Divina review 4/15 - 4/22

Hello,

I just wanted to return the favor since the forum was so informative for me. Just so you know my wife and I are in our late 30's and we're traveling with our 2 daughters 6 and 3. I've been on multiple cruise lines except Disney so I'm not comparing it to them.Let's get to it.

Embarkation- very simple for us . We arrived around 3:00 and it moved very quickly. Just like everyone said on the boards I really don't know why they don't take your CC while checking in. You have to go to the kiosk on board which was very quick and I think an unnecessary step. However,they took everyone's pic at checkin. This which I believe took more time. Especially trying to get a 3 yr old to stand still after a day of traveling and they wouldn't allow me to hold her for the pic.

Muster station tags for kids.-We got on the boat and the first thing they did was shuffle us to a line and we had to wait like 10 min just to get muster station tags for the kids. At this point you don't sign up for the kids club. They should have just made it a one stop shop.

Pizza - Being born and raised in Brooklyn I must say the pizza is the best at sea. The one in the buffet that is. Just be aware the pizza change during the course of the day. Pineapple, bacon, ham pepperoni and sausage. That's just naming a few.

Burger & Fries - I was surprised here because it being an Italian ship I read the burgers were good. The were good but, the fries are even better. Everyday they had a different type of French fries. Sweet potato fries, curly fries, waffle fries, crinkle cut, and potato wedges. There were other types but I can't remember the names for all of them

Buffet will be up next stay tuned.....

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Follow Fort next cruise May 13 ;-)

Great Start!

Thanks for the review looking forward to it.

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We were on the Divina in Feb 2017. I agree with your views so far!

Looking forward to hearing more!

Anxious to hear more ! Thank you for sharing !

Can you tell me what muster station tags for the kids are? I thought they just had kid sized life vests?

Buffet- Let me give you a background on my eating habits. I'm not a 5 star Michelin guy or do I like to eat at Olive Garden. With that being said buffet was edible but I expected better. The pasta wasn't out of out this world either. For the life of me I couldn't find an omelette station. There might have been one unbeknownst to me. Every night they had a meat and seafood and also a vegetarian option. I must say I'm not a seafood eater but to my taste buds the seafood options were good. My option of good means I can't taste the Brooklyn canal they were pulled from. [emoji3]. They always had rice pilaf and some sort of poultry or fish.

I feel like I was neglecting the other meals. Breakfast was edible also. They had the runny eggs and also pre made omelette. The omelettes were different every day and the last day was omelette with salmon 🤢. I'm not a seafood eater so this made no sense to me. Sorry, I digressed. They had bagels,waffles(pre made), French toast(pre made) and pancakes which you can see the cook making in huge batches. They also made chocolate pancakes. These options are available daily. Please if you love croissants do yourself a favor and have a ton. The pizza oven turns into a pastry oven during breakfast. Dunkin' Donuts has nothing on them.

Kids corner- I think this comes into play for breakfast. It's great that they have this the only problem is that it's all the way at the back of the buffet. Ok, I get it kids scream and make a lot of noise but for good sakes you might as well tie the food to the anchor and make us climb down the chains to get it. Ok I may be exaggerating a little bit on the chains but it's a walk. The issue is once you get food for the kids you now have to walk back to the beginning of the buffet for adult food as I like to call it. The food I spoke about in the last paragraph. The kids option always had hotdogs,eggs,French toast, eggs, potatoes and different cereals. The distance to the kid corner was too far for me to justify after the 2nd day of the cruise. Especially by 12:00 when it would let me know great work, you reached 6000 steps.

Buffet Etiquette- There's a huge problem with the buffet. A moron designed. I'm no interior designer but all it would have taken is to watch hgtv or something. On the forums many people said oh the different cultures are rude. It truly isn't that it's just the buffet is setup functionally when there's a lot of people. So your probably like what is he talking about.?There's no simple sign that says line starts here. Since MSC gives huge oval plates at the buffet that means people can keep piling on while they move through the different stations. I was in line once and a women on a motorized scooter screamed people are so f@c!ing rude on this ship. Well..... she was actually the one at fault because she came from the opposite direction not where you take your plates and utensils. A simple line starts here would change the entire buffet experience.

