Alex71

Here's what they say on their webseite:

“Meraviglia”, or “Wonder” in English, is the feeling of being amazed when we see something new, extraordinary or unimaginable. MSC Meraviglia will be the first ship with three homeports and will spend her inaugural summer sailing the Mediterranean in Summer 2017.

http://www.msccruisesusa.com/us_en/Ships/MSC-Meraviglia.aspx

Fortunately, the advertised price has to be the final price including taxes and fees, so 399 EUR means 399 minus whatever the travel agent is willing to take off and free for the kids means free.

The leagality of the service charge has been disputed, but I guess they can get away by claiming that it is no longer mandatory.

Expensive last minute flights are not an issue for us, since we can drive to Venice in 7 or 8 hours. Flying would maybe save us an but would add a lot of inconvenience.

No longer applying the club discount on specials seems to be a new development though.

Decks and restaurants look very airy. Wondering if they will cram in a lot more tables and sun beds in real life.

We've had lots of threads moaning about MSC getting more expensive and lacking specials.

My impression is that this trend is finally starting to reverse. I'm seeing lots of Western Med specials for 399 EUR or 449 EUR, some even as low as 299.

Eastern Med is slightly more expensive, but I booked a cabin for four on the Magnifica from Venice to Istanbul and back for 1098 EUR list price (adults 549, kids free, inside, bella). Final price minus discount from my travel agent came in at 1021 EUR, club discount not applicable.

This will be our first cruise with them in 18 months and finally take us to gold status, for whatever it's worth these days.

I usually wear at least a dark suit, but tend to leave off the tie since I'm on vacation. I've seen people wear jeans on gala nights, but they were the absolute minority and must have felt out of place. The second seating tends to be more formal than the first one.

We had some fabulous waiters and cabin stewards. In these cases we gave each of our two cabin stewards an extra 10 EUR and each of our two waiters also an extra 10.

We also had cases where we were not quite as impressed and did not top up the automatic amounts.

Yes, the entire world should just adopt US practices.

Yes, truely outragous that some countries and compynies still try to do things the non-US way.

You can also get them on Ebay for a few cents vs. 15 EUR at an airport electronics shop.

So is it a liter of water per booking per day or is it per person?

 

Just trying to gauge how expensive my usual consumption of water at dinner is going to cost me. I can probably drink a liter per meal. ��

We once booked through an American TA and got one voucher for a bottle per cabin per day.

You can also buy 14 water vouchers for 26 EUR and beer or wine packages will also come with additional water vouchers.

Wow. I learn new things everyday!

Still doesn't make a lot of sense since they serve free tap water in the buffet. And providing tap water in the MDR upon request is less costly than bottle water vouchers.

 

Anyways, thanks for your replies... I'm moving on...

You can buy a 1.5l bottle of San Benedetto at Aldi for 0,29 EUR incl. VAT, so I'm sure MSC pays less than 15 ct per 1L bottle. It's probably cheaper than washing out carafes, filtering the water, etc.

The tap water in the buffet restaurant is not served, but you will have to get it yourself from the dispensers, so a completely different situation from the MDR.

As others said, it's completely normal in most parts or Europe to pay for drinks at restaurants. Most people prefer (corbonated) mineral water over tap water and even tap water is often sold for a cost.

I just yesterday paid 4 EUR for a carafe of carbonated tap water at an Italian restaurant in Germany, so compared to that, MSC is giving us a fantastic deal with their very cheap water prices.

The beer price is much more of a concern to me...

They are slowly removing all aspects that make them attractive. We are keeping our eyes open for good deals with other lines. Fortunately, lots of new ships are currently being added everywhere.

We twice booked a guarantee cabin on MSC. Once we got a mild upgrade from inside to ocean view, once we exactly got the category we booked and it was perfectly fine.

We usually get a 0.5 L carafe of the house wine and find it acceptable. The red wine is from Sicily, the white wine from northern Italy. They are both hidden towards the end of the wine list. Last year, the price was still 7 EUR + service.

On European sailings, they don't provide tap water in the MDR, so you may want to prebook a pack of water vouchers. Although, since you are Canadian, they may give you some for free.

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Don't think that is his goal. I guess he wants to be honest and report the winnings as income.

