We recently had the misfortune to sail on a cruise with the MSC Opera. We've sailed on several different cruise lines, in many different regions, but this was our first to Northern Europe. We selected the cruise based on itinerary and departure port. We selected the ship based on reviews we read online about the various lines and ships which met our itinerary or departure port criteria. Because we used the internet as a resource, we felt we should contribute to the data available there, thus this review.

The ship is beautiful, with a lovely art deco dEcor, and our room - a category 10 ocean view stateroom with a balcony - was comfortable and spacious (the two are not always synonymous). I learned that the balcony rooms with an impeded view are a joke - a woman who had one explained that the life boat was 'on' her balcony and she would have been better off (and it would have been lot cheaper) to go down a category. The ship has an equipped gym, two pools, two hot tubs, a spa, a casino, a theater, and several shops selling overpriced items of jewelry and clothing and duty free booze. There are two restaurants, a cafeteria, and several bars. There is also a club-like area for smokers. The ship itself - and the kindness of some of the service personnel - was almost all that was good of the cruise. For embarkation, we were to arrive at the dock in Copenhagen by 11:00, we were there by 10:45. We finally got on board at 12:20. No explanations or apologies for the delay The usual abundance of food found on such cruises was true here with five different times one could eat. The problem is that they use MSG in almost everything. For those with an allergy to this chemical (as I have), choices are reduced substantially. For example, on one of the two Gala nights, I could eat two of the appetizers and one of the pasta dishes - even the salads were off-limits. The daily program asks that such allergies or food tolerance issues be brought to the attention to the Maitre d'Hotel, but their method of dealing with it is telling one what they can or cannot eat. For me, my only sure choice for dinner each night was pasta pomodoro. I even had a reaction to lunch on day, thus either the pizza or one of the salad offerings were tainted, but no one at that meal is available to provide a 'what not to eat' warning. I got tired of being poisoned, and started buying food on-shore. On one deck they have an ice cream parlor, but it was closed. This was because of the weather according to a crew member, in spite of the fact that people were sunbathing and swimming. It was beautifully set up one afternoon - but not for the passengers: it was strictly for filming purposes. On our cruise, they were producing a publicity film with gorgeous, thin, model types (who looked nothing like any of the passengers I met), and the production of that film took precedence over anything else. Passengers had to reroute around the film crew (sometimes having to go up a dock and back down again to get to the restaurant, for example), and cables were strewn across walkways. One unlucky lady practically fell on her face tripping on one of these; the crew was more concerned about the cable being reconnected than whether the passenger was harmed. The shore excursions are extremely expensive when compared to other cruise lines. We had our own private driver and guide in St. Petersburg (from Optima Travel - highly recommended), and spent less than we would have if we'd taken their offerings at the same port. We had a private driver, private tour guide, and a wonderful time. The ship's personnel will try to tell you that you have to take their excursions or you won't be able to leave the ship in Russia - this is patently untrue. As long as you have a copy of the front page of your passport, you can leave. There is a law in Russia that cruise ship passengers can debark for a day, so long as they are sleeping on the ship - and a visa is not required (or even possible to get for only one day). The cruise personnel will not tell you this, and will, in fact, lie about the requirements. The ship's personnel are, for the most part, argumentative and rude - even when they are trying to sell you something (at the salon, I was briskly informed that my hair color was unacceptable and ugly, and that I must change it - at a cost of 70 euros). A few of the servers (mainly southeast Asians) are friendly and polite, but they are the exception. Any feedback is met with either laughter, or an argument. The customer is never right on this cruise line. The internet 'cafe' is also quite expensive, and the computers may or may not actually work. Out of 10 computers, only three were operable the one time we tried it, and we heard the same complaint from other passengers. In spite of this, one is directed to use the internet cafe for such things as checking flight times by the cruise people. It's a "can't win" situation. Then there is the smoking issue. We selected this ship because it seemed to have a better control of where one could smoke (we are non-smokers). The problem is they don’t enforce their non-smoking rules. The hallways and balconies were often smoky, yet smoking was not allowed in the cabins (including the balconies) and limited to specific deck areas and to the smoking lounge. Since it is a fact that second hand smoke is dangerous, this lack of oversight has health implications, but the MSC personnel don’t seem to care. As a final indignity - (the 'shorn' bit), my once shoulder length hair is now 2" long - when they touched up my hair color in the beauty shop, they used extremely strong peroxide, and overlapped. After I returned home, my hair started coming out in handfuls (right at the overlap) and I was forced to get it cut to the 2" length. I've been asked how my chemo is going.

We were really open to 'cruising Italian style', we've been to Italy several times and loved it. We thought that the happy experiences we had on land would translate to the sea - we were so very wrong.