MSC Grandiosa Western Med: A Celebrity fan does MSC

[angelsil]

I'm recently back from Europe where DH and I had a chance to try MSC for the first time on the 11/20 sailing of Grandiosa from Genoa. As I was researching the cruise I noticed there weren't a lot of reviews of this ship or sailing, so I thought I'd post here for the next person.

 

TL;DR - The ship is gorgeous and the itinerary was appealing but MSC is likely not for us. There were some really nice things about the cruise, but the disorganized style of the line clashes with our desire to have things pre-arranged to minimize stress and surprises.

 

Us: DH (44) and I (51) have a total of about 20 cruises under our belts. Mostly Celebrity, but also RCCL, Carnival and Disney. This was our first Med cruise, but not our first time touring Europe. After the cruise we spent a week in Florence.

 

Itinerary: Genoa | Rome | Palermo | Valletta | Barcelona | Sea | Marseilles. We booked this for the Malta stop which was/is a bucket list for me. Read on for how that fared 😞

 

MSC level: We booked the Fantastica experience as we wanted to at least specify early/late dining and pick our cabin. We status matched to Diamond. Well, I did. DH got matched to Gold for some reason. Whatever, we got the giant chocolate ship.

 

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Our (longer) thoughts

 

Early on, I realized that I wasn't sailing Celebrity. The website was a pain to deal with, things weren't clear or conflicting. We booked direct online and added a specialty dining package and several excursions. The info on the excursions was minimal - there was no departure time provided, for example, and only after paying for the dining package did I realize that you can't reserve ahead online. Basically all the bad stories about shoreside MSC you read here are pretty accurate.

 

Embarkation was quick in Genoa, but the person directing traffic at the port had us bypass where luggage was dropped off, so we ended up schlepping ALL our luggage onto the ship at 11am. Luckily we were backpacking and the cabin was ready, so this was a minor problem. We hadn't unpacked or even left port before we were notified that the Malta stop 3 days hence was canceled due to weather. I seriously thought about just disembarking and dealing with getting there myself, but we stuck it through. BOTH Palermo and Valletta were canceled in lieu of an overnight in Messina. A town which, IMHO, does not warrant an overnight. There were almost no excursions offered in Messina, so it was kinda like a lost day or two. The weather wasn't really conducive to staying on the ship outdoors, so the solarium and indoor areas were packed.

 

Having been alerted on this board that we had to use one of our specialty dinners the first night, we rushed off to get that done right after boarding. Not how I wanted to start my vacation, but we were able to get a spot at Butcher's Cut. For probably the most bland steak I've ever had. It wasn't an awful piece of meat, but there was no seasoning. Doused it with provided sauces and moved on. Overall the food onboard was very marginal except for the pizza. It wasn't awful. It was just not great. Due to the number of ports and our dining package, we didn't eat a single night at our reserved table. I had a lot of pizza at the buffet. For dining, we went to Butcher's Cut, the Bistro, and Teppanyaki. The latter was probably the best food of the specialty restaurants we tried.

 

Our cabin was on the 14th deck - 14079. DO NOT SELECT THESE CABINS IF YOU LIKE TO SLEEP. I've never had so much noise in my life on a ship and, yes, I should have read the deck plan better. But, I've sailed under dining rooms and pool decks before with no issue - this was above and beyond. From about 6am straight through until midnight or later, chairs and such were being dragged above us. We sleep with a noise machine app that we had going through the Zoe speaker (a cool thing I liked about MSC), but no avail. It was just non-stop noise which made us even more tired for long days in port.

 

The ship itself, I should add, is gorgeous. It's an amazingly designed, beautifully appointed and maintained ship. If I were sailing just for the ship? This one would win hands down. However, there is also the staff to deal with. Oy vey. It was not great. We had a premium drink package and none of the bar servers knew what was included. They had these tiny tablets to take orders and had to scroll for minutes to find specific drinks, then figure out mentally if they were included - often getting it wrong. The same drink was priced differently in a bar vs. a specialty restaurant. It was just weird. We sent out laundry and had to call for 3 days straight to get it back. We got charged twice for a spa appointment and the guest services desk challenged us about it, making for a huge hassle. We often didn't get our excursion tickets until 9 or 10pm the night before only to find out we had to be off the ship at 7am. Things were just disorganized and we spent way too much time trying to get accurate information. 

 

The last note I would make is that the circus shows were amazing. We're not show people typically, but we ran into someone associated with the show at the pub watching World Cup and he invited us to the Sweet! show they were running. It was really fun, so we went back for the other show the last night. These performers are incredibly skilled and the shows are very well produced. The special theatre they have designed for these shows is one of the nicest I've seen at sea. They also held a very nice Diamond loyalty even there which had small pieces from many of the ship performers. 

 

Feel free to ask me any questions. I've tried to be fair here about our experience on Grandiosa.

