MSC Orchestra Review
MSC Orchestra to Norway, Sweden -- An American Perspective
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We just returned from a week-long trip aboard the MSC Orchestra to Norway and Sweden. Aside from one other family we met on board, we believe we were the only Americans aboard this sailing. This was our second experience with MSC -- the first being Christmas 2013 aboard the Divina to the Caribbean -- and needless to say our first experience with them on a European sailing. The boards here on CruiseCritic had me very concerned about what to expect, and I'm happy to report that we had a fantastic cruise. I anticipate this review being long, primarily as there are so relatively few reviews of the Orchestra, particularly on her limited runs to Norway/Sweden.
We booked through a Stateside travel agent and no problems. As is well known, the MSC website is awful and it was not at all helpful in the months leading up to the cruise. As was my observation with our earlier Divina sailing, MSC really needs to get the website fixed, if only to provide guests with detailed information about their sailing. We found it impossible to get information on evening dress codes (how many gala nights, etc.), and booking excursions was a pain and a half. We normally book excursions through private companies, but most of the places we visited lacked a plethora of choices or it simply was not possible (as in Geiranger/Hellysylt). We ended up booking excursions through MSC for three of our five ports, and it worked out fine. You add them to your "shopping cart" and they do not confirm them until you're on board. In our case, our tour for our first stop -- Kristiansand -- was cancelled the night before arrival, but we were able to rebook on a different tour. I also pre-booked the 14-voucher softdrink package on-line, which I think is cheaper than buying on board. I'm still not sure.
Our cruise was originally slated to depart from Copenhagen but it changed literally a couple days before we booked, and was moved to Kiel, Germany. The MSC website offers no information at all about transfer options, though it turns out they were available -- at least we saw them when we were there, but there was nothing on-line and our travel agent was told by MSC USA that they were not available. They did offer a bus shuttle from the Kiel train station, and when we returned, we saw buses labeled for MSC transfers to Hamburg Airport – all information that would have been helpful in the beginning. As we didn’t know any of these things, we were left on our own to get from Copenhagen down to Kiel. Going by train would have involved at least two transfers and I was concerned about timing, so we ended up renting a car at Copenhagen Airport and driving down. Two one-way car rentals were prohibitively expensive, so we ended up renting for the week and just leaving the car in the parking garage during the trip. In hindsight, we could have done the train and likely saved money, but information simply was not there. Kiel has no airport, by the way. I pre-booked parking through the Port of Kiel website, and the parking garage was convenient -- the Altstadt garage, about 500 meters from the Ostseekai, from where the ship departs. Kiel as three separate cruise/ferry docks, and once again MSC did not provide the dock information -- I had to find it elsewhere. Without knowing which dock, choosing parking is difficult.
Cabin Review
We had an aft-facing balcony cabin for three on deck 9. We'd been toward the rear on Divina and liked it, and were again very pleased with our selection on this ship. Unlike Divina, there are aft-facing balconies that can accommodate more than two people. The cabin was much larger than I'd expected; slightly larger than on Divina. Again, available information is scarce, but having peeked into many other balconies during the trip, it appears that the aft-facing cabins are slightly larger. We had two beds pushed together to form a king and then an extra-long sofa, which had a trundle bed pulled out at night for our teenage daughter. As on the Divina, it offered a real mattress vice sofa-bed "cushion." Both the trundle and main beds were VERY comfortable. Our cabin had a connecting door, but we never experienced noise from the other side. There was a desk and large empty area in the corner, which gave the cabin a very open feel. The balcony itself was slightly larger than those on the port or starboard sides, and slightly cantilevered. They even put a third chair out there, along with a small table, as we were a triple.The television and minibar were installed on a corner cabinet, alongside the closet, which is a very efficient use of the space. This SHOULD have been done on Divina. While small, the flat-screen TV did work well and there were on-demand features available, including portfolio reviews. The bathroom was large and a mirror image of those on the Divina EXCEPT for the glass shower doors. I know they were added to Divina when she first arrived in the States, and I'm hoping they’re installed on Orchestra in the future. The glass doors worked really well and did wonders to help the lighting in the shower. There was plenty of storage in the bathroom -- on a multi-level corner shelf, as well as in the undersink cabinets -- for all three of us. All in all, I give the cabin an excellent rating. In addition, being in the rear, we never once heard noise from the hallway as there was no cross-traffic. As on the Divina, too, there are outside staircases on each of the rear corners of the ship, connecting deck 7 (verandah), all the way up to 14. We used these a lot to get quickly up or down. This “real estate” could easily accommodate a few more cabins, but bravo to MSC for leaving them open.