Staff Etiquette - MSC wait staff can do better. They weren't horrible. They just didn't go that extra mile that would make you want to go to the reception desk and increase the gratuity amount you were giving them. This goes for all the staff. I will focus on buffet staff. On other cruise lines if I was holding 2 cups they would offer to hold it for me and bring it to the table. I'm holding 4 coffee mugs of water at the staff are like excuse me sir I have to pass. They didn't refill the just stations timely and get this. In the steerage, (hope I spelled it right )kids corner they didn't have enough staff to clean up the table. Out of all the sections this one should have the most staff. It was also a game of cat and mouse to find out which machine had OJ that wasn't watered down(out of mix).

Please excuse my typo's. On my iPad on JetBlue trying to do it while it's fresh. Still more to come and just so everyone's knows I did put a deposit down on a future cruise while on board. You have to get through the bad to appreciate the good.

Next up restaurant!!

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Anxious to hear more ! Thank you for sharing !

 

Can you tell me what muster station tags for the kids are? I thought they just had kid sized life vests?

They have to get tags that have their name and cabin number and muster station which I wasn't in love. Stop it, you getting ahead of me. Kids club is like 3 post away [emoji51]

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Did you attend the official Meet & Mingle? Did you sign-up for it and did they send an invitation to your stateroom?

Thanks

Did you attend the official Meet & Mingle? Did you sign-up for it and did they send an invitation to your stateroom?

 

Thanks

I did go to the meet and greet and the invitation did come to the stateroom. Unfortunately I arrived late because there was a family activity with the kids club that conflicted with the meet and greet.

Restaurant - I want to preface by saying I never made it to lunch but the menu did look good. It didn't change and the time was from 12-1:30. We skipped dinner in the restaurant the first and then went the last night. Both of the nights we went the food wasn't our cup of tea. I was expecting to be overwhelmed with different pasta choices. Unfortunately that wasn't the case. The kids menu is sub par. Meaning they make pizza with ham? Really? Out of all the toppings you can choose to give kids you choose ham? My kids only wanted the french fries. What I will say is that the food at our table came quickly and when we got our appetizers the girls were getting their meals. I will say that MSC did take into consideration children under the age of 1 who don't have teeth. My very first cruise with my daughter she was almost 1 on carnival was horrible. She lived on horizon organic milk for kids. Everytime on carnival I asked for something puree they would tell me the closes thing they had was mac and cheese. Kudos to MSC for thinking about kids or even Elderly cruisers with no teeth At my table I didn't suffer from the water demon. My waiters kept on filling it up but, I did hear other people on the boat complaining about the asking for water multiple times.

Everyday menu - Okay call me snobbish if you want but on other cruise lines (CCL, NCL, RCCL and Princess) I have been on there's always been an everyday menu. I have no idea why MSC doesn't have any. What they do have is a priced menu for shrimp and steak and other things that I chose to ignore but not an everyday menu. That being said we had early seating and just a word of advice. The earlier you get there for dinner the quicker you will be served. Now the bottleneck for me came when it was time for dessert. It just took for ever and dragged on and the 2 nights we said we were going to skip we didn't because we felt bad for the kids. They didn't enjoy their dinner so we kind of threw them a bone but it cost us time.

Breakfast - I think this was the best meal out of the entire cruise. Please do yourself a favor and try to make it to the dinning room for breakfast. Service is great, the staff seem like they're rested and tend to smile more and they're responsive to your needs. Food came quickly even though they only got it right only half of the time. They fixed the error quick enough that they rest of your breakfast was still ok. For example forgetting a hash brown or the toast. What I did notice though is that they don't stray to much from the menu. For example can you make an omelette with ham, bacon and sausage. Sorry, we can put the sausage on the side. Really? Its the same kitchen dude. Just reach over and throw it in there. Its not that hard.

