MSC Virtuosa UK seacation 11/09/21

[Captain Quoits]

Just returned from a 3 day mini cruise around southern England and wanted to share a few of my views. This was our 7th cruise and first with MSC having been with P&O in the Caribbean 4 times and done Celebrity and Marella in the Med.

 

First cruise from Southampton and during COVID times. Embarkation took well over 2 hrs due to huge queues and the temperature check, showing your documents and COVID test and after all the fuss about travel insurance this wasn’t even asked for during this process.

 

The ship certainly has the wow factor and was stunning although very rarely saw staff with the vacuums or dusters out so carpets looked a bit scruffy in places.

 

 The aqua park was great fun and my wife did the Himalayan rope bridge which looked terrifying. So much to do both day and night on board and children and teens will love it.

 

Our cabin was the nicest we’ve had at sea, balcony cabin on deck 12 midship and certainly nicer than previous balconies we’ve had.

 

Think my biggest bugbear was the constant long queues for a drink in every single bar within the ship. Don’t know if this was due to a lack of staff, the fact it was all inclusive or whether minimum staff were deployed in bars to stop the Brits drinking the ship dry, maybe a combo of all three but it certainly seemed to be a talking point on board. Believe that we sailed on two thirds capacity which is just over 4000.

 

Food was good although not the best we’ve ever had on cruises and would have liked a bigger choice of menu in the main dining rooms. Never got to eat in the speciality restaurants as these were booked up in no time at all given the fact they all ran with reduced capacities.

 

Hoping to cruise again soon and certainly would give MSC another go, preferably in the wall to wall sunshine of the Caribbean rather than England but even here we did actually see some sunshine this cruise.

 

Jason

[portofrome]

Thanks for your review.

[welshrich]

Hi, we were on this cruise too, we've done 35 cruises all with RCI so was not sure what to expect.  We liked the ship, the food was lovely and the crew were really nice but you could see they were overworked and tired.   Like you we saw the long, long queues for everything, the service was not great with this as the ship seemed understaffed, we went to the dining room for breakfast which took over 2 hours one morning, dinner was a lot better and we had nice servers.   Has this been my first cruise it might have been my last but I hope the service and queues were just because of the pandemic.   I would try another MSC cruise in the future but maybe not one of the staycation types as the ship just seemed so understaffed which did spoil the experience.