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Will be on MSC for first time vs. Norwegian

RobertDuff

By RobertDuff,
in MSC Cruises

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RobertDuff

RobertDuff

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We have a free cruise through a casino for MSC. We have cruised 4 times and only on NCL. From what is available and our schedule, it looks like we will cruise on the Seascape out of Miami. For those who have been on both, what differences will we see, from the embarkation, dining, excursions, to disembarkation?

Thank you!

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ddlb

ddlb

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I am platinum  NCL and just recently in the last couple years did 4 MSC cruises. They are such a deal. You can book with the drink package unlimited Wi-Fi with no gratuity. The yacht club is something else. I’ve never done the Haven but wow the yacht club is worth every penny!   I bid and won an upgrade yacht club cabinand  used the 30% off coupon from myVEGAS on another. The entertainment was good. The yacht club food was excellent. I think you will be very happy with the price difference. If at all possible upgrade to the yacht club. It includes your drinks and Wi-Fi and. THE THERMAL  spa!!!  Priority boarding and all that. Specially coffee your mini fridge stocked for free etc etc

Edited by ddlb
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JamieLogical "Live from...." Rare

JamieLogical

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Would love some info on the non-Yacht Club experience. Seems like a lot of posters that moved to MSC from other lines always talk about the Yacht Club, but my husband and I will not be sailing in the Yacht Club for our upcoming Meraviglia sailing in April. We will be in a balcony.

 

We have sailed a lot of NCL and Celebrity. We just came back from our first Princess sailing (NEVER AGAIN!). Would definitely be very interested in how the MSC experience compares.

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styles27 "Live from...." Rare

styles27

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Done 3 MSC cruises. One in YC, 2 in Fantastica aft facing balconies. 

 

The one thing we prefer on NCL is the flexibility in dining, ie choice of time and different included dining restaurants. 

On MSC only Aurea and YC guests can dine anytime in their dining rooms. Not as many if any included dining options besides the buffet for dinner. 
 

MSC’s all in drinks and WiFi is less expensive than NCL’s. 
NCL’s drink quality is better. 
 

MSC overall is less expensive on most sailings we’ve priced out. 
 

There’s things I like and dislike about both of them.

 

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Cruise5life

Cruise5life

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53 minutes ago, JamieLogical said:

Would love some info on the non-Yacht Club experience. Seems like a lot of posters that moved to MSC from other lines always talk about the Yacht Club, but my husband and I will not be sailing in the Yacht Club for our upcoming Meraviglia sailing in April. We will be in a balcony.

 

We have sailed a lot of NCL and Celebrity. We just came back from our first Princess sailing (NEVER AGAIN!). Would definitely be very interested in how the MSC experience compares.

I may be able to give some info.   
min on the Joy right now just did 15 days Panama.    
on  Sunday I get on the Meraviglia for a week in the Bahamas.  
in a fantastical balcony room.      
so stay tuned.    I’ll try and post my experience.    

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Griff4AU

Griff4AU

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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, ddlb said:

The yacht club is something else. I’ve never done the Haven but wow the yacht club is worth every penny!  

I did a pretty recent review of the Preziosa and YC - having been my first MSC cruise. You are correct, YC is special. I have been in the Haven and while I prefer NCL over MSC (well, my last NCL sailing was 6 years ago so that may be dated), I would take Yacht Club over Haven 100 times out of 100. 

The fact that I can get a YC Balcony / Suite often for less than a Princess or Royal traditional balcony / Mini Suite  has me seriously considering my future cruise decisions. 

 

 

To Robert's OP, most US folks are going to prefer NCL over MSC because MSC is much more of an international line often with the announcements in multiple languages.

Financially, MSC is growing and trending up. NCL is not. Probably doesn't matter for your cruise. However the Seascape is a new ship and should be beautiful. 

 

Edited by Griff4AU
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JamieLogical "Live from...." Rare

JamieLogical

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1 hour ago, Cruise5life said:

I may be able to give some info.   
min on the Joy right now just did 15 days Panama.    
on  Sunday I get on the Meraviglia for a week in the Bahamas.  
in a fantastical balcony room.      
so stay tuned.    I’ll try and post my experience.    

 

Great! Can't wait to read your report!

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kernie968

kernie968

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Posted
2 hours ago, JamieLogical said:

Would love some info on the non-Yacht Club experience. Seems like a lot of posters that moved to MSC from other lines always talk about the Yacht Club, but my husband and I will not be sailing in the Yacht Club for our upcoming Meraviglia sailing in April. We will be in a balcony.

 

We have sailed a lot of NCL and Celebrity. We just came back from our first Princess sailing (NEVER AGAIN!). Would definitely be very interested in how the MSC experience compares.