Next - Kid's club. Prior to my cruise I didn't find out too much detail about the kids club. I hope to fill in the gaps for some of you that have concerns and questions. Just a quick preview. I'm not impressed with it but it did bring me back to the yester year of kids club. When cruising was different. Stay tuned

That is strange re no everyday menu choice as this was available when we were on the Divina in January. There was a section on the menu with these options

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Bagbklyn, we thank you for your review. Agree or disagree, this makes these boards better.

Thank you.

Wow, my review of the dining room would have been different. They didn't have those options at all. My daughter loved the lasagne and wanted it every night. Unfortunately the classic favorites wasn't on our cruise and the dinner menus were on paper that were in a dinner sleeve if that makes sense. Not sure if the menu switched in conjuction with the fantastica package. Just a thought

That is strange re no everyday menu choice as this was available when we were on the Divina in January. There was a section on the menu with these options

 

 

 

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That is strange re no everyday menu choice as this was available when we were on the Divina in January. There was a section on the menu with these options

 

 

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And it was still there every night on our cruise departing on April 1, 2017. I guess the term "Classic Favorites" is a term that confuses people.

Kids Club - Doremi - I have to start off by saying the few reviews I read were contradicting each other. From my kids loved it, to my child wanted no part of it. So I went in there with an open mind. The 1st strike as some remember was no signing up all the kids at the muster station bracelet station. The reason is because the same staff that put the bracelet on are the same staff for the kids club. So, 8:00pm embarkation day putting the girls down after a long day of traveling and glancing through the Daily program(Yeah I know very original. That's what its called) and I see kids club registration 2-5 and 8-11. Don't quote me on the times but I think that is when they were. When I went up to the kids club you had to sign a waiver for the kids. The sign up process was pretty simple so I had my hopes up.They wanted to know who would be allowed to pick up and drop off the kids on the waiver.

The next day the kids wanted to go to to the kids club. I made sure to take my room keycard to sign them in. The next day was Bahamas so we stayed on the boat. I went to to sign them and felt really good because I Was being a good eagle scout. I did the registration last night and I have my keycard ready. I went to drop them off and they said you have to sign the sheets over here. It kind of took my back. I was like OK this is just a backup plan. While looking at the sheet I saw time in and time out. I was like oh, I guess this is the process we are using. I slipped my card back in my pocket while flipping it around like a credit card. You know Mr.Suave. They were like oh bye Daddy. I said take care and then I was like, "ah hah" the wife isn't going to catch me out there for being a dope. I asked them about a phone. They looked at me like I had 3 heads and said oh. If you want one of those you can go to the reception desk and pay to get one. I said oh, you guys don't give one and they said nope. :(

Sidebar - I don't know if they weren't ready for the influx of all the kids because it was easter week but the sign in and sign out process was horrible. They never checked for ID's. My daughter just asked me what I was typing and said make sure you tell them it took so long to sign in and out. I'm waiting for MSC to send me to surveys. I don't want to complain, I want to make them better and give some constructive criticism because a lot of it is easily fixable.

Here's the pick up process. Come in and find you childs name on the sheet that you signed in 2 hours ago and remember the time because it can be 2 or 3 pages back. At the same time tell them you child's name and they scream for them. Now if you have a smart @$$ daughter like mine the 6 y/o going on 30 she ignores the call because she's enjoying the activity she's doing. The 3 y/o quickly ran out and we are look from the outside for the 6 y/o in the sea of kids. After 2 workers are calling for and she finally finishes her activity she finally stands up. Turns out she was 10 feet in front of us and we couldn't see her. So as you can see in my signature I have been on CCL, RCL, NCL and Princess. I have only used CCL kids club and plan to use RCCL in august. I can only gauge the CCL kids club but CCL does it right. I used it before the upgraded to camp ocean I believe..... For some that don't know you use your key card to check the kids in and out. This serves 2 purposes. 1st it make sure you are allowed to pick up the child and secondly it makes for a quick sign in/out process. Also, while the kids are at the camp they must where name tags. This makes such a huge difference because kids can learn each others names and staff can learn their names.

