Review of MSC Divina Sailing Oct 29th-Nov. 4th 2017

Hello everyone my name is Ken and I travel frequently with my uncle Terry. While this is not my first review, it is my first MSC review. I like to write a long detailed review going day by day with lots of pix. It takes me a long time to finish the whole thing, so I will give the short and sweet of it for those that want a quick synopsis and want to move on. For those, like me, that love lots of details and pix stay tuned. .

So the MSC Divina would have gotten a huge thumbs up, but unfortunately they gave me food poisoning. Therefore I've been left no choice but to give then a thumbs down (n)! There is no doubt that the Divina is a beautiful ship! In my experience the customer service on board was excellent for the most part, with a few exceptions. The food was decent in all the venues we ate, with the exception of getting food poisoning of course. What can I say we have been on quite a few cruises now and have never gotten food poisoning so travel on MSC at your own risk. I'm a firm believer in saying, never say never, but it's extremely unlikely we will ever sail with MSC again. We also traveled with a group of 375 and several others have complained of getting sick as well as another member of our roll call. Please feel free to ask any questions and I will do my best to provide an answer

What did you eat that gave you food poisoning

How did the medical clinic or customer service handle your situation?

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Ok now that we got that out of the way let's get on with the good stuff. So we flew in 2 days prior to the cruise. We were sailing with a group called Chumley's Bear Cruises, there were about 375 of us. We stayed at our host hotel in Ft. Lauderdale called Ocean Sky Resort and Hotel. We got a group rate of $120 per night. The resort was right on the beach and had direct beach access as well as a pool and a hot tub.

So we had a couple of issues before the cruise. The first and by far the most devastating is I lost my sister and best friend to stage 4 liver cancer on Sept. 10th of this year. It was so quick she passed 1 week and 2 days from the first time we were told she had cancer. Which on the one hand it was good she did not suffer long, but on the other it was so quick it's left us all still reeling from the loss. I say this not to elicit sympathy or attention, just as an explanation why this trip turned out to be low key as far as what we did in ports.

The other issue was we were originally booked on a cruise going to the Eastern Caribbean. Due to Mother Nature our cruise had to be rescheduled to the Western Caribbean. So I had already had everything planned out for our trip to the Eastern Carib way before my sister even got sick. By the time the cruise was changed to the Western Carib I was dealing with everything with my sister. Normally, especially going to a new island, I would do a ton of research and have everything planned out. For this trip I just didn't have it in me, and we just got off the ship in each port and walked around and winged it. We debated about cancelling the cruise altogether but ultimately decided that we could be just as sad and depressed in paradise being cooked and cleaned for, as well as at home where we would have to do these things for ourselves.

Here is a pic of my uncle and I at Wi-Fi Burger, our first meal, on Thur. after arriving in Ft. Lauderdale and checking into our hotel.

http://s1045.photobucket.com/user/lovelearnteach/media/Chumley%20cruise%20Oct%202017/cruise%20vaca%20Oct%202017%20101_zpskoyk5pwy.jpg.html?sort=3&o=674

What did you eat that gave you food poisoning

I was on this sailing and got food poisoning the same day as many others. Out of multiple things anyone has eaten I don't think anyone can tell you what exact food gave it to you. It can take hours before it hits. Based on what I've read so far it was from the buffet at breakfast on Thursday morning.

How did the medical clinic or customer service handle your situation?

 

 

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I called 99 and told them I was out of toilet paper and that I needed more. I didn't know what was going on at the time.. I just knew I was sick. I didn't hear of anyone else getting sick till the posts started hitting our roll call today. I did tell the room attendant but I just got the "oh I'm sorry" talk.

I called 99 and told them I was out of toilet paper and that I needed more. I didn't know what was going on at the time.. I just knew I was sick. I didn't hear of anyone else getting sick till the posts started hitting our roll call today. I did tell the room attendant but I just got the "oh I'm sorry" talk.

Just glad you’re fine now. Thanks for your response.

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Ok sorry about that, now I got the pic thing figured out :D:rolleyes:.

What did you eat that gave you food poisoning

Well I can't be 100% positive, but I believe it was the Chicken Curry with Basmati Rice I had for lunch from the Black Crab Restaurant. My uncle and I had the Minestrone Alla Genovese and he didn't get sick, so the only other thing it could have possibly been was the Vanilla Panna Cotta with Wild Berry Coulis.

How did the medical clinic or customer service handle your situation?

