What can u tell me about Melody ?

Well we booked a med cruise on "Melody" for July instead of "Splendour" i think splendour is a better ship but the ports on melody are better so we booked. we are 2 couples(age 29), anyone went on melody recently ?

Hi,

I will be going on the western med. cruise next week (June 20-27) I will be happy let you know how it was when I get back! Take care!

~Christina~

We sailed the Melody 2/26/02. I'm going to copy and paste my review here for you but things do change onboard ships with time so keep that in mind. I would imagine it still is being run in a european style.

We have just returned from our 11 day cruise on MSC Melody.

We booked this cruise 36 days prior to sailing using SkyAuction.com. We recieved excellent service from them as well as a great price and a nice upgrade. We bid on the lowest category and ended up with a middle category outside stateroom, a nice surprise. Doc's were delivered in plenty of time (at least 2 weeks before sailing).

Embarkation was a breeze. We drove from our home on Floridas west coast to my family's home in Miami, parked the car there and my brother drove us to the Port Everglades Pier. From the time we were dropped off until we were on the ship could not have been more than 5 minutes. A white gloved attendant took our carry-ons and escorted us to our room.

Our cabin B-26, was an outside on Bahamas deck. It had a double bed, and a pull down single which we didn't use, a dresser and 2 comfy chairs. The closet was large and very deep for extra storage and had drawers as well. Hangers were provided although we did bring some of our own. The bathroom was larger than most found on new ships featuring a full size tub, and a large sink area. There was about a 2 ft. shelf that ran the entire width of the room under the porthole that could be covered with a curtain providing extra storage space. All four suitcases fit under the bed with no problem. We left a note for the steward to bring 2 additional pillows and went to explore the ship.

The ship is small by todays standards, 36,500 Tons, 538 cabins, eight decks and a capacity of 1,076. It has two pools, one covered indoor and one outdoor, as well as a childrens pool. There are two lounges, 4 bars, a casino, disco, gym, salon and spa. There is a buffet on pool deck as well as the restaurant.

The itinerary for this cruise started with two days at sea followed by St. Thomas, Antigua, Grenada, St. Lucia, Guadeloupe, Tortola, At sea, Nassau and back to Ft. Lauderdale. We sailed out of Port Everglades around 8p.m. under coast guard escort, by the residents of the waterfront condos blowing horns, and flashing lights, what a great send-off.

The ship is stabilized for a smoother ride thank goodness, but it can really rock and roll because of its smaller size. Many passengers were caught unaware on the first evening and some were even sick. We knew what to expect having sailed this ship many years ago when it was the Big Red Boat "Atlantic", and took bonine before sailing and on the following two sea days. We never had a problem and never used bonine again for the remainder of the cruise.

The buffet food is pretty typical found on most ships. I'm not really a buffet lover and use restaurants at every opportunity. The food we tried at the buffet was tasty, but I really don't like cafeteria style dining. The food in the restaurant was better by far in my opinion, much more relaxing and was served well.

Service is where this ship excelled. From the moment be boarded until we left we were treated extremely well. There was an exception with our waitstaff in the dining room, but that was corrected by a discrete table change of our entire table (6 passengers, 3 couples traveling separately) to another table and waiter by an extremely apologetic Matre-D. I don't think the original waitstaff we had were going to be kept onboard after our sailing as all but one table of passengers they were serving ended up being moved. Our new waitstaff were wonderful and we were treated like royalty for the remainder of the cruise. The english speaking social hostess, Ingrid, joined us for dinner one evening and was a joy to speak with. She really loves her job and it shows. Our room steward did his job well and timed his duties around our schedule. When we saw him in the hall he was always quick with a smile and a friendly "hello". This was repeated by all service staff we encountered on the ship. One bar waitress, Svlitiana who primarly worked the blue riband bar was really sweet and took special intrest and was handsomly rewarded at gratuity time. The staff at the pursers office were always kind and helpful as well, and the officers and cruise staff treated all passengers with the greatest respect and were very informative on our bridge tour.

The passenger mix on this cruise was very interesting, about one third american, with the rest being italian, french, spanish, dutch, and german. Announcements obviously had to be made in all languages which were time consuming but kept to a minimum, in my opinion.

The entertainment because of the language barriers were of the type that required no dialouge. A ballet company put on some nice shows. There was a magic show, a concert violinist who was extermely talented as well as some other talented musicians. This was not your typical vegas type of entertainment usually seen on a ship but that would not have worked on this ship with such an ecletic group of passengers. The cruise staff even put on a variety show poolside one evening complete with samoan staff that preformed Samoan war dances and fire dances. Interesting how fire didn't seem to be an issue with MSC as it is with other mass market cruise lines. They even lit up their baked alaskas. Perhaps they felt alot safer knowing that many of their passenges were firefighters, paramedics, and police officers that were given great deals on this cruise in thanks for their 9/11 involvement. These guys and girls were alot of fun to party with and we had a great time with them.

Debarkation was not as swift as I thought it could have been. But staff were agreeable to us leaving before our color was called when I told them we had our ride outside waiting.

I know this review must seem as long as reading War and Peace but as this ship has not been reviewed before I felt it deserved this attention. I know I didn't go into any detail on the ports and if you have any questions about them I'll be glad to answer e-mail, but feel that information was more abundant than that i've provided about MSC and the Melody, so that is where I've concentrated this review. All in all we had a great time.

