Anyone been on both - Celebrity and MSC?

[renaroo]

I've been on several cruises: Carnival (4), Royal (1), Princess (1) and most recently the Celebrity Millennium to Alaska in Summer 2015.

 

I loved our Celebrity cruise - we sailed Aqua Class with our first ever beverage package (classic) and while I'm not a HUGE drinker, I'm a HUGE fan of the beverage package. Without the package I think about every drink and try to decide if it's worth it, if I should wait, if it's worth spending money .... ruins my fun. Another thing I loved about Celebrity/Aqua is Blu. Two thumbs up - we loved it!

 

I have a cruise booked for a 7-day Caribbean cruise this summer on the Celebrity Equinox. We have aqua class again, with the premium beverage package, free gratuities, and $300 onboard credit.

 

Although, there is another option: We could book MSC in the yacht club for about $400 more (total), plus gratuities.

 

I read up on MSC a little, but don't know if it's worth it. We really want total relaxation and to just enjoy good food, good drinks, good service, and have fun with the entertainment. We don't even care about the ports of call - we've been to most of them already.

 

I'd love to get thoughts from any cruisers who have done both (or have info about both) cruise lines - Stick with Celebrity or try MSC for a little extra money.

 

Thanks, cruisers!

[dst87]

I've sailed with Celebrity on Infinity and Eclipse, and will be sailing in Yacht Club on MSC Splendida next month.

 

I'll let you know! Though someone else will almost certainly beat me to it!

[mafig]

If you can wait a little while, I'll let you know, too. Going on MSC Divina in the Yacht Club in October.:)

[renaroo]

Thanks to you, both! I'd love to hear your thoughts when you get back. It's a tough decision because we were VERY happy with our 1st Celebrity AquaClass experience, but the Yacht Club on MSC sounds soooo nice, I'm considering it. :-)

[dst87]

Thanks to you, both! I'd love to hear your thoughts when you get back. It's a tough decision because we were VERY happy with our 1st Celebrity AquaClass experience, but the Yacht Club on MSC sounds soooo nice, I'm considering it. :-)

 

Yacht Club looks awesome enough to make us try it. We've sailed baclony and concierge class with Celebrity, and probably they're my favourite line. BUT I love trying new things and I've got plenty of more holidays left in my life.

 

I'm a pretty positive person and can enjoy most things, so it'd have to be pretty damn bad to be actually unenjoyable!

[renaroo]

Yacht Club looks awesome enough to make us try it. We've sailed baclony and concierge class with Celebrity, and probably they're my favourite line. BUT I love trying new things and I've got plenty of more holidays left in my life.

 

I'm a pretty positive person and can enjoy most things, so it'd have to be pretty damn bad to be actually unenjoyable!

 

The only cruise line I'd be reluctant to try again is Princess. We cruised her once about 10 years ago and the beds were T-E-R-R-I-B-L-E! Poorest sleep quality ever. Even then I heard bad things from the reviews about their beds and how you have to request an egg foam topper to make the beds bearable. IF they didn't run out. After that, I figured any cruise line that would let their bed quality get that out of control can't be trusted with my vacation. Things have probably changed, but there are too many great options to revisit that hassle again.

[riclop]

I've been on several cruises: Carnival (4), Royal (1), Princess (1) and most recently the Celebrity Millennium to Alaska in Summer 2015.

 

I loved our Celebrity cruise - we sailed Aqua Class with our first ever beverage package (classic) and while I'm not a HUGE drinker, I'm a HUGE fan of the beverage package. Without the package I think about every drink and try to decide if it's worth it, if I should wait, if it's worth spending money .... ruins my fun. Another thing I loved about Celebrity/Aqua is Blu. Two thumbs up - we loved it!

 

I have a cruise booked for a 7-day Caribbean cruise this summer on the Celebrity Equinox. We have aqua class again, with the premium beverage package, free gratuities, and $300 onboard credit.

 

Although, there is another option: We could book MSC in the yacht club for about $400 more (total), plus gratuities.

 

I read up on MSC a little, but don't know if it's worth it. We really want total relaxation and to just enjoy good food, good drinks, good service, and have fun with the entertainment. We don't even care about the ports of call - we've been to most of them already.

 

I'd love to get thoughts from any cruisers who have done both (or have info about both) cruise lines - Stick with Celebrity or try MSC for a little extra money.

 

Thanks, cruisers!

 

We have been on X once and it was very boring, we have been on the Divina 5x and have 2 more booked and 3 on the new Seaside.

[DWhit]

Just got back from our first ever MSC cruise on the Divina. We were in the Yacht club. We have also enjoyed many sailings on Celebrity, including a cruise on the Connie this past February in a suite. Both cruises left out of South Florida to the Caribbean.

 

I can give you some points of comparison on these two latest cruises. Both were very enjoyable for us. I don't think you can go wrong on either trip.

 

MSC will have many more people who are not primarily English speakers, if that makes any difference to you. It felt like about 50/50 in the Yacht club, but someone told me about 10% were From the USA for the whole ship. We didn't mind this and actually enjoyed it, taking Italian lessons on board and trying to speak in other languages to other passengers, who seemed willing to bear with us and overlook our obvious linguistic shortcomings. It was a bit awkward when during a show about France, the performers decided to thank the USA for being the Divina's home port. They did this by singing the Star Spangled Banner, so Pam and I stood up with hand over heart for that number. Seemed a bit odd, but I know they meant well.

