Matsurida

Thanks muchly for that verification. I feared as much 😁

We're on the Seaview (W. Med) in July. Already have an Easy BP included. I can't find a definitive answer to this question anywhere and am hoping someone can jump in: is alcohol-free beer included in the Easy package? I'm suspecting it's not, since only normal Heineken is listed under the "draft beers" that are said to be included. Heineken zero seems to be bottled. Am I right? Many thanks in advance for the input.

Thanks for the info, Bob. Just wanted a vague idea of what time we had to spend in Barcelona before boarding. It's a balancing act between seeing a bit of the city and my kids chomping at the bit to get on the ship. I'll aim for early afternoon then and (hopefully) keep everybody happy.

Thanks a lot for that, Tenpin. You're a real encyclopaedia, cruisically speaking!

Would anyone have an idea of what time we're likely to be able to board the Smeralda in Barcelona (I'm assuming they're using Terminal E, right?). More importantly, what time are we likely to be able to disembark at the earliest (carrying own luggage)? TIA for any info.

Would anybody have an idea of how much the Costa airport transfer in Barcelona costs (so I can compare to taxi prices)?

Thx

Thanks for that, Janet & Carl! 

We're a group of four (2 adults, two kids) travelling on the Smeralda next year in two cabins. If one of us buys the photo package, would photos of all four of us be included or only the two in the cabin that bought the package? I've never bought any photos on board before so I don't know how it works. Any info would be appreciated. TIA

:D" American cruisers expect everything to be in English and to cater heavily to American tastes and way of doing things. Several fellow cruisers would even act insulted and make disparaging comments about a cruise line sailing from a US port that would do things in multiple languages and not just English, even if it’s a European cruise line heavily catering to an international clientele."

Haha, tell me about it. I passed one old British couple on the last cruise complaining to customer services about the number of "foreigners" on board!

Just to add a little in reaction to the last post:

That's right– for lunch on port days the kids are taken with the Kids' Club to a specially designated area of the buffet. But that didn't suit our kids at all because they are adventurous eaters and they weren't allowed to stray from the kids's area of the buffet, which offered only the standard kiddy fare of fries, fish fingers, mashed potato, mini pizza, burger, etc... day in, day out.

It's not that our kids HATED the MSC Kids' Club: they just didn't find it particularly appealing. There were some stand out events such as cooking class or t-shirt making but, as I said, I think our older daughter was just to mature for a lot of the activities: there were regular parades round the ship with the kids all chanting, photo shoots with Doremi, family discos with "baby music" as she called it and a lot of games were the two groups were clubbed together so that she was up against 4 year olds. The whole thing may well appeal more to younger kids. Talking to other parents, there have been issues in the past with language barriers, and even on our recent cruise which was heavily marketed to a British clientele, the vast majority of kids in the clubs were non-English speaking. Our kids are multilingual so it has never been an issue but I have spoken to other parents who say their kids don't want to go in there because "nobody speaks English" which ends up exacerbating the problem!

Hi. I meant that MSC was more geared towards Southern Mediterranean families. That said, we've just gotten off the MSC Magnifica after a two week cruise, one which was sold as catering more for the British as it was sailing from Southampton, and the timetable in the Kids' Club was different to what we experienced last year. This time there were no late dinners, for example. I can say that the staff were all lovely but our two kids still weren't thrilled about going there. There were some pretty cool activities but those were few and far between and a lot of the time kids are expected to do their own thing, colour in, watch TV, etc. I have a vague memory of NCL's kids' club being altogether more active, with a lot of sport, rather than being designed just to keep the kids vaguely amused and out of their parents' hair. And everything was much too childish for our 10 year old who was at the upper limit of the pirates group (age 7-11), which was definitely still geared towards the seven year olds and was often clumped together with the younger 3-6 group anyway.

Our kids preferred NCL's Kids' Club by a mile. They just found the activities more interesting. From a parent's point of view, I also found NCL better organised. Drop-off/pick-up was always chaotic on MSC. Several times we found the Kids' Club locked up with no indication of where they might be or what time they would be expected back. Our biggest bugbear on NCL was that it's more geared towards southern Mediterranean families: they have a set dinner-time at something like 8pm (which is normal for Italian/Spanish families but very late for our kids) so if you have the early dinner seating or prefer to eat earlier as a family, the kids have no evening activities aside from going to dinner again with the Kids' Club. This meant that our kids were very reluctant to join KC in the evenings at all. "Family disco" sounded promising but ended up being 15 minutes of pre-schoolers jumping around to Barney-like songs. Nothing for slightly older "cool" kids at all.

