steveknj

18 hours ago, TrinaLC said:

I’ll agree wholeheartedly that MSC’s post-covid muster is substandard. 
 

What possible reason can there be for making everyone go to a muster station at the same time, only to be clocked in?  The resulting run for an up elevator is so unnecessarily unpleasant. And before hand, making everyone climb up or down multiple flights of internal stairs without having a good system in place for those who can’t is a mistake.  (This includes not only those with physical challenges, but families with small children. We saw one poor guy with two small kids, one on his shoulders, one in hand, climbing down 6 flights of stairs. Far more likely to suffer an injury there than endure a sinking!)
 

(We were in YC. DH has a bad knee right now and can’t do stairs. First we were lied to despite a direct question as to whether we could take the elevator down (“yes of course” —— err,  nope), and no record was made of any handicap that might require assistance in the event of an actual emergency. I can only imagine it to be worse in steerage…)

 

(JK with that last quip 😀)

Thinking about this more, I'm really surprised with newer technologies that use interactive TV, that none of these cruise lines have made it just REALLY simple.  You get into your cabin, you turn to whatever channel has the muster instructions, you thumb up that you've watched the video, and your done.   It's that simple.  NCL's kinda/sorta works that way in that you could watch the video on your phone prior to your cruise, and then you just check in with someone on the ship, where they check that you've acknowledged that you watched the video on your device.   I think that's where they need to do at this point.

15 hours ago, nferr said:

  I'm on the Meraviglia right now. I booked the dining package way back on line. Three nights in the specialty restaurants for $71 or just about $24 per.  Yes you eat off the experience menu but at that price it's a no brainer. I already tried the Ocean Cay seafood restaurant and the Teriyaki hibachi. Both were excellent. Tomorrow night I'm doing Butchers Cut steakhouse.  I know they raised the price of the package quite a bit recently.

On my three day cruise on the Seashore, it was $99 for two meals pp and it was limited to ONLY the Steakhouse and Tepenyaki.    While I would have enjoyed the steakhouse, we've done the Tepenyaki on other cruise lines and it's fine, but really, nothing I need to do again.   $71 for 3 nights sounds like a really good deal.   Maybe next time if that's offered we'd take it.

1 minute ago, Mark_T said:

Full menu attached, scroll down below the 'Brunch' section for the 'Experience' menu.

Butchers-Cut.pdf 1.87 MB · 1 download

Thanks!  $60 is still expensive, too expensive for my blood and they don't have my favorite cuts of beef (Rib Eye, TBone/Porterhouse) as a choice.   That said, NCL has gone a la carte as well (though most of the cruises I've taken with them included a two meal specialty restaurant package...no extra charge).   But, while a Rib Eye on MSC is $68 a la carte, on NCL it's $39 (though the MSC one is a little bigger, but not almost double size).    So yeah, the MSC specialty restaurants are more expensive then NCL.   Carnival is $49 per person surcharge.    So that's something else to consider if you are not a MDR or Buffet person and want to eat more elegant.  They WERE offering a $99 per person 2 meal package, so that MIGHT be worth it if you go on a longer cruise.  

27 minutes ago, Mark_T said:

Personal choice, but I don't find the 'Experience Menu' pricing expensive, especially when purchased in a package and when compared to the up-charge that Celebrity are asking these days...

I never saw an option for any type of "experience menu"  It was just the a la carte menu, with the cheapest steak in the $45 range.  A far cry from the $30 upcharge on Cagney's we used to get.   How much is the "experience menu" and what steaks are available?

1 hour ago, JT1962 said:

From my experience the MSC Muster Dril is only better than what most ships did prior to Covid. It is definitely not better than what Carnival and many others do now where are you watch the video at home or on your phone before you board the ship, then just check in at your muster station as soon as you board. MSC has everyone watch the video in their cabin, then go to the Muster Location all at once or in groups by floor. MSC is much more chaotic than the process on other lines, with hundreds of people crowding the stairways to all go to their muster station at the same time.