Since when is gambeling "income" taxable and since when are gambeling losses tax deductable? This is the first time I'm hearing this and I don't think it's a correct assumption.

I wouldn't worry about the certificate.

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Hi All

 

Picked this up from Seatrade Insider.

 

Resulting from strong demand, MSC will base 2 Fantasia class vessels in Germany in 2016

 

So Germany will have:

 

MSC Splendida in Hamburg

MSC Opera in Warnemunde

MSC Fantasia in Kiel

 

Annie

That's great news. Hopefully, prices will come down a bit. It would be great to have a few more of the slightly longer tours that spend two days in St. Petersburg.

If they wanted to expand... wouldn't it be easier for them to just buy NCL.

 

There seems to be too much expansion in the cruise industry. This won't end well.

Hopefully, we will see some better prices once all this capacity becomes available.

My experience and observations are that MSC food is generally very good to excellent but the English translations in the menu are terrible. Cross-checking across a few other languages sometimes helps, sometimes not.

Yep, that's what we usually do as well. Unfortunately, we don't speak much Italian, but comparing the English, German and French translation is already very useful.

In general, the Italian dishes and seafood are very good. Some of the meats are not that great.

Request a table for 2 that way you don't have to wait for everyone to finish a course before they bring out the next one. If there is a slow eater than that causes a delay.

I think that's a good advice. Request a table just for your family so that you won't have to wait for other slower eaters.

The pace will be dependant on the slowest eater at the table, since they will wait till the last person has finished a particular course before they bring out the next one. We never had to wait longer than five minutes for the next course after everyone was finished though.

If you don't plan to finish a course, put your silverware in a way that indicates to the waiter that you are done.

Certain deserts (Baked Alaska, Italian night) are brought in for everyone at the same time, so unless you plan to skip desert, you can't speed things up on these nights.

Alex71,

 

Thank you for your reply. On Saturday, I was holding on the phone for 45 minutes, could not wait any more. I will try it again tomorrow. Was you fare not full price brochure price ?

 

Wish me good luck.

 

ylc

For our second voucher, we got the early booking discount + club discount + OBC from our travel agent + kids cruise free + the voucher. All in all, it was a good enough deal, given that we have to travel during our kids' school breaks. The situation might be different for folks who are able to jump on some off-season last minute specials.

Our first voucher was accepted despite booking a special rate, but possibly by mistake.

We've successfully used a voucher twice. Out of three bookings where we tried to use a voucher, it was accepted twice and rejected once.

Normally, we do well with just the drink vouchers, but I came accross a special that already includes the Cheers package for the adults and am trying to assess how useful that package would be. We would have to buy it for the kids for 9 EUR pp/day.

It's my understanding that the package includes drinks with the meals both at the buffet restaurant and MDR. Is this strictly for the main meals or can one order drinks throughout the day at the buffet restaurant, e.g. with an afternoon snack?

Many thanks!

I've set up SMS notifications for my credit card so that I receive a text message whenever a charge is posted from a new country and whenever a charge above a certain amount is posted. This would make me aware of attempted fraught right away and in the past has also helped me argue with merchants in situations where it was unclear if a charge had gone through.

The text messages are also sent in case of a declined charge and come with a number that can be called to resolve the issue.

Confront, no, but I question why one should not "politely" or tactfully (at first one deserves the benefit of the doubt) ask the offender to stop the offensive conduct. To do so may help others affected by the impolite conduct. Subsequently reporting to a ship officer that a guest pushed in line or improperly reserved a deck chair may be ineffective and inordinately time consuming.

Absolutely agreed. Nothing wrong with an "I've been waiting in line too!" when someone tries to push in ahead of me. Sometimes even a look might suffice.

I don't think I would go through the effort of reporting someone to the crew unless it's a particluar dangerous behavior.

LOL thats new ,now unhappy american cruiser wants staff to bent for him.:rolleyes:;)

Was that a "special interest" cruise?

I now have "premium status" with my TA and get a 4% discount. Officially, it's a 4 % OBC, but for the sake of simplicity, they always deduct it from the amount I have to pay.

The EU is pretty unforgiving as far as price fixing is concerned, but maybe they've given up on the UK ;-)