MSC Armonia 2011 and 2018 – what happened to me, MSC and the industry?

[perakcruiser]

A lot. But where to start? Probably the reader is most interested in tips and tricks for the Armonia 2018 route in the Carribean, how to rent a classic car in Havana, the „tarjeta“ and so on. Will have, but later.

Let me begin in 2011 when I was cruising with the MSC Armonia in EasternMed (Italy, Greece, Montenegro, from Venice, which alone is priceless). At this time the Armonia had no Balcony cabin category, only Inside, Outside and Suite. The Balcony cabins were added later when the ship had surgery. Also no Bella, Fantastica and Aurea, but a lot of different cabin categories, five for inside and five for outside, all different prices! I had the feeling that there is no real difference anyway apart from location, but not only MSC had this system, all other Euopreans I knew also.



With my girlfriend at this time I had a suite on deck 10. The cabin still exists, now it is a Aurea suite. About all I write from 2011 keep in mind that this is seven years and many many cruises in the past, probably I don´t remember everything correctly. Feel free to correct me if you know it better.



What I remember is a much higher level of equality on board. Actually I don´t remember any advantage about the Suite except the bigger cabin with balcony and bathtub. I think we not even had any priority boarding. No places on the ship reserved for suite guests. The rules of the old MSC Club were quite simple, one night on board, one point, inside cabin or suite, no difference.



Also worth to mention, at this time MSC still was breaking the law happily. The Service Charge (7 Euro per person per day) could not be canceled without giving a reason and discuss this with the Guest Relation Manager. Anyway we had nothing to complain, it was a great cruise on a wonderful ship. We had chosen it because the price of the suite was almost like a inside cabin on other lines. The quality of the food was not as good as now, but not bad. House wine there were only two (!) from Sicily to choose, Nero d’Avola and Inzolia, both not good at all. It costed me many more cruises to find out how to enjoy wine with MSC. I will share this with you later.



So what about the Armonia 2018? The ship is still a beauty. Meanwhile the US companies also have improved the looks about their ships, especially Celebrity, also NCL, but MSCs Old Lady still can compete without doubt. Inside at first sight there is not too much inequality. No „speciality restaurants“ which anyway means „pay extra restaurants“, I appreciate. But there is a big change that MSC never communicated. At least it not reached me.



The MDR on deck „La Pergola“ is now a „My choice“-Dining restaurant only for Fantastica Balcony or Suite guests. Aurea and Wellness guests also have a special sun deck, as seen on the other MSC ships. I would not care too much, BUT also the Menu @ Le Pergola is different. You will not be suprised to hear that it is better. Many dishes are the same, but they offer some special dishes from speciality restaurants from other MSC ships to choose. And more homemade and Gragnano pasta. Actually we did not get any Gragnano pasta in the Marco Polo MDR in all the two weeks. No problem, because I did not expect it anyway in the Carribean, still MSCs happy wish to get 100% of the suggested Service Charge was illusory from this moment.



I probably would have gone crazy if we would have had a Bella Balcony and not spent the few Euros more for such a big difference, but as we had Bella Inside and we were overall absolutely satisfied with the food in the MDR, no big deal. Just remember this when you book a Balcony cabin on the ships from the Armonia class (officially Lirica class).

Edited July 4, 2018 by perakcruiser
Format

[champagne123]

Wait, I have to get my glasses so I can read this! OP, can you please enlarge your letters? This is sooooo tiny and I am really interested in reading this. Thank you

[champagne123]

Thank you Soooooo much!!!! Now I can read it. Looking forward to it.

[perakcruiser]

Sorry, I wrote it with wordpad and when copying it here, the format became a disaster. Did my best to edit, the other parts I will write directly in here.

[Beamafar]

Looking forward to this, P, as we'll be on Armonia in January next (though a different itinerary and a US sailing, so some minor differences including onboard currency and wine offerings. However, Cuba overnight is one of the POCs, so will be interested in any info on Havana).

 

Did you visit Club Tropicana?

[perakcruiser]

Did you visit Club Tropicana?

No, but I will include the info we got about it in the review.

[perakcruiser]

Everybody recovered from Gragnano-Gate? Good, then we can continue.

 

A few things about the Armonia. This time I was cruising only with my mother, not my wife and daughter. But I wanted to know if the Kids club is as good as on Meraviglia. Yes, it is. Baby Care time every day 9:00-11:00, 15:00-16:00 and 19:00-21:00. Yeah!

 

19:00-21:00, that is dinner time. We had the first session in the MDR, 19:00 or on some days 19:15. Second seating is 21:30 or 21:45. You have Bella and start to panic because 21:45 is much too late for you? Relax, no problem, the Spanish and the Mexicans are happily all going to the second session.

