Picture heavy fun review - MSC Armonia - Canary Isles and Madeira - incl. DIY trips

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

A great review and lovely photos from the MSC Armonia :) Thank you.

 

I agree with you about the disco, why not use it as a viewing lounge with a barservice and quiet lounge music during daytime. Would be a perfect place on bad weather days too. The Red Bar is lovely, it became our favourite place during the evenings with it's live music and cozy atmosphere. Totally agree with you regarding the barservice on the outer decks, they are understaffed and it takes too long time to order something to drink and the buffet is not designed for the extra passengers after the lengthening. A big plus is that the Il Girasole is open until midnight.

 

We had a balcony cabin and had our meals in the La Pergola, a great restaurant with lovely food and service, could not have been better. The Bistro Lunch Menu was also excellent.

 

We loved the MSC Armonia and with some small adjustments the experience can be even better.

 

hello Norwegian cruiser73,

 

thanks!

 

Norway -- cool! This cruise was the first time we had contact to Europeans even further north than we live ... a lot of Norwegians and Danes onboard. Enjoyed the company of a Norwegian couple during lunch in Marco Polo once ... really fun and pleasant...would love to go visit Norway now one of these days as well -- who knows, maybe on a cruise?

 

:) I completely agree with you on everything you said about the Armonia!

 

Stef

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

The pool deck

The pool deck of the Armonia consists of two pools, 2 jacuzzis and the newly added spray park for kids. There was only one day during our cruise, when the sun came out and people started their pilgrimage to the sun lounges ….

Still it was too cold to jump in the pool or use the spray park. The two Jacuzzis however were constantly packed to the max. We only managed twice to find a seat and I seriously believe two small hot tubs for more than 2500 passengers are simply not enough. The hygiene of the jacuzzi slacked a bit as well … I don’t really wanna go into detail describing the grime that covered the walls at the water surface. But how should the personnel get on top of the maintenance, when the thing was constantly crammed with people … I’d have thought it much wiser to add two more jacuzzis and a small kiddies pool during the stretching than this bizarre spray park. But -- maybe during real hot days this thing will work --- especially during the school holidays… however, if I remember my childhood … I could never wait to get done with the boring shower at first to go jump in a real pool… this spray park for me is nothing but a giant shower… I fail to see the fun aspect for kids in it --- but maybe that’s just me.

I loved the lights on the pool deck at night:

Tried to capture the motion of the ship with the sloshing waves … dind’t really work out well though. But trust me, it was quite impressive in real life.

The Jacuzzis --- for once without people but of course covered … maybe since they obviously can’t add more Jacuzzis now … they could instead elongate the opening times of the present ones …. I would have loved to take a steaming bath in the dark and maybe it would take away some of the crowdedness during peak times this way as well.

The fun thing about the spray park are these lanterns at night. They change colors repeatedly and make you feel like you just landed in an “Alice in wonderland” movie …. Where’s that white bunnyrabbit?

More to come after Easter. I wish you all a wonderful holiday!

Stef

[Babyeddiedog]

:)An Italian! How cool! Welcome to the review!

 

Stef

 

Ha ha sorry Stef, a Brit in Italia :eek: not a 'real' Italian. I've got your Magnifica trip report bookmarked and have gone through it twice already...love it too!

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

Ha ha sorry Stef, a Brit in Italia :eek: not a 'real' Italian. I've got your Magnifica trip report bookmarked and have gone through it twice already...love it too!

 

lol :D no worries -- Brits are lovely as well .... just curious to find one in Italy:D.

 

Stef

[bess128]

Fantastic looking forward to another great review., I hope you Tanya and Tariq are well:)

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

Fantastic looking forward to another great review., I hope you Tanya and Tariq are well:)

 

:p Thanks ... and welcome!

 

We're fine, thanks. Just a busy easter weekend. Probably won't be able to post more review stuff till thursday ... sorry for that! I will be back though! Only 5 more ship posts until we get going on the ports!

 

Stef

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

The theatre

Lol – first of all I loved the name La Fenice – just because it’s the name of the newly renovated theatre in Venice, which I desperately would love to see a Verdi Opera in my lifetime.

On board the Armonia this theatre however is rather small. To compensate the additional passenger load, they have three different show times in the evenings. For us also a first: You need to reserve seats to attend.

How do you do that? This was the only time we approached the guest services desk … to find out how to make reservations … and we were promptly accompanied by a very nice staff member to one of these touch screens:

You swipe your card … the guy did it for us so fast, we hardly saw where and started making reservations for us for the entire cruise to come… we always booked seats for the early shows … you know – because of the late dinner.

We ended up seeing every show there was (except one) and I’ll tell you about them in the daily sections.

Generally the theatre has some advantages and disadvantages compared to the others we have experienced. Here are the pictures ... then I'll tell you about it:

1.

It really is tiny. No flashy lighting or glitzy interior. It’s cozy, but not dazzling. Some might like it, others may not. For us it was okay … but I must admit I liked the theatre- style on the Magnifica with its green chairs and fancy blue lighting better.

2.

The seating. You have three possibilities: Either you choose to sit in the single chairs behind the benches – here you have a guaranteed good view of the stage and a pretty comfy seat. The bench in front of you is on a lower level, so unless you have a 7 foot giant sitting right in front of you on that bench, you’ll have a perfect view. The benches on the other hand have the advantage, that they have little tables in front of them, so you can easily bring a drink with you and put it there during the show. Here you also are not confined to a single seat … I’ve heard people complain about the narrowness of MSC’s chairs … here only your actual body width defines the space you need. The disadvantages of the benches are however, that you have the single seats in front of you at exactly the same level… so unless the seats remain free or a kid occupies them … you might end up not seeing the entire stage. Also I thought the benches to be a lot less comfy than the single chairs

… we opted to use the chairs and wait with the drinks till after the show. The last and worst places to be in this theatre are the two sections on the sides in the very back. Here there are no more level differences and you basically don’t see a thing… stay clear of those … unless of course you’re a teenage couple in love and don’t care about the action on the stage --- then this hidden and most of the times obviously deserted section is just for you;)!

Stay tuned!

Stef

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

Kids and teens

When they stretched the ship, they added a new kids and teen area.

Here are some of their activities …

Lol, if you paid close attention, you might have noticed that the ports of call don’t fit … I don’t know if they were overeager in pinning the dates for the upcoming cruise , or if those sheets still hung there from the cruise prior to ours.

Let’s follow Tanja into the area for the little ones.

Oh my God, they had the cutest little restrooms with tiny loos and sinks the hight of my knees.

Mhhh

… I don’t like the very dominant Lego theme… but I guess that’s just me… I could never sail on a Disney ship for that matter … the constant cartoon characters in pictures or statues throughout the entire ship would drive me mad. I admit that the plastic lego pieces would probably be perfect if you needed to disinfect everything because of some virus … also the plastic seats and linoleum floor … wonderfully easy to clean … but I just don’t like the atmosphere this produces – it is part of a cruise ship -- not a clinic afterall.

Let’s check out the room for the teens:

Thank God at least the teen’s room doesn’t have any of this lego nonsense. Aren’t those the cutest little hang out holes?

Lol – of course too tempting NOT to try out. I really was in constant fear of being thrown out … but we were the only ones in the entire kid’s and teen’s section. I don’t know how busy it gets during school holidays though.

Stay tuned!

Stef

[Pluto_fan]

Stef, thanks for investigating the kids' areas for us! My daughter has moved up from the Mini Club to the Junior Club for our upcoming cruise. It's nice to get an idea of the activity schedules...thanks for posting those. :)

[denisey]

Originally posted by Kreuzfahrtneuling Lol, if you paid close attention, you might have noticed that the ports of call don’t fit … I don’t know if they were overeager in pinning the dates for the upcoming cruise , or if those sheets still hung there from the cruise prior to ours.

 

 

 

I was surprised to see Casablanca on the list, I didn't remember you mentioning that! LOL!

 

(And one day I will get the hang of "quoting"!)

[Juddernaut]

Just off Armonia. Everything went well and we had a great time. Only downside is the amount of weight we put on.

The pillows are great, so much better than the pillows we come across in our frequent travels to Germany/Austria.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[lorrdean]

Yayyyyyy I've found your report. Havent been on here for a wee while, and thought I might have missed it. Caught up now, so you can continue 😁

[Irish Cath]

I've just caught up too. Brilliant brilliant start so far. You do know that you are really tempting me and Grrrr into an MSC cruise don't ya ????

