Very limited postings in Roll Calls

[madcat444]

Hi guys,

 

Anyone any knowledge as to why the roll calls on MSC are so sparse right now? I started one up months ago for the TA from Brazil to Italy on the Magnifica and, to date, there are only myself and two others have posted on it. Also, online the sailing is showing as fully booked which I find difficult to believe as TA's rarely sail at full occupancy.

I did this trip in 2014 and seem to recall the roll call was way busier....

 

:confused::(:confused:

 

Could be a long trip - hopefully I'll find lots of nice Italians to converse with but, if like last time, Portuguese may be the language of choice which rules me out after the very basics! :eek:

[AmoMondo]

Hi guys,

 

Anyone any knowledge as to why the roll calls on MSC are so sparse right now? I started one up months ago for the TA from Brazil to Italy on the Magnifica and, to date, there are only myself and two others have posted on it. Also, online the sailing is showing as fully booked which I find difficult to believe as TA's rarely sail at full occupancy.

I did this trip in 2014 and seem to recall the roll call was way busier....

 

:confused::(:confused:

 

Could be a long trip - hopefully I'll find lots of nice Italians to converse with but, if like last time, Portuguese may be the language of choice which rules me out after the very basics! :eek:

 

Inactive roll calls,are the norm for MSC cruises. The exception are sailings out of the US.

 

The majority on cruise critic are American and I very rarely find even a single American on any non IS sailings particularly longer repositioning ones.

 

On your cruise there may be as little as 100-150 English speaking passengers onboard. Most passengers have never heard of cruise critic.

 

Costa are the same, you're lucky when you find anyone else going on your cruise, a lot is unusual.

 

There will be a lot of Brazilians on your cruise, a few Argentinians and a reasonable number of Italians and Germans as well.

 

You'll be surprised how well you can communicate where there is a will to do so on both sides. I had a very fun lunch with 3 Brazilian ladies and an Italian couple. We pretty much used any language we could think of using Spanish, English, Iatalian and even Latin words at one point and a lot of miming and hand gestures.

 

You'll no doubt find the otherbEnglish speakers at your table at dinner. The crew can be more chatty on the repo cruises too.

[madcat444]

AmoMondo.....yes, surely I'll get by - always have done in the past with a few "international" words and adaptations. For example, last time in Brazil having to use Italian to speak to Brazilian policemen as the word for "dangerous" were similar! lol

 

Still find it hard to believe ship is full but we'll see.....

[Iluvcruising2]

I had the same experience. Hardly anybody posted for our rollcall on an MSC Preziosa sailing out of Genoa.

[Tonsoffun44]

Could be there are a lot of "lurkers" who may not want to post on the roll call an wish to be anonymous for whatever reason. Sort of like a blind date, show up a minute or two late look in the window don't like the looks of the person don't go in.

 

I know on one of my first cruises after joining CC we had a crazy active roll call with 40-50 members, once onboard only the few (maybe 7) newbies to cruising or CC acknowledged each other.

 

Now I look for how many views the roll call gets VS how many posts.

[Gig103]

I found the same, and when I got on board the Venice-Dubai Grand Voyage, we found out from the Hotel Director there were 10 Americans on board out of 2100+ passengers.

 

Talking to the Brits & Aussies, they were aware of Cruise Critic but used different cruise blogs based in their home countries, so visibility for MSC on this site is definitely limited.

 

Quick Edit: Except for US-based sailings, as AmoMondo already pointed out.

Edited January 5, 2016 by Gig103