I have to break the kids club post into different post. It's a lot

And it was still there every night on our cruise departing on April 1, 2017. I guess the term "Classic Favorites" is a term that confuses people.

I thought I was crazy. I hsd to ask my wife. They had it other languages but no color. I hope I'm wrong but it looks like the dinner menu has changed. I met another family who had the same issue and had to call the maitre'd over and the end result was the maitre'd told the passenger we will make whatever you want. There was no color ink on the dinner menu. Breakfast and lunch had the color menus.

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Oops ! Sorry for jumping ahead of your review . I am really appreciating the kids club information . More please !

Just off this cruise, and Classic Favorites available at least 5/7 nights. I know because my mom ordered the Ceasar Salad each time we ate in the MDR.

Just off this cruise, and Classic Favorites available at least 5/7 nights. I know because my mom ordered the Ceasar Salad each time we ate in the MDR.

Ok, maybe your on to something. The 2 nights that we ate dinner in the dining room were the 2 formal nights. Maybe on those nights they didn't offer the classic favorites. I stand corrected if this is the case. I guess the 2 nights I went I happened to be unlucky.

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Everyday there's family activities. It's one of those things you can skip but you will feel bad once you pick them up and they ask where were you? All the other kids parents were there. While these activities sound great, getting the family involved for so many activities was a lot. Sometimes 4-5 times a day. In between you the camp would either be closed for lunch or dinner. You can sign up to have them go to dinner from the dining room or to have dinner with the camp. Dinner was in the buffet for the kids. My kids never went so I can't comment on it. My 6 y/o said that most of the activities was dancing , face painting and drawing. The 3-6 and 7-11 share the same room but are just sectioned off. They did most of the activities together and only separated for certain activities.

Everyday my kids can back from the kids club with some face paint on their face. The family activities were good in the theory but didn't really make sense. It could have been that there were too many kids but it was just too much for them to handle. They had tons, tons and tons of lego's, arts and crafts and and white t-shirts. Kids decorated this through out the week.

My daughter is very observant and said when the kids acted up at camp everyone was hushed or everyone had to be quiet. My daughter said a lot of kids were put into timeouts. Personally I didn't agree with this. I've seen it myself on Carnival were kids aren't listening and when the parent comes to pick up the child the counselor would speak to the parents and let them know if this behavior continues the child can't come back. It seems like there was no truly authoritative person in charge. While the kids club wasn't a zoo it could have been better. The daily planner says it is subject to change as they give it out on the first day of the cruise. I think this is a problem in itself. The daily planner doesn't make reference to the kids club. If you lose that sheet you can have to go back to the kids club to get the planner for the week. one cruiser was like the best thing to do is to take a picture of it with your phone so you always have it. This worked wonders when they stuck to it. Normally my daughter was the one updating us with the changes. Something as simple as a dry board outside the kids club to let you know the activities for the day. They have a family water balloon fight and didn't have enough balloons. They have a make your bunny family arts and craft and didn't have enough crayons. After one event that finished at 3:30 my daughter wanted to go to the kids club. The staff said oh it doesn't make sense since camp closes at 4:30 and you will have to come at 4:15 anyway. Luckily that was the last day of the cruise and I made that her last event with the kids club.

My daughters didn't have a bad time at the kids club. They just didn't have a great time. We wanted to get rid of them and they were indifferent to it. I think if the staff can just a little more open and understanding that family activities while great doesn't allow your child to acclimate to the kids club if you're forced to see them every 2 hours. Its like dropping your kids off to nursery school and coming in every 2 hours to give them a hug. The 3 y/o is like I want to go with Mommy and Daddy and the 6 y/o is like what are you guys doing? Can we go to the slide, 4-D or bowling. Stay in camp kid and leave us alone. She goes fine I will stay in camp if you get me virgin pina colada. Mind you at Carnival it was like can please act like you have a family and spend time with us.