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

Stef, thanks for investigating the kids' areas for us! My daughter has moved up from the Mini Club to the Junior Club for our upcoming cruise. It's nice to get an idea of the activity schedules...thanks for posting those. :)

 

:pyou're welcome!

 

On our cruise we only had a bunch of kindergarden and below kids aboard because it was in the middle of a school term. But those really seemed to have fun.

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

Just off Armonia. Everything went well and we had a great time. Only downside is the amount of weight we put on.

The pillows are great, so much better than the pillows we come across in our frequent travels to Germany/Austria.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

lol -- really? You prefer the MSC pillows over German/Austrian ones? Now I've seen it all:D.

 

 

No, seriously, glad you had a great cruise! I'm aware that sleeping habits and preferential pillow habits do vary:o.

 

Stef

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

Yayyyyyy I've found your report. Havent been on here for a wee while, and thought I might have missed it. Caught up now, so you can continue 😁

 

Lol -- welcome back! No worries, you're just in time for the port section.

 

lol, yes mam, at once mam, as you wish I'll continue now ;).

 

Stef

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

I've just caught up too. Brilliant brilliant start so far. You do know that you are really tempting me and Grrrr into an MSC cruise don't ya ????

 

:) hey, you're back! I was close to griping about how miserable I am without new review posts from you .... but I thought ... let's head over there one more time to see if something changed (something I've done pretty much daily) and voila ... miracles do happen ... a breathtaking picture proof series of a sunset (and moonrise) of Kotor! Okay, I decided to talk to you again. But pleeeeaaaaase tell me the next post won't take another two months .

 

:)Lol -- as far as I recall prior to a MSC cruise you have the Baltic sea waiting for ya first of all. How's the planning coming along?

 

But seriously I'd love to see an MSC report from you (even if the wait between post drives me insane) ... so go ahead and book one! Heck, let's cruise together one day! Remember the reviewer's cruise we were discussing? We really should!

 

Stef

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

Sports inside and out

This was the sports court. The net was way better constructed than the equivalent one on the Magnifica. Nicely high over the entire court it would have been much easier to play ballgames here without the balls being stopped by a low hanging net all the time. But this court was for basketball and soccer … no poles for a tennis net … too bad, but we didn’t bring our rackets this time anyway.

The miniature golf course.

Looked like fun, but it was too windy and cold outside to go through the hassle of officially lending out rackets for a certain time period.

Half of the course was however under the roof of the above sports court … so simple rain without wind gusts wouldn’t be a stopper if you really wanted to play. Lol – and excuse the high amount of selfies in this review … but we lacked Tarik to take pictures, so we had to improvise.

This is the way to the gym.

Lol to the right, there is this little notch for a plant …. And apparently the staff is supposed to have restrooms here.

No idea how the poor folks are supposed to walk in or out of those doors like this.

Tadah, the entrance to the gym. I liked the fact, that nobody was walking up and down in front of the entrance in order to control ages… here they rather had the personnel

inside

the gym doing useful stuff like helping the passengers with their workouts if they so desired and probably just checking for the appropriate age limits on the side. I liked this way of handling things much better than on the Magnifica.

The gym is up next.

Stay tuned!

Stef

[Juddernaut]

A great review and lovely photos from the MSC Armonia :).Totally agree with you regarding the barservice on the outer decks, they are understaffed and it takes too long time to order something to drink and the buffet is not designed for the extra passengers after the lengthening. A big plus is that the Il Girasole is open until midnight.

 

 

 

We had a balcony cabin and had our meals in the La Pergola, a great restaurant with lovely food and service, could not have been better. The Bistro Lunch Menu was also excellent.

 

 

 

We loved the MSC Armonia and with some small adjustments the experience can be even better.

 

 

Interesting. The only time during our cruise last week when we had to wait for anything was one time at the gelato bar when they had a rush of gelato fiends. Apart from that, we always got served within a reasonable time everywhere. A few times we may have waited a few minutes but no worse than a pub or bar here in Geneva.

