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Beautifully designed inside, with great attention to detail & lots of comfortable & interesting places to relax, the ship is also very clean. A variety of live music is a feature of the cruise, so most people should find a bar to suit their taste. Two or three of the lounges, particularly L'Insolito, encourage dancing, & it's not too difficult, even at Easter, to avoid children.
The ship is huge. It's an excursion just to walk from the theatre in the bow, to L'Insolito lounge at the stern... Going up & down stairs it was usually quicker to walk than wait for the lifts, which, though very shiny and quiet, have been programmed by Dr Random.
Food & service in the restaurants were excellent; at dinner you could have six courses, if you wanted. The portions were well judged & well presented, & there is plenty of variety. During the day the Zanzibar buffet on Deck 14 was open most of the time, & coffee of good quality was available 24/7. However, if you don't like the sight of diners - of all nationalities - scrambling to pile pyramids of hot dogs, burgers, fries, waffles, chips & pizza on their plates as if they might not see another meal for a fortnight, then just give Zanzibar a body-swerve & use one of the restaurants instead. Healthy options (fruit, salads) were always in plentiful supply at the buffet, & these areas were, predictably, quieter.
The theatre is very big & comfortable, & we enjoyed the shows. There's an element of the circus about some of them, with tumblers and remarkable acrobats, while in all the shows - especially the opera-themed evening - the quality of singing was superb. The stage could have been better lit, but that's a minor point.
We can't comment directly on the excursions; they seemed dear so we did our own thing & never felt we had missed anything that mattered.
The worst aspect - & almost the only negative aspect of the cruise - was the unholy rush to get rid of you at the end. We had to have our cases outside the cabin by midnight (surely it could have been a bit later to give us time for a proper last evening) & had to vacate it by 7am, although our flight was not till after 2pm, & the airport is only 15 minutes away. That meant we had to trundle our hand baggage down to breakfast. These arrangements could have been handled with more sensitivity.
Would we cruise again with MSC? Yes.
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