The part I liked about the MSC kids club is that the kids got paraded around the ship and weren't locked up in the club all day. The talent show was cute but due to miscommunication you have to go a little earlier than the time its says for the practice so you can be considered as a spot on the talent show. Again, the talent show reminded my of cruising in the past. Having video of all the kids on the pool deck or the stage singing is priceless. Especially when they get older to blackmail them ;p. Now how can I complain about a service that is being offered for free. Easy, they have the capability of doing better and can easily fix it. Send the director of the kids club onto other cruise lines and just be a spy and find out how the other lines do it. I have the daily activities for the kids club for the week we sailed. This forum makes it so difficult to upload photos. I will try shortly.

Update: I was able to do it. Everything that is in bold is a family event. What isn't on the kids club planner is the time the club is closed. You learn that the hard way when dropping them off and make your plans and find out they're closed for like 2 hours and also for dinner if you didn't make reservations. Don't get me wrong they're entitled to close but at least communicate at the beginning of the day or on theplanner.

Next up the ship!!!!

Enjoying your review

Okay . . . Loved the kids club review. It was worth the wait ! Thank you for sharing the copy of the program . It seems to be very Easter specific , but one question please. . . Can you tell me anything about the Unicef parts ? Is this some part of the worldwide charitable organization ?

TIA

Restaurant - I want to preface by saying I never made it to lunch but the menu did look good. It didn't change and the time was from 12-1:30. We skipped dinner in the restaurant the first and then went the last night. Both of the nights we went the food wasn't our cup of tea. I was expecting to be overwhelmed with different pasta choices. Unfortunately that wasn't the case. The kids menu is sub par. Meaning they make pizza with ham? Really? Out of all the toppings you can choose to give kids you choose ham? My kids only wanted the french fries. What I will say is that the food at our table came quickly and when we got our appetizers the girls were getting their meals. I will say that MSC did take into consideration children under the age of 1 who don't have teeth. My very first cruise with my daughter she was almost 1 on carnival was horrible. She lived on horizon organic milk for kids. Everytime on carnival I asked for something puree they would tell me the closes thing they had was mac and cheese. Kudos to MSC for thinking about kids or even Elderly cruisers with no teeth At my table I didn't suffer from the water demon. My waiters kept on filling it up but, I did hear other people on the boat complaining about the asking for water multiple times.

Everyday menu - Okay call me snobbish if you want but on other cruise lines (CCL, NCL, RCCL and Princess) I have been on there's always been an everyday menu. I have no idea why MSC doesn't have any. What they do have is a priced menu for shrimp and steak and other things that I chose to ignore but not an everyday menu. That being said we had early seating and just a word of advice. The earlier you get there for dinner the quicker you will be served. Now the bottleneck for me came when it was time for dessert. It just took for ever and dragged on and the 2 nights we said we were going to skip we didn't because we felt bad for the kids. They didn't enjoy their dinner so we kind of threw them a bone but it cost us time.

Breakfast - I think this was the best meal out of the entire cruise. Please do yourself a favor and try to make it to the dinning room for breakfast. Service is great, the staff seem like they're rested and tend to smile more and they're responsive to your needs. Food came quickly even though they only got it right only half of the time. They fixed the error quick enough that they rest of your breakfast was still ok. For example forgetting a hash brown or the toast. What I did notice though is that they don't stray to much from the menu. For example can you make an omelette with ham, bacon and sausage. Sorry, we can put the sausage on the side. Really? Its the same kitchen dude. Just reach over and throw it in there. Its not that hard.

 

Next - Kid's club. Prior to my cruise I didn't find out too much detail about the kids club. I hope to fill in the gaps for some of you that have concerns and questions. Just a quick preview. I'm not impressed with it but it did bring me back to the yester year of kids club. When cruising was different. Stay tuned

I dont know whats wrong with ham on Pizza and they do have every day choice in menu.:confused: