B_A_H

Winner, winner, chicken dinner. From my first online NL booking which changed three times due to Covid sailing shifts to my sailing on the Divina, I spent a good three hours overall on the phone with the NL call center. And these calls all took place at 5:00AM because the NL call center closed at 3:00PM local time. It all worked out in the end but it certainly wasn't convenient. If you book on another region's website and everything goes perfectly, other than all of your documents being in another language, you'd be issue free. But. If something goes south be prepared for to invest a lot of effort and patience in getting it resolved.

Mark Zeller is the VP of Hotel Ops. I e-mailed him and referenced this thread. BTW, CEO's and President's have multiple e-mail addresses and minions parse the public ones. It's doubtful the e-mails you're sending will reach them personally. They each probably receive 1K e-mails a day. Clearly MSC is taking advantage of demand and raising their prices. The differential between YC and standard cabins is growing larger. Some of the increase is probably to offset higher costs because food quality and service levels cost more in YC. That, and as the experience on the rest of the ship is economized, I'd guess more people would be willing to buy up to YC. If they want to charge more to protect the experience, that's swell. But diluting the experience or allowing it to be diluted by onboard staff is not.

Here's the problem with those opinions. Not all the "folk" on Cruise Critic look at the world through the same lens. One person's "it was exceptional" could easily be another's "it was awful." It's a problem on all review sites. How do you know the author's opinions you're reading map to your personal needs, wants, values, and expectations? You don't. I'll use myself as an example. I have lots of MSC experience. There are friends whose requirements are similar to mine. I'd recommend MSC to them. Others with different expectations, not so much. My opinion of MSC is the same in both situations but I'm filtering that opinion knowing the audience. All the opinions here are unfiltered and you may have nothing in common with the author. When I'm researching, I look for overall themes in reviews. If the majority are leaning the same way you can pretty much assume there's some accuracy in what's being said. The occasional "it was awful" is to be expected. If the majority of posts lean "awful" you can pretty much expect some degree of awful. Someone new to MSC digesting this forum for the first time should clearly come away with "MSC is different." There's a huge leaning that way here and it's true. It behooves them to figure out what's different from reading other's posts to glean how it could affect them personally. And the timeframe of an experience being opined matters a lot. With the state of cruising right now, someone reflecting on a pre-Covid experience or an in-Covid experience where occupancy was at 50% doesn't represent the present. The ships are now packed, staffing is challenged, first time cruisers are at a high, and the cruise lines are cutting back and up-charging to make up for two year's of lost profit. The best reflection on what to expect is from people posting about experiences over the past six months. Just food for thought. Here's something I hope is helpful. I was on a 7 day Divina cruise in January in YC. It reinforced for me the value of paying more for YC even though YC prices are rising. I have YC booked on the World Europa in May and Seaview in October based on my Divina cruise. I canceled non-suite cruises on Apex and Majestic Princess to book those two MSC cruises. On the Divina, everyone in the non-YC parts of the ship looked happy and I didn't personally witness any major service issues. But even at 3/4 occupancy the ship felt crowded and less fine tuned than pre-Covid. I can only imagine what things would have been like at 100+%. If you read other cruise line's forums here you'll see similar opinions. And Celebrity and Princess are both cutting back heavily in various areas all while charging more. YC on my Divina sailing was near perfect. My time away is valuable and, to me, at least for now, YC is almost insurance on the experience I'll receive. I'll report back from the World Europa in May if I see MSC joining the other cruise lines in the race for the bottom. 😉

3 night weekend cruises are organized chaos on every cruise line. So brace yourself. The ship is guaranteed to be full, there will be lots of inexperienced cruisers, sailing out of Miami you'll have a very large Latino contingent, you'll have lots of groups/families traveling together, there will be tons of kids and teens, you'll see people falling over drunk by noon, and overall everyone trying to cram as much as they can in to just 3 days. That said, avoiding peak hours for dining can help as can utilizing bars that aren't as popular for drinks. Personally, unless it was on a luxury line, I would never take a weekend cruise on a mass market line. That includes YC on MSC.

