I am reviewing on behalf of two couples that sailed on the MSC Preziosa in the final week of October in 2014. We all thoroughly enjoyed our first cruise-liner experience, are hooked and looking forward to further cruises.
As you will see from our ratings, there were only two components to the cruise that we found could do with improvement; the embarkation process was poorly organised, slow, mentally and physically draining at the end of a long day; and, the excursion package we purchased to Ephesus during our Izmir stopover seemed designed to hurry us through the site visit in order to get us to a leather factory outlet store. We spent an equal amount of time between the site and this factory, which we believe devalued our experience and detracted from the purpose of the excursion. MSC state that these excursions are not owned or run by their company, which is fair enough, although I believe they should survey users to provide feedback to these third parties and even move to different suppliers should the feedback prove consistently poor. We found our own way around Bari, Katakolon, Istanbul and Dubrovnik without issue and would encourage people to read port reviews and plan your own excursions.
Apart from these two things we had an extremely enjoyable trip.
Our balcony cabin was comfortable, clean and well kept by our steward - Diego. The view from our Balcony was marred by a large steel arm used to lower and raise one of the gangplanks, so I would suggest you query things like this when making a booking.