My husband and I chose this cruise as we were travelling around South Africa and thought it would be a good way to see some different areas of Country. We have visited a lot of Africa over the years but never South Africa. The cruise left from Durban visiting Maputo and Portuguese Island for four nights. Embarkation was a nightmare. We were not emailed our e-tickets (MSC blamed our agent, our agent blamed MSC for not receiving them), we had no idea what time boarding was. We had chosen a suite with an all inclusive package called the Aurea experience. This package appeared to have many privileges starting with priority boarding. We eventually managed to contact MSC in Durban on the morning of sailing to be told to come immediately (9am) as people were already queuing at bag drop. We were in a hotel 5 mins drive away so we jumped in a taxi arrived and then queued to bag drop to be told to go to information to get our baggage tickets. This bit was very efficient and we got our tickets and dropped our bags and went off to Easy Boarding. That was where the nightmare began!! Easy boarding told us we weren't on the list and would have to queue. It took about 30 mins to get to the first check in. We produced our British passports and after several minutes of perusal we were told we didn't have the correct multi visa and wouldn't be allowed to sail!! We were told to go back to Information for confirmation. Off we went to Information in a state of shock. Information confirmed what the girl in check in said and we wouldn't be able to sail. We protested as we were not aware we needed visas, one of the staff eventually went to check immigration and came back with an officer who informed us we DIDN'T need a visa as we were British citizens. Please MSC inform your staff in future to ensure this doesn't happen to anyone else.

You would think that things would be fine after this debarkle but NO ..... As I said before we had purchased a suite and an all inclusive package which allowed anytime dining, all drinks etc and a 30 min massage plus access to the exclusive sun deck. The sun deck was brilliant but only open when not windy so it was open 2 days out of 4, not the fault of MSC obviously. The cabin was lovely very well laid out with a bath, overhead shower and walk in wardrobe. The massage was excellent. Those are the good points, now the bad. Getting a drink on the first day was a nightmare without pre paid tickets. We were told that the all inclusive is only available to Europeans and so most of the bar staff were unaware of it, hence the problem. The food was very poor quality, the buffet restaurant was an absolute "bun fight" with the staff struggling to cope with the quantity of food people were taking. Our evening restaurant waiters were very good and tried very hard to make our meal as pleasurable as they could with the quality of the food being produced. Christian the restaurant manager proved invaluable in sorting out our problems, he is a great asset to you MSC. The trips and immigration were very well organised as was disembarkation so one more plus but on the the whole all we can say is "thank goodness it was only four days"!!