Agreed.  Where I was confused, is they asked us to go to our cabins and watch a video.  I tuned to the TV, and it brought me to a screen that said, "Safey video will begin shortly"  and we had the announcement via PA that the video was now starting.  The TV never showed the video on the channel I was tuned to, nor was there instruction on what channel to tune to.  So, when the next announcement came to go check in at your muster station, we did that without actually watching the video.  We checked in and were done.  Which is bad if you think about it in an emergency.  When we got back to the cabin, I flipped around the channels, and there it was, on an entirely different channel that we initially tuned to.  If they had just said, "tune to channel 10" or whatever, we would have.

35 minutes ago, Mark_T said:

If you go again, you'll see there is an 'Experience Menu' option which is usually at a very reasonable price and offers a limited selection from the full menu.

 

There are also package options available which gives you access to that same 'Experience menu' at even lower prices...

Thanks.  I'm more used to one surcharge and getting (mostly what I want).  And to be fair, one of the things I used to like is that I could eat at one of these specialty restaurants for a small upcharge, with food that was equivalent to what I'd pay on land and enjoy the experience.  But over the last few years, many of these have gone a la carte with prices that are on par with what is on land.  For example, at one time, eating at Cagney's on an NCL cruise was just a $30 upcharge.   Well where on land can you got a top grade steak dinner for $30.  But when looking at the MSC menu, the prices for their steaks were not really any cheaper than I could get on land, thus, we just decided it wasn't worth it.  In fact, most of the specialty restaurants were a la carte (we did the Mexican place on an $18 all you can eat deal).  It's one of the things I'm not that fond of on MSC.

21 hours ago, JamieLogical said:

You will see a lot of people hype YC on these forums, but my husband and I have found the non-YC experience on the Mereaviglia to be just fine. I can't imagine that the benefits of YC would be worth triple the price you are paying for your Aurea balcony! On a 7-day cruise that's over $550 more per day!

I think for a lot of people, they want that completely pampered experience rather than just a "normal' vacation.  I don't care about that sort of thing, especially at 3x the price.   It depends on what type of experience you are looking for.   So the OP talked about taking trips to WDW.  If those trips included the top hotels, the Contemporary, the Floridian or that type, then a week in a "typical" cruise cabin might feel constricted.  But if they go to WDW and stay in one of the less expensive to moderate hotels, then the YC experience, might be more than they need.  But everyone wants something different from their experience.  I can't speak to that.  

I got off our first MSC cruise a week ago (3 night cruise) and while not everything was perfect, a lot of what people complain about, food, nickel and diming etc. were no better or worse than most cruises I've been on.    Firstly, I upgraded to the Aurea package, so that does have SOME influence on our impression.   That gave us access to a couple of special perks, a special area on the ship (The Seashore out of Port Canaveral), and we got some chocolate and a bottle of Italian sparkling wine.   We are not big drinkers and indeed we didn't drink on this cruise, but we did like that the drink package gave us access to specialty coffees (really excellent cappuccinos).   As far as the food, like just about every other cruise, it's hit or miss, with mostly hit.   The pizza is the best I've ever had on a cruise line (and I'm a native NYer and somewhat of a pizza snob).  The buffet was the same every day but what we tried was actually pretty good.  We enjoyed the breakfast in the MDR.   And we ate dinner in the MDR two of the three nights.  The first night, I had some pulled pork thing that was pretty good with a good portion.   The second night I had some blackened grouper that was overcooked.   We also did the taco joint for dinner one night.  We wanted to do the steakhouse but it was all alacarte and TOO expensive, So like I said, hit or miss.  We really liked the private island, which was definitely better than what NCL and RCCL offers (though since we've last visited, they've updated that island, but haven't experienced it).  Problem was it was too cold (in the 50s) so we couldn't enjoy the water and didn't stay as long as we would have liked.  The entertainment was on par with Carnival, but not as good as NCL/RCCL.  I liked the little cabaret where they had rotating acts everynight, 3 or 4 different ones each doing a 15-20 minute set.  That was different and interesting.  Embarkation and Debarkation was seamless, despite the horror stories I read on here about it.  We were on the ship within 15 minutes of arriving at the port and off the ship in like 20 minutes after standing on a continuously moving line (we did self checkout and took our own bags).

