JamieLogical's Live from the MSC Meraviglia 9/24

[JamieLogical]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 25, 2023 by JamieLogical

[cruisebeachgirl703]

Busy Day yesterday. Enjoy.

[PATRLR]

@JamieLogical Always enjoyed your commentary over on the NCL boards.  We're contemplating doing 11 or 12 nights on the Preziosa northern Europe next summer (Norway including Artic Circle). We've never been on MSC but it's much more reasonable price than some of the alternatives.   So doing some reconnaissance here in this forum and looking forward to what you have to say about MSC.

Enjoy your trip!

[JamieLogical]

7 hours ago, newtocruiseinblue said:

How does msc compare to celebrity? I see you’ve done several celebrity cruises. Thank you and happy cruising! 

 

Celebrity is definitely a better overall experience, but I just don't think the value is there with the current prices. We were looking at an obstructed balcony balcony on a 7-day our of Ft Lauderdale with a crappy itinerary on the Beyond vs. a 10-day out of NYC in a balcony of our choosing with an awesome itinerary on the MSC Meraviglia and the MSC cruise was $300 cheaper. For us, sailing out of NYC is much cheaper/easier, so the value just wasn't there to take the Celebrity cruise. I know they are very different products and the Beyond is an amazing ship, but just being on a cruise is an awesome experience, whichever line you are on.

 

If we had infinite money, we might sail Celebrity more or if we could only do one cruise a year. But we get much more bang for our buck on MSC.

[gizfish]

 Chis Clarke is the opener for both the rock show and Houdini show in the carousel lounge and plays from when the doors open till the show starts.  So getting there at the door open time is worth it.  

[JamieLogical]

We had filled out our room service breakfast card to have our breakfast delivered between 6:30 and 7:00. They must have been running behind because by 7:15, we still didn’t have our breakfast. I decided to call down the room service to make sure they got our card. They told me that they had received the card and that our breakfast was already on its way. Sure enough, it did arrive a few minutes later.

 

It was our Newport port stop and we planned to go ashore and visit one of the mansions and maybe eat lunch at a pub my cousin’s wife had told me about. Our original plan had been to meet up with one of our friends from Rochester who has family in Newport and had planned a road trip to Newport for the same time we would be in town. Unfortunately, he started feeling really sick on Friday and wasn’t up for the drive on Sunday. So we were on our own.

 

Getting off the ship was quite a debacle. First of all, when they started calling tender tickets, they said you needed to go to the TV Studio Lounge to get your tender ticket and at the same time you would need to turn in your Canadian immigration forms for our Sydney and Charlottetown stops (but not St. John for some reason?). We had little slips of paper that had been left in our room that mentioned we got priority tendering, but we didn’t realize those themselves were the tickets. We thought we still had to go to the TV Studio Lounge for actual tickets. Meanwhile, we only had one Canadian immigration form in our room. Our room steward had only left us one. So filled out the one we had and hoped that would be enough.

 

There was a decently long line outside the TV Studio Lounge and a lot of people standing around trying to fill out their Canadian immigration forms by rightly up against a wall or on each other’s backs. We eventually got through the line and, sure enough, one form was not satisfactory, so they gave us a second form and I hurriedly filled that out against the back of a chair. Then we were waved down to the guy giving out tickets. We showed him our slips of paper and he said those were our tickets and we should head down to the Meraviglia Lounge to await instructions. Turns out we could have skipped the whole Canadian immigration situation for the morning as they were only requiring those for people who didn’t already have tender tickets.

We walked down to the Meraviglia Lounge where there was a loose group of people gathered. Nothing really to indicate any sort of line or what we were waiting for. We asked one of the couples and they said they had been waiting there a long time. This was evident because some of the people were sitting in the chairs and napping while waiting. Fortunately, WE didn’t have to wait very long before an MSC crew member told us it was time to go. I felt bad for those that had waited a long time, but it did make me feel a bit better about “wasting” time with the Canadian immigration forms, since that time would have just been spent waiting anyway.

