macrompian1

We had a lovely driver called Franco, he was knowledgeable without being boring and was very polite , we would not hesitate to use Rominlimo again, this was my second time to use their service, they did not disappoint, from the initial query to the final bon voyage! :)

Well, the bags are unpacked are the washing machine is going full throttle. I am surveying my latest batch of fridge magnets accrued over the past week, gonna have to get a new fridge, double door style!

So, Splendida ..... Beautiful ship, helpful staff, decent size balcony cabins (8173 & 8175), no extra charge for the view of the lifeboat outside our windows. Food quality, not brilliant, cafeteria style but warm ,not hot, not cold, do not touch the coffee! large choice in buffet, dining room was much better, but still not brilliant, the shows we saw were entertaining, some awesome acrobatics . Excursion prices are a rip off, we did our own except for Tunisia for safety reasons, at half the cost. I had a difficult time with this booking as my previous posts identify, which I suppose soured the trip for me a little, but I can honestly say that whilst I did not have a horrible time, I am in no hurry to go back onto another MSC ship again.

If MSC continues to mess about with the February cruises then consider switching to Costa... they currently have numerous 7 day February cruises at £299 for a balcony cabin.

I was looking at Costa to see what they had to offer, but I am not sure how they compare to Msc or Rcl ? I usually cruise with Royal but decided to go with Msc due to the reasonable price of the cruise, am really sorry now, because it is not worth the extreme hassle of getting it sorted ;(

I am still waiting on confirmation to see if the prepaid gratuities are going to be transferred to the new booking, a week waiting, ridiculous service from MSC, never ever again.......

Yup it's happened. One of the 3 largest cruise vendors in the USA (CruCon) has stopped booking MSC cruises, and taken them off their search engine. They told us there were just too many hassles for their customers.

MSC has some way cheap prices for the summer, but we can't deal with possible cancellations/departure changes with air already locked in.

-Bob

Well , good, companies who show such disregard for their clients should be shown the door. Thanks for letting us know :)

That is so awful for you.

I'm beginning to think that TAs who are having to deal directly with their clients being let down by MSC should boycott the company. It seems to be causing nothing but headaches for them (not to mention us would-be/wannabe cruisers). I know in my case, my TA couldn't apologise enough even though, as she said herself, it was "outside my control".

RESULT!! The TA have come up trumps, msc said they sent a letter to the TA NOTIFYING THEM OF THE CHANGE of schedule , ta says they never received it, they did receive a call saying the times had changed as previously stated. So whilst MSC are behaving like they can survive without any customers at all , and don't feel the need to help sort this mess out, the TA , are footing the bill for all the changes, which MSC quoted as being an extra 3/4/k for flight & accomodation changes. So after a week of worry , wrangling of hands and annoyance, we are finally cruising again.... Feb 14th from Rome on splendida. Afew days earlier than intended, but I am not arguing that point!

Thank you all for your input.

Good to know that this can happen and is managed so poorly. So far we only booked cruises from ports we could drive to, but as soon as flights are involved, this becomes a major problem.

 

The cruises out of Dubai and out of the Canaries looked tempting, but we won't risk booking them if there is a risk of them being cancelled on short notice.

It is only on MSC that this happened to me, never on RCL , so bear that in mind.

Oh No Pat 1954, so sorry to hear that. If Msc keep changing the game plan, no-one is going to have money next year to book more cruises...it will all have been spent on cancelled flights, hotels , etc. Where is the joined up thinking here? Where is the

" customer is king" service ? At this rate if we do end up going on an MSC ship ,I will be so worried about how they operate the ship at all , if they can't get simple , paid in full bookings right!! I'll need a holiday to recover from this farce!

You'd have to wonder if MSC has any idea how cancellations or changes affect their consumers. For those, like Macro, who are time constrained due to school-going children, or others who only have a particular time off at work and don't have the luxury of re-configuring their holidays, it has a huge impact. The disappointment and frustration one feels is acute and, while I know some could say there're worse things in life, that's not to say it doesn't take its toll. It also comes with an extra cost as in cateyes2u's case. The decisions seem arbitrary rather than from situations outside of the company's control, such as weather, dangerous conditions or political unrest, etc. which would be understandable at least.

Well said Beamafar! Even the TA agreed hat it was a very strange way for a company to behave. They really do just want me to disappear cancel the whole thing and get out of their hair. They just don't realise what they are dealing with.... Equally intriguing is the fact that I looked up the USA website to see if the 16th Feb date was live on their website, it was and for a charge of 529usd I could have my balcony room!! That was this afternoon, I went back just there to check and there it was, gone, as they say.....some freaky stuff going on in MSC land. Arbitrary changes do seem to be the case. I have spent a lot of time looking around again now, but quite frankly, the prices for booking this late in the season for anything close to Easter or Summer , are scary. Disappointment & frustration are very polite terms for what I am feeling right now :mad:

Ouch....I hope this works out for you

 

Customer service is not MSC strong point but this is really ridiculous

Let us know - hope this works out

:(

Thank you,

Now it appears as if the same cruise is departing a day earlier , from Marseille , and the company are trying to get me to pay and extra......get this....3,000.00euro for the privilege of going on the cruise I had already booked and paid for in full!! HOW?, WHAT? HUH?