 

 

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Well I went to the service desk the next day to let them know. At first they tried to hee haw, but I shut that down real quick. I said I'm not here to argue about it or to debate it, I'm just letting you know you have an issue and it ruined my last day and half of vacation. They said they were going to make a report, but that they needed me to go to the Dr. to complete the report. I asked if I would be charged and they said they had no idea, I would have to go to the medical center to find that out. So I went to the medical center and that was an experience all on it's own. So they said it's $95 to just see the Dr. if she did any treatments or prescribed any medication it would be extra. I would have to pay upfront and MSC might reimburse me after. Screw that when it was not my fault to begin with it was MSC's fault. There was an alarm, on the ship, that kept going off and stopping and the staff in the medical center started trash talking about MSC and it's employee's . Saying things like how stupid they were, and how incompetent they were basically. So she said she wanted to take my temp and if I had a fever I should probably see the Dr. I didn't and she said don't eat spicy foods, rest and sent me on my way.

I called 99 and told them I was out of toilet paper and that I needed more. I didn't know what was going on at the time.. I just knew I was sick. I didn't hear of anyone else getting sick till the posts started hitting our roll call today. I did tell the room attendant but I just got the "oh I'm sorry" talk.

Our cabin stewardess was so sweet and wanted to mother me. I didn't tell her I had food poisoning, she just knew I was sick.

So we took an Uber share from the airport to the hotel. It was $17, but we had a funny little mix-up. So we're outside waiting for our Uber and this car pulls up and the guy says you ordered an Uber ride, I say yeah and he grabs our luggage puts it in the trunk of his car and starts to pull off. I get a call on my phone and the guy says this is your Uber driver where are you? I say to the guy driving us um excuse me but where exactly are you taking us? Just then this later starts running towards the car and the driver says aye senora and proceeds to pull over. So anyway it all turned out ok and it's a funny story.

Think you have a problem with posting photos? I clicked on the first you did and think I got a spam message about winning an iphone!

And now just getting please update your account.

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Think you have a problem with posting photos? I clicked on the first you did and think I got a spam message about winning an iphone!

And now just getting please update your account.

 

 

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I apologize, I'm working on fixing the issue. If worse comes to worse I will post the pix through CC, they are just so small that way. It just can never be easy :rolleyes::D.

Oy vey why is this pic thing so freakin difficult? It should be the easiest thing to do on here, but breaking into Ft. Knox is easier than trying to post a stupid pic :D:rolleyes:. So let's see how long this works. Fingers crossed I finally figured this out everyone, I thank everyone for your patience.

One other little side note. I put negative options on the poll for those that don't like or agree with what I say. This is a review not a debate. Choose one of those options and move on, thank-you for your cooperation. Besides CC is just going to delete them anyway so use the options I've provided for you so we can keep this moving :).

I hope you all can see these pix now. These are the ones I tried to post earlier, so hopefully they are visible to all now.

The front of our hotel.

Our room on the 3rd floor. I thought the beds were very comfy.

The bathroom.

Our room had a coffee maker, microwave and mini fridge. All were clean and in working order.

A nice big desk area and tv.

All rooms in the hotel have a balcony with ocean views.

The balcony area, not very private, but that's the price you pay for the ocean views. It was still nice to sit out there and watch and listen to the ocean.

The view looking down. Not much of one, but we were still very happy with the hotel and our room overall.

The view looking to the left or front of the hotel. It was a beautiful day.

Our neighbors a condo complex.

We could see the tiki bar on the pool deck from our balcony. Neither one of us are really drinkers so we never purchased any beverages from here.

So after exploring the hotel a bit and our room we relaxed for a little bit. We started to get hungry. I had heard of Burgerfi, sorry for the incorrect name earlier, so I Google mapped them and it said it was a 17 minute walk. Whew was it ever and then some, but it was worth the long walk.

The weather was absolutely gorgeous out so we sat outside on the outside patio.

My uncle Terry and I.

We both got Bacon Cheeseburgers, Terry got a double, I got a single. They were very yummy. The counter person suggested that 1 order of fries would be enough for us to share and they were. We got cheese on them also, very yummy

The menu

I got a Strawberry Shake, they use frozen custard, it was very good.

On the walk home the sky was just so pretty.

Came across these beauties on the walk home.

It was getting dark by the time we got back to the hotel.

So we went back up to the room and watched tv for a little bit, then changed into our swim suits and headed for the hot tub on the pool deck. It was a a huge hot tub, and we had a good nice long soak. Then it was bed time afterwards. That concludes day 1 of our vacation.