While my wife and I are frequent cruisers, I never had the desire to write a review until now. We have tried most of the major players including Carnival, Holland America, Celebrity, Norwegian and we thought we would give MSC a try. We actually booked back to back cruises since each week was a different itinerary. The first week(1/9/10) was to the Eastern Caribbean and the second week (1/16/10) was to the Western Caribbean. We booked through an on-line travel agency and selected Category 4 Ocean View Guaranteed and were pleasantly surprised to be upgraded to Category 10 Balcony at no additional cost.

After reading some of the reviews posted before we left, I was wondering if it was possible that MSC would not be able to meet the standards of the other lines. Bottom line, MSC met or exceed the other lines in almost every category.

You must keep in mind that this a European cruise line which is relatively new to North America. Despite the multi-lingual diversity of the passengers, MSC is trying to address the needs of the passengers. Because of the diversity, announcements must be made in 5 languages(English, French, Italian, German, Spanish). As a result, there are few announcements which I felt was a big plus. It was a pleasure not to be bombarded with loud announcements every hour from someone telling us it was time for bingo, time for the art auction ,or hyping the ship excursions etc. All of these activities are clearly listed in the daily program which is delivered to your cabin every night, just like all the other lines. There is also a very informative book in each cabin which explains all of the ship amenities and services, also written in 5 languages. Read more