After our smooth flight to New York, my wife and I began our MSC 7 night cruise with a rather painless check in. While walking to the ship I was impressed by the new appearance of the ship. Everything was clean and freshly painted (ship looked new).

Upon entering the ship I was greeted by many ships crew welcoming me (barely speaking English) wanting to escourt me to my room. My wife an I stopped by the Excursion representative and discussed excursions (again with a person the barely spoke or understood English). We managed to make it to our room by ourselves and again i was impressed by the cleanliness of the ship. Upon arriving at our room it was very small in comparison to our other cruises aboard Princess and Carnival, but it was nice. I guess that is where things began to go down hill.

To be brief. The Excursions we booked to Halifax, St john, and Boston were outstanding. Our guides were great! Bar Harbour we took the tender to shore and did some shopping, exploring, and dining. Newport, Rhode Island was hell. The time in port was only 5 hours. It took 3 hours to be tendered to shore which left only 2 hours for shore. Crew told us the weather was to bad, high winds. I checked my Accuweather App and the winds were 6 mph, sunny, temp high 40's. I do no know what bad weather is. While waiting on the tender all paid excursion guests were escorted to the rear tender door and rapidly tendered to the dock. I guess those who pay get off boat and all others wait. Food, let's face it is a real enjoyment of cruising. Food was horrible. It reminded of cheep cafeteria food. The formal evenings was no better. A REAL LET DOWN. Lastly I only met two friendly crew members. A young lady at the excursion desk spoke good English, made eye contact, smiled every time i saw her on the ship. Our room Steward was also very friendly. Read more