go.without.you

You said the bread was good so that's an improvement from November. The sourdough rolls were rock hard and after the 3rd night we stopped trying.

On 12/17/2023 at 7:08 PM, CruisingWalter said:

To top it off, the Yacht Club Butlers were leading their guests the wrong way through our queue so we had to keep getting out of their way. They could easily brought them down backstage like they were doing for scooters and wheelchairs. What an absolute cluster. There are so many ways this could have been done better. 

 

If that had been my first MSC cruise, between the elevators and that cluster of a debarkation, I don't know that I would go back. How a company responds when things go sideways shows much more than when everything goes right. 

 

 

As one of the people being led upstream I can tell you it wasn't a picnic for us either. I'm convinced that was when I caught the bad head cold I came home with because that was the 1st time during the entire cruise that I was in the middle of a crowd.

After that experience I cancelled my 2 MSC cruises for next year. I lost money but I am not about to gamble a few thousand more for poor service and grocery store wine while paying YC rates. I'm doing Celebrity this week and if the expectations aren't met then I will have to stop cruising for a while. Its sad. This will be my 31st cruise on over 6 lines since 1988.

On 12/17/2023 at 2:20 PM, dshroyer said:

I am convinced that when it comes to food and drink they have allowances for each cruise.  That way they ensure that each cruise is profitable.  If they have big eaters or drinkers then they will just run out of stuff.  We were on a cruise when the ship ran out of butter.  And eggs.  I was on the Seashore a few weeks ago and the first day the yacht club was out of most wines.  No wine list for dinner.  In the yacht club!  This tells me they are allocating by cruise.  Just my opinion.  

I sailed this ship for Thanksgiving and them not having Sav Blanc the 1st day was a huge red flag for the rest of the trip. I also asked for a wine list....I'm still waiting to see it.

Hi, keep checking but I think they start about 6 months before.

@Essiesmom I agree with the playing of the long hair. I guess because they paid a lot for it they want to make sure it's still there because it seems people with real hair don't touch it but extensions or wigs are constantly being stroked like a cat. I mimic them by stroking my invisible long hair. It emphasis how they look when they do it.

So I was able to snag the unlimited dining package during the black Friday sale. Is there any way to make the reservations before boarding?

I've tried calling the Captains club with no luck (I'm Elite Plus).

• Ship:  Constellation
• Length of Cruise: 6nights
• Cruise Sail Date: 12/22/23
• Date email offer received: Do not recall
• Captain’s Club Tier: Elite Plus
• Booked through Celebrity Direct OR via TA: Celebrity while onboard then transferred to agent
• Current Cabin: Aqua Suite
• Bid?  Yes/No: Yes
• If YES - Bidding Details:
  • Cabin Category: Aqua Sky Suite, Sky Suite, Celebrity Suite
• Bid Offer: $890, $695. $800 (barely above minimum bids).  
• Notification Date: 12/12/23 (10 days before departure)
• Accepted / Rejected: Aqua Sky Suite (Accepted)

If someone is using their phone on speaker in public then I naturally assume they want others to be involved in the call as well. Therefore I chime in with answers, advice, snorts of laughter and plenty of questions. That is also an invitation for me to start playing Cotton Eyed Joe on my phone at full volume.

I matched to MSC gold but didn't receive a single loyalty related invite or gift.

4 hours ago, morpheusofthesea said:

We found no degrading (for us) this Thanksgiving cruise. 

Live reports from Seashore YC are still reporting bad service 2 weeks later.

I cancelled my other 2 MSC cruises for next year and I booked RCCL in a regular balcony cabin and I will probably still have better service than my 1 YC trip.

I got off Seashore on the 26th with a head cold. Pretty much summed up the entire cruise.

I know right? I received my 1st and only BC offer a few months ago for a free inside cabin which I grabbed. I got the 2nd BC offer the other day and saw it was only $50 off. Why even bother?

@Best Cat Mom Unfortunately our cruise was very disappointing and we did not get the YC service that we had expected. This was on Seashore which is consistently getting bad reviews. This was my first MSC and now my last. I had 2 booked for next year that I cancelled because I'm not going to spend over $6k for a substandard experience and "hope" that it will be good.

@jean87510 we were docked until 9pm. But if the other bars were still open there is no excuse why YC bar would be closed. You pay extra for YC and they close the bar early? That's some BS.

Well I doubt the bar was still open after 2:30 since all of the crew packed up and left, regardless of what that paper said.

And the bar closes at 2pm. You cannot even get water.

11 hours ago, lcpagejr said:

On Seascape...I mentioned the same to my wife...Saw several Thanksgiving cakes but never saw any cut and offered!

Maybe they were fake cakes made out of cardboard.

27 minutes ago, scamper said:

Ever the optimist, look at it this way:  you could have been mixed in with the poor shlubs in steerage.

 

Don't give up on the YC.  I'm willing to bet a future cruise will be better.

I have 2 MSC YC booked for next year. Still deciding whether to keep or cancel.

I'll be on Connie for the Christmas cruise so I'm following along with high hopes. I just got off an MSC in Yacht class and was definitely disappointed.

On 11/25/2023 at 12:24 PM, morpheusofthesea said:

Atrium Thanksgiving welcome. Thanksgiving cake OnePool Deck buffet.

We had a HUGE cake similar to this on Seashore but I don't know what happened to it because I never saw pieces of it anywhere and it wasn't offered.

2 hours ago, BeeeJay said:

I think you just need to go into MSC YC with proper expectations and do some CC research so you have the proper knowledge of a few tricks to improve your experience.

The whole reason I booked MSC was after reading all the wonderful reviews on here!! Every single review I read that compared YC to Retreat all said the same thing. "Better service, great food, exceeded our expectations, etc", the total opposite of what we had this past week. We spoke to several passengers in YC that had sailed MSC before and they were all disappointed too.

51 minutes ago, JAGR said:

I mentioned this earlier. I'm wondering if this sailing was an outlier for MSC YC.  It was the first sailing after a TA cruise. and I've seen posts before from people who were not pleased with new cruises after TA crossings, Typically, the crew are smaller for service during the sailing, and if MSC had delays or problems in ramping up or onboarding staff, that could be the reason for many of the service issues that @go.without.you experienced.

This was the 2nd cruise after the TA, they had a 3 day before ours. It did seem like they were understaffed. 

2 hours ago, jcpc said:

I've never taken a Celebrity cruise where they use a "service type elevator".....it's always been mixed in with the non-Retreat folks.  On Summit in Bayonne you definitely exit from a different ship door onto Deck 4 but at the point where you cross over the gangway you are mixing in with the other folks.  The Retreat Concierge escorts you to the point where you "mix in" and then you're on your own!

Never used a service elevator on Celebrity but they had a back door from retreat lounge that took you to the deck. 

3 hours ago, Sundiego said:

I don't remember our experiences on YC (pre-Covid), but I know on Haven they use a service elevator and take you all the way to the gangplank area where they swipe your card. You never actually see the "gen pop" line. 

That's how Celebrity does it too. It was just so awkward going against the current to get to the exit point.

So disembarkation was a hot mess. We chose to walk off with our bags so our butler takes us and 2 other passengers down the elevator to 6. Then we had to walk against traffic all the way to the middle of the ship like salmon swimming upstream. We went right up to the front of the line and gen pop was a little salty about it. So I get to the point where I have to scan my card to leave the ship and the guy says something about $19 and "go see the guy at the table". Oh for the love of all that is holy!!! I asked at the table why I was called there but he didn't speak English. Or pretended not to. So what was the purpose of me entering my credit card info on the app before I boarded the ship? All the guy did was pull up my account and then dismissed me.

MSC does some dumb crap. Seriously. But the elevator override worked great as well as the wristbands. No idea who the captain or any officers were because none of that info was provided. I'm used to the captain making a daily announcement but ours never did. There was a definite lack of communication on this ship that I have never experienced before. 

So overall I'm very disappointed about this trip but I still enjoyed it and had a good time. 

I'm doing Celebrity next month but in Aqua class because Retreat was double the price of aqua.  Their pricing is ridiculous. I did place a move up bid, so we'll see.