msc-cruises – 2 J's World of Adventure

I have promised lots of our followers a review on how we found the holiday and the cruise…..

Those of you who know my husband will know that he is very rarely derogatory about anything…where as I am quite outspoken and say it how I see it…

So I will start with Johns review ….he decided to compare MSC to our preferred cruise line Princess……

Johns views:-

MSC Cruises v Princess Cruises

The end of MSC Opera’s seven-day cruise around the Greek Islands – and Bari in Italy – prompts me to look at a comparison between these two cruise brands.

Perhaps this particular MSC cruise destination and timing skews my perception, but it was soon obvious that there were two noticeable differences. The MSC demographic was noticeably younger. Whilst on Princess, English is the predominant language, the MSC profile was much more multi-lingual.

There are differences in the crews too. Let me say at the outset that the cheery outlook of all MSC is an absolute treat whereas, on occasions, the Princess personnel give the impression of pretence or forced smiling!! As to numbers, I dont have comparison figures, but there are far more staff in evidence across all the Princess activities compared to MSC. However the MSC staff are far more attentive, quicker service and more proactive in meeting their customers needs. On the evidence we saw, the theatre performers were not of the same quality as that of those on the Princess Cruises.

The food on board is different, too. On Princess the choice suits what I would describe as ‘the American palate’, whilst on MSC it is clearly more ‘Mediterranean’. The menu choice on Princess includes foods like lobster, steaks, duck , beef wellington etc. Where as on MSC this type of food is at an extra high charge.

That’s Johns review….mine is a copy of the response I gave to our travel agent when she said my response to their online customer satisfaction survey was very mixed …this is what I said…

The clientele on our cruise consisted mainly of large very loud Italian family groups – in the buffet they took huge platters of food of one type…all the fruit, all the bread rolls etc then they grouped up to 20 chairs and made their own family buffet..often not finishing the platters which they put down the middle of the tables…this left other passengers with no assorted fruit etc…no member of staff stopped them doing it by telling them to just get their own plate of food, and lots of these big family groups sat for several hours at every meal time taking up all the seating area In The buffet whilst still saving their sun loungers …so we never got a sunlounger the whole cruise and gave up trying to get a table in the buffet at breakfast, preferring to go to the main dinning room and wait for service…… we often went without lunch because on port days the ship doesn’t serve in the dinning room and we couldn’t get a seat in the buffet. Our evening meal was nice, we sat in the same nice area every night and had two great waiters.

We saw one really good show in the theatre but the only other one we could find seats for was weak vocalists …… again huge blocks of seats were reserved by a couple of family members..some filled near the start of the show others never filled…..the shows we went to we had to get there over an hour in advance to get a seat.

On the sea day we couldn’t get any loungers or a table, we eventually found two chairs which we sat on but it was like Butlins on water, the disco started at 10.30 am with everyone shouting, jumping up and down…horrendous……the excursions…..were ok apart from the scenic cruise of corfu coastline…sounds good but it was a nightmare…we had booked the English commentated one….alas after a few minutes the guide spoke virtually entirely in Italian. Even worse she started talking about “The Anglaise” …a young German, couple who were doctors, told us she was being very offensive to our race…all the Italians were laughing and shouting “viva Italy”….. we felt very intimidated. When a lot got off for a swim the lady came and asked if we were ok and I said we were not happy that the commentary was in Italian and that she had humiliated us with what she was saying about the English. She pretended not to understand saying her English wasn’t good and the majority of people were Italian . The German couple spoke to her in Italian and explained what we were saying she just shrugged and wandered off….on the way back after the swim she encouraged everyone to dance so we couldn’t even see the scenic coastline….This wasn’t sold as a party cruise it was sold as a scenic cruise……on top of this MSC had double charged us/double booked this excursion we realised prior to the excursion and they said it would be refunded to our cruise account and we could cash it out as Euros. We said we’d prefer it to be refunded to our credit card they said they couldn’t do that …so we lost out twice by paying a transaction fee on the card and on the exchange rate changing it back to £…… so this wasn’t good .. as for the end of cruise excursion…..this we had booked through our travel agent and not through MSC……it was pleasant enough…the limousine it advertised was actually a Mercedes’ taxi….we went to all the places described but unfortunately it was only 3 and a half hours not 4/5 hours …we could hardly ask him to just drive around for another hour so we again felt the excursion was mis-sold…so again disappointed as we spent hours at the airport unable to book our cases in until 2 hours before our flight…..not great

So you can see why the review was a mixed bag of frogs….the staff on the ship were very helpful and pleasant ( apart from one in the WiFi department who was obnoxious, luckily the manager intervened) the food in the restaurant was good but the rest of the experience was not good at all.

Our Travel Agent, Rosie Price – rosie.price@dialaflight.co.uk. – passed our views on to MSC. Very surprisingly …a pleasant surprise …… because when we’ve voiced issues to P&O, Princess and TUI/Marbella Cruise companies they’ve either not responded or the later gave a very abrupt and rude response asking what we wanted, I said “an apology for giving us two right angled twin beds when we had requested a double and informed them it was our honeymoon and they had refused to let us change cabins with an elderly couple who had requested single beds and had been given a double”….we never heard anything back from them even though we felt we had a valid reason to voice our displeasure…….I digress ……….. back to MSC response…which we asked our travel agent to thank them for……

Dear John and Jennifer Jackson,

Thank you for taking the time to provide such detailed feedback about your recent cruise with MSC. I genuinely appreciate your honesty and am truly sorry to hear about the negative experiences you had. Your comfort and satisfaction are our top priorities, and it’s disheartening to learn that we fell short during your trip. Let me address each of your concerns.

