Round trips from Southampton on Virtuosa 2022/2023 nov - april

[Bogof1]

We sailed on the 4th Nov on a round trip Southampton to Southampton. What we were not told was that the ship actually starts all its cruises in Hamburg! So the first few days were OKish then every stop from Hamburg on new passengers got on, and Also many got off!! We’ve never sailed MSC before, and sad to say will never cruise with them again. The menu repeated…only a 4 day choice, very limited, a lot of the time the meat had to be sent back, the only “dress up night” was a bit of deep fried Brie as a starter (that’s all that appealed) and chicken Kiev…Lidls frozen beat it hands down. We did eat in the butchers cut as was included in our status match…the best meal In 8 days. The ship is amazing, glitzy, clean, staff wonderful and helpful. Entertainment I would say is personal, 2 shows were really good but not prepared to pay €17 to see ones in the carousel lounge. Quizzes few and far between, craft only a sea day and I got fed up of sticking bits of paper on to other bits of paper. 
The final straw that broke the camels back was disembarkation. I think that due to picking passengers up throughout the voyage was the reason we had to have a face to face immigration check before we could leave the ship. On visiting the bathroom at 2am on the morning of disembarking a pice of paper was under the door telling us we had to report to the carousel lounge at 8:30 for this check!!!! 1 and a half hours later after queuing the whole length of the ship we had our passports checked, cruise cards scanned and a sticky dot put on it to say we had been. Another2 hours In Another queue we finally got off the ship! This was a health and safety nightmare 2000 passengers in close proximity queuing, no water or anything offered…cruise cards shut down at 8 am..so I was told…and no staff telling you what was happening, 3 hours is a long time to stand!!!!!

hopefully they may have learned something with this cruise so it will be better for any other travelling over the next few months 

[steamboats]

Seems like you haven´t been prepared well at all ;-). MSC does interporting in Europe - Med and Northern Europe. For the MSC Virtuosa Southampton and Hamburg are the two major embarkation ports. But you might also board in Le Havre.... or any other port on this route. Not too many people embark there.

 

The Carousel Lounge is the only place you pay for entertainment - actually you pay for the cocktail. It used to be Circe du Soleil but now they are doing their own shows there.

 

I heard about the facecheck nightmare in Southampton on this cruise from German cruisers. But we had the same nightmare on AIDAcosma in February. Lines all around two decks. We were more than one hour late for our shore excursion. And they told us to go 15 min prior to the meeting time ashore. No lines were organized onboard. In fact we were lining up one deck above and had to go down the stairs while other people squeezed in from the lower deck and the elevators. Then there were only two or three immigration officers doing the facecheck.

 

So Southampton is a hit and miss regarding the facecheck.

 

steamboats

[Oz_Steve]

ikWe are joining the Virtuosa for a round trip from Rotterdam on the 23rd of this month. Like the sound of not many passengers from this port.

[steamboats]

@Oz_Steve no, Rotterdam is not a big interporting port. So there won´t be too many people.

 

Fun thing... when the ship returned to Hamburg on Monday all disembarking passengers were checked by customs and many of them had too many cigarettes or other stuff with them.

 

steamboats

[BertieRulesOK]

Funny, I did the roundtrip from Southampton on 4th November and I think I may have been on a different cruise.  Food, staff and ship were 10/10.  I had an absolutely fantastic time and I'm already looking to book to go again. 

 

I'm not sure how to explain your experience other than we may have had very different expectations and attitude towards the cruise.  It was a very cheap cruise and so I was not expecting "fireworks". The food was hot and tasty (and most importantly i didnt have to cook it), but was not going to win any awards... But that was what I was expecting.  In fact it was probably better than expectations given some of the moaning on these forums.

 

The ship is fabulous.  Pools you can do a decent length in, a fabulous thermal area, loads of interesting spaces to explore.  I could have easily done another week all at sea, as long as I had my book!  

 

Staff were really lovely!  Every interaction was brilliant.

 

Cocktail lists were explored and wheat beer was on tap!  10/10!

 

I would agree that a few more quizzes would have been good, but then I chose to do things instead too, such as sit in the jacuzzis!  

 

Disembarkation was a complete mismanaged shambles and was a very sour note at the end of a great cruise.  I chose to go sit in a lounge instead of queue to leave the ship and continue to exploit my drinks package for a few hours.  I am not going to let this monumental f up of queue management colour my opinion on what otherwise was a fantastic trip however.

 

Felt this needed to be said.  I find too many people posting on these forums review of cruises skew towards the negative and moany.  It made me really anxious about my cruise in the run up which was not at all helpful to someone going solo first time with anxiety issues.  So please consider my post to be the necessary "balance".  Not one person I spoke to on-board was having a bad time (until the queues). So I think matey above is likely to be in the small minority!  Enjoy your cruise and just don't have urgent plans for disembarkation in Southampton.  If there's queues, go elsewhere and come back later.

[perakcruiser]

5 hours ago, BertieRulesOK said:

Funny, I did the roundtrip from Southampton on 4th November and I think I may have been on a different cruise.  Food, staff and ship were 10/10.  I had an absolutely fantastic time and I'm already looking to book to go again. 

Actually all people we spoke with said that it was almost perfect and the best value cruise they ever had. I totally agree. From my 10 MSC cruises this was clearly number 1 when considering what I paid and what I got. 

[General Agent]

I have commented on the other version of this topic but feel it is worth clarifying some points.

 

Yes, the ship is stunning, the staff great and everything spotlessly clean. The free shows were ok but for me lacked the atmosphere that a live ships orchestra adds to a performance and rather loud.

 

Food is subjective but I do expect it to be served hot in the MDR and of good variety and quality, which I personally did not always get. In my opinion, if you are going to have a four day menu rotation on an 8 day cruise, there needs to be a little more choice. The quality of the steak in the MDR in my personal experience was variable from almost inedible to ok. Yes I could have sent it back but on a table of 8 I did not feel comfortable doing so.

 

I would find the ship crowded with more passengers on board especially at double that we experienced (2600) with associated longer service times in the bars.

 

This cruise was great value at about £45pppn for a Bella balcony. We used this cruise as a taster for this ship (and MSC) for a couple of cruises we had our eye on for 2023 where the cost is more than double at about £95pppn and for me at that price does not represent good value especially at greater passenger numbers getting on and off the ship for excursions and shuttles.

 

It is great that we can have, and respect, different opinions and there are cruise lines and ships out there for us all. It's just that this ship is probably not one for us unless it is great value and half empty, which is something you cannot know at time of booking.