scottamemnon

We finished our cruise, although I tested positive the morning we arrived at Ocean Cay, the last full day of our cruise. I doubt they could have left me there even if they wanted to.

Not only were they in close contact, they were all showing symptoms. My daughter had a darn fever. We demanded they quarantine all of us because otherwise it was just being crazy. My wife was told on the phone that if they tested negative again(30 minutes after the first test), that it was sufficient for them and they would be able to go about the ship freely and leave the ship onto Ocean Cay. Either way we are not going to be cruising anytime soon. We had the Mardi Gras scheduled for Thanksgiving and we are cancelling it today. One of the whole points to cruising was always the amazing customer service aspect, if that is gone, I simply no longer see the point over land vacations. Much of the rest of the magic had been nickeled and dimed away, with that becoming even more noticeable on this mega ships.

Well up until a week before sailing it seemed like the US was never going to approve vaccines for 1 year olds. My wife and I were vaccinated and boosted. My 10 year is fully vaccinated. S I am sure just everybody knew that 14028 was next to quarantined cabins, right? It just looks like a regular cabin on a deck of fantastica balconies... with a deck of cabins above and below. This is not the same as getting assigned a partial view in a garbage area. I am sure someone could book one of these cabins, so my warning should be valid. On a whim I tried to see if I could book one a few weeks out. Closest I could get was on deck 12, 2 cabins away from the bulkhead that divided that section. If I could get that close on a sailing 2 weeks out, I am sure people are going to be in this scenario. Guy leaning over was day 2... first symptoms day 4.. fever day 6... usual range of time after exposure to show symptoms with covid is 2-14 days. So your expert analysis is a little flawed. The point I was trying to make with this post was not, poor old me... it was how dare the cruise line not take any damn precautions? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that putting people next to a quarantined room is a stupid idea. This is the whole reason why they are moving people when they are sick. People need to be aware that for all the flowery articles about caring about your health, at least in the case of MSC, all they care about is the health of your wallet and their ability to access it.

That seems to be the impression I have gotten from everyone sailing Yacht club, that its near perfect. We had a great time on the Armonia in 2019, so we know they can do it well for non-yacht club as well. I would like to think this had something to do with the large group of crew leaving the ship I saw on embarkation day, and over the next few weeks they will get their act together fully. A few times on the phone I had the distinct sensation that the person on the other end had someone listening in over their shoulder based on how they answered. Just writing the post was pretty cathartic... the anger I was bottling up needed a release.