Like I said, there were a few things we didn't like.   Desserts were mostly subpar (and considering this was an Italian ship, that surprised us).  We are used to having sliced cake options at the buffet but all they had were mini pastries (but no Napoleans!!).   Muster drills were confusing, but really didn't take a whole lot of time.   We don't gamble a lot, but while I do appreciate that the main casino was smoke free, there were only two draw poker machines, so we didn't play.   The trivia games were few and far between.   No coffee was offered at dinner, which we normally enjoy with our dessert.

Would I do another MSC? Absolutely.  We are not actively going to book another cruise any time soon.  We have some other expenses and plans, but when we are ready again, we'd book another one.

We upgraded to an Aurea balcony on our upcoming cruise (18 Jan) and it's indeed confusing.   Looking at my check in papers, it shows it as an Aurea balcony and lists the Aurea benefits, but it also shows the "experience" as Fantastica.  So I hope we don't get screwed out of what we paid for.  It does show that same paragraph as posted by @maehara so if they give me a hard time, I'll show them that.  We went for the upgrade for two reasons, the spa access and "Anytime dining" which is something I'm used to on the other cruise lines I've been on. 

I bet that this question has been asked before.   We are taking our first MSC cruise.   I've heard (mostly from my son) that we would need to print out all of our check in materials, but when I went through the check in process through the MSC app, it says there's a boarding pass.  Is that boarding pass all I need when I get to the pier?  If I need more, what exactly do I need.  I know on the other cruise lines we've taken (Carnival, NCL, Royal), what's in the app or what we got via email was enough.   I know we need our passport and all that.

Also, is there a way to pre-book specialty restaurants or is that something I cannot do until we get on board.  I know you can buy a meal plan, but we don't want to do that, as this is a 3 night cruise and we want to at least experience the MDR once, and a specialty once and then perhaps make a decision on the third night based on our MDR experience. 

Any other embarkation tips?

We have cruised mostly on NCL but also a 3 cruises on Carnival and 2 on Royal.   We sailed on NCL in 2022, after the pandemic and I have to say, that the MDR food really went downhill.  Last year we sailed on the Carnival Italian style ship, the Venizia, and we found the food REALLY good.  The thing about Carnival is there are lots of choices, especially for lunch.   So you can usually find something that is good.  We are going on our first MSC cruise in a couple of weeks (Seashore) and I'm less than encouraged by the reviews, but know that food is subjective.   I'm encourage to read that the pizza is good (as someone else in the thread I'm a native New Yorker living in NJ and pizza is practically a way of life).   But I haven't found too many reviews of the MDR that are positive.   The only food that seems consistently good is the Mexican place so we'll probably try that one night (my son's one and only cruise was on the Meriviglia and he said it was great as well, but he has nothing to compare it to).  Our cruise is only a 3 night one, so we'll get a taste of what it's like and if it's reasonable we'll do more, but if it's terrible, we'll probably skip MSC in the future.

On 12/23/2023 at 7:57 PM, rbelshaw said:

As for the elevators, the ship's system is the same simple one I use to get to my office, without the multiple jabs for the multiple passengers - a distinction I would not notice, as I always travel solo on both journeys. I cannot guess what important information that push - per- person requirement would impose, and as I am approaching fluffy status, wonder if I should be pushing for two.

Think about it.  If you are waiting with 4 people and you push just once, and the person standing next to you has 4 people and pushes once, how does the elevator know you are 8 people or one person?   And that's why you get such overcrowding.  The elevator has no idea how many people to expect.  If you push it 4 times for 4 people, the "crowd control" that the elevator should control (because that's the point of elevators like that) knows how many button pushes and thus, how many people.  Otherwise an elevator designed like that doesn't work.

45 minutes ago, CruisingWalter said:

 

There are zero instructions for the passengers, so nobody knows to hit the button more than one time. Nothing in the information in the room, no simple instructions with the keypads, nothing. We were the only couple pressing the button twice, the other passengers would look at us like we were nuts when we did it. It was a complete fail on our cruise and was marginally better on the Seaside. 

