My 3 night Preziosa Review

[IrishComet]

We are a family of  2 adults and 2 teens. We have cruised many times with Royal Carribean and had Junior suites and up, so for this cruise we booked inter connecting balcony cabins on Deck 9. I had read many reviews about MSC and The Preziosa, and have to say was a little bit concerned about all the negative reviews about service and food. We had booked the Fantastica package that came with drinks up to a value of €10 per drink for the adults and soda and soft serve ice cream for the teens.
 We flew from Dublin to Hamburg with Ryanair and arrived on time. We took a taxi from outside the airport to the Renaissance Hotel.
Hamburg is a beautiful city with lots to see and do. A couple of things we did was eat ice cream by the lake, visit Minatur wunderland and the Hamburg Dungeon (English speaking guide on Saturday & Sunday @ 10am).

We took a taxi from the hotel to the Steinwerder terminal. We arrived at about 12.30 and after giving our luggage to the porters we entered the terminal and were given a number 4 ticket and told to wait till it was called. 4 was called after about 20 minutes, so we joined the que to check in. At the desk they verify your passport and documents and give you your sea pass card. We then went through security and proceeded onto the ship.
When we got on the ship our photos were taken. In total from arriving to ship took about 45 minutes.

Now on the ship in the atrium, staff were welcoming you on board and saying if you want food the restaurant on deck 5 or the buffet on 14. Up to 14 we go, come out of the lift and are greeted at the entrance to the buffet by 2 staff, 1 with anti bacterial spray and the other guy saying 4 of you, let me find you a table (Wow). We are sat at a window and the girls went and explored the buffet, while I kept the table. On the table is a button for bar service, so I had to press it and along came a waiter who got me some drinks. (I’m  impressed with this so called bad service and rude staff)
I must say the buffet restaurant is big and plenty of choice. I had read that the pizza was good, It is delicious and fresh.
So after we eat, it was time to explore the ship, and then find our cabin.
We had Cabin’s 9126 & 9124,  interconnecting balconies. I noticed that we had early (6pm) seating in the Golden lobster restaurant, so I went to see if we could change to the later @ 8.30pm. No problem, but it is a shared table with other English speaking guests.
Now the last time we did a shared table did not work out well, my kids were age 6 & 8 and the others were 3 generations of the same family aged from 87 to 43.  Well I have to say we thoroughly enjoyed our table mates, 
The service was fine, nothing special, or nothing bad. The choice & quality of food was not great in my opinion, but to be honest it didn’t really matter as we were having great conversation at the table. 
We went to 1 show called the Mask, which was ok.
We eat Breakfast and lunch in the buffet, food was perfect, however coffee was weak, but just press that button or go to the bar and get a fresh cappuccino included in the drinks package.
The weather was not great so the indoor pool was packed. There is a pool and bar at the back of the ship that would be nice on a warm sunny day.
We were only on board for 3 days but we all really enjoyed our first MSC experience.
I did miss the not been able to walk around the ship on a lower deck close to the water.

[glittergal1]

Great to hear you had a good first cruise with MSC , was the dungeon in Hamburg good?

[IrishComet]

The dungeon was great fun

[Captain-John]

Thanks for your review. Completely agree with you on the food front - it is always a compromise we make when cruising with MSC - when we chose MSC over another line, it's because the price differential is too great to justify - but we know we won't get the same quality of food. (YC excepted).

 

I've also always found the service on MSC to be relatively good and comparable to other mass market lines, never experienced any of the 'horror' stories of persistently poor service, although granted have had the odd hiccup with individual staff over the years.

[portofrome]

Thanks for your review!