This is kind of a meaning of life question. Cruise lines and experiences come in all shapes and sizes. A seven day Caribbean cruise can cost as little as $300 per person to almost $5,000; sometimes on the same ship. The person paying $300 for an inside cabin and rationing their on board expenditure to spend as little as possible thinks they are getting the best deal. The person paying $5,000 wants the extra features, attention, and specialness that comes with booking a suite. Neither is right or wrong. A bunch of us swear by YC and are repeaters. An equal or larger amount think it's a waste of money. If you think paying as much as twice the cost over a non-YC cabin is worth it to get the YC benefits then you should go for it. I don't know if the subjective opinion of strangers is really going to help your decision making very much.

Here's a helpful hint. If you go all the way through the booking process and click on "payment" it actually creates the reservation and puts it on hold. You don't actually have to enter a form of payment. You should receive an e-mail with your booking number showing the booking as "option." If you have a Voyagers Club account and make the booking when signed in to your profile the booking shows up as a 24 hour hold in "my cruises." You can them make a deposit or full payment online. It says the hold is 24 hours but I've had reservations held for a week.

OP, great impartial review. I'm sure it'll be appreciate by MSC novices looking for balanced feedback.

Here's a sample of what I'm referring to. In the booking path you have to input your address. "Italy" is hard coded on the Italian website with no other selections available. It also verifies what's input in the postal code field to ensure the address entered is a valid Italian address. You can't get past it so if you don't have a valid Italian address you'd have to input a fictitious address in Italy to continue the booking. Same thing applies to the other regional MSC booking sites. Clearly MSC wants everyone booking on the site corresponding to the region of their primary residence. Also, unless you have a credit card that doesn't charge a foreign transaction fee you're going to pay for the conversion from Euros to whatever your credit card's currency is. My January Divina cruise from Miami was booked via MSC NL but it didn't affect my check-in process. 1/3 of the ship was from the EU so I'm sure I wasn't the only whose boarding documents weren't in English. .

This is a huge caveat emptor for anyone wanting to attempt it. I've booked on other country websites and everything's fine until it isn't. First, if you book on another country's site, they are the one you have to work with on all aspects of your booking. The U.S. can't even see another country's reservations nor do they display on the U.S. website. A NL booked reservation is only visible on the NL website and so on. I booked a cruise during Covid-times with MSC NL. They were very nice and helpful and assisted me with many cruise changes. But they are an 8 hour time difference away and you have to make an international call at your own expense to reach them. Their website is obviously in Dutch and all of my cruise documents were as well. To discourage people from booking outside their country of residence, MSC mandates you input an address from the booking country in to the customer information section of the booking. I had a valid NL address to use so that wasn't a problem. If anyone here doesn't, and puts a fake address in, you're essentially lying. Whether that comes back to bite you or not is to be seen. Also, don't forget, MSC's cancellation and change fees vary greatly by region as do their insurance requirements. Insurance is still mandatory on the Italian site for example. So tread cautiously my friends, this could blow up in your face should things go south.

Like other have already said, thanks so much for your detailed and lighthearted review. As to the above. If shipboard staff are enriching themselves by brokering YC access onboard, that's pretty serious and corporate will not take something like that lightly. If it's officers and senior staff letting their friends and family in pro bono, that's a gray area and may be something corporate's aware of. Corporate may even do some of it themselves. Regardless, you said the YC was full which means staff and service were already strained. The YC on the Seascape holds 262 in double occupancy. Adding 50 non-YC "guests" is adding 20% more bodies that need to be served. Whoever onboard was making these decisions was pretty cavalier about the impact to paying YC guests. Like you, I'd be none too pleased.

That isn't true, actually the opposite is. There's no such thing as a "change" with MSC. Even a change affecting the same ship and sailing date has to be done as a "cancel" followed by a "book." If the cancel/book is done within the same reservation, the balance on what was canceled is applied to whatever replaced it leaving either a debit or credit. The same process applies when MSC vs. the passenger initiates a change. I know this because I booked a sailing with MSC NL vs. USA and made a new reservation for a change I wanted to make thinking they could just move the deposit. They had to cancel my new separate booking and replicate it within my original reservation. The agent actually explained how their system worked to me. Unlike the US, MSC NL is unbelievably helpful. For example, I didn't read that the free move required 90 days notice. MSC NL made the move for me at no charge anyway. In the NL, they have an exception handling process where non-standard requests are reviewed and responded to overnight. In the US they just say "no." Or worse, give multiple answers to the same request. Back to the OPs original question. No, MSC offers no kind of best rate guarantee. The 90 day free move is one way around it and there's the odd chance that you might get a competent and helpful CSR willing to work with you. If there's a price drop, your best bet is to try and change to a better category that is equal to or more than what you originally booked. That way, there's no credit for MSC to deal with. And you're getting something vs. overpaying based for what you currently have based on the new pricing. And refunds, like best rate guarantees, is something they don't do so well. MSC being "different" has been talked about ad nauseum. These are samples of that. And they aren't likely to change in the near future so MSC newbies be warned.

