Markanddonna

I called Celebrity. It appears we all have to change our passwords. Egads...is Celebrity becoming MSC?

Sometimes, if there is a group of Bible Study participants onboard meeting on sea days, they are asked to do a Sunday service. We have held services jointly with a priest. I agree HAL is your best bet in Alaska. I haven't seen a mass on any other cruise line in recent years.

I emailed the company asking if this person was employed there. She has an email address for the company but is not currently on the list of employees they post (about 25 people.) I want to give them a chance to respond first.

Yesterday, a luxury travel company in Great Britain contacted me to ask if I would be a tour guide for a group of 35-40 people who wanted to tour Portland, England. I'm sitting here in a midwestern state in the USA, wondering how I became an expert after being there just once. I then saw that she found my email on my website, which contains a lot of information for many sites I have visited, including Portland, Dorset, etc. The entries I made were meant to be helpful to those on my specific sailing but could have been appropriate, although dated for anyone wanting info. I always thought travel companies knew their resources quite well before contracting them. This email reminds me to do a deep dive into the reviews. It also explains some of the inferior guides I have had on private tours (that means YOU, Elizaer, who didn't know the basics of some sites in Israel in 2022.) Perhaps the pandemic's effect on the travel industry continues. Anyone on a cruise that stops in Portland in August may get to meet me. Supposedly, she wants to contract me for a group of 35-40. My evil twin thinks I should tell this travel company I am available. Hey, a free trip to England?

Another observation. I've been on 30 cruises and generally found every crew to be top notch, efficient and polite. Two out of our three past MSC cruises had some really significant crew problems. The worst MDR server we have ever had, and on one ship that was way understaffed, we saw the crew looked weary and sad. One in the buffet even told his stories of MSC woes to us. He said that they now had three times the responsibilities. That MDR server kept blaming the slow kitchen, but it was her curt, surly tone that was bothersome. Someone should have told her that saying "yeah, yeah" in a sour tone after every request is viewed as impolite. Calling women who were of any motherly age "Mama" and anyone younger "baby" is not cool.Unreal.

Unless you are able to pay for the Yacht club, ignore the comments about that category. I find MSC pretty close to NCL and RCL. The food is somewhat disappointing, but like others have said, you can always find something appealing. Really, I make much better Italian food! On our last MSC cruise last month, I'd say the theatre entertainment was perhaps the second-best of all our cruises. The lounge entertainment was mediocre. Every sailing is different. For example, we traveled about 5 years ago in Europe out of Rome and there were announcements in EIGHT language (1/3 of the passengers were mainland China.) That got irritating really fast. Last month, the announcements were ONLY in English out of PC.

Right before the pandemic, we sailed on the Grandiosa's maiden voyage. One third of the passengers were from mainland China so they added Mandarin and Cantonese to the six languages for announcements, making eight. As far as new people coming onboard at several ports, the ship always had a group of new people looking quite lost. It was probably the least friendly group of passengers (except for the south American crowd from Miami) we had ever traveled with.

MSC certainly has some holes in their practices and products. I found the customer service experience to be very good on all. I always approach the desk with a smile and treat them respectfully and their demeanor has always been pleasant and helpful. However, their food is another story. Their pasta is incredibly dry with little sauce. I witnessed a young woman at another table showing her server how the pasta could be picked up by her fork in one clump. That's how dry it was. I asked our server (the worst one we ever had on a cruise taken this past month) if we could have a small bowl of sauce to repair our dry pasta and she never brought it. It was a very inexpensive cruise, so I keep that in mind. I got what I paid for.

All MSC customer service reps have a sign above their desks telling them to say "The website has a little glitch. The tech support in Geneva reports the website will be normal by Monday" This is, of course, my supposition based on numerous calls.

The ports do seem to make a difference. Leaving out of Fort Lauderdale has been a good experience with a friendly vibe. The absolutely worst was out of Miami on a 10-day Panama sailing with a very large number of Central and Southern Americans. They, as someone else noted, tended to be on the wealthy side and treated the crew and other passengers terribly. This was the only time I saw a fight on the cruise, with tempers flaring on sea days (sense of entitlement). We avoid Miami now. We found Galveston to be a very friendly crowd and were embraced by the Texans. They were a hoot. Of course, sailings on MSC in Europe tend to have many Europeans. The atmosphere there is a bit chilly. I had a back-to-back MSC:NCL in the Med, and the passengers were like night and day.

Have you considered using Logan Air? We are doing the reverse and the fare is very reasonable and a lot less time.

It depends on where I am going. The Caribbean—No. I think my children and grandchildren have received their fill of gifts from various places in Europe. Now, I tend to buy things only if it is a really exotic or very new place for us—like Israel or Australia. I might buy items that reflect our family's heritage and maybe a non-breakable Christmas ornament.

If the conditions are okay for docking, they will. Perhaps part of the day can be salvaged.

Just check in on their website and get the paper document. It seems that photo is such a problematic issue on the app. I wasn't allowed to skip it, so I just used the old fashioned paper docs.

It depends on the demographic onboard. Good dance bands learn which genre gets people dancing. Poor ones have their own sets and don't do very much. The officers are roaming around to check out the interest and the number of people in venues. Maybe the band wants another contract, may they don't care. On our last cruise (not Celebrity) the venue that was supposed to be for dancing took a break every 10-15 minutes! We saw NO one dancing for the entire cruise (except for us on the third level in an out-of-the-way place.) On our last Celebrity cruise in January, it was rock and roll, twist, and slow dances. Very little Latin.