American Review of Splendida 9 Nights Mediterranean

[Reds4life]

We just got off the ship and I wanted to share a brief review while still fresh in my mind. This is mainly from an American first time European traveler perspective and probably just to give folks like myself a decent idea of what to expect. 

 

Embarkation was easy and efficient. Galataport is a nice place and was modern and easy to navigate. We stayed at Union Hotel before and after. Highly recommend. They walked us to the port and the hospitality was impressive.

 

Our rooms were great as were our room attendants. Very clean and well kept. Service was excellent. Cleaned twice per day. Top notch!

 

Food was good and bad. The buffet was one of the best we have been to on a cruise. Pizza is legendary of course. Fruit and salad was always fresh. Good variety of dishes.The carving roasts were very good and they always had good fish. We did however miss some degree of ethnic variety. No Asian food, rarely Indian or Mexican. Burgers were school cafeteria level but adequate if that's your craving. The scrambled eggs in the morning were oddly greasy or buttery. I almost thought they had cheese in them since they had a weird consistency and taste but several of the workers said no cheese. They were terrible but the premade omelets were ok. Waffles and pancakes were school cafeteria style again. Something very very odd for an American was no maple syrup unless you ask and no BBQ sauce. No shrimp or fried fish which was a disappointment. But overall the buffet was outstanding in enough spots to make it excellent overall. Just some weird MSC omissions of items. 

 

Now, the Main Dining Room...it was just not very good. The menus were very limited. Starters were terrible except for a few items like the Frito Misto Seafood. Too much cold cuts and odd salads. They didn't have the typical North American Always Available selection of steak, chicken, Caesar salad (isn't this Italian? 😃) which was a terrible omission. The main entrees were a pasta, rice dish, and fish dish and two odd meat dishes and a vegetarian dish. One time in 9 days they had chicken. And, almost every meat has what we now call "MSC gravy" which is the same brown gravy on everything. We struggled to get the wait staff to bring us ice, bread and butter. We really don't understand why people wouldn't want to drink cold beverages. Regardless, save the trouble of going to the dining room. Just eat the buffet. Lastly, we absolutely missed free lemonade,vitamin water, and some soft serve ice cream. 

 

The shows were some of the best we have seen in about a dozen cruises. Truly excellent singers and enough variety for everyone. They really should bring these folks to America though to be recognized. They sang an amazing performance of "Purple Rain" and "Shallow" and barely got a golf clap. We could probably do without the Turkish Dancers and Broadway night but the rest were spectacular. Great job!

 

Splendida has plenty of pools and deck space, gym is small but nice. Nice amount of kids activities with bowling, 4D theater, race car, water slide. There was hardly any activities during the day though. Maybe hard with different nationalities? But we enjoyed ourselves. 

 

Probably the worst thing was the smoking...everywhere. Balconies, pool deck, casino, and anywhere in between at a given time. One guy was vaping in the theater. That's gross. 

 

Ports were all spectacular and a great itinerary. Overall, a great cruise, just the usual MSC oddities and some things that could be better, namely the Main Dining Room menu which was the worst ever. But a nice trip the Texas Roadhouse on the way home and a great big ICE cold Diet Mountain Dew will fix that lol. This cruise was a once in a lifetime trip for us and we enjoyed it tremendously 😉

[Heartgrove]

Very nice to hear about your cruise on the MSC Splendida. We sailed on her in October 2022. Our cruise was to Sicily and Southern Italy from Genoa. Although we were in YC that cruise, we did try the buffet (yes, the pizza is the best!) as last September we sailed on the MSC Preziosa in September 2023 to Scotland and Ireland. The plan was to see if we would enjoy a cruise enough for ten nights in the Fantastica Experience. It was - so we treated DSIL to sail with us and it was very reasonable to have booked two Fantastica staterooms.

 

Our experience aboard the Preziosa left us with a very positive attitude about cruising MSC in Europe. Our cruise was about 80% +/- German so smoking was never an issue. We had 6:00 pm dining and ate 9 of 10 dinners in the MDR. The one night we ate in the buffet as we wanted to see the sail away from Cobh, Ireland. The dinner selections were always varied so never really experienced the "MSC gravy" like you did. Our tastes favor Mediterranean so enjoyed the fish offerings. I would imagine that the head chef actually decides on the menu offerings depending on the sailing.

 

Ironically we had booked your itinerary for this Fall in conjunction with the Grand Voyage Transatlantic aboard the MSC Divina. We were going to do the last of the season 9-Night cruise from Trieste and then board the Divina in Genoa three days later. But MSC cancelled the Divina sailing which then disrupted our plans for the Spendida sailing.

 

- Jack

[Mommapadraig]

Great review! We were on the on the Seashore out of Florida and found the entertainment to be wonderful. I wonder if they have basically the same shows.We also had a singer perform purple Rain to a standing ovation so I think you are correct about Americans appreciating it much more..

I booked our 2nd trip on MSC today.we loved it.

[Frode]

It’s a pity that you actually not once do mention from, and to, which city/cities you sailed. Obviously it was in the Mediterranean, that’s all you’re saying 🤔

Then I see that you’re mentioning that the embarkation went smoothly in Galataport, a place which I believe not many have heard of…and it for sure do not make the majority of your readers much wiser…

(Myself I know exactly where Galataport is situated - have been there - however, I do not want to visit that city or that country ever again 👎)

[Reds4life]

21 hours ago, Mommapadraig said:

Great review! We were on the on the Seashore out of Florida and found the entertainment to be wonderful. I wonder if they have basically the same shows.We also had a singer perform purple Rain to a standing ovation so I think you are correct about Americans appreciating it much more..

I booked our 2nd trip on MSC today.we loved it.

That Purple Rain rendition was amazing. MSC has some great talent! That has improved since our first cruise in 2017 on Divina

[Reds4life]

40 minutes ago, Frode said:

It’s a pity that you actually not once do mention from, and to, which city/cities you sailed. Obviously it was in the Mediterranean, that’s all you’re saying 🤔

Then I see that you’re mentioning that the embarkation went smoothly in Galataport, a place which I believe not many have heard of…and it for sure do not make the majority of your readers much wiser…

(Myself I know exactly where Galataport is situated - have been there - however, I do not want to visit that city or that country ever again 👎)

Istanbul, Corfu, Bari, Trieste,Olympia, Athens, Kusadasi. We didn't do any MSC excursions so I didn't feel it was relevant