Right off the bat, sorry if this feels like bashing the line, we had A LOT go wrong on this cruise and a lot of observations that are concerning I feel like need to be said as a warning to others. We have sailed on MSC before on the Armonia in 2019 and were really excited to try one of their larger ships. There were four of us, my wife and I, our 10 year old daughter and 1 year old son. We had a standard balcony, Bella category... so it was a guarantee. More on this later. Everything went well on embarkation. Only comments I would have is there were a lot of people crammed in that room, a lot of coughing going on. I did notice what appeared to be a larger than normal amount of crew exiting the ship, passports and luggage in hand, than I am used to seeing. Not sure if this impacted a lot of our crew interactions. This sailing appeared to have some very large Brazilian groups on board from our interactions with people at times. The ship sailed at 80% capacity. We were assigned cabin 14028. When we arrived at our cabin, we were surprised to find a door closed in the hall that leads to the cabins further forward. It said crew only on it. After a couple days we realized that there were people in those cabins. Eventually we realized that these are QUARANTINE cabins. By the time we figured that out, and after I had been on my balcony while the guy in the cabin on the other side is leaning over the railing, I am starting to get some congestion. This will get much worse later(this is day 3). Going back to the beginning: While walking the ship the first afternoon my wife slipped on a wet spot, jamming her knee. She told a crewmember about it so they could clean it up before someone else slipped(this was in the entrance to the photo cave like area). None of the crew seemed to care about it. We waited in the area and found it was almost 15 minutes before it was dealt with... we just initially figured they were just too overwhelmed. Night 1, we went to Central Park for dinner, went to our table and found another family there. No big deal, must be a mistake, we thought. Then another family came, and another, and so on. There were 8 families assigned to this table at 5:15pm! 30 minutes later we are assigned a new table... the crew then explains the table number does not exist. Another 20 minutes later and we finally have a table. Kind of crazy, but it wasn't a huge deal. For the first couple days things seem to be mostly fine, with a few oddities. No one was asking people to sanitize or wash hands on entering any of the dining rooms... that was very strange. The "washy washy" police has been a thing on cruise ships for a very long time now. Never seen it so lackadaisical. This should have been a sign of things to come for my family and a large number of others. After day three when we pieced together the quarantine thing, we asked for a new cabin. The crew member confirmed that the cabin next to us was for quarantine, but that could mean a sick passenger, or a crew member joining the ship. My wife was outraged because we have a 1 year old who could not be vaccinated in time. Why they could not simply provide a buffer zone of a cabin or two, I have no idea. Just a heads up for anyone wishing to sail on the Seashore. I was able to confirm with my own eyes that at least on decks 14, 12, and 11.. the forward most section is being used for quarantines. There is a bulkhead door there. On 14 it was the cabins forward of 14028. Ask to be moved if you get assigned one of the ones right there. Move on to the mid day of day 6... I have a fever... and a very high one. Dizzy, uncontrollable chills, etc. My wife calls the medical number as asked and tells them the symptoms I am having. The person on the other end said they could come to see us for a $200 consultation fee, plus whatever testing and medicine costs. NO WHERE on the ship does it say covid testing is free and should be done when you have flu like symptoms... the web page does, but we went without internet. So I decided to tough it out, because I am a stupid man and thats what we do. My wife goes and buys a thermometer. By the time she is back the fever has backed off a bit, but still reads over 103. The next morning(day 7), my daughter has a fever, my wife is congested. Now my wife calls again, this time she is told the correct info. The come and give us all tests, I am positive, they are all negative, but more than likely positive as well. So we get ready for quarantine. From here on out is where this story goes crazy and really needs to be a big red flashing warning to anyone who is concerned about covid exposure. When guest services calls about going to quarantine, they only wanted to send me. They only wanted to talk to me. When my wife questioned them, she was told she needs to stop being a hysterical woman and put her husband on the line. We are then informed that the three of them should go to the medical center and test again(it had been 30 minutes). If they test negative, they are free to wander the ship of go to the private island. My wife loses it at this point and tells the man that they are ok with them spreading covid wherever she wants, even though its obvious we all have it? He did not deny it. We demanded to all be quarantined together. In quarantine, this doesnt improve. The impression we got from the crew is that we are a hassle to them, and they would have been happier with us tossed overboard. Requests for food and drink were rarely fullfilled correctly. I didn't eat much that day, since they delivered food for 2, to a room of 4... and never corrected it. Everything had to be on their time. Thank god I brought toddler formula onboard for late night feedings or I am afraid of what we would have done for our 1 year old. Several times they called my wife hysterical when she was asking questions. The condescension was pretty shocking for the cruise industry. We were promised, in writing, that we would be reimbursed pro-rated amounts for unused things like drink packages and the like... this never happened. When we asked for the 3rd time, we were told to take it up with our credit card company. Departure day.. the baby is now sick, everyone has fevers. Thankfully my high one lasted off and on for those first 24 hours only. I have no sense of taste or smell though. When they finally got around to taking us off the ship, we got unceremoniously shuttled into a holding area with 40 other covid unwanteds. Talking to others, we hear there were other batches of guests, with the rumors being 10 groups in total... so potentially 10% of the guests... although I find that hard to believe. The officer that met us there just said, you have to leave, you have covid, walk out and go to the right... thats it. I am sure I missed a lot of other misteps that happened.. my wife says she was often ignored by staff until I was present. We heard other guests at dinner complaining that their food was always dangerously cold, but we did not encounter this. I should wrap this up with some good. The pizza was still great. Hola tacos was amazing! My wife and daughter said the revolving sushi was great too. I really liked the sports bar and the brooklyn cafe. For the flagship of the fleet, they need to fire the hotel director and cruise directors. All of this negative is on the two of them and their leaderships of their departments. Catching covid can happen anywhere, we have been lucky to avoid it until this time. I am sure we will recover. It is the treatment we received that really disturbs me. I have never felt so unwanted by cruise staff before, such an attitude can only come from the people who lead them The blatant disregard of health protocols is truly scary. At the very least I hope some of this causes some people to pay attention to what is happening on board and be careful. We had been planning on going on the World Europa next year, had even talked about booking while onboard. Now I will stay away from MSC, maybe forever. My wife's very large, italian family will not sail on them either.. since they come to me for tourism advice. MSC should be thankful my father retired from the tourism industry where he was a president of a very large travel company(now sold to new owners). We came away with the ultimate feeling that if they could not make money on you, they didn't care if you dropped dead.

I now have 3 different times for my sailing this weekend... my paperwork says 10am, they texted me yesterday saying 10:30am. The web site says 1PM this morning. I am going to go with the 10:30am unless they text me again.

All kids 2 and up need a Covid Test, even if they are vaccinated. All adults need the test too. The only exception is kids under 2 years old.

I keep seeing reviews of two check in lines at Miami, one for vaccinated, one for un-vaccinated. Is this still the case? I am sailing with my two kids on July 2 on the Seashore. My wife, my 10 year old, and I will all be fully vaccinated. My 15 month old son will not. He does not need a test as far as I can tell. So I am not sure which line I should go to, or if we need to do anything different. Anyone who has sailed recently out of Miami have any insight?

The biggest difference is that the Bella level is a guarantee cabin, so you do not pick one. Although on my July 2 cruise, by going Bella we got a cabin that would have cost us $600+ more if we had gone Fantastica. With low occupancy numbers it is a pretty good gamble right now. Other than that it is more priority for picking early or late dining and no delivery fee on room service mostly.

The 2nd.

Thanks for the help. We have gone ahead and cancelled our Carnival cruise for 4th of July week and now will be on the Seashore. Capacity wasnt the only issue with Carnival(issues with the ship being reported). Really excited to go on the Seashore though. Only ever sailed on the MSC Armonia with this line... I am sure it will be a huge difference!

Its just what I have heard from cruise news sources, I have no official info. Also Carnival ships seem to be packed on youtube reviews of late. Considering my facebook group for the Carnival Horizon cruise I was going on in a few weeks has gone over 500 members, that is a pretty big sign of how full some of the ships are. Also seeing people report that the Sunshine is packed out of Charleston every sailing of late. I am sure its not every ship though.

There is definitely something funny going on with the web page. I just called to inquire about using Cruise Flex to change to a different ship, and the person on the phone had completely different pricing from the web page, cheaper too!

I think they are also doing updates on promos right now. If you click on their kids free + onboard credit offer it doesnt find any cruises eligible. Any kids are being charged for in the booking engine.

Seeing Carnival and Royal sailing at 100%+ now, and he reviews are starting to get concerning there about Covid.. it seems like a large number of people are getting it on cruises now and I have an unvaccinated infant who I would prefer didn't get it if possible. For anyone who has sailed Caribbean sailings on the Divina or Seashore lately, how busy has it been?