The Divina YC holds138 double occupancy. I was on it in January. Seeing the same people for a week you get to observe their patterns. Quite a few were never without a drink from bar open to bar close. They also ate every meal offered; sometimes with double portions. Others, myself included, had wine with dinner, a cocktail or two during the day, and ate like we do at home which isn't 5+ times a day. I guess it's attitudinal. There's the "it's included and I paid for it so I want all I can get" crowd and others who just enjoy knowing it's there if they want it. I guarantee you the former wouldn't be consuming what they did if it were a land-based resort and they were paying a'la carte. For me, the exclusivity, serenity, and service in the YC is the draw not the ability to binge drink because it's included in my cruise fare. To each their own as they say.

MSC changed the port tax on quite a few European sailings. It affected a bunch of us. You should have gotten a new booking confirmation via e-mail showing the adjusted amount. If you had already paid the higher amount, your booking should show a credit. How you get that back God only knows. When something impacts the cruise fare, like a port tax change, the reservation is repriced at the current rate vs. the rate at the time of booking. Make sure your cruise fare didn't get repriced higher than you were originally quoted. Your best bet is to e-mail mscexistingreservations@msccruisesusa.com to get your situation resolved.

Using the Divina as an example, it has 69 cabins in YC that hold 138 people double occupancy. The ship in total has 1,751 cabins for 3,502 passengers double occupancy. That means 92% of the ship is not YC and what the vast majority of people sailing with MSC are going to experience. Saying "YC is great" isn't going to help the 92% figure out if MSC is right for them. More so than any other cruise line, who your fellow passengers are will determine your individual MSC cruise experience and I think their lower entry level prices contribute to that. Length of cruise, departure port, time of year, and how full the ship is are all going to determine who you'll be sailing with. Using myself as an example. I normally sail YC but got a good deal on an Aurea balcony on the Meraviglia out of Port Canaveral. I was on a Sunday-Thursday 4 night this past October and the ship was about 3/4 full. There was some of the rowdiness you get on all of the shorter cruises but it was a solid experience and everyone that I saw looked like they were happy and enjoying themselves. If it was someone's first time on MSC having sailed with other lines I think they would have come away favorably impressed; especially at the price point. The Thursday-Sunday sailing after my cruise was 100% full and being a weekend cruise the rowdiness factor was likely 10x what I experienced. That's why, even in YC, I wouldn't touch a short weekend cruise with a 10 foot pole. On any cruise line. But let's be honest. Some of us here, me included by my Meraviglia example, have taken MSC cruises we wouldn't have normally specifically because of the price. So the same thing that makes MSC such a mixed bag also lures us in to their web. 😉 Moral of the story? No doubt some people in this thread have had bad experiences with MSC. Would others of us in their situations probably have reacted to the problems differently or gotten them resolved more effectively? I'd say likely. But just like on any forum on CC, there are "good" MSC experiences shared here as well as your "meh" and "NEVER AGAIN!!!" experiences. It doesn't help that the MSC experience you'll receive is so YMMV based on external factors. I've said it before. I'd recommend MSC to some of my friends (with guidance on which sailings to avoid) but definitely not to others. From a different perspective, I'd recommend Carnival to none of my friends. I don't know if that's an indictment of Carnival or a reflection on who I socialize with. 🙂

Whenever there is a change to a booking that impacts the cruise fare, it reprices to the current day's pricing. MSC recently revised European port taxes and a bunch of us here got confirmation e-mails with higher prices than we booked. I e-mailed my original booking PDF to mscexistingreservations@msccruisesusa.com as they asked and within an hour I got a revised confirmation with the corrected pricing. Should it happen? No. Is it annoying? Yes. Is it the end of the world? No.

