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Excellent First Yacht Club Experience but not perfect.

Vancouver

Let me start by saying staff are FABULOUS however the rooms are very shabby, like a poor quality 3* hotel at best. They are kept as clean as possible by the staff but the carpets are grubby and stained, the sofa also stained and grubby from age not a lack of attention from staff.

Pool areas are really awful, like a bad version of a Butlins camp, overcrowded and horrible walking through tatty furniture and lots of smoke.

Buffet restaurant Bora Bora,  was such a bad experience, again staff doing their very best but totally overcrowded with people literally crossing and knocking into each other, too many people at the same time, not enough tables, just manic and chaotic. I felt for couples with babies, children and older people-absolute carnage and again food 3*hotel quality at best!

Queueing to disembark was a disorderly shambles -up to an hour at times, not great when the itinerary is a short half day stay at a destination. This is a ship that needs to have much better organisation when leaving for trips and desperately needs an overhaul of rooms and outdoor areas. Not a good experience overall I’m sad to say. MSC needs to do better. Not at all a splendid trip!

FABULOUS staff but AVOID this ship-grubby rooms more like a 2* hotel

First cruise with MSC and specifically chose it to try the Yacht Club.  We were not disappointed and really enjoyed the experience and perks associated with this class.

The main thing to point out and this is something everyone says but it's true, is the crew are amazing.  Every single one of them work incredibly hard and always have a smile and a friendly greeting no matter how busy they are.  It's clear that their primary focus is ensuring you have a great time and they are very good at it.

In particular our Butler Pankaj was a star.  Friendly, courteous, professional and efficient.  He was always available when needed and happy to assist with any issues you had going above and beyond in our case to source the last 3 cans of Coke Zero on the ship for my wife who is teetotal as the ship only had Pepsi Max which she's not a fan of.

Imen our Housekeeper too was excellent, always smiling and great at turning round our suite several times a day without us feeling we were in the way.

  The following are some areas that we felt could be improved upon, however they did not detract from a great first cruise with MSC -

As Splendida was one of the first to be fitted with the Yacht Club there are some areas that detract such as the dedicated YC restaurant being at the opposite end of the ship to the YC itself and the lack of a bathroom on the YC pool deck which meant guests having to travel back down two floors to the Concierge area or your own cabin whichever was closer.

  We had heard some bad things about the food on MSC but as we love Italian food and had also heard people raving about how good the food was we had high expectations.  Unfortunately we felt although the food was good it wasn't top class which is what we would expect with the YC experience.  We had several fillet steaks and all but one was a disappointment in terms of tenderness or not being cooked correctly.  So much so that we gave up on them.  Top class restaurants should be able to produce consistently good steaks night after night cooked to perfection and i'm afraid this wasn't the case here.

We also noticed that items on the YC menu also appeared on the main guests dining room on other days and on one occasion one of the desert choices was also available at the buffet so not sure how 'exclusive' the menu really is.  

  Our main issue was the lack of physical menus in the YC restaurant and the use of the dreaded QR code and smart phone combo.  Not everyone wants to carry their phone around all the time and the excuse that it was to save paper didn't stack up as thousands of photos were printed out during the cruise by the many photographers who bombarded you with requests every night.  Only a fraction of these photos would be purchased by the guests with the majority ending up being destroyed.  Now thats a real waste of paper and cost.  MSC would do better taking a leaf out of NCL's system which is digital and only those purchased are actually printed.

The constant upselling of the photographers also got a bit wearing after a while although they were always lovely and friendly.

  Last gripe was the Disembarking at Trieste where due to high winds we were over 2 hours late.  This meant a mass exodus off the ship and i'm afraid here the Yacht Club let itself down.  There was very little organisation or communication to ascertain which guests had time critical ongoing travel connections or any sort of organisation down the priority lift to deck 4.  Once we arrived there we were met by the Yacht Club Director who when asked if we were to be escorted off as usual were told no just join the queue.  As you can imagine this didn't go down well as priority embarkation and disembarkation is one of the main perks and the reason guests pay the additional premium for a Yacht Club experience.

Luckily our Butler Pankaj spotted us and escorted us and several other YC guests through the throng, off the ship and out the cruise terminal, whilst also carrying two large suitcases belonging to other YC guests.  Another example of the crew, Pankaj in this case going the extra mile to ensure MSC guests feel valued.

All in all we would definitely sail with MSC again in the Yacht Club but I think we would choose a ship where the Yacht Club had been designed in at the build stage as we feel it would work better as a ship within a ship concept.

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Romanian - detected
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Hello, we boarded Msc Splendida on the 3rd of August. 2021, .At the embarkation, although we were vaccinated and with a test done in the last 24 hours, they did it again, that's a good thing. Problems began to appear one by one. A first problem was with the assurance that they did not look for us and made us wait because it was not done with them, in the end they clarified that it is ok.

A major problem was when we received information about the route where we found that they changed the course of the cruise, they changed Montenegro with Split, which bothered us that they did not let us know.

The ship is very nice with all the facilities on it. The cabin is ok with a balcony. Too much noise in the hallway being located next to the service elevators.

Another problem is with food, food with very few assortments, ie not at all.

 One problem I encountered when we went to buy the trips, besides the fact that you wait 3, 4 hours in line they extracted extra money from the card. We are waiting for it to be resolved today.

ATTENTION, DON'T LET YOURSELF GET OFF THE SHIP UNTIL THEIR EXCURSIONS. This is not ok!

As a general conclusion has changed, it is the difference between what it was before, we have been on other cruises 2.


Community Manager's Note:  This review was translated from Romanian via Google Translate.

Good for them, bad for us

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