 

OK, let´s talk about the nationalities on board. As usual the whole world in one boat, but different compared to MSC cruises in Europe. Much less Asians, easy to understand, when you were flying from Kuala Lumpur to Munich, from Munich to Madrid and Madrid to Havana. Yes, I was completely dead when we arrived Havana. Good that all was prepared by MSC, the tarjeta, the bus from airport to port and so on. What is different compared to Med cruises? Less Italians and Austrians, more Spanish, Germans and - no surprise - Americans (but not from the US).

 

I guess almost all the Europeans came with MSC flights and not individual bookings. MSC flew the geusts in from Russia, Panama, Holland, France, Germany, Italy and a lot from Madrid with connecting flights to UK, Munich and others. Unfortunately we had Air Europa, a really terrible airline. Feels like flying a LCC for 10 hours, try to avoid them. If you cannot get one of their Boing Dreamliners (they had one before, now two).

 

One thing about the Tarjeta. Only the first one is included in the cruise price (if you book cruise with flight). But the Armonia comes back to Havana after one week and then of cause after the second week. The Tarjetas will be delivered to your cabin but cost 15 Euros each. The one at the end of the cruise you need of cause, but the stop in the middle you can skip if you are not in the mood or have seen everything you want already at the first two days. Then you can return the Tarjetas at the Guest Service desk and stay on board.

 

OK, today I wanted to talk about the Armonia, Havana will be later. Before I start to complain some things I want to make clear that overall the ship is still great.

 

The cabin is not as modern as on the newer ships, but absolutely OK. We had one of the inside cabins with 2 extra beds, the extra beds on the wall did not disturb at all. Enough space for sure, just the shower with the shower curtain is quite a big difference compared to the new ships. The TV is LED meanwhile, but smaller, but that is not the problem. Well, Europeans, you cannot expect too much European channels, where should they get the signal?

 

But from MSC is expect that I can watch Formula 1 on the weekend of the Monaco Grand Prix, at least in the pub! I know it is shown in USA and Mexico, so there is no excuse. ESPN seems not to have the rights, two of their channels are shown. Women tennis and "Baseball" (I watched a little bit, this seems to be simplified version of Cricket, but much much more boring) instead of Formula 1, I had to hold back some tears. Good news for football fans, ESPN has a lot, also all there World Cup I know from their advertisement in the weeks before.

 

Not too much Non-American channels, but some good movies at least? Unfortunately not, yes, they have a movie channel for all common languages, but all with the same movies. Very low quality US movies, so sad! And these 5 or 7 movies never change in the two weeks, come on! The person who selected the movies should be caned.

 

Problem No 2 is a much bigger thing. I love coffee and was looking forward to cool down with MSCs frozen coffee delights. I am used to the system that only one coffee bar serves the speciality coffees. But what I am not used to is that the Caffe San Marco opens only from 17:00! The "alcohol bars" like the White Lion Pub open at 8:00, but the coffee bar at 17:00, what logic is this? And as you expect, on many days the guests hang around at 17:00 and certainly they don´t open one minute earlier, so if you are unlucky (and service in San Marco was really slow) you get your coffee at 17:30.

 

Did you realize that the good old Shuffleboard disappears more and more from the new ships. No like! So I was happy to remember the rounds of Shuffleboard we played in 2011 and brought my mom up the sports area to collect the sticks and discs. Well, some discs are missing, no Shuffleboard. I have the slight suspicion that these discs maybe not missing since yesterday.

 

OK, you think I am complaining so small things? No, I just tell the things I did not like. Overall I give this cruise 4 from 5 stars. The forth star MSC captured on the very last day. We had a flight out of Havana at 20:55 so leaving the cabin in the morning would not be a source of happiness. MSC was very generous, we could stay at the cabin until 16:00, almost until disembarking at 16:40. That is really great, we fully used this last day with one more Havana trip and then had shower and a late lunch on board.

 

Food was spotless, at the buffet (big selection!) as well as MDR where the classics from MSC were found (with the best steak I ever had from MSC) extended by some Carribean dishes. The menu did NOT repeat after one week! One or two more difficult pasta dished did not have the exactly the "Meraviglia quality", but nothing to complain and over-compensated by the steak. Fish good as always. The Pizza was also great as always, "Best pizza at sea", you all know it. I had the feeling the mozzarella was not the same very high MSC quality like in Europe, but maybe this was just a feeling, I would need to taste the Meraviglia and the Armonia pizza at the same time. And we in Malaysia have Mozzarella and Parmesan from Australia, please let´s not talk about this.

