MSC Poesia Review

5 Star Ship with 1 star Service

Review for the Eastern Mediterranean Cruise on MSC Poesia
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Der Lotse
First Time Cruiser • Age 20s

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Sail Date: Oct 2008

SHIP INFO Our cruise ship, MSC Poesia, which was launched in April this year, was a bigger cruise ship than the Armonia and Lirica which we had previously cruised on. The Poesia is a beautiful ship with superb restaurants,facilities and activities. But the cruise was let down by its staff, struggling to cope with 3,000+ passengers.

DINING In our waiter service restaurant, there was a better choice of food at lunchtime than in the evening, but eitherway the food was barely warm. Waiters were not as professional as on other MSC cruises, providing poor service and appeared to have little or no training, i.e. clearing plates away before everyone had finished and leaning across diners when serving or clearing away. They had difficulty understanding English and therefore our requirements. There were no jugs of water available on the table; we had to buy bottled water, which is not the case with other cruise lines. Also the cost of wine was 50% higher than other cruise lines. At the entrance to the Il Palladio restaurant, the hand sanitizer never worked properly, even the Maitre'd agreed it never had. Breakfast in the Le Fontane Restaurant was equally dire - again the waiters understanding of English was poor and it was pot luck what food arrived at the table and in which order the courses came. One morning we were asked to vacate the table at 9.30am to enable the table to be cleared and laid up for lunch!

For afternoon tea, we had to queue like children at school for a mug of coffee or hot water in which to put our tea bag. On previous cruises, we were able to serve ourselves with hardly any queuing as there was more than one hot water machine. SHORE EXCURSIONS When booking excursions, we were pressured to book trips we did not want. For our first trip at Bari, as we did not receive the tickets for our booked trip, they had to be hurriedly printed 15 minutes before departure. For our second trip in Istanbul, because the reps understanding of English was poor, when she read our tickets, we were put on the wrong coach and it was only after leaving the port on the excursion bus, did we discover that we were on the Topkapi Palace trip instead of the Blue Mosque trip.

Cabin Review

Cabin 6
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