 

We were led to the back of the ship on Deck 6 and then down some stairs to the Infinity Lounge on 5 and then through a rat maze in the hall outside of Waves and then down another set of stairs and through some clearly crew-only areas. Eventually, we were scanned off the ship and made it onto a “tender” which was actually some sort of local party boat with a bar in the middle. There were no seats left when we boarded, so we just had to stand and hold onto something, because it was very choppy.

 

We did have a great conversation with another couple near us. They were from Toronto and seemed to cruise frequently, having done most of their recent sailings on MSC. It was nice to have people to chat with, as the tender ride was looong. I would estimate about 25 minutes?

 

Finally, we made it onshore. It was much later than we had planned and the last tender back to the ship was scheduled to leave at 2:00pm. I believe at this point it was about 10:20. We walked across the street into a little shopping plaza area. I noticed a visitor information center in there and we decided to stop in and see what our options were for getting to Chateau sur Mer, which was the mansion we had decided to visit. Turns out there is a free bus that goes out to the mansions, so we got directions on how to get to the bus terminal and which stop to get off at.

 

There was a steady stream of people flowing towards the transportation center and there was quite a line when we got there. The bus that was already stopped there was being filled from the line and, of course, when they cut off boarding, we were the second couple from the front. Fortunately, buses came almost as soon as the last one left, so we didn’t have to wait long to board the next bus, but we did have to wait a while for it to fill up.

 

We couldn’t see much from the bus, as the windows were all steamed up. I was at least able to see enough to follow along on the map the visitor center had provided so I could be sure we didn’t miss our stop. When we got close, we pulled the cable to request a stop and the bus driver was trying to communicate something to people, shouting as loudly as she could, but we couldn’t hear her at all. We got off the bus and proceeded to walk a couple of blocks to our mansion.

 

Outside the entrance to the mansion was this gorgeous, ancient tree with branches that came all the way down to the ground. You could go inside of the tent created by the branches and it was super cool (if a bit wet) in there. I will post some pictures, but the 360 video my husband took would convey it better. Unfortunately, he won’t be able to process that video and get it uploaded to YouTube until we are home.

 

We had been told you could buy tickets at the mansions, but apparently, that is not true of ALL the mansions. Chateau sur Mer does not sell tickets. Fortunately, you can buy tickets online, so I was able to purchase tickets on my phone. On the spur of the moment, we decided to buy the two-mansion tickets, since our bus stop was right outside The Elms, which is also our friend’s (the one who didn’t make it because he was sick) favorite mansion. We downloaded the audio tour of both mansions and then proceeded through Chateau sur Mer, which was really impressive. It’s not as grand as some of the other mansions, but the woodwork was especially impressive.

 

The full tour took about 45 minutes and then we were off to The Elms. This was a more grand mansion even though my friend called it more “understated” than the others. I can’t imagine what those must be like if this was understated. It was very pretty. I especially liked the Solarium and the views of the giant yard.

 

We rushed through this one a bit, as my husband was starting to get hangry and we were also starting to worry about tendering back to the ship on time. The last tender was supposed to leave at 2:00 and it was now about noon.

 

We headed out to the bus stop where there was a family of about six already waiting. They told us they had been waiting a while and both busses that had gone by had just waived them off because they were already full. Google told us it was only about a mile back into the downtown area, so we decided to hoof it. The rain was picking up at this point, so it wasn’t the most pleasant walk, but at least we got to see more than we could from the bus.

 

We decided to forego lunch onshore, worried we wouldn’t have time to get a table, order, eat, and get back to the tenders in time. So, we decided to go back to the ship and just get some lunch in the buffet. My husband was incredibly hangry at this point and I was really regretting not insisting he eat an actual breakfast. He had only had a small Danish in our room with room service breakfast.

 

We got over to the tender area and the line was (we thought) absurdly long. There was one tender there that was unloading passengers. We were shocked to see so many people just now getting off a tender when they needed to back on a tender by 2:00.

 

It took an inordinately long time to unload the tender and then begin loading it with passengers going back to the ship. It was pretty clear we weren’t going to be boarding this one, as there was such a long line ahead of us. By the time the tender was fully loaded, we were JUST short of being under the awnings that MSC had set up. So we hung out in the rain for the next tender to arrive. I couldn’t believe they were only doing one tender at a time. The NCL tender area was loading/unloading three at a time.