Woo hoo! Thanks so much. Have been waiting with bated breath ;) Thanks, too, for the well-written, informative trip report. Really enjoyed that!

Can confirm. I was able to use both of the Aurea massages for our cabin. Book early, though. Best time slots for our entire 7 night cruise were gone by the second day (plus I found the sales push annoying).

Hooray!

Brilliant! We're on this exact itinerary in August and I'm reading through intently. I don't suppose you have photos of the insides of the Daily programs, too, or am I just too inept to see them on the website?

Yeah, you assumed right. We're four- two adults, two small(ish) kids. Just not sure we're the table-sharing types... and only have 3 languages and I'm worried about being sat night after night with people in silence because we can't communicate. Guess we'll wait and see what happens. There's always the buffet... :)

I see. Thanks a million for your speedy replies!:D

Been on MSC once before but had anytime dining. This time we haven't booked Aurea and will have the early dinner seating (Magnifica). How likely is it that we're assigned a table for four... or to put it another way: are we likely to be seated together at one table with another family? And if so, do they try and match up languages spoken at all ( which was my experience on RCCL a few years back, for example)?

St Olaf's in Tallinn is high on the list of attractions thanks to its church tower, which you can climb for a fantastic view of the city. Just a word of warning, though: we were there in summer just as the church opened its doors. You can enter the church for free and then buy a ticket to go up the tower. The round staircase has something like 230 steps and is very narrow (Photo on Wikipedia). The problem is that there is only one staircase, i.e. for going up and for coming down, and when we were there, they didn't limit the number of people going up. We were among the first two or three people at the top but the viewing platform rapidly became full to overflow point with constantly more people coming up. Getting back down was claustrophobic not to mention dangerous, as people were using the staircase both ways, with much pushing, children crying, people panicking, a few close to passing out. We couldn't believe that the whole thing wasn't better managed. it was just: "buy your ticket and up you go". I would avoid taking kids up at all at peak times and reconsider going up yourself. Pretty badly organised, and generally irresponsible to not manage the crowds better.

We've just come off the Magnifica and, while I can't compare with P&O, our kids (5 and 9) gave the kids' club a thumbs down in comparison to NCL, for example. They didn't hate it but it wasn't just as good, they reckon. That said, there are two good size pools, one inside and one outside, all-you-can eat gelato on the drinks package, a super kid-friendly theatre programme, and the kids' club will look after the kids on the ship for free whilst mum and dad are on shore (NCL charged for the pleasure). What I didn't find particularly great was that the whole kids' programme is geared towards children from Italy and other southern European countries. English is spoken – that's no problem – but the evening programme in kids' club, for example, included dinner at 8pm. That meant that our kids (who were starving by 6pm and ate dinner with us in the dining room) had to go with the other kids again into the buffet restaurant for an hour if they wanted to participate in kids' club in the evenings. Not ideal.

Booked on a Baltic cruise from Warnemunde and finally got the tickets today. We've got a boarding time of 15:10, although we booked Aurea class. Seems late to me... or can anyone confirm that this is a "priority boarding" time. Thanks.:)

I have no facts-I'm just predicting that these might be the next charges as why would the German's be offered these perks for free, if they are already free.

 

The German's aren't being offered "perks for free" – the mails you are getting are simply stating, as do those in any other language – what you get for your money. Interest in cruise holidays is relatively recent in Germany, with many potential customers unfamiliar with everything a cruise entails. Regular cruisers take it for granted that you can stuff your face for free 24 hours a day, offload the kids without paying extra and use the fitness centre without shelling out more than what you pay up front but these are indeed attractive selling points in a market where cruising still has the image of being ultra-expensive and somewhat elite. It's basically justifying the cost compared to your regular two weeks in Ballermann.

Moreover, the cruising industry in Germany is still dominated by Tui and Aida; both offer all-inclusive packages. In Germany (and, as far as I know, Austria and Switzerland), NCL offers this too, in order to compete with Tui and Aida, I assume. In the basic price that we pay here for the cruise, the UBP (including 18% service charge) plus all gratuities are included. There's none of this "select your perk" business (although they might have an OBC campaign from time to time) so, you see, the "freebies" the OP mentioned aren't being offered as some sort of optional – it's simply more of a "Here's what you get. Aren't we super?" thing... and that happens in every market and every language. :)