peder

Well of course the Yacht Club posters would have access to both the Aurea and gen pop boards 😉

There are definitely discounts from time to time, but I don't think there's generally a correlation between a "sale" and discounting with MSC or any cruise lines. In my experience, a holiday "sale" tends to be mostly marketing rubbish. But some of the "flash deals" are true discounts that are specific to poorly-selling itineraries. There are also sometimes heavily discounted itineraries that are published without much fanfare (I believe there were some recent 7-night Seascape sailings with YC deluxe cabins going for only $3k with dual occupancy, and I don't think those price cuts were announced anywhere, they were simply a reflection of poor sales related to Ocean Cay being dropped from the itinerary).

"Bringing a second ship to Port Canaveral will give MSC Cruises’ guests a much wider selection of cruises. MSC Grandiosa will offer alternating 7-night Eastern and Western Caribbean itineraries. Meanwhile, MSC Seashore will sail 3- and 4-night cruises to Nassau and Ocean Cay MSC Marine Reserve, the line’s private island in The Bahamas."

This is the only disappointing aspect IMO. Presumably will be the same handful of ports that we already see on 7-day Orlando and Miami itineraries. It would be great if MSC had the occasional 8- or 10-night sailing from Orlando or Miami on their newer vessel that went somewhere fresh.

And ya know, I'd argue that the Explora 1 is the largest YC.

Itineraries not yet listed on the MSC US website, but will probably be posted within a week or two? MSC is presumably getting close to locking in their fleet deployments for all their ships for December 2025 and onward.

12 hours ago, Stockjock said:

I didn't see that post, could you provide a link?

And just today, we have schedule announcements for the Grandiosa! 

3 minutes ago, sverigecruiser said:

 

There are two large whirlpool on the Top 20 deck just outside the YC on deck 20.

 

I think that the made-to-order food was very nice so no step back, I think.

oh, good to know. Almost everyone has labeled the food situation as more of a hassle and/or taking things away. Yours is the first report I've seen saying it's at least largely equivalent.

But RE: whirlpools: the Top 20 deck whirlpools are of course shared with Aurea, no?

The service aspects are irrelevant to us, and the wait times for dinner seem to have been at least partially solved by opening a second dining space for YC guests in the 2nd floor of the buffet.

However, the small pool, only having one whirlpool? Moving away from small plate snacks + buffet to a made-to-order grill? That's a big step back from the Seashore/Seascape YC experience.

The Owners Suites look great, tho, so I'm still tempted to book on World America or World Europa. And the rest of the ship, especially the outdoor promenade look great. It seems like the World-class ships have the best Bella/Fantastica experience of any class in the fleet?

1 minute ago, Stockjock said:

I didn't see that post, could you provide a link?

Oh, just the one about website issues. The MSC website was down for an extended maintenance period, and I'm speculating that they're about to announce schedule changes.

They were probably first adding assets to support the new itineraries (maybe cruise thumbnail photos?) then they'll enable the schedule after they've done some internal prod testing and/or readied press releases or other communications to announce the release of 2026 itins.

Thanks for this info. There's a whole language of technical issues like this that are helpful to understand how MSC operates.

As I mentioned in another thread, there are likely a ton of schedule updates about to be posted, mostly for 2026 but apparently you also some 2025 updates like your sailing.

Yeah, I read the post. But it's just a press release and has no new info whatsoever.

Sounds identical to World Europa

I'm guessing they're readying the site for 2026 itineraries? Maybe will correspond with a Memorial Day sale?

At 873' long are they going to start running into issues getting into some ports?

Also, if the ship is 60' longer, how would that not increase passenger count, becaues surely means more cabins? Unless they're going to greatly increase the number of penthouses?

39 minutes ago, no1talks said:

But are they? Or, are they putting on a bougie lifestyle as the Potemkin village of their generation?

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/25/affluent-millennials-more-likely-to-exaggerate-finances-to-appear-wealthy.html

This tweet is just looking at median. Top quartile I think would be even more exaggerated. Incomes for top millennial earners have been very high.

Top quartile of millennials are probably doing better than any generation's top quartile before them. Many have been invested in the stock market since '08/'09 and have basically enjoyed an uninterrupted bull market for 15 years. Many in that group consider $QQQ to be as safe as treasuries 😅

So that's a pretty big group of consumers that is still largely untapped by the cruise industry.

I think these folks on the YouTube "Live a Little" channel are Explora's target: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPBe3LRPhZw

We're flexible, and we managed. Just wanting to set expectations for anyone that if the weather is great and your sailing is full, there's going to be some demand for the primo lounging spaces, even in Aurea and Yacht Club.

Less shade on the Seashore and Seascape, @Lbsahm. There are cabanas available on a first-come-first-serve basis, but they tended to be very full on my Seascape sailing. People would camp out and be very possessive of them. Was kinda annoying to see folks claim a cabana AND chairs while not actually using the cabanas because they wanted to be in the sun, and all I wanted to do was sit outside an enjoy a coffee for 15 mins.

Your mileage may vary. If the weather is a little less than ideal, you might get easy access to the cabanas.

I wonder if they're going to add family suites that accommodate 6 or 8. I don't think they're going to lengthen Explora 3, and I don't think there's much room to expand offerings for children. Instead I think that means the focus would be on cabin designs, which they could change to cater to families more easily.

I feel like Explora should have used the exact same systems as MSC, and used the combined scale of the two entities to justify higher IT/software engineering spend so that the entire cruise management user experience could be handled digitally (and I really do mean everything: even a cruise move or a change of cabin should be automated... I have wasted so many hours on the phone working on such changes, and it must eat into margins a great deal to have me on the phone as much as I am).

The Royal and Celebrity systems are obviously integrated; they didn't feel any need to create an entirely new architecture for those two brands. Explora wasn't such a unique duck that they needed their own backends.

Saw an interesting comment on YouTube from @lindsayslivealittle: "Explora 1 and 2 are not what we would consider specifically kid friendly.  However, they offer a kids program and have small area specifically for kids that we will show in our ship tour.  But they did tell us Explora 3 will have a much larger kids area and designed more for families."

And I noticed that the MSC Cruises Wikipedia page is suggesting Explora 3 will be about 10% larger, coming in at 70,000 GT (note however that the linked source article does not confirm this): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSC_Cruises

Has anyone else heard or read of rumored or confirmed changes for Explora 3 and beyond? Are we expecting these be an "Explora Plus" class?

I'm already feeling priced out of Yacht Club, yet prices for similar options on other lines are at times a literal order of magnitude higher.

Feels like an industry-wide correction on demand is overdue, but because MSC YC is a great product and because it would still be a lower price than competitors, I think YC prices might only continue to rise, even if prices come back to earth with other lines.

I've read some reports that the table spacing might be different in the Aurea area, and we've personally had great service in Aurea, never finding the oft-derided service from Bella and Fantastica customers.

We haven't sailed with Explora yet, but we really like larger cabins, so for us we were shopping for a Grand Penthouse. But the pricing is all wrong relative to the Ocean Terraces. For us, an Owners Suite or Royal Suite in the MSC Yacht Club is a much better value, so that's where we've stayed for now. Weird though that we should probably be a target customer for Explora and I just can't make the leap.