 

We both really enjoyed Le Muse, the restaurant for the YC folks. We felt it a little better than our experiences at Luminae and Blue on Celebrity. But food and restaurants are highly subjective. We called the buffet on the Divina "crazy town", but still ate there most mornings for breakfast.

 

We missed the live orchestra for the main shows on Divina, but thought the singers and dancers were better than what we saw on Celebrity. Also we noted Divina had a large, active entertainment staff, like Celebrity used to have. Celebrity had more dancing opportunities, but there was a good party band, and an awesome jazz band on Divina, and we were able to get in some dancing.

 

The TopSail lounge is much larger and has a much better view than the Michaels Club on Celebrity. Also there is the One Pool area which is always uncrowded and very nice.

 

The YC suites are OK but we preferred the Celebrity suite for size and layout.

 

Traveling in the summer versus the winter resulted in a younger set of passengers on Divina, with more children, but that was fine with us.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Doug

[mafig]

Just got back from our first ever MSC cruise on the Divina. We were in the Yacht club.

 

 

 

We both really enjoyed Le Muse, the restaurant for the YC folks. We felt it a little better than our experiences at Luminae and Blue on Celebrity. But food and restaurants are highly subjective. We called the buffet on the Divina "crazy town", but still ate there most mornings for breakfast.

Why did you choose to go to the buffet? We like breakfast in the dining room. Did you try LeMuse at all for breakfast? Isn't there also a buffet in the YC for breakfast?

 

 

The TopSail lounge is much larger and has a much better view than the Michaels Club on Celebrity. Also there is the One Pool area which is always uncrowded and very nice.

 

 

 

Traveling in the summer versus the winter resulted in a younger set of passengers on Divina, with more children, but that was fine with us.

Were there children in the YC? In the pool? Were they well behaved?

Hope this helps. Yes, it does.

 

Doug

 

Thanks for the feedback!:)

[parallax]

I did this breakdown over on the Celebrity board. Hopefully, this will help. http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2195596&highlight=parallax

[faze41]

We had an aqua room booked on the Equinox for this November and cancelled it to try MSC Yacht Club instead. It ended up being cheaper than the AQ on Celebrity. Looking forward to our cruise.

[renaroo]

This is GREAT information! Thank you so much. Gracias, Danke, Merci ... and no the multi-language aspect doesn't bother me a bit. ;-) I'm a little more concerned about the # of kiddos with the kids sail free concept. Don't get me wrong - I love kids and have worked at both elementary, middle and high school. On vacation, though, I need a little break so I can recharge and face the munchkins all refreshed. :-)

[DWhit]

We both really enjoyed Le Muse, the restaurant for the YC folks. We felt it a little better than our experiences at Luminae and Blue on Celebrity. But food and restaurants are highly subjective. We called the buffet on the Divina "crazy town", but still ate there most mornings for breakfast.

Why did you choose to go to the buffet? We like breakfast in the dining room. Did you try LeMuse at all for breakfast? Isn't there also a buffet in the YC for breakfast?On our first morning we went to the YC buffet for an omelette. There was a sign for omelettes, but no one was around to cook them. We waited around a while and no one came. We also noted the rest of the buffet did not look that good to us. So I remembered a tip I got from Cruise Critic that there was an Omlette bar on the starbord side pool deck that most people did not know was there. We walked down there and sure enough there was a nice station with chef (and with no one in line) that made delicious fluffy omelettes. Since we right near the main buffet, we grabbed our omelettes and headed through "crazy town" to grab our drinks, waffles and any other desired items. Then we headed to the tables at the very back of the ship (also a tip from CC) and enjoyed our breakfast with a lovely view of the wake. We normally dont spend a lot of time for breakfast, especially on port days, so that's why we mostly went the buffet route. We did eat in Le Muse once for breakfast, and it was very enjoyable.

 

Traveling in the summer versus the winter resulted in a younger set of passengers on Divina, with more children, but that was fine with us.

Were there children in the YC? In the pool? Were they well behaved?There were children from time to time in the yacht club lounge, and they were always very well behaved. Also you should now that there was rarely more than a person or two else in the pool when we were there. There was occasionally a child or two in there as well, but again all were very well behaved. Really, we had no issues at all with unruly kids the whole trip, but felt it was great to see the little ones in action :)

 

The other thing I remembered is that for our trip, MSC had kind of odd port times with relatively short times in port, often docking late in the morning. Since you are not concerned about the ports, this will not be an issue for you, but others looking at this might need to investigate further for their particular sailings.

Edited August 30, 2016 by DWhit

[renaroo]

I did this breakdown over on the Celebrity board. Hopefully, this will help. http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2195596&highlight=parallax

 

Thank you - this is terrific!!!

[mafig]

Thanks, Doug!

[mafig]

I did this breakdown over on the Celebrity board. Hopefully, this will help. http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2195596&highlight=parallax

 

I really enjoyed your review and the comments from the Celebrity folks. Some were so typical.

 

I like Celebrity a lot (although I found my last cruise on them boring .... maybe I just need something different), but the X posters on Cruise Critic refuse to believe any cruise line is better than they are, in any way.

[Shippy]

...there is NOTHING like the Yacht Club.

We like more space so have a YC3 for next March

I always encourage people to go to youtube. com

enter....MSC Divina Yacht Club There are several good videos. You will be amazed when you see them.