 

The next tender eventually came and while there were not many people disembarking it, I was sad to see some luggage coming off and then a woman in a wheelchair being helped up the ramp. I assume she was being medically disembarked. That has to be so disappointing to be medically disembarked on the first full day of the cruise!

 

Once that whole situation was cleared out of the way, they started loading up this tender with people and I wasn’t sure we were going to make it on this one either. Meanwhile, the line was now about 5x longer than when we had gotten in it. I can’t imagine what new people joining the line thought when we had been so exasperated to join such a long line when we did and their experience was going to be WAY worse than ours. Also, I had no idea how they were going to get all these people onto tenders by 2:00. It was already after 1:00.

 

We did make it onboard this second tender, but we were close to the last people that made it. As we pulled away, I could see the line was still many many hundreds of people long. It was going to take at least 4-5 more tenders to get them onboard.

 

After the long tender ride back to the boat, the fun was just beginning. Getting off the tender took a very long time and then we had to go up several flights of stairs moving up about one spot every minute or so. They had security set up in a hallway on I *think* Deck 5? It was a huge bottleneck and we just were NOT moving at all. It was a huge relief when we FINALLY managed to get through and by that point, I was pretty sure my husband was going to turn cannibal. I think we made it up to the buffet right around 2:00. It was a mob scene but we did not care. We grabbed a table and I let my husband go get his food first while I just drank a cup of water.

 

I finally got some pizza and nachos and felt like a human again. Then we were able to get back to our room and change out of our soaked clothes and I really felt human. But I was in desperate need of a drink! So I grabbed my Surface so I could finish typing up my blog from Sunday and we grabbed one of our new board games and headed down for drinks. Edge was mobbed by what mostly seemed like one big group all wearing red bucket hats. So we went down to Meraviglia Lounge, which was much less crowded and finally got some drinks. First an Americano with Bailey’s and then a Mojito.

 

I finished typing up my blog and then we broke out our new board game, Splendor Duel. We didn’t get very far into the game before the lounge really started to get crowded. Turned out they were having trivia in there. We endured the slow service and loud distractions of the trivia but were relieved when it was finally over. We had just finished the first playthrough of our new game and decided to play again now that trivia was over. Or so we thought! Apparently, music trivia had been scheduled for the pool deck, but due to the inclement weather, it too was going to be held in the Meraviglia Lounge. This was much worse than the first trivia, because it involved loud, blaring music. There was no hope of table service for more drinks, as there were now about 500 people in the Meraviglia Lounge. I eventually just gave up and we quit our game and packed up to move on.

 

We ended up in the Champagne Bar, which was blessedly empty and other than a crying baby being there for the first few minutes, it was a good place to regain our sanity. I had three French 77s in rapid succession and then it was time for dinner.

 

Our assigned dining time was 6:30 in L’Olive Doree. We asked to be shown to our table since we hadn’t been there on Sunday night. We were the first people to arrive at our table, but a couple of ladies joined us shortly after. Eventually, two more women (I believe a mother and daughter) joined us, and finally a couple joined us.

 

My husband was disappointed to learn the lamb shank he saw on the menu earlier in the day was no longer on the menu, but we did not starve. I had the crab cake and the mushroom ragout as appetizers, then the pulled pork and mac & cheese as my entre. I had the dulce de leche as my dessert. All of it was excellet. My husband was disappointed with his rotisserie chicken.

 

During dinner, we asked for Prosecco but were apparently the only people in our whole section to have ordered it, so our server was determined to pawn the whole bottle off on us and just continuously refilled our glasses. I was pretty inebriated by the end of dinner and also incredibly sleepy. I decided I just needed to go straight to bed, which is pretty much what I did. However, when we got back to the room, my husband realized his Nintendo Switch was missing. He had had it in Meraviglia Lounge but had set it on the floor when the trivia crew showed up to get it out of the way. Apparently, he left it sitting there on the floor. Fortunately, someone had turned it in to lost and found and he was able to recover it. Once I knew he had gotten it back, I was able to sleep.

