Northern Europe 2013 - book cheap MSC cruise now, or wait for X /HAL price drops?

[welshfamily]

Up until last year I would have agreed with most of the previous posts.

The 2011 Eclipse Baltic cruises rose steeply from Jan11 to June11. We were waiting to see what happened and booked the Solitice in the end for a August sailing. This caused us to book the Baltic cruise on the Eclipse late October 2011, for July12. We got badly burnt and paid about £800 ($1200 ) each more for Aqua Class cabins. The price dropped the day after final payment. As we were paying for 4 this hurt.

This year we are watching several sailings for the Med and have decided to buy when, and if, the price gets to an amount we are willing to pay. Here in the Uk we haven't had any good offers from Celebrity yet as most of them are based on the Eclipse which is doing the Baltic or Iceland both of which we have done.

There is a double captains points offer but we are Elite already.Please remember here in the UK we can't change our bookings without losing our deposits.

The point I am trying to make is you have to make your mind up how much you think a particular cruise is worth, pay and then be satisfied. The Baltic cruise on the Eclipse was the best cruise we have ever had, the itinerary was superb therefore I would like to recommend it.

Our situation is different as all the Med cruises this year are similar to ones we have already done and we would be satisfied with any one of 4.

Hopefully we will both find the cruises we want.

[Scotswoman]

We cruised once on MSC because they were offering a very attractive Black Sea itinerary at an excellent price. The ship itself was fine, but the standards of almost everything else involved lacked very badly when compared to any of the other cruise lines we have used (Celebrity, RCCL, Cunard, Princess, M.S.Discovery, Fred Olsen). The whole experience on board was not even mildly comparable to that on a Celebrity cruise. In addition, friends of ours from Australia had a very nasty experience when their Baltic cruise was cancelled by MSC due to problems on the ship. The treatment they received at the hands of MSC was both chaotic and shameful, and they had to employ a lawyer to receive even the very minimum of compensation after months of letter-writing. They had flown from Australia for "the trip of a lifetime" to St. Petersburg and Stockholm etc. They ended up in a hotel bunker miles away from the centre of London and were then put on a five-day cruise to places of no interest to them! My advice would be to try to find an acceptable price with RCCL or Celebrity cruises to the ports you´re interested in visiting.