Your Cruise Your Way Cruise Blog

We received this review of the MSC Orchestra yesterday from a family who had sailed, and were nice enough to share their thoughts on the cruise. This is one of the few I’ve seen from the other side of the spectrum, a family with children. This is important feedback when you consider kids sail free on MSC. Thanks to Tom and Iris for their input. Read on to see their story.

This was our 12th cruise, 1st on MSC. First the positive- It was a newer ship 2007, so it was in top shape and beautiful furniture, decors, lighting and high tech. They also didn’t pressure us to buy pictures and drinks. On to the negative- However it did not have a main atrium as we are used to with other ships. The hardest part for my kids was no free ice cream at any time, it was not expensive $ 2-3 each, but could add up if they ate 4 plus times a day. The midnight buffets were a big joke, the Italian night was mainly dough, very lil’ meat and cheese. I took 5 pieces and took only a small bite from each. I also noticed a lot of people doing the same. Other nights the buffet was in a round tray with the waiters walking around napkin in the other hand so you could maybe get a piece or two, not a buffet by any means. The menu a la carte’ sucked big time, also loads of starch, never seen chicken served bone in ever but on this ship and the food very bland, guess European style. Entertainment provided by people that couldn’t speak English and thus games were hard to understand and they were confused themselves. Music-they were stuck in the 70’s – 90’s. The DJ Mike wouldn’t even cater to any request. Not that the disco wasn’t upscale and high tech, they had plasmas 360 degrees around the dance floor- guess what they were for?? The manager said “power point presentations only” go figure. At the end of the cruise the handed out the amounts of food consumed and the meat, flour and potatoes consumed was almost the same amounts in weight, pretty disgusting. Room service was bread sandwiches- club, chicken salad, tuna, mostly bread, very little protein and chicken salad. Dessert was also available. Nothing else. Unbelievable. Good thing we didn’t go to eat, our reasons for picking this cruise was the ports of call. Sad that a beautiful ship like this has poor service, poor entertainment, poor command of the English language- when most of the guests are English speaking. Just my .02 cents.

Tom and Iris