 

My general thoughts are that MSC needs to *drastically* improve their tender process. We had so little time in Newport (8:00-2:00) that having hours taken up by tendering to/from the ship was just incredibly frustrating. I've been to plenty of tender ports on plenty of cruises and only Cabo on the Emerald Pricess was anywhere near as bad and that was just for tendering into port. Tendering back onboard was fairly stress-free.

 

Day's Drinks:

Americano wi/ Bailey's from Meraviglia Lounge
Mojito from Meraviglia Lounge
French 77x3 from Champagne Bar
Prosecco x3+ from L'olive Doree

Edited September 26, 2023 by JamieLogical

[JamieLogical]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pictures loaded a little out of order, but I don't have the time or patience to go through and fix them. Sorry!

Edited September 26, 2023 by JamieLogical

[Ottawa_Cruiser]

Wow - those mansions are phenomenal! Great photos and thanks for the live review.

[Debde]

Loving this as I just booked for November out of Brooklyn!

 

As many who know me-you know what question i am going to ask......LOL:

What English TV channels are there and how much to rent pay per view movies??

 

Believe it or not-this is the one thing that keeps MSC from being my first choice. Crazy as it sounds.

[luckyinpa]

speaking of PPV. are they free in YC?

 

like debde, i spend time in my cabin sometimes. i know it's weird to be in a room you pay for, but thats me! 

[JamieLogical]

36 minutes ago, Debde said:

Loving this as I just booked for November out of Brooklyn!

 

As many who know me-you know what question i am going to ask......LOL:

What English TV channels are there and how much to rent pay per view movies??

 

Believe it or not-this is the one thing that keeps MSC from being my first choice. Crazy as it sounds.

 

I have literally not turned on my TV yet, but I will try to check for you when I am back in my room. I definitely will not be able to answer any questions about PPV in the YC, as I am just in a Fantastica Balcony.

[DaKahuna]

@JamieLogical Loving your review and the pictures.  Sorry to read about the debacle with the tendering process.  

[rikitikitavii]

2 hours ago, JamieLogical said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pictures loaded a little out of order, but I don't have the time or patience to go through and fix them. Sorry!

Following along, we board Mera on October 4th!

[mtnmom3dogs]

Hi! I’m on this same cruise next week (getting on as you get off). In hindsight,  Is there anything different you would do with the tenders? I have a hop on hop off trolley tour booked ( not through MSC). Is there any way that you know of now to avoid the chaos of the tender tickets and immigration forms that you described?

 

 Thanks!

[JamieLogical]

7 minutes ago, mtnmom3dogs said:

Hi! I’m on this same cruise next week (getting on as you get off). In hindsight,  Is there anything different you would do with the tenders? I have a hop on hop off trolley tour booked ( not through MSC). Is there any way that you know of now to avoid the chaos of the tender tickets and immigration forms that you described?

 

 Thanks!

 

The only thing we could have done differently was avoid the line to turn in our Canada immigration forms, since we had priority tender tickets already. I suppose we also could have gotten an earlier start to the day.

[coscab]

Thanks for all the pics, glad you had time to visit a few mansions, we visited The Breakers and a few other mansions many years ago, we also enjoyed the cliff walk between the mansions and the Atlantic Ocean, not sure it is still open to the public.

 

Question:  Is your cabin next to one with a whirlpool on the balcony, if so is it noisy at night?

 

Looking forward to the rest of your review!

[Debde]

2 hours ago, JamieLogical said:

 

I have literally not turned on my TV yet, but I will try to check for you when I am back in my room. I definitely will not be able to answer any questions about PPV in the YC, as I am just in a Fantastica Balcony.

Thanks. I laugh because no matter where we go, it's the first thing we do. Turn the TV on. LOL

Have a great time!

[Fissues]

Welcome to Boston!

[JamieLogical]

1 hour ago, Debde said:

Thanks. I laugh because no matter where we go, it's the first thing we do. Turn the TV on. LOL

Have a great time!

 

I have a TV at home. There are many many things on a cruise ship that I don't have at home.