This is an interesting point and one I agree with. Once you see what MSC is capable of with the YC, it does shine a light on what they choose not to do in terms of the regular cruise experience. I wouldn't say I'd never sail non-YC with MSC, but I'd only cruise Aurea if I did. And ideally not on a short cruise or one I knew in advance would be full of kids and groups traveling together. At least with Aurea you get priority boarding and preference (even if it's against the Maître D's will) for dining. The MDR can be shambolic on a full MSC ship and they sometimes go to three seating times. Celebrity was my favorite mainstream line; especially on the E-class ships. There was a certain polish and vibe that's hard to explain that made the cruise feel more modern and upscale without needing to be in the Retreat. Celebrity has taken a machete to services and dining in the name of cost cutting. For me, they just aren't worth the premium they charge any longer. I canceled a Concierge class Caribbean booking on Apex in November to sail YC on the Seaview out of Rome in October instead. I'm more comfortable about what I'll receive nine months from now on MSC than I am Celebrity..

The big three all have reprice-for-lower-fare policies with some giving back the difference via OBC. MSC does not. I don't know if system limitations prevent it or if it's an intentional policy. The term "move" is the only way to change a MSC booking; even if it's within the same sailing. The current sailing has to be canceled and the new one made with the same booking (confirmation number). The "maybe" comment is because it can all be black box until the agent actually executes the change. Within that now moved booking, a credit is created for the original sailing and a debit for the new one. God knows what happens if there's a credit due the passenger. I've moved MSC bookings before and it's not for the feint of heart. And the history of all the previous cruises prints out on any confirmation and the cruise ticket. MSC systems are either archaic or being used beyond what they were originally built for. Also, what we see on the Internet isn't what the agents are looking at. They are looking at text and codes displayed on their screens not pretty HTML pages. So the agent trying to find an outcome similar to what OP was seeing probably took a couple shots to replicate. Better agents won't fix an unfriendly policy (repricing policy) or make up for wretched IT systems.

Non-YC suites are just bigger staterooms and have no benefits over other Aurea categories. All Non-YC suites are Aurea and the only major benefits to Aurea are priority boarding, anytime dining, a private sundeck, and access to the Aurea spa. You get more Voyagers Club points as well.

Hi @misztercruizer. I am on the 5/12 sailing with you. We'll have to share info so we can connect onboard. I see you're from Georgia, I'm from Louisiana. I'm really hoping YC normalizes when the ship starts it's first Mediterranean season. Its first Med cruise is 4/11 so they'll have a month to find their groove before we board. Ours is the 5th sailing from Barcelona. Some of the things @alistairg and @little britain have shared aren't particularly positive and seem very un-YC like. I'm hoping some of the anomalies are based on the market and whose sailing. Someone mentioned the Russian passengers as being particularly disruptive. There are a ton of YouTube reviews posted in Russian; more than any other language. It appears when the West was cutoff to upper income Russians, the UAE and particularly Dubai have become their new go to for high end vacations and to buy Western luxury goods. Certainly not something to be concerned about on sailings from EU ports where I'd imagine the majority of passengers will be Europeans and Brits.

You folks are a really tough crowd. "Reprice" means as it applies to the cruise fare itself. MSC adjusts the port taxes at 90 days. If they go up or down it causes the entire cruise to be repriced at that day's pricing. The European taxes went down and a bunch of people here, me included, posted about getting repriced. You have to reach out to MSC to have the original pricing restored. Any change you make to a booking online, even personal information, always results in a new booking confirmation being e-mailed. There's nothing any of us can do online that would affect the actual price of the cruise itself. That's why the new booking confirmations you've all mentioned weren't repriced.

I enjoy reading first-timer's reviews of MSC who have experience with other cruise lines. There are three flavors: "It was different than [insert cruise line name] and I liked it and will probably sail again. "It was different than [insert cruise line name] and I liked it but probably won't sail again. "MSC was awful and [insert feature], insert feature], and [insert feature] are nothing like [insert cruise line] and the [insert service element] was terrible. MSC is different. I recommend them to some friends but not others knowing that, based on the individual, they might not be a fit. I'd guess probably about 2/3 of discussion on this board are about MSC U.S. operations (as a booking, not departure point). Don't underestimate the importance of the U.S. market. (see below) As a holding company, MSC is worth $28B. CCL, the next largest, is worth $2B. And MSC is private where CCL is publicly traded and answers to shareholders. MSC has the resources and governance environment to be absolutely anything they want at whatever speed they choose. Right now they are saturating the industry with capacity, likely to build market share and a base. The next logical step is to make more money per passenger so deployed assets return a greater profit. After that they'll potentially become "less different." That'll start a host of new discussion threads about whether "less different" is good or bad. Be careful what you wish for. 🙂

I was on a 7 day Divina in January. The ship was in excellent shape and YC was wonderful. The food in Muse ran from good to exceptional (especially the meat dishes) and the service was just about perfect. Embarkation and debarkation were both incredibly fast and efficient. All my experiences were positive.