I’m sorry that you were unable to find sun loungers throughout your cruise and that finding a table was so challenging. It’s disappointing to hear that you had to compromise on your relaxation and dining experiences due to overcrowding and lack of available seating.

I regret that you had difficulty finding seats for the shows and that the quality of the entertainment varied. Reserving blocks of seats should not have been allowed, and it’s concerning that this disrupted your enjoyment. We strive to offer high-quality entertainment for all guests, and it’s clear that we need to improve in this area.

While I’m glad to hear that you found the staff mostly helpful and pleasant and enjoyed the food in the restaurant, it’s clear that the overall experience did not meet your expectations. The mixed experiences you had, from loud and disruptive environments to feeling unsafe and unwelcome, are far from the relaxing and enjoyable holiday we aim to provide.
As a gesture of goodwill, we would like to offer you a £130 cruise discount voucher. To accept this, just let me know and I will send this straight out to you. We understand that we cannot change what has happened, but we want to do what we can going forward, to put this right.

Please accept our sincere apologies for the distress and inconvenience you experienced. If there is anything else we can do to address your concerns or if you would like to discuss this further, please do not hesitate to contact me directly.
Thank you again for bringing these matters to our attention. We hope to have the opportunity to restore your faith in MSC Cruises.

Kind regards,
Jack Murphy
Customer Service Executive

I am certain everyone reading this response will be amazed at its concerning manner…rarely do people apologise and I take my ‘hat off’ to Jack Murphy for his show of concern and the wording of his response…’Well done Sir!’. However, we will not be accepting the discount voucher because we do not intend to cruise with MSC again…we do accept the apology which was conveyed to us in a very congenial, honest way…Thank you Jack Murphy and thank you Rosie Price (rosie.price@dialaflight.co.uk) our disappointment has been somewhat appeased.

Our alarm woke us with a jump at 7.30am. We were soon washed and dressed and heading for the buffet for breakfast. It was total mayhem and although I am certain all the usual components for breakfast were there it was too crowded to actually see. A couple of tiny croissants, a bowl of Greek yogurt and a banana sufficed. We were in the theatre by 9.25 awaiting the start of our excursion… a trip to Olympia. We had docked at Katakolon on a Greek headland jutting out into the Ionia Sea. This is where the first ever Olympic Games took place in 776BC. There were 5 events – running, jumping, wrestling, javelin and discus.
We were soon on our coach for the 45 minute journey to Olympia. Our guide spoke in about 6 different languages and we were thankful that one was English. We were told that the area is world famous for its olives and it’s fine virgin olive oil because evidently it has close to zero acidity. The area is very fertile and produces wine, watermelons and honey… everything was very green.

Arriving at the Olympia UNESCO site we were divided into language groups.. so our group was a total of about 12, it was made up of Americans, Australians, New Zealanders and another couple of Brits, who nearly pushed me down the ships steps in order to get to the bus first… typical Brits!!!! Ther was my favourite mode of transport, horse and cart waiting to take people to the ruins….. but alas our guide was all for walking…

We first saw the remains of the gymnasium. Our English speaking guide gave good information, although for someone with the attention span of a fly I soon switched off…. But I did learn that they used to run 192 metres and the men all ran naked… this surprised me as from the history of athletics which I had briefly studied in my degree years I seem to remember ancient pictures depicting them running in loin cloths… but who am I to question…. When someone asked about the ladies our guide made a derogatory comment but did later say that when they were allowed to compete they only ran 100m and wore white tunics.

When the statue Zeus, which was 14 metres high and over saw all the area, was removed to Istanbul the town of Olympia became abandoned. I think he said this was in about 400AD. The only resident of the original old town today is the cat!!!!

Earthquakes were and still are common place but a big one around 600AD lead to the collapse of the buildings. Having been abandoned the town lay covered in mud until exploration by archaeologists in 1876.

We wandered around looking at the various ruins before going through the arch to the actual Grass Olympic arena/ stadium…. This was fairly unspectacular as a flat ground for the running, standing long jump and Javlin neither of which needs todays run up as they were all performed from a standing position. There can still be seen some starting stone blocks and the space where the water flowed around the outside of the field so that the spectators, who viewed from the mound had drinking water.

The original Olympic stadium with starting block for the sprint

Walking back to the coach we passed the place where the Olympic torch is still lite to this present day. ( it is at present in Paris for this years Olympics) The area is next to the oldest ruin…. I think our guide explained that a mirror or a piece of glass was positioned under the Olympic torch so that when the sun was in the correct position it’s rays would hit the mirror and set light to the torch. To this day that is how the torch is lite.

We wandered back to the coach park stopping at the Olive shop to purchase a very small, very expensive tin of premium virgin olive oil… a gift for my son who likes the finer things in life, a T-shirt for John and a pen for Johns Granddaughter. We decided that was enough shopping and so we sat and waited our time out having a Pepsi Max in the shade of an olive tree overlooking the ruins of Olympia.

We returned to the ship and had a light salad in the buffet for lunch before returning to our cabin for a siesta.

We showered ( you need to be a contortionist in our shower) and washed hair and put on some suitable glad rags in time for a rather nice mock-tail, called a Magic Island, before supper. Once again we got a wake view table and Saleem served us very well yet again.