[Mark_T]

3 hours ago, JamieLogical said:

 

The only thing we could have done differently was avoid the line to turn in our Canada immigration forms, since we had priority tender tickets already. I suppose we also could have gotten an earlier start to the day.

We had a similar experience on Celebrity Eclipse, there is sometimes no magic solution other than to queue and smile.

 

I would echo the start early comment though, it is sometimes the only way to avoid being those on the last tender off the ship in the morning when it is a short port call.

 

I wonder if the use of local transport was a port condition?

[rxlowry]

How does Splendor Duel compare to Splendor?  

[JamieLogical]

35 minutes ago, rxlowry said:

How does Splendor Duel compare to Splendor?  

 

It's a bit more complex and seems to be a bit more luck-based.

[ms sjsky]

Hi Jamie,

Will be following your report as we'll be taking out first NE/Canadian cruise in a couple weeks!  One question, I've seen people mention on here that they don't check the embarkation times that are assigned on your ticket.  Can you tell me if this is true?  We have an assigned time of 4pm, but our transportation will get us to the ship around 12:30, wondering if we can board the ship then, or should I be looking for something nearby to kill a few hours at.

Thanks and enjoy your cruise!

[JamieLogical]

31 minutes ago, ms sjsky said:

Hi Jamie,

Will be following your report as we'll be taking out first NE/Canadian cruise in a couple weeks!  One question, I've seen people mention on here that they don't check the embarkation times that are assigned on your ticket.  Can you tell me if this is true?  We have an assigned time of 4pm, but our transportation will get us to the ship around 12:30, wondering if we can board the ship then, or should I be looking for something nearby to kill a few hours at.

Thanks and enjoy your cruise!

 

It is definitely true. At least at Brooklyn, no one looked twice at our boarding time.

[JamieLogical]

Yesterday was our port day in Boston. We were scheduled to arrive at 8:00, but when we woke up, we were clearly nowhere near docking yet. I don’t think we could even see land from our balcony. We had a conversation about our plans for the day while enjoying our room service coffee and, after looking into how long a walk it was to the New England Aquarium and the fact that you had to buy timed tickets, we decided we would rather just stay onboard and have a lazy day.

 

As we were getting showered and dressed, there was an announcement that due to the rough seas (they did look *very* rough), the pilot boat was delayed in making it out to the ship. They were hoping for a 9:30 arrival time in Boston.

 

We had already decided on MDR for breakfast and were happy to see it was in Panorama instead of Waves. We headed down and surprisingly got an actual table for two that was not nearly touching another table. It seems they had not planned on so many people doing MDR breakfast. I think the delayed arrival time meant more people felt they had time for a sit-down breakfast. Towards the end of our time there, I heard they had run out of orange juice.

 

The highlight of our breakfast was that we accomplished toast! We both asked for butter and jam with our toast. Our server brought us a dish of butter right away. And then when our toast came out it was actually toasted! The bread itself was also quite fresh and delicious. We never did get our jam, but hey, toast! In addition to my actual toast, I had an omelette with cheddar and bacon and it was also quite good. I liked that it wasn’t huge and the egg to toppings ratio was good. My husband has the express breakfast with scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, and hash browns. Unfortunately, the hash browns were too oniony for him, but he enjoyed the rest.

 

While at breakfast, they announced that due to our delayed arrival, they were changing our all-aboard time from 2:00 to 4:00.

 

After breakfast, our plan was to find a place to get some drinks and play some board games. We tried Edge, but it was mobbed with people still waiting for the ship to dock. We checked the app to see which bars were open and decided to scope out the Bamboo Bar. There are nice dining-height tables and chairs there. They couldn’t do Mimosa Blossoms (I still haven’t even had one on this cruise!), but they were able to do large mimosas in plastic wine glasses, which worked for us.

 

We settled in drinking our mimosas and I finished typing up my blog from our day in Newport while my husband played his Nintendo Switch. My blog took forever to type up and then it took even longer for me to load all those pictures, but I did eventually finish and I had also finished two big mimosas by that point.