Prioritize the following in order of importance to MSC: Providing a localized experience based on market sailed vs. a consistently European experience everywhere. Meaning, to be competitive out of the U.S., present food, beverage, and entertainment experiences more equivalent to those you compete against in those markets. For example, Disney offers a common core product but with regional adjustments between parks in the U.S. and Europe. Making Investments in both customer service and IT. For MSC, the two are inextricably intwined. Poor systems make the processing of cruise changes, add/change/cancel of add-on products, and refunds manually intensive multi-step processes with embarrassingly long response times. And cumbersome systems make checking the status of something in process completely black box. Offering a website as sophisticated as competitors that allows a high degree of cruise customization, the ability to book and manage add ons, make dining, specialty dining, and spa reservation pre-sailing, and provide the cruiser with a great deal of control over their cruise experience without manual intervention. One would think the revenue upside for MSC would more than cover the expense of a B2C website with competitive features. Synchronizing individual details collected pre-cruise with onboard crew and systems. Things as simple as dining reservations show one set of information pre-cruise that are either not received or not abided by staff onboard. In YC, long and detailed preference questionnaires are provided pre-sailing that aren't received and/or acknowledged onboard. It's pretty much a theme with MSC - one hand doesn't seem to be aware of what the other hand is doing. Providing more localized decision making. Almost consistently, problems and onboard issues are met with "you need to call the 800 number when you get back" or "I've forwarded the issue to management." The latter is frustrating when shipboard management is the one saying they don't have any authority to make customer service decisions. MSC seems much more top down than other cruise lines.

Actually, I was on the Meraviglia in October and Divina a couple of weeks ago. If anything, it seemed MSC was upping their food quality. That's a big contrast to most cruise lines that are going the other way. Typically, at the "value" end of the pricing spectrum, MSC and Carnival have the lowest entry level pricing. I think you get a better experience on MSC. Granted, I took my first Carnival cruise over 10 years ago and swore never again, but recent postings would seem to paint MSC the more premium of the two at the same price point. YMMV.

Hey @wbingham, sorry you got beat up in this thread. I recently booked a Princess and Celebrity cruise and their online personalizers were both so comprehensive, easy to understand, and flexible that I can understand your culture shock using MSC's for the first time. If you're used to those types of personalizers it's understandable to expect they are the norm. As you've found out, MSC marches to a different drum. Those of us that regularly book with MSC are used to their quirks and idiosyncrasies. Welcome, you're one of us now. 😉 I did the 4 night Meraviglia in October. It was a great cruise and I didn't have any problems personally and everyone seemed generally happy. You'll find the ship to be drop dead gorgeous and impeccably maintained. One thing MSC does better than anyone is keep their ships in excellent condition. The themes in the staterooms and public areas run darker and more European than the bold bright colored atmosphere you may be used to from RCI. So you'll know, short cruises in general are rowdy and if your cruise is full you're likely to have the same service issues people in other forums are reporting when a ship is at capacity. Sadly, it's the new normal. You'll also, without question, run in to MSC's quirkiness during your cruise. You have two choices. Roll with it and think "well, that's different" or you can spend 4 days analyzing everything and saying "that's not the way RCI did/does it." You'll be miserable if you do the latter and have a much better time adopting the former. MSC's quirks make them not for everyone but even if this ends up being your only cruise with them you'll have had a different experience and hopefully some fun. MSC isn't for everyone and it'll be fun hearing about your first MSC experience either from the ship or once you return. P.S. - I canceled the Princess cruise for a World Europa sailing and the Celebrity cruise to go on the Seaview; all were in Europe. My decision was based on all the cutback threads in their respective forums. Ironically, it seems MSC is upping their game, especially with food, while everyone else is bean counting.