Exactly.  On the Venizia they have signs up on how to do it so perhaps MSC needs something similar. I know I'm going to mention it to people waiting on the Seashore how to do it correctly and maybe the word will spread 🙂  They should give me a free cruise for that!! (I keed, I keed!!)

We will be on the Seashore in January.  Thanks for the review.  Just a note on the elevators.   Some of the newer Carnival ships have similar type elevators.  I was on the Horizon a few years ago and it was similar to what you encountered, long waits and crowded elevators when they did arrive.  But, we were on the Venizia this past summer and with similar elevators, i don't think we ever waited more than a minute or two, and the elevators were only crowded a couple of times and those were after a show let out from the theater.   So the system CAN work on a cruise ship if implemented correctly.  Perhaps MSC needs to look at the issue and figure out how to make it work.  In theory it should work, but often times people forget to hit their floor one time for each passenger (i.e if you are there with 3 people, hit the button 3x.).  

2 minutes ago, Essiesmom said:

Per the port website, portCanaveral.com, it is $17/day plus tax.  EM

Awesome.  Considering that parking at the Manhattan Cruise Terminal is $45/day, that's a relative bargain.  Driving down to Orlando in January to drop my daughter off for her Disney Internship and considering a 3 day from Port Canaveral while we are down there.   That will work out well.

How much is parking?

We are looking at this cruise too.  We are taking our daughter to live in Florida for a spell and figured we'd attach a short cruise to it.  Never sailed MSC, but my son has out of Brooklyn.  Ship looks really beautiful and also figured a short cruise would work to see how we like it (We've sailed NCL, Carnival, Royal Caribbean).

20 hours ago, ftelah said:

Wasn't sure where that I could ask a couple questions but from reading this board I thought it would be a good try. There will be 4 of us flying into LGA to go on the Venezia at the end of the month. None of us have cruised out of NY but have done many cruises out of several other ports. We are kind of lost at what the best way to get from the airport directly to the cruise port other than my husband had seen that we are better off being dropped off across the street from the port instead waiting in the line to be dropped off right at the port. We were hoping to also be able to go by somewhere like a Wal Mart or Walgreens or something to get some wine and soda to take on the ship but again we have not been in the area to know anything about how the most efficient and smart way to do that after we get off the plane and head to the cruise terminal. If anyone has any suggestions it will be greatly appreciated as my experience in NY was not a good one when we drove through there several years ago so I have been rather dreading it. Thank you for any and all help!

The cruise port is in midtown Manhattan so with that said, there are not many places, especially near the port like Walgreens to buy what you are looking for.  Maybe a few blocks there could  be a pharmacy you might be able to get something.   Certainly not a Walmart (I'm not certain there are even any Walmarts in Manhattan).   I also don't believe (but it's been many years since I lived in NY) that you can buy liquor in any store other than a dedicated liquor store (it's like that here in NJ and used to be that way in NY when I lived there).  As far as from the airport, you can probably take a taxi, though I'm probably not the best person to answer that.

On 9/5/2023 at 9:51 PM, shof515 said:

mask can be found in the gift shop onboard

 

 

check the fun times or the hub app onboard for places to lunch on embarkation. its usually lido buffet area food like the buffet, guys burger, the burrito place, pizza, deli, etc

Also they had masks available in the photo area (I forget the name of the venue, but where you looked at the photos taken during the cruise)

On 9/6/2023 at 12:37 PM, Etta1213 said:

We're buffet people, and RC's much easier buffet layout has kept me from wanting to cruise Carnival again. DH's mobility problems complicate the situation.)

It's not the best buffet layout by any means.   And yes, you would need to wait in line to get to specific portion of the buffet you need to get to in many instances.  For example, if you wanted to get to the entrees, you'd have to wait online, go through the salad bar to get to the entrees.  That said, the few times we did the buffet, I don't think we waited online for more than a couple of minutes to accomplish that.  The horror stories of "long lines" were just not something I encountered.

1 hour ago, HappySails4U said:

* Heard that the shuttles were over booked and some passengers were told that they would need to find another means of transportation and refunds were not given.