I did see a few people get very impatient very quickly, but I am in no way suggesting this applies to you guys. Maybe they beefed up the staffing numbers or something. Cruise was fully booked and I thought they did an amazing job all things considered.

Edited April 13, 2015 by Juddernaut

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

Interesting. we always got served within a reasonable time everywhere.

 

...everywhere? does this mean you were actually served drinks even while in the buffet restaurant? Wow!

 

I'm really pleased to hear that. Apparently they're getting the hang of the new situation now. Good to know. The waiters already tried their best on our cruise as well , just that it was impossible for them to tackle it all at times. To hear that now their job has become a little more doable is definitely a good thing.

 

Stef

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

The Gym

Lol – I just liked the reflection in this pic.

But here’s a pic of the gymnastics space without it:

 

 

 

Here you got your towels and I liked the fact that they had a water fountain present. See how early it was? We never used the gym during the main part of the day, so I don’t know how crowded it gets with all the additional passengers onboard. Way early in the mornings ( say between 6 and 8 ) it was perfectly fine…. LOL- If it was open that is.

Sizewise this gym was the smallest I’ve ever seen … but then again … it was the smallest ship as well, so I guess this is a logical consequence. For us, it worked just fine. We really were spoiled by the luxurious space, panoramic views and stylish interior of the gym on the newer Magnifica. On the Armonia, the gym is a small, not at all fancy, simply a place to work out.

The machines were okay though and the revolutionary innovation of adding a friendly staff member to be present (at all times?) for us totally compensated the lacking glamour factor.

Tanja was once again annoyed by these blinds which constructed her view (So I guess it's not only an American ship problem).

But what’s that in front of her treadmill outside the window?

Is it just me, or does this remind you as well of old pirate movies, where they wrapped up the corpses in cloths to throw them overboard?

Does anybody know what this thing is?

Next up: miscellaneous ship stuff …. The very last ship post until we start our daily adventures.

whoohoo.

Stay tuned

Stef

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

Miscellaneous ship stuff

 

Shopping

 

 

 

 

There were plenty of these glass displays on deck 5. Additionally to that there were actual shops: a MSC logo shop, a general store, a clothes joint and another store we never checked out. Maybe I also forgot another one ... Shopping onboard is just not us ... so please forgive the slacking in the description here.

 

 

 

 

This is the new "library". Sigh.

 

 

 

 

The casino ... another place we never used other than to pass it on our way somewhere else.

 

 

Lol -- and the very last picture of our ship tour is one of the public restrooms onboard...

 

Hoooray, no reflective shiny floors;)!

 

 

 

 

This was my personal impression of the Armonia. All in all we liked most of it. The biggest plus point for me: Its cozy atmosphere, which makes you feel at home right away.

 

The biggest lack: Too few options to get wet during bad weather. The two jakuzzis are too few and I must say that an indoor pool would have been a blast.

 

I would sail on the Armonia again, but only if it is in warmer weather and if it is a longer than 7 day cruise, so hopefully the passengers will be a little more ruly. Also the ports of call would have to blow me away, because as much as we enjoyed the cruise ... I wouldn't return just on behalf of the ship.

 

But now let's get going with the daily part of our trip. People who have read my former reviews already know how it works. I'll start with posting the dailies of the day to be covered, then you'll get a picture of MSC's tours offered that day, followed by our own DIY tours. To finish each day, I'll post pictures of the dinner menu (incl. food-porn) and a picture description of the evening show if there was one.

 

 

Let the fun begin!

 

 

Stef

 

 

 

 

[ocbogian]

Hi Stef,

I am joining you for another cybercruise. One question.

Last cruise 3 people + 12 days = 5300 photographs.

This cruise 2 people + 7 days = ???? photographs?

[Elmartellama]

I must say the MSC Armonia seems way behind in terms of decor and facilites than the MSC Fantasia. Hope the MSC Orchestra is nicer!

 

I agree on the 2 jacuzzis situation. It's just too few nowadays! Then again, the MSC Fantasia has like 10 jacuzzis and three of them are XXL size, which is a bliss, all of them look quite clean. They are packed at some hours, but from 17h or 18h they empty. I even used many of them alone, or just with my partner!

[PegKay]

Great review as usual!

Edited April 14, 2015 by PegKay