[hawkeyetlse]

Thanks for your review! Bad luck with the itinerary change. I hope you get to visit Malta one day soon. I can only imagine how stressful it was for the passengers that were supposed to embark or disembark there!

 

I'm glad to hear that they're still giving out the chocolate ship (many others have reported getting an ordinary small bar of chocolate instead). I'm also kind of amazed to learn that there is one person on the planet who has actually used the Zoe speaker… 🤭

 

Did you go to the Butcher's Cut twice? Or where did you go for your Diamond dinner? And what did you get at Teppanyaki with your dining package?

 

What excursions did you do?

[angelsil]

16 hours ago, hawkeyetlse said:

Did you go to the Butcher's Cut twice? Or where did you go for your Diamond dinner? And what did you get at Teppanyaki with your dining package?

 

What excursions did you do?

 

We did end up at Butcher's Cut twice because of the Diamond perk. The second time wasn't as good as the first night as we were in the restaurant rather than out on the porch. Food didn't improve, still marginal steakhouse fare.

 

For Teppanyaki, hubby got the Samurai for 10 Euro. I don't eat raw fish or shellfish, so I got a customized version of the same with extra chicken and seared sushi.

 

In Rome we did the Grand Tour. DH had never been to Rome and wanted to go inside the colosseum (which I'd never done either) so it was the best of the bunch. It was a LONG day, but we saw a lot.

 

In Messina, the first day we just wandered on our own and ate at a local farm-to-table place. Day 2 we took the excursion to Taormina. It was nice, but they dumped us early in the day and we had to be back at the bus around 12:30 just as everything was opening. Since it wasn't a planned stop, I'm sure they scrambled to get anything at all. Taormina and a few Messina excursions were the ONLY excursions offered. Nothing to Etna, for example.

 

Barcelona we did the excursion to Montserrat and a Cava winery. Beautiful views and nice wine.

 

We did our own thing in Marseilles hoping to get to Chateau d'If but it was closed "for weather" despite a beautiful, sunny day.

 

I liked the Zoe! It was fun to sit after returning from port with a bottle of wine we bought locally on the balcony and listen to our own music. Our night after Marseilles we had a nice bottle of Cava, fresh brie and baguette for dinner on the balcony. Best dinner we had on the ship and it was our last night, so a proper send off.

[AtSeaAlways]

Thanks for this.  We love to ballroom dance.  Or bits of Latin.  How common is this?  I get up early - is there coffee anyplace at say 0600?  What about a quiet indoor venue like a library?  

 

[angelsil]

14 hours ago, AtSeaAlways said:

Thanks for this.  We love to ballroom dance.  Or bits of Latin.  How common is this?  I get up early - is there coffee anyplace at say 0600?  What about a quiet indoor venue like a library?  

 

 

We're not dancers ourselves, so I can't speak to how that was on the ship except to say they had dance classes nearly every day in the promenade area.

 

Coffee early was a big challenge for us. We regularly had to be off the ship early for excursions. The Edge Bar seemed to be the best place for coffee early if you didn't want to fight the buffet when it first opened and both opened at maybe 6:30 or 7:00. Generally speaking, things opened later than I've found on Caribbean sailings.

 

The quietest area we found during the day was the lounge at the top. Lots of people reading in there when World Cup games weren't on. On our sailing there weren't any "adult only" areas enforced, but that lounge was supposed to be adult only and generally was.

[AtSeaAlways]

Thanks.  On one of MSC programs I did see a note for 24 hour coffee someplace.  I am not fussy but cannot wait until 0730. Room Service is not really an option - DW is asleep - do you meet them in the hallway?  

Edited December 11, 2022 by AtSeaAlways

[hawkeyetlse]

If they advertise 24 hour coffee it must be the one of the beverage stations up in the buffet, with the brewed coffee dispenser, and hot water for tea. 

[xcell]

I'm on the same trip in a few weeks..sorry to hear that the ports were cancelled...I was so looking forward to hear what you did for the ports.

 

Thanks for the review...

[anabella95]

I booked World Europa for the 3rd week of August.  We board on Barcelona, Spain.  This will be our first MSC cruise.  We tend to sail on Celebrity or RCL.  I am nervous.  With your drinking package, did you get charge a service charge when you order a drink? Was it hard linking your credit card to your account?

Thank you in advance for your help.

[Janet&Carl]

6 hours ago, anabella95 said:

I booked World Europa for the 3rd week of August.  We board on Barcelona, Spain.  This will be our first MSC cruise.  We tend to sail on Celebrity or RCL.  I am nervous.  With your drinking package, did you get charge a service charge when you order a drink? Was it hard linking your credit card to your account?

Thank you in advance for your help.

 

If you have a drink package (prepaid or included) there are no further charges on your account. Credit card links are easy - you do it from any of the terminals around the ship.