MSC Virtuosa, UK and Ireland
1
MSC Virtuosa Southampton, Spain, France, Portugal
The good parts:
Plenty of choice for food at the buffet
Cabin attendant was fantastic
The bad parts:
The ship was overcrowded, everything was busy almost all the time.
Not enough bar staff, even double the number of allocated staff would not have been enough in most cases.
MSC cruises are a budget option (compared to the likes of Princess) however, everything costs money on the ship. Surprised that you get air conditioning for free to be honest as MSC seem to try their best to monetise everything.
The Arcade was run down, and the prices of the machines were just unbelievable given the quality. The kids had been promised some time on the games, but it was money not well spent.
3 evenings in the first week I had cold showers.
No management of people reserving loungers with towels. There were cases where people would reserve a lounger by the pool at 5am, get off the ship at dock and not actually come to their lounger until 3-4pm. Given that people were already having to sit on the floor because there werent enough loungers for the number of customers (see point 1)
You cant do your own laundry; you must buy a package which, like everything else on the cruise is overpriced.
The terrible:
There was a single lifeguard for the indoor pool, shared by at least 2 members of staff at any one time. Both staff spent time on their mobile phones instead of doing their job, given the nature of the job this is just unbelievable. They got called out by paying customers.
The people on the ground are largely over worked. There appears to be next to no management happening on board. Two examples:
1. It appeared that each bar was allocated 2 staff behind the bar and up to 2 staff taking orders from tables. Some bars are smaller than others and some bars are in far greater demand. I.e., the outdoor bars were in higher demand on warm evenings. However, there was no reactive measures taken when bars filled up with customers. Its almost as if the company expects customers to manage the bar numbers their staff. Why not have members of staff acting as floaters that move between bars based on the demand at each bar??
2. Disembarkation. The plan was that self-assisted customers would leave from the two gangways from 0700-0730. All other customers had been assigned groups and would be called down by group every 5 minutes from 0730.
However, one gangway was down from 0700 until 0730 at the latest (possibly earlier). This meant that groups could not exit as scheduled and had to wait in their designated waiting areas. This was the first issue. The designated areas were only set up to take 2-3 groups at a time.
The delay went on for nearly 2 hours, which meant the designated areas now contained up to 12 groups instead of the planned 2-3.
During this time there was no member of staff allocated to the designated area to provide updates. There was no air conditioning, there was no way to get water or food. The only updates were that there was a delay.
No members of staff took responsibility.
How can one of two gangways being down for 30 minutes result in the self-assisted customers taking 120 minutes to disembark instead of 30 minutes. Surely if x number of people that were due to disembark in 30 minutes via two gangways would take 60 minutes to disembark, maybe 75 minutes at most?? Bearing in mind that the second gangway was available after 30 minutes at most it should not have taken 120 minutes.
In the end we just left, I refused to be stopped. My young children were in tears and my elderly father in law was suffering.
Heres some advice for MSC:
You should be able to obtain an average time to disembark a customer.
You know the number of customers requesting self-assisted disembarkment 2 days before the cruise reaches destination, so this first group will have an expected processing time.
You have a member of staff at each designated grouping point, this person is there to provide updates to the group and call each number as they should start their move to disembark.
A disaster happens, you cant disembark as planned. Suddenly planned time to disembark self-assisted is going to take more time than planned. You provide the waiting customers with an ETA. Youve already planned for a disaster, so the designated grouping plans are already capable of supplying waiting customers with water, food, air conditioning and entertainment. You open staff elevators and corridors to support the unexpected movement of customers. You open all restaurants with the offer of free food and water whilst they wait.
What you dont do is just leave everyone without any update, hot, tired, hungry, thirsty, and unable to use toilets due to the unexpected numbers trying to share the location.
I'll never cruise with MSC again, I'll tell everyone to avoid