 

Oh, also, at some point while we were approaching Boston, we could see a fire at the airport. That was somewhat alarming, but fortunately, I had my trusty free wifi and quickly saw a 6-minute old post on Twitter/X saying that they were doing safety training exercises at the airport and that smoke and fire would be visible. Other passengers did not bother checking the internet or didn’t have wifi and they were all gravely concerned there had been a plane crash or something.

 

My husband set up Splendor Duel while I got us another round of mimosas and a couple of bottles of water. We played a couple of rounds and ultimately ended up having 4 mimosas each. By that point, it was approaching 11:30 and we had decided during breakfast that we were going to do Kaito Sushi for lunch, which opened at 11:30. We headed back to our room to drop off our stuff and then headed to lunch.

 

There were only a couple of other people there so we were fine without a reservation. We both agreed to stick to water with lunch. Service was slow, but the food was really good and I think our total bill was under $25. My husband got some Sake Nigiri and the Tigereye Tempura Roll. I got the Yaki Soba noodle dish. The highlight of the meal for me was when my husband tried to reach across the table and pick up some of my noodles with his chopsticks and then dropped the noodles right in the middle of the table.

 

After lunch we decided to take advantage of the empty hot tubs around the Bamboo Pool. We went back to our room to change into our swimsuits and then went to Deck 16, which has a mezzanine area that overlooks the pool. This area has two hot tubs, both of which were empty. We got into the one that was facing away from the pier (since that just had a view of a big warehouse building). It also didn’t have a great view, mostly just overlooking cranes and cargo containers, but you could see all the planes flying into Logan Airport. My husband had a fun time trying to identify the types of planes as they come in.

 

We stayed in the hot tub for a good long while. At one point, one person did get into the hot tub across the way and we saw someone getting into one of the hot tubs outside! But for the most part, the whole area was pretty dead.

 

After we had soaked long enough in the hot tub, we went back to our room to change and the headed up to the Sky Lounge to spend the afternoon playing board games. We played several more rounds of Splendor Duel and then we tried out our new Happy Little Dinosaurs game. That is a very cute game, but if you play it with two players, make sure you follow the special two-player rules.

 

We had many drinks at the Sky Lounge and spent a little time chatting with a couple nearby. The place really started to get crowded after all aboard and we decided to head down to our room to get changed for Gala Night. Once we were dressed, we went to the Champagne Bar for some pre-dinner French 77s. We had agreed to stick to water during the actual dinner itself.

 

For dinner, I had the French Onion Soup, the Surf & Turf, and the Grandma’s Chocolate cake. My husband tried the Beef Tartar (turns out it’s not his thing), the Lamb, and the Royal Cake. Our dinner conversation was pretty pleasant. We learned a bit more about them. We also learned that it is a thing in Seattle for there to be hot girls in pasties serving coffee at drive-through coffee stands? We all had a good laugh talking about that peculiar trend.

 

After dinner, I went back to the room because my dress was causing me fits. I changed back into my comfy cruise uniform and then we went to see the Captain’s presentation in the plaza. The captain barely spoke at all and most of it was just taken up by introducing the officers.

 

After that, we struggled to find anything to do for the rest of the evening. My husband didn’t want to go see the main theater show. The Meraviglia Lounge was packed. I was reminded of one thing I really dislike about MSC. They have several small acts that perform in various lounges around the ship, but they aren’t listed properly in the Daily. They will only appear in the Daily with the time and location of their first set, but then there is no info on when their additional sets take place. So, if it’s 9:30 and you want to see a particular act, you have to scroll back up to 7:00 or whatever to find out where they are playing and then you don’t know if/when they will be playing there again throughout the evening.

 

We hung out at the Brass Anchor, Infinity Lounge, and Champagne bar briefly, but couldn’t really decide on a place to settle. We eventually gave up and headed back to our room.

 

Day's Drinks:
Mimosa x4 from Bamboo Bar
Americano w/ Bailey's from Sky Lounge
Vodka Ginger ale x2 from Sky Lounge
Bailey's Alexander from Sky Lounge
Vodka Ginger ale from Sky Lounge
French 77 from Champagne Bar
Bailey's Alexander from Brass Anchor
Hugo Spritz from Infinity Lounge