Seriously , who is running their customer department? Basil Fawlty?? The TA is trying to get this debacle sorted, if anyone from MSC management is reading this , please review your booking/changing/ how to treat potential long term customers policy!!

It might be a good idea to wait till Easter as we did this cruise last year on 18th Feb the weather was only good in Tunis and it snowed in Genoa but the ship and crew were good and apart from weather we enjoyed the cruise hope you have better luck next time

Tanks Pat1954, looking at Musica for April now, might just leave it altogether and go back to RCL and do a summer one, still can't understand how MSC behave towards potential guests, the mind boggles .....

I saw on another website this morning still for sale cruise on your ship visiting Marseilles day after Genoa that would be easier to get back from but as we both know Msc has cruises for sale which are not happening

I'm finding it very difficult to find anything similar on the dates previously booked, I might have to wait until the Easter holidays, and naturally the prices are higher, apparently Msc are only too happy to just refund and let me toddle away off into the sunset, such a shame, it would have been my first MSC cruise. C'est la vie.

I had booked the Feb 17th sailing too on 1st November only to receive an email from my TA on 4th Dec saying MSC had called her to say that it had been changed to a 5 day cruise ending at Genoa and that they wanted to cruise-move me to Feb 10th.

Thanks Beamafar,

I got this email on Dec 7th, no mention of a shortening of the cruise

"just sending you a quick email in relation to a couple of time changes to the itinerary on your cruise. I have copied the changes below so you can see which ports have been affected.

1st Barcelona, Spain 18:00

2nd At sea

3rd La Goulette/Carthage & Sidi Bou Said, Tunisia 08:00 17:00

4th Palermo/Monreale, Italy 08:00 15:00

5th Civitavecchia/Rome, Italy 08:00 18:00

6th Genoa, Italy 09:00 18:00

7th Marseille/Aix en Provence, France 08:00 16:00

8th Barcelona, Spain 09:00

If you have any questions or queries please let me know, thanks a mil"

So someone on either side is very confused/couldn't care and now I am spending more time and stress on trying to get it sorted. I have also missed out on a great number of great deals that were available, but sure I was saying, " I'm grand , I have my cruise booked!" Yeeeesh!!

I am very interested in how MSC deal with you as I have already posted my cruise 26/9/14 on Armonia is no longer on MSC website and I think ship is going into drydock but MSc don't reply to emails or let their customers know anything so hope you get a better response than I did my travel agent is kept in the dark also don't MSC realise we don't book cruises with companies with no customer service.

Sorry to hear you are in a similar predicament, I still have very sketchy information to be honest. TA says that the cruise has been reduced to a 5 day cruise ending in Genoa, which is difficult to fly to Dublin out of, and so would require a two hour transfer to Milan and fly out then....not an option, we'd only be on the ship and getting off again and then the hassle of transfers etc. so, no thank you to that one.

I received an email from the TA on Dec 7th stating time changes for excursion days, but all 7 nights were listed, and no mention of cutting it back. So, MSC, what in Gods name are ye up to? In fairness, the TA seems to be making some effort to sort it out, but at 4 weeks to go and very little else similar in terms of dates and itinerary, I just don't know what's going to happen.

I will keep ye posted. Wish me luck!!

Yes, It's very strange. The first the TA knew about the cancellation was when I rang . The TA are very experienced with cruises so I can't understand how this happened.

Can anybody shed any light on this? Due to depart from Barcelona on 17th February , four weeks time... I was doing my web check in today on MSC website, the error message kept coming up to check departure date, so time and time again, I went in and checked , rechecked all the info I had input , to no avail. So I rang my travel agent to see if I was doing something wrong, I was told after several hours, that my cruise that I only booked in November and had fully paid for had been cancelled with no reason given.

At this stage it was 5.pm this evening (Saturday) , so the best the travel agency can do is wait for the Irish manager of MSC to get into work on Monday. The reason we chose those dates was because our kids would be out on mid-term break and we didn't want them to miss any school, I have looked to see if other cruises depart around that time but there is very little going on at that time of year in Europe.

So, did any of you hear anything??

One cannot book a guarantee cabin for more than two people, for example, three adults sharing one room cannot get a guarantee cabin of any type be it , balcony or suite or whatever.:)

43.5 days!!! Got my luggage tags this morning!!

Thank you so much for the thorough review, it's making me wish time went faster, until my cruise , then of course I want time to stand still! Enjoying every word and photo.:)

ooops , **thanks

Just off Liberty of the Seas today. Nicola Baker, Diamond Lounge and Oana Popa, Concierge Lounge.

Thabks a million, I have not heard much about Oana Popa, not sure if that's good or bad......

Yes, we went in April 11, had a fantastic time in Universal, it is expensive to eat there, even snacking, so bring some goodies in your case! It was our second time in Universal (Orlando), we preferred the Royal pacific hotel over the portofino even though the portofino was higher rated. We hired a dodge 7 seater to bring us & our luggage to FLL, dropped it off at the alamo , & got a taxi to the RCI port, about 20usd plus tip. I would encourage anyone to do that trip, my kids who were 9 & 10 9 (girls) totally loved every minute, as did I. It was also our first cruise & I hope to continue to do at least one a year! Hope that helps.