 

* It has been reported that there is no Carnival staff member to assist with the departing shuttles and no signage for direction.   Basically on your own and then find out that the bus is full and must stand and wait for additional hour(s). 

 

Our first time sailing from NYC and trying to avoid as many hurdles as possible !  

 

 

Yeah, that's not good.

2 hours ago, Jeafl said:

Thanks for the balanced review!  It's nice to hear that your waits for anytime dining were pretty short.  Did you ever go later than 5:30, and if so, what was your wait time then?

I think we might have eaten like 5:45 one night, but still a 10 min wait.

1 hour ago, latebloomer56 said:

Hello, question how long did it take you to walk to Penn from the port? If taxi situation is this bad we may walk if rather is nice the first week in Sept. Have walked from Time Square many times but with less luggage. One large bag and two carry on bags plus my backpack for my Inogen machine.

Thanks

We actually didn't do that walk.  We walked from the pier to PA which took, about 20 minutes, dragging one large suitcase.  I have asthma and had to stop once or twice, but it was still not bad.   But PA is a bit farther north and west than Penn.   I'd imagine probably a half hour to get to Penn.  As I said we DID walk a few blocks west of Penn station on our way to the pier and then got a cab on 10th Ave. That was still $30 due to midtown traffic on a Tuesday afternoon.

1 hour ago, shof515 said:

the whole taxi stand area is congested with fake uber/lyft, expensive ripoff taxi drivers, yellow cabs, etc. it can be a mess. it can be somewhat not easy getting a uber/lyft with the traffic in that area. what i do instead is i walk up to 11th ave or i walk a few blocks down to 46th st. the best part of walking is you can sometimes escape the very annoying surge pricing zone and save a few bucks

This is what we thought when we decided to walk to PA.  But it was such a nice day, we just walked the whole thing.   We sort of did that in reverse on embarkation day.   We walked a couple of blocks away from Penn Station and snagged a cab there.   THAT day was very hot and muggy and was too much to walk it.

7 hours ago, HappySails4U said:

Thanks for your review.  We are sailing from NYC mid-Sept and my spouse will be super focused on the most efficient method of transportation from the ship to LGA.  We initially thought about using the Carnival shuttle but the horrible reviews made us reconsider.  In your opinion If the "taxi stand" is so horrible should we just plan to use Lyft ??? 

I have not used Lyft in Manhattan yet, and I'm not sure how that would work at the cruise port.  But the Taxi situation they have now IMO is untenable.  We've taken maybe 5 cruises out of NY.  The first one, I remember it was hard to get a cab, but we ended up getting one with none of this pricing nonsense that went on this time.   The next time, they actually had a taxi line.  That worked great.  The next two times, we drove in and parked, but that's gotten so expensive that we decided to go back to our bus/train/taxi plan.  They do need to make it less of a free for all.  If I was heading to LGA, I think I'd take their shuttle.   Just to avoid the hassles I went though, I'd rather pay extra.  NOTE:  The other times I've cruised from NYC, the cruises began and ended on a weekend, so maybe it's only this bad during the week?    That will be a consideration next time we cruise out of NY.  What issues have you heard about with their shuttle?

8 hours ago, Stick93 said:

@steveknj nice review - honest and informative . MarQ is really very talented and all the cruise directors on Carnival really set the tone of FUN on the ship. NCL has very nice ships but no identity of the program. Have many things going on catering to different ages and interest , but nothing that brings it together. Royal compares better to Carnival in terms of fun and entertainment. I did loved the Elvis show on the Getaway - was done very well and if you get to see choir of man on an NCL ship that was really great - the shows on carnival don’t come close to those. 
 

Happy travels….

That is the one place where I felt NCL had Carnival beat and that's their shows.  While we enjoyed the Carnival shows, they are "typical" and the types of shows I've seen on cruises for as long as we've been cruising.  NCL (and RCCL) have broadway shows.  We've seen SIx and The Million Dollar Quartet on our recent NCL cruises and were both excellent.   I guess Carnival figures they'd rather spend on the overall "fun" experience than just on broadway shows.