Overall Cruise Experience

Not good...MSC nickels and dimes you for everything. Water, soft drinks, juice, and coffee (except at breakfast) are not free even with dinner...one liter bottle costs 2 Euro + the service charge. You can get around the water thing by ordering ice through room service (free) and letting it melt for your daily excursions like I did or you can buy "coupons" 14 bottles for 46 Euro or drink packages...14 cocktails for 76 Euro. I'm a wine drinker and no coupons were offered for us...buy it by the glass or bottle and prepare to be overcharged. The food is poor for what you're paying for. The buffet food was very bland and the buffets were so overcrowded that I often had to sit out on the windy deck to eat as it was like cattle call. Eat breakfast in the restaurants...avoid the buffet unless you like powdered eggs and cold fatty bacon. The dining room service was impeccable but the food was Italian fare. Each night featured a different region of Italy...lots of seafood dishes but not what you'd expect. Cuttlefish, perch and swordfish were the good choices but the menu was heavy on squid with pickled vegetables and over salted soups. One more than one dinner I received stale bread, over salted soup and freezer burnt vegetables. I also had very poor experiences with any sort of risotto that the ship's kitchen concocted...often it was under or overcooked. I will tell you that I am an American living in Germany and am used to the European dining experience...I was not expecting beef or chicken on the menu all that much but only saw beef on one night of the cruise. Lobster used to be served but the waitstaff told me that MSC doesn't serve it anymore to cut costs...it seemed that they cut the quality of the food out too judging what I ate. On the one night they served king prawns as a main dish I received two...yes two king prawns. I am not joking when I tell you that I've lost weight on this cruise due to the miniscule portions and lousy food. I resorted to buying anything I could ashore as the food seemed better in Turkey, Croatia and Venice.

The ship is new and beautiful but already starting to smell like an ashtray due to the numerous areas where cigarette smoking is allowed. The stateroom was nice...bed comfy and the bathroom well lit. The shower had surprisingly good water pressure too. The hair dryer was in an odd place..inside a drawer in the main cabin where it's tethered and forces you to sit in front of the TV on this cube chair that pulls out. The walls are thin...you hear everything your neighbors are doing and toilets flushing. Every morning at 0200 the ship would perform some sort of mechanical function that sounded like trumpets and air horns were mating...this would last for about 15 minutes and would wake you up from a restful sleep. I know my neighbors were hearing it too as I could hear them milling about at the same time....this happened each and every night of the cruise and it was impossible to sleep through it. I paid extra for a room with a window only to discover that my window was obscured by an orange lifeboat...don't book an 8th deck room with a window on MSC Magnifica as most of the aft side room on the 8th deck had lifeboats in front of the windows. Read more