MSC Seaside - first 2 days dazzling! Last 5 Meh.....

[Clarea]

Appreciate the reports and excellent photos.

[Keith1010]

Thank you for your thoughts.

 

Keith

[Fredric22]

I have a strong suspicion that the Yacht club and specialty restaurants is where the best food on the ship was, I would go back as Yacht Club to find out, but I can get excellent food on Carnival and RC with a normal fare

 

Excellent food on Carnival? I am sorry, but the main dining room food on Carnival leaves much to be desired. I would say Carnival's main dining room food is "fair" at best. To call it "excellent" may be an over-statement, in my opinion. I will say that Carnival's food is much more catered to the tastes of Americans. In order to enjoy the food on MSC, you have to be OK with a lot of seafood and dishes prepared in a Mediterranean style. It is certainly not for everyone.

[lifeasme123]

just returned from 7 day to Antigua, Saint Thomas and Nassau. Ports were great, service was just fine and we were dazzled by the ship for the first couple of days. THEN we started noticing and experiencing several issues, design flaws, etc. that just left us feeling " meh".

One major thing that was disappointing was how the ship is so chopped up and/or inaccessible . We had Fantastica balcony package. So we couldn't access certain areas of deck 8 ( Aurea) -. We were not Yacht club so we couldn't access most of the forward areas of the ship as this was dedicated to Yacht club. I've never been on a ship ( in 10 cruises) where you couldn't walk out on a outer deck from either port or starboard sides of the ship. If you did manage to find a deck to walk outside on, it was either filled with dining tables and chairs or blocked off at certain points , so you had to go back inside and down or up a level to get to your destination. And no deck went all the way around the ship - or at least couldn't be accessed. Meh.

Main dining menus lacked variety and if something did sound good, it was usually a let down when u received it. Pasta was just gross. We by no means have refined palates- we are Applebees fans and not picky at all, but meh. We ended up feeling like it wasn't worth the xtra effort to dress for dining room so only ate there twice. Buffet dining became redundant very quickly . Same food each time we went. I remember Carnival having many of the same menu items at night on the buffet that the main dining room had, and tons of variety. So meh. I have a feeling that the yacht club restaurant and buffet had the quality and variety that was lacking in our area.

Hot tubs tiny and lukewarm, except for the jungle pool area- which was usually loaded with kids.

Aft pool and main pool areas lacked the space for enough loungers - meh.

Nightly movies on big screen by the pool poorly attended because the only seating was the tiered backless bleacher style seating right in front of the stage. The lounge chairs were packed up and tied down every night. The movie screen is so low you can't see it even from the pool or hot tub there. Meh.

Good points were: excellent shows, excellent free coffee, great service, great variety of music and lounges.

But the overall experience was just meh. Probably a much better experience as a Yacht club member?

 

We were on the same sailing and my sentiments are the same.

 

Ship felt compartmentalized or choppy.

 

The MDR was better than expected, but there were a couple of nights I really didn't care for the food. We ate twice in Ocean Cay.

 

Daughter loved the Jungle park and we liked the slides.