Jamie I always read your post in the NCL forum. I have been on two of the same cruises as you on NCL. We are going on MSC in May  so I cannot wait to read your report. Just curious as to why you would not do Princess again? We are branching out and trying all the other cruise lines to see if we can get a better fit for us.

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MaverickF Great Review Rare

MaverickF

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We did our first post-covid cruise on MSC Divina non-YC recently. Before Covid, we mainly cruised on NCL. The experience on NCL may be dated, but I will provide some of my MSC observations here.

 

MDR Dining - While food quality overall is comparable, MSC is more hit or miss. We truly enjoyed the food on two of the three nights we dined at MDR. One night though the pasta taste was really bland (surprising for an Italian cruise line), but you can order multiple appetizers and entries to try if you like. The NCL has the free-style dinning. This sounds a great concept for pax, but logistically it could be a problem if all passengers like to come on the preferred time 6:30-7:00pm for example. At this preferred slots, there is usually some wait to get a table and food. And dinner can take a long time on NCL. MSC has three sets of dinning times when we were cruising at capacity. So the service was really promptly as they tried to turn around the table for the next setting. Usually we could finish the dinner under 90 minutes and have time to enjoy the rest of the entertainment at night. 

 

Buffet/Specialty dinning - NCL has more varieties in both buffet selections (Asian, Mexico foods for example) and specialty dinning. I don't care much about buffet, but kids did like the pizza on MSC. However, this is totally up to personal preference. The NCL French Le Bistro and the MSC sushi restaurant are our favorites.

 

Overall I prefer the MSC MDR, and the buffet/specialty dinning on NCL.

 

Excursion - I didn't book any excursion through the ship. I always try to book excursion on our own if we have enough time to get back to port. Not only are we saving money, but it is usually much quicker since you don't need to wait for your fellow passengers. At Nassau, Divina arrived one hour later than a NCL ship. We bought the Atlantis tickets online,  and breezed through Atlantis gate check while the NCL groups were still waiting with a long line at the gate. However, the private island Ocean Cay only has MSC excursions. We were really disappointed that all excursions were cancelled due to high winds on that day.

 

Embarkation/Disembarkation - We have departed from Miami both on MSC and NCL, though that NCL cruise was a while back. NCL was more organized for the embarkation. MSC service representatives seem to be less informed, and we got different answers from different MSC people. We had Diamond status through match, but one representative refused to let us in the priority line while standing right under the boarding line sign for Aurea experience and Black card. We had to ask another representative to let us in. It was funny that we then overserved the two representatives engaged in a heated argument in their own language, apparently arguing on what is the right priority line policy. Took us about 1 hour to get onboard even with the priority line. On the disembarkation, We did the express walk off on MSC. It took us less than 30 minutes to get outside of the terminal since MSC uses face recognition at the terminal. This is a big plus.

 

Overall the MSC ship and food quality are comparable to NCL. The most complaints on MSC are on their services especially if you use the drink package or have wifi issue. Fortunately, we don't use those and will have an open mind on MSC service adjusted with expectation. The main draw from MSC is the price. We did enjoy our short cruise on MSC,  so much that we book a World Europa Mediterranean cruise in June. Comparing to other newer ships like RCL Oasis class, the MSC World class offers almost half the price on a true ocean balcony. It is too good to pass up the price difference.

 

Edited by MaverickF
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JamieLogical "Live from...." Rare

JamieLogical

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1 hour ago, kernie968 said:

Jamie I always read your post in the NCL forum. I have been on two of the same cruises as you on NCL. We are going on MSC in May  so I cannot wait to read your report. Just curious as to why you would not do Princess again? We are branching out and trying all the other cruise lines to see if we can get a better fit for us.

 

You can read my full live blog here:

 

Don't want to hijack this thread, but the gist is that I hated the ship, the service was terrible (not because of the wonderful crew, but because there were about half as many crew members as there needed to be), the food was hugely disappointing, 2/3 of the Specialty Dining options were closed for most of the sailing, tendering was a debacle in the ports where it was required, some of the entertainment was downright terrible, the list goes on....

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styles27 "Live from...." Rare

styles27

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6 minutes ago, JamieLogical said:

 

You can read my full live blog here:

 

Don't want to hijack this thread, but the gist is that I hated the ship, the service was terrible (not because of the wonderful crew, but because there were about half as many crew members as there needed to be), the food was hugely disappointing, 2/3 of the Specialty Dining options were closed for most of the sailing, tendering was a debacle in the ports where it was required, some of the entertainment was downright terrible, the list goes on....

