This cruise was our gift to each other to celebrate our 45th Anniversary. We sailed right through the Check In Process. No problems at all. Did not have to wait in a long line. Process was fast and efficient. There are no printed Deck Plans available. They do not have them, There is a deck plan of the ship by the elevators. This makes trying to get around the ship difficult for the first few days. Able to board the ship was also an easy process but trying to get an elevator to Deck 14 to the Buffet was not so easy. This is a gorgeous ship. Elegant and polished. Clean and lovely. Once in the Buffet area we did notice that the staff was not all that friendly, no eye contact or smiles of welcome. This is our 14 cruise and our first on MSC. We are used to being warmly welcomed by the staff. Even if you can not speak the language you can smile and nod...that is international in it's meaning. The food was very good and there was a variety. The Buffet area was very crowded with people pushing for food. We did find, later in the cruise, if you went to the very back of the ship it was far less crowed and there was plenty of room with lots of tables and chairs.

The delivery of our luggage was a nightmare! I had packed my travel iron, I was not aware that this was a big NO NO! Our luggage was not delivered to our room by 9:30 pm....we went to Guest Relations where a not so friendly or responsive crew member pointed and said "Check the Luggage Area"...I had NO idea where that was but a very nice passenger showed us where to go as he had just come back from there. When we entered the room we did not see our luggage..we spoke to another crew member who told us to come back in an hour! We went back to our cabin and returned at 10:30pm...still NO LUGGAGE! By then we were convinced that our luggage was lost and we would be in our clothing for a week!

At 8:30AM the following morning I returned to Guest Services, after my husband and I had to try to sleep in the clothing we traveled in, we tossed and turned worrying about what we were going to do with out clothing for 7 days! The gentleman behind the counter did accompany me to the luggage area where I did see my bag. He asked if I had a travel iron and I said YES, he said that housekeeping did not want them used as they could be a safety hazzard. I replied "fine, I won't use it". They did not open my luggage, they did not confiscate my iron...they did nothing but hold my belongings overnight! He said he would have it delivered and I said no way, I'm taking it with me! Why they didn't simply deliver our luggage and either leave a written warning or speak to us in person I can not understand! This, of course, made the start of our cruise very difficult! Read more