My husband and I are not first-time cruisers. We've been on 2 Carnival cruises, Celebrity and now MSC. On this cruise, we visited Costa Maya, Belize, Honduras and MSC's private Bahamian island, Ocean Cay. Now, let's start with the positives... We had fantastic weather overall. The ship was beautiful. The service on the ship was decent - especially our servers in the dining room - John and Adonay. They were super friendly and would say hello to us when they saw us around the ship. The shows (including Cirque du Soleil) were really great too.

Okay, now for the negatives... The food was awful! By far, the worst food we've had on any cruise. Yes, even worse than Carnival. We felt terrible by the end of the trip from that feeling you get when you eat a lot of low-quality food. It was a huge letdown for us, especially since my husband is a chef. Besides the food, we were also disappointed by the amount of entertainment on the ship. There were many times that we were bored on the ship and couldn't find anything to do that didn't cost a bunch of extra money (like the arcade, 4D theatre, bowling, etc. And speaking of money... as soon as we stepped on board, we were bombarded by staff trying to sell us on restaurant reservations, spa treatments, drink packages, etc. No warm greeting, only selling. It was a big turnoff. And when you sail MSC, get ready for a BIG gratuity bill. Wow... we were really stunned. We paid almost $90 each. And there's no choice in the matter. Almost $180 is a lot of money for two people to pay for a cruise we didn't even enjoy. And that doesn't even include the automatic gratuity added to individual drink orders (if you don't have the package) and a la carte food items (like gelato).

Also, we had a broken chair on our balcony, which we notified guest services (on day 1) who said we would get a replacement the following morning. It never arrived. Pretty frustrating when you pay the extra money for a balcony room. Read more