likely to end up with a situation where "your soup is dry" (to quote my favorite chef)...

I did not know that! Thank you kindly for this information, it certainly would come handy as the "upstairs" (I should not call it YC anymore) experience was rather confusing.

Thank you so much! We will have a full review here in the next few days. Promice it is not all doom and gloom, we had fun at all the night parties and really enjoyed our YC Balcony suite (not aft facing :)) Cheers!