 

Next will be shows and wine :)

[Reds4life]

"Baseball" (I watched a little bit, this seems to be simplified version of Cricket, but much much more boring

What, lol? You mean the national past time of the USA, baseball?

 

On another note, were there any movies shown during the day in the theater? We're booked on Armonia out of Miami in 2019 and are concerned about our kids being a little bored during sea days. Any info on options for kids to keep busy during the day would be appreciated. They are not kids club kids and like to do things with us. I guess if all else fails there's baseball on ESPN haha :):D

[perakcruiser]

Sorry, guys, I wrote directly in the thread this time and unfortunately killed some stuff I worte. So said this board has no auto-save function.

 

Anyway, not too much lost.

 

No TV shows in theatre, not seen this on any MSC boat.

 

No shortage of kids activities, but I did not look at the details.

 

Tropicana Club is far away from port, MSC offers excursion, I guess this cannot be done "cheap". Like most things in Havana for foreigners.

 

Shows, all so much Broadway-style again, too little classical music and opera. But the "classical" team was great, everybody laved Margarita, the mezzo-soprano, but also the Tenor had a terrific voice. Violin and piano also laudable.

 

Well, you are all tired of all this complaining (in the world outside the US market about the missing of opera on all ships nowadays, not just MSC, others are even worse. But finally the cruise lines are not doing this to make us unhappy, it is the people who decide. If the broadway shows are full and classical music is half empty and people even accept to pay for this circuit del sole stuff, than it is as it is. So I better should not complain, I should say THANK YOU MSC for at least still having a classical music team that also performs in some bars when not playing in the theatre.

 

Also nothing to complain about the "broadway team", the shows hat a vibe strongly geared to the Mexican, Italian, Spanish guests, but I guess almost everybody likes this.

 

Finally, WINE.

 

Do yourself a favour and buy the CLASSIC package. I don´t want to say a word about La Zolla anymore, but the quality and choice you get with the Classic package is definitely worth it. I attached a photo of the wines*

 

So what we enjoyed? "Unfortunately" we very fast found our favourite and got stuck with it. With the Whites it was Sauvignon "Tenuta Villanova". The other Sauvignon "San Nicolas" is way less happy. The Chardonney "Fontanafredde" was also delightful. Our overall favourite was the red "Regale Rosso", because we hat it three times, I only can tell you that the Syrah from Sicily was one of the better Syrah I ever tried. Usually I am a Riesling drinker, but after a short talk with the sommelier that basically brought the result "Anselmann is even worse than Dr. Loosen" I decided not to waste one of the precious coupons with trying.

 

Anyway, my conclusion: The Classic package for 119 Euro is great stuff, don´t even think about the Easy package for 69 Euros, the upgrade is the best invested 50 Euros one can imagine. Minus the seven waters it is just 15 Euros for each bottle of some really, really good wines.

 

Later in the near or not so near future the last part, the destinations.

 

* Sorry, no photo because "The Dimension limits for this filetype are 1656 x 1242. We were unable to resize your file so you will need to do so manually and upload it again. Your file is currently 3264 x 2448". I will not spend my time with this, but I remember I have seen it anywhere on cruisecritic before.

Edited August 29, 2018 by perakcruiser
No attachment

[Beamafar]

Thanks, P. It can be a nuisance when you write directly on the thread and then lose it. It happens to me quite a bit due to poor internet connection, sometimes.

 

I agree with you about the Classic wine package and Regale Toscana is my favourite in the selection, too. I purchased that package on our Magnifica cruise last September as we didn't upgrade our drinks package to Deluxe (I don't think it's good value anymore when the currency onboard is the Euro) which has that wine included, as well as Cicogna, which, unfortunately, is not included in the wine package. That's my favourite in the Deluxe package.

 

Interesting to hear that the Tropicana is far away from the port - I didn't know this and thought that the taxi fares I've seen quoted seemed a bit steep. I'll need to keep this in mind if we do decide to book tickets for the show and allow enough time to get there.

[perakcruiser]

Let´s not talk too much about the Regale, otherwise next season MSC puts it off the list ;)

 

If I will ever have a deluxe package (which I doubt as my wife drinks no alcohol) I will ask you for more recommendations like the Cicogna ;)

 

 

About the taxi fares, I don´t know too much, as we wanted to avoid this rip-off. Probably hiring a "classic car" for one hour (or 45 minutes) for the usual 25 CUC is already cheaper. For the egg taxis (they call them coco taxis) it maybe is already too far, I guess it is about 15 km from the ship.