We sailed with Princess about 15 yrs ago on The Grand Princess.

Our experience was like yours and even back then they were understaffed.
It was awful and we never cruised with them again. 

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Itchy&Scratchy Great Review Rare

Itchy&Scratchy

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6 minutes ago, JamieLogical said:

Don't want to hijack this thread, but the gist is that I hated the ship, the service was terrible (not because of the wonderful crew, but because there were about half as many crew members as there needed to be), the food was hugely disappointing, 2/3 of the Specialty Dining options were closed for most of the sailing, tendering was a debacle in the ports where it was required, some of the entertainment was downright terrible, the list goes on....

We refuse to go on older Princess ships after being on Caribbean Princess in 2016. I bet you would have had a completely different experience if you had sailed on one of the newer ships. I wouldn't knock the entire cruise line because of one post-pandemic sailing on an older ship (although, we sort of did with NCL long before the pandemic....). We had just had the most wonderful cruise on Enchanted. We aren't Diamond or anything - just regular folks.

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JamieLogical "Live from...." Rare

JamieLogical

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56 minutes ago, Itchy&Scratchy said:

We refuse to go on older Princess ships after being on Caribbean Princess in 2016. I bet you would have had a completely different experience if you had sailed on one of the newer ships. I wouldn't knock the entire cruise line because of one post-pandemic sailing on an older ship (although, we sort of did with NCL long before the pandemic....). We had just had the most wonderful cruise on Enchanted. We aren't Diamond or anything - just regular folks.

 

The ship itself was only a fraction of the problem. I can't imagine that all of the other items I listed would be drastically different on another ship... or at least they certainly shouldn't be! If you can't provide consistent staffing, food, organization, etc. across your full fleet, then that's a whole other problem.

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Beamafar Great Review Rare

Beamafar

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After 23 MSC cruises we booked a fantastically priced last minute (9 days out) cruise on NCL.  Loved the different vibe onboard with freestyle dining and laid-back entertainment and were sceptical about how we’d feel about being back onboard MSC 4 weeks later.  Once we stepped onto the (MSC) ship, we automatically felt like we were “home”.   Whole different atmosphere.
 

What I’m trying to say is that NCL and MSC are totally different experiences.  For us, NCL has a very relaxed approach and MSC is more structured (set dining times, etc with a more European bent).

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Captain-John "Live from...." Rare

Captain-John

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My 'primary' line is NCL with 15 or so cruises with them (next sailing in May). Key difference for me between the two lines is quality of food (Yacht Club aside), and the 'freestyle' aspect of being able to dine when you want, with who you want, without having to negotiate with a Maitre'd to make it happen.

 

Food is what makes me hesitate every time I consider an MSC cruise, although I find ways to mitigate it such as sailing in the YC or booking the Aurea experience which allows 'Any time' dining. Also on the newer ships I book speciality restaurants/packages to offer some variety.

 

MSC tends to offer lower priced drinks if you aren't taking a package, and much lower priced excursions. I find little extras on MSC you wouldn't expect for the price point - crisps/nuts with your drink order being a very small example. NCL didn't do that on our most recent sailing and the ship was in very poor condition (Epic). Something I have never experienced with MSC (oldest ship in the MSC fleet I sailed on was Orchestra, older than Epic but far better maintained).

 

The headline MSC rate is usually always lower, but for a time they were not offering drinks packages with bookings which is a deal breaker for me. I couldn't be bothered to add it on and price it up seperately, so I've only recently made an MSC booking again as I see they are offering drinks packages upfront with the booking.

 

NCL almost always run their 'free at sea' promotion which includes drinks, dining, WiFi and a shore excrusion credit/gimmick.

 

 

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styles27 "Live from...." Rare

styles27

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5 hours ago, Captain-John said:

 

 

NCL almost always run their 'free at sea' promotion which includes drinks, dining, WiFi and a shore excrusion credit/gimmick.

 

 

I loved our NCL cruise last April with our little grandson but their free at sea is FAR from free. 

On our one week cruise on an old ship (Pearl) it was over $500 to add drinks and WiFi. There’s no way we drink $500 worth of alcohol in a week especially when we have our 9yr old grandson with us. We declined the “free” not so free offer. 

On our last Divina cruise which was 14 days (just off the ship a week ago so very current pricing) the all in drinks and WiFi was an extra $90 pp so $180 for 14 days vs $500 for 7 days. 
Now that’s a deal we grabbed. 
 

I always chuckle when I get the NCL flyers in the mail advertising I can “choose up to 5 free” at sea on our next cruise. 
 

I do wonder how long MSC will be able to keep that low price point though. 

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