My family I have just returned from a cruise aboard the MS melody in the Western Mediterranean. We had a very nice time. It was our first real cruise and we thoroughly enjoyed it. The boat itself was pretty basic, but the crew was Great!!! Our cabin stewardess was Victoria, and she was soooo nice. The first night we were on the ship we had rough seas, and we thought for sure the cruise was over for us, luckily it calmed after that. When Victoria found out that we were sick and she literally ran up to the guest services area to get us some medicine, when my hair drier wouldn’t fit into the socket, she gave me one of hers to use for the week, and she was always very prompt about cleaning our room. Our waiters were great too! They spoke English really well, and they were always very pleasant. There wasn’t much choice of activities on the boat, but we were never bored, since every day there was a port to visit, and by the time we got back on the ship and got ready for dinner ate dinner and then there would be a baby disco for my daughter who is 4 (and by the way LOVED the kids club!!! They were great with her!) then after that we would watch the show they had in the Club Universe which changed every night (but mainly featured the Spanish ballet, doing various themes dancing, and some magic acts). Most nights we went to bed early in order to be awake for the early port calls.

Speaking of port calls, we only went on the ship excursions in Tunisia and Palma De Mallorca.

In Naples, we did a double-decker bus ride which was very nice and cost about $18 per person (for 2 bus routes) and kids under 6 were free, that was a really nice ride.

Then in Pallermo, we walked around a bit and then took a horse drawn carriage ride. There were tons of taxi and carriage drivers hounding us for business, so we haggled a bit to get someone down to $40 for a one-hour drive but they lowest they would go to was $50 so we said we would come back later maybe… which we did, but since there wasn’t anything really great to see there we just asked to go on a 30 minute ride for 25 Euros.

In Tunisia we did the shopping excursion and that was CRAZY, we only got about an hour in the Medina and an hour in Sidi Bou Said, and everyone wanted you to come into their shop, sometimes physically restraining you. Just a word of advice, if you ever use your credit card and they want to charge it in the local currency, make sure you know the exchange rate!! One place I wanted to by a mirror 30 EURO, and it would have been a Great buy if I had a few more Euro left on me (originally asked for 160 Euro) but when the guy wanted to charge my credit card he wanted like $180 Dinar…. I told him forget it because I knew that the exchange rate would have been like $45 Dinar, apparently he thought I was some stupid tourist he could rip-off. (I really wanted that mirror too!!! Why did my husband let me buy so much before that?!?!) Oh well!!!

So the next day was Palma de Mallorca, and we had a excursion planned for the night, but we really wanted to make it to the beach. So we did a double decker bus ride, which was pretty nice, but there weren’t too many remarkable things to see in Palma, but it was only like $13 per person and kids under 4 were free… so my daughter was 3 for that day. Then we got back off at the port and took a taxi to Cala Mayor, one of the closer beaches it was like 8 Euro there and like 5 euro back. The beach was pretty nice, the water was a good temperature, and a very nice color turquiose, and there was a little snack bar/café, lifeguards, outdoor showers and bathrooms there. We only had about an hour of free time there so then we had to get back to the ship and get ready for the Palma by Night excurison, which I HIGHLY recommend to everyone! It was a great show with good food, all you can drink white and red wine, and orange soda, and bottled water. The dancers were incredible, the lighting was fantastic, a combination of regular stage lighting and a lazer show, mind boggleing acrobatics and magic performances, the musical acts were also pretty good, including a set by The Drifters. There is definitely something for everyone at this show.

In Barcelona, we were supposed to meet up with a friend of mine, but unfortunately she couldn’t make it, so we did another double-decker bus ride, getting off at La Rambla, where we enjoyed eatting some KFC (since we don’t have that by us in Germany) and my daughter loved tipping all of the street performers and getting her picture taken with them. After walking up and down the main street, we went to the plaza at the one end and she and my husband fed the pigeons (they have bird food for sale as the little stand there) and that was a hoot! I myself have like a bird-phobia, so I just took pictures.

In Marseilles you have to buy tickets from the ship for a shuttle to the old port area (5 Euro per person r/t) then there we had the option of taking this little train (like 8 euro for aduls and 6 for kids- which only has a small area) or a double decker (16 Euro – kids under 4 free) which you can get on and off of and goes to a lot more places. (Of course there are also city buses and taxis.) We chose the double-decker, because we wanted to go to the beach. So, we did like ½ the trip and got off at this man-made beach complex area, the beach (David) wasn’t for me, it wasn’t a typical sand beach – it was made of small pebbles that were killer on the feet and the water was too chilly to really swim in. Then after laying on the beach for about an hour, we waited another hour for the next bus, because we didn’t realize they didn’t come every 20 mintes like all of the other tours had… oh well.

Genoa – visually speaking, looks like a ghetto, and we didn’t really do anything there since that was our disembarkation port and driving there was insane!!! The ship offered excursions if that was just one of your ports of call, not your final destination.

Other tips…. If you want to spend a week in Palma de Mallorca, the ship will let you get off for a week… but of course you would have to check with the cruise line to see if they have another ship coming back in a week to pick you up and make hotel reservations and stuff like that on your own. We wish we would have known this but our travel agent never mentioned it to us and by the time we found out it was too late!

We highly recommend this trip to anyone who is not very picky and needs everything to be “Americanized”, because the food and the ship are not the main attractions of this vessle… the ports of call are. And there were very few Americans on this particular cruise, so things are more customized to Europeans.

Take care and happy voyage!

Hi, Heartsome1,

Posted some questions on your review.

Cause im too nervous for my first cruise... 14 days to go....

HI

I replied to all of your questions on my review page! Take care! Hope you have a really great cruise!!!

~Christina~