My wife and I are not first time cruisers as we have cruised with Royal Caribbean, Carnival, Holland America, and Disney. We have friends that have cruised extensively for the last ten years or so. They cruised with MSC on a different ship in Europe and were quite pleased. As a result they were ‘Voyagers’ status and given a price reduction on the Miraviglia out of Miami. Our friends invited us and in August of 2019 we all booked on-line with MSC directly. We booked ocean view cabins based on the information and photos on MSC’s web site which led us to expect an ocean view, cabin size between 160 to 236 sq ft, and a sofa.

In November we were offered an opportunity to upgrade our cabin to a balcony with slightly more size and an ocean balcony. We chose to upgrade and received confirmation December 16th and our credit card was charged on that date (more than seven weeks before the departure date).

At this point we all were very happy and looking forward to spending some time in the sun, eating well, and drinking well, That changed on January 31st when I received an email from MSC Cruises USA stating “due to technical and operational reasons we are unable to honor the bid upgrade”, and we had been reassigned to a ocean view cabin. The email included a telephone contact which I called immediately and found that I could not speak to anyone at that number without a travel agent pin number. I next call MSC Customer Service. After some hold time, I got connected with an agent, Read more