Stockjock

All of our excursions are booked directly through MSC. That’s usually what we do, because we find the pricing pretty good, and I also like the fact that if there’s a problem, the ship is going to wait for you. I know others don’t feel the same way, and that’s fine. But I think the pricing on MSC is better than most of the competition, based on my experience.

I did make copies of the menu from Raj Polo teahouse. If you go, be sure to ask what your drink package covers and what it doesn’t cover, because it’s not obvious and it’s a bit confusing.

So we did the boat ride and winetasting tour out of Malta, and I thought it was very good. They pick you up on the bus and drive you to the other side of town or the island or whatever, and then you take a boat for a fairly lengthy ride all around Malta. It gets a little bit on the cold side, but it was worth it, and there were a lot of opportunities. Just bring a jacket for sure because it can get breezy out on the water. Next, you get back on the bus and you head back to the port area, right next to the ship, for a wine tasting. They give you a glass of a red and a glass of white, full pours, which I thought were both pretty good. They also serve you some little snacks that were kind of tasty. After it ended, we stuck around a little longer and chatted with a couple of nice ladies from Australia. We also ordered some calamari, which I recommend, and another glass of wine. But I felt like it was a good tour and a good value. The restaurant where you do the wine tasting is fairly nice, and not a dive, so it is worth considering ordering some food there, but of course you do have the ship right next to you if you want to just wait until you get on the ship. Here are a few pictures from our boat ride, and a few shots of “Big Mama”, which is my nickname for World Europa.

We’ve left our last port and are approaching the tail end of the crew so I don’t know if we will have an opportunity to do that but I’ll try. Are you asking for a photograph of the venue itself? I also tried to check the spa prices in the app and unless I’m missing something, I didn’t see them.

I suspect that you just pay the difference in price over your drink package maximum, but I’m not sure since we just walked through Champaign bar and didn’t actually stop there for a drink. Yes, I probably should’ve taken a picture of the Trout presentation, but it was just atrocious. It was all scrambled up with some kind of a red sauce, and it just really looked vile.

Apologies in advance for any misspellings because I am doing this via voice dictation while getting ready for Malta. So I don’t have a lot of time this morning. Yesterday, we visited Palermo. My girlfriend decided to stay on the ship and relax, so I took a tour that went to several cathedrals, including one in Mondrale. I would describe it as not bad. Something to do, basically. The cathedrals are nice, but after a while, they almost all start looking pretty similar, so I understand why my girlfriend gets burnt out on cathedrals. They did stop at a street market, but it was ridiculously overcrowded and I couldn’t really get in to get anything to eat, and it took an act of God to find a bathroom. so I wasn’t completely thrilled with that part of it, but again it was a worthwhile thing to do for a few hours, and my opinion, just not amazing or memorable. We did go to Raj’s Tea House, and it was OK. I suppose it is a decent atmosphere. The service was friendly, but very slow, and the quality of the product seemed pretty good. It’s one of the few places where if you have a drink package, with some of the specialty items, you will have to pay full price for them. in other words, for us, we had easy plus, which takes nine euro off normally, but with my girlfriend’s cocktail I had to pay the whole €15 for the cocktail + seven euro for a slice of pie, that was her idea not mine. Interestingly, the tea-based liquors are included, if you have the drink package, as are most of the teas, which are very good. My girlfriend thinks I’m cheap sometimes, but what I would probably do is get the tea that’s included in the drink package, and there are a lot of tea varieties, so then, order the tea liquor on the side and mix my own drink, and there would be no charge for that, under most circumstances. Just be aware that their tea-infused liquors started at about 37% alcohol, and go up to 70% plus alcohol, and I’m not talking proof, I’m talking the percentage of alcohol in it. So they are extremely strong. If you drink too many of those, you’re going to get hammered. They had a woman playing the piano later in the day, and that was enjoyable, but as I mentioned before, I really miss Sky Lounge tremendously. They do have some ok options, but they don’t have anything that replaces it, so to us, that was a big letdown. I’m not sure if the teahouse will be a success. Maybe. I guess I could say the same about the Gin experiment or whatever it is. I asked my girlfriend if she prefers the new world-class ship or the older ships and she said she prefers the older ships. I think I would agree, although I would not dissuade anyone from trying this ship, because it is nice and many ways, and they are doing some things differently. You may find those changes to your liking, and you may find that you missed some of the old venues. We spent most of the evening in Masters of the Sea, and they had a guy on the guitar who was outstanding in terms of his guitar work, and his voice was not bad. Gor dinner, we went to the main dining room at Le Dunes, and we found the service to be very good there. This was the first meal we had that was not in a specialty restaurant, or on a gala night, and the starters were pretty good, my girlfriend had Trout that was maybe the worst presentation I can remember at any restaurant in recent memory. She didn’t like it, I tasted it and thought it was OK but I’m not a big Trout fan. I also had a veal that I thought was at least average. In fact, her Trout presentation was so bad, I didn’t even take a picture of it. We both commented that it looked like somebody vomited the trout dinner onto the plate, and I don’t mean to gross you out, but that’s what it looked like. We visit Malta today and we’re doing a tour that is a wine tasting on a boat, so I’m hoping that will be fun. By the way, if you ever check into this ship on Facebook, I’m the guy that created the check in because there was none, for what little that’s worth.

We only walked through masters of the Sea, but maybe we’ll have a drink or two there.

I think I cleared up some of the confusion over what is or is not included with the dining specialty dining packages, as well as with the MSC diamond level free dinner. Now this does vary from ship to ship, which makes it even more confusing, but here on World Europa, apparently, the dining package is good for the Butcher’s Cut restaurant, the sushi restaurant, Hola tacos, and the Chef’s Garden Kitchen. But the diamond free dinner is only good for butchers cut, the sushi restaurant, and Hola tacos. Once again, this may vary from ship to ship. Tonight, we went to the Chef Garden kitchen, which was interesting. It’s certainly a lot different than butchers cut, and they are using more unique or creative ingredients, and the garnishes are grown in the restaurant, for what that’s worth. We did enjoy it, but I still enjoy the traditional butchers cut more. I mentioned previously, I’m not a big fan of the Hola tacos joint, but I’m a bit of a Mexican food snob, since I live just north of the Mexican border. The waiter admitted that their food was “inspired by” actual Mexican food, and I think that’s a good way to put it. I’ve got some pictures of the food and menus from tonight’s Chef’s Garden kitchen dinner. The service was very good and the staff was eager to please. I also thought the presentation was generally pretty good, although they did add some sprouts as garnish on the desserts and I thought that was a little bit odd. I’m starting to see some things I don’t love about this ship. Without a doubt, there is a lot to do and it’s a huge ship, but I really miss the nice casual, mellow chill out lounges that we find on many other classes of MSC ships. I think it’s the sky lounge that I’m thinking of, where you can just chill out looking out over the pool area and they will have a band with maybe a piano or a singer or a guitar player or something like that. I can’t find this on World Europa, unless I’m just looking in the wrong places. The shows in the main theater are pretty good and are the same basically as on any other MSC ship. There is a carousel lounge at the rear of the ship that seems to have a lot of interactive themed dance-along and silent disco type of activities which really doesn’t appeal that much to me, but maybe it will appeal to many other passengers. We visited Elixer craft bar recently, and it was pretty quiet, and while we enjoyed the drinks, we didn’t necessarily feel that they justified the additional cost, since nothing is covered in that bar by the drink package. We walked through the gin experience or whatever it’s called a few times, and it seemed OK, but I’m really not that much into gin, and again, I’m not looking to usually spend a lot of money on drinks over and above the drink package I’ve bought unless the drinks are really amazing. So obviously, they want to upsell you, and you know, that’s fine, but it seems like they dedicate a lot of space to upselling. The closest thing I could find to kind of a chill, low-key bar was Lanai, but there’s two things that aren’t great about it in my opinion. One it’s at the back of the ship, where you have to go outdoors, and get somewhat cold, especially during the winter months, but then the biggie to me is that it’s basically a smoking bar. So I really wish they would’ve created something like Lanai, put it up higher with a view, and ditched the cigars and cigarettes. I wouldn’t discourage anyone from trying the world-class ships on MSC, but there are certainly a number of changes versus the rest of their fleet. Some will find these to be changes for the better, and others may appreciate some of the benefits of the older MSC ships.

Here are a few photos of our afternoon spent in “Rome“. The tour we did was called Baroque Rome, or something like that, and I thought it was good. It hit many of the highlights of Rome, briefly, including the Vatican, Coliseum, Trevi Fountain, etc. you know all the famous places, It was also nice to meet Dominic from Spain, who is a lurker here on Cruise Critic, lol. He seemed like a nice fellow. Tonight we will visit a specialty restaurant, but I do have a little bit of a gripe about that. So I bought the Trio dining package, and then I got one additional specialty dining for being a diamond member, and the specialty restaurant host told me that my only options were Hola Tacos, which my girlfriend hated, Butcher’s Cut restaurant, and the Kaito sushi restaurant. The MSC and Me app made it appear as if La Pescaderia seafood restaurant was included but when I called, they said it wasn’t, but they told me that the Garden Kitchen Restaurant is included, But when I asked before, they said that it was not included. So there seems to be some confusion about what is or is not included in the specialty dining package, and what is and is not included in the free diamond dinner, which again, is a little bit annoying, particularly since I would’ve probably skipped the Hola taco place if I had correct information. If anyone knows the actual answer, I would like to know, since I can’t apparently get a straight answer from the employees here on the ship. In any event, we switched our reservation to the Garden Kitchen, so we’ll try that tonight at nine, and then we’ll see the Diva show with Christina Ellinas. We saw her on MSC last New Year’s Eve, and we thought she was very good.

Thank you, to you as well!

We did not but most of the prices were from €14 to 16 €. The drink I had was the only one that I think was made with tequila and I enjoyed it a lot and I think it went for €14 each.

A few photos from New Year’s Eve dinner and now drinks in the speakeasy. It is a pretty interesting concept, we only have six people here out of over 6700 passengers, so I see why they can’t really do too many invitations. We are about a half an hour from the calendar clicking over a notch, and I think the live entertainment will come out pretty soon. I may post some more pictures later as we get closer to midnight, and presumably get a bit more intoxicated.

It’s a big ship, so it takes a while to explore it, but let me know if you have any questions.

We had a rainy day in Genoa today, so our three hour tour, which included an overview of the city, with three stops, was just about perfect. Because it is New Year’s Eve, it will be Gain Night in the main dining room, and then we will spend the changeover of the new year in the speakeasy, which should be memorable and interesting. i

Errors with this message. I’ll try it again below…

I ordered the chocolate dip, strawberries, but otherwise, one of the deliveries we got was for having the Aurea suite and the other one is for being diamond members.

Today, the ship stopped in Provence, France, and we did a tour that was pretty long, and it went to Avignon and Aix en Provence. We did a *very* similar tour on Divina and 2015 or 2016, so maybe, in retrospect it wasn’t the best choice. If I had to book it over again, I would probably pick something else, although there were some interesting aspects to the tour. It was just a very long day, with a lot of time on the bus, and I didn’t feel like we spent enough time where I wanted to spend time and we spent too much time where I didn’t want to spend time. While it warmed up later in the afternoon, I was freezing my backside off early in the morning, so, if you take this tour, be sure to bring appropriate clothing to keep you warm, depending on the season, of course. I purchased the Trio specialty dining package, so tonight we tried Hola Tacos. I’m from San Diego, so I’m probably the wrong person to talk to about good Mexican food, because we live just north of the Mexican border and outstanding Mexican food can be found on almost every block. One of the servers said that their food was “inspired by” actual Mexican food, so if you don’t know any better, you might think it was reasonably tasty. if you do know better, like we do, I’d suggest that maybe they should hire some actual Mexicans to create something a little more authentic. My girlfriend hated it, I thought it was OK. That said, the service was good, so that was not the issue. I had the street tacos, which were very small, but relatively tasty. I would not mistake them for the street tacos I can get in Southern California, but they were not bad. My girlfriend had the Molé enchiladas, and it was not a particularly good representation of what they should taste like. Overcooked, dry, and not very authentic. I had the bartender, make me a margarita from scratch with fresh lime, I don’t think that’s something they normally did, but it came out pretty nice. I did order a shot of Grand Marnier on the side to make my own premium margarita on the rocks. After that, we went to a magic show, and the audience seemed to enjoy it, but I wasn’t terribly impressed. We got some snacks later, and I was a little bit surprised that the buffet was closed, although it was late. They sent everyone down to Pizza and Burger on Deck 6 forward, so we had some junk food before bed, which is always such a great, healthy idea. We also tried the Elixer craft cocktail bar, and I didn’t think it was worth the money, quite frankly. My Easy Plus drink package covers drinks up to nine Euro, and most of those drinks were about €15. We did try two drinks and while they were pretty good, I didn’t really feel that they were exceptional and they didn’t justify the cost, in my mind. I think that Celebrity’s specialty craft cocktail bar, which I think they call World Class,, is considerably better. As I write this, I am lying in bed, and there is some serious disco baseline booming and reverberating throughout the cabin. Don’t get me wrong, I really like the cabin a lot, I think we got an excellent price on it and it’s a good design with plenty of room and well laid out. And I don’t really hear creaks, pops, or groans either. But it’s 12:30 AM, and I’m not loving the disco beat constantly blasting throughout the room. It is quite pronounced, not something that you barely hear. While we are having fun, this is a huge ship and I think it holds 6700 passengers. So it’s very full, and it feels a bit like organized chaos. At first, I wondered why they didn’t have a central atrium per se, but I think that it would just be too many passengers in one place. You want to spread it out a little bit when you have this many people on the ship. My girlfriend said that it is a floating mall. I do miss the Swarovski crystal stairs, but I think they have that in Yacht Club club, I’m not sure about that though. Service has generally been quite good and our cabin steward is excellent. Tomorrow, we will be in Genoa, and we have booked a very short tour for the day. In closing, for tonight, at least, let me say that when I first reviewed MSC in 2015 or 2016, they had a largely Russian crew m, or similar, that were extremely grumpy, and seemed like they hated their jobs, hated their employer, and hated their passengers. I don’t sense any of that at present. The crew seems eager to please, and I sense that they enjoy their jobs, and that MSC is treating them reasonably well. So I felt good about that aspect.

Dinner time at Butcher’s cut. The food was amazing and the service outstanding.

A few photos from our first day sailaway. Sure we will have plenty more, lol. Mission accomplished on the Speakeasy tickets, I hit up the Hotel Director and Director of finance who were hanging out and asked about it and they got me some tickets.

We mostly cruise on Celebrity and MSC, so I have a pretty good familiarity with both of them. I was on Infinity this summer, and then a month later, on Eclipse for the second time, and then we will be on Celebrity Ascent in the summer of 2024.

Here are a few pictures of our room, which is one of the one bedroom Aurea suites. I think it’s a grand suite, but I’m not sure. We like the room. It’s good-sized and has a nice layout. I did a YouTube video that I will upload later and I’ll provide a link to that once it’s done.

So we are onboard having lunch now in the Hexagon restaurant. We’ve already had a couple of problems. At first, they did not have our cruise cards and they looked high and low and they had to have them made. And then after some delay, they brought them to us, but with two entirely different passengers’ names on them. And then, after another delay, they brought us the cards with the correct name, but it didn’t show our loyalty status as diamond for both of us and they told us to fix it at guest services. Guest services fixed it, but afterwards I looked at it, and they only fixed mine not my girlfriend’s. So I hate to nitpick, but little things like that are mildly annoying. Though as I write this, the Hexagon dining room is nearly empty, but we’ve been here for an hour and a half. And they just now served us our desserts. So I think to say that the service is very slow is an understatement. In terms of the food quality for lunch, it was pretty good although they did bring my girlfriend the wrong entrée and then had to replace it. My meat skewer was reasonably tasty, but barely lukewarm. While we were waiting on the food, I asked where I book the specialty restaurants, and I was pointed to a room with a man with a white coat, so I sat there for about 20 minutes and then once my number was called, I was told that they don’t book specialty restaurants, lol.

I agree 100%. I am roughly 6 foot tall or 183 cm, and those extra inches make a massive difference. If I spend $100+ for a seat with an extra 5 inches of legroom, to me, that’s an excellent value and well worth the cost. Spending thousands of dollars for a lie flat seat is something that I could pay without blinking, but to me, it’s just not a good value. I know that some disagree with that, and of course I respect that opinion.

Here is our itinerary. There are some cruises that I book for the itinerary, some cruises, I book for the ship and date, and this would fall into the latter category. I thought World Europa sounded pretty interesting, and of course, it’s always fun to do a cruise over New Year’s Eve. We have been to all of these ports previously. I am also interested in the new specialty restaurants, which sound appealing to me.

Tonight is our last night in Barcelona. We board tomorrow morning and we have a Aurea Suite, which sounds pretty interesting, and it is on the back of the ship, so part of the view is at the cabins across from us, but we also have a view off to our right, which will be an ocean view. It is a pretty good sized cabin, with a separate living room and bedroom area, and I thought about doing yacht club, but I think this is going to be perfect for us. We will have four specialty dining nights out of seven, and a drink package, so I think it’s going to be a lot of fun and a great way to kick off the new year. But that said, here’s a few pictures from this evening.