We have just completed a 7 day west Mediterranean cruise [August 2018] on board the MSC Fantasia departing from Barcelona. Our party of six passengers included four adults and two kids aged 4 and 11. We had two three birth aft cabins. We booked the AUREA experience and had two deck 12 aft S3 category suites. The cruise itinerary included stops at Ajaccio, France; Civitavecchia, Italy; La Spezia, Italy; Genoa, Italy; Cannes, France and Palma de Mallorca, Spain before returning to Barcelona Spain. MSC does offer a cruise of similar duration on the MSC Seaview but the itinerary is not nearly as attractive in my opinion. I summarize the highlights and lowlights of the cruise below.

Negatives

While the embarkation process in Barcelona was seamless despite the roughly 1000 passengers that embarked at this port once onboard instructions were not as vivid as I’d like. We were first time cruisers so the separate registration for children (safety bracelets, kids clubs registration etc.) was all new to us, ditto confirming meal times, linking credit card to MSC ship card, enabling Wi-Fi, early booking of spa treatments and locating our cabin. Once on-board it took me two hours to sort all this including two trips to customer services were long queues existed with passengers essentially seeking help with the same questions. Read more