MSC needs work on communication

We sailed the MSC Meraviglia October 16 sailing. Beautiful ship, clean with a friendly staff. That makes a good first impression but it doesn’t take long for that to be questioned. As we proceeded up the gangway to the ship the very first thing they did was “chip” us like a pet! MSC does use an electronic bracelet to replace the ship card which is handy and it is disclosed on the webpage. However, this time they added a tracing feature for COVID – not a bad idea but there should have been some information on this before boarding not after. As some tried to avoid the bracelet table the security put them straight that this was mandatory.

Next we proceeded onboard to register the credit card for ship purchases. This is generally done online before board or at the check in with most lines. They told us to do it onboard. First machine they directed us to had a big OUT OF ORDER sign! Next one we waited for the couple in front of us to finish – they gave up after about 5 minutes assuming it was not functioning. We waited at Guest Services and a crew member gave us some vague instructions which didn’t work so we got another staffer. We learned that if you are registering a credit card and not depositing cash then you need to use the top right portion of the machine rather than the large central portion of the screen – NO INSTRUCTIONS anywhere! And without help I doubt you would get both people included on the card. With that complete we began to explore the ship. It was odd, as the ship was nearly deserted. We wondered why – as it turns out there were only 1066 passengers out of a total capacity of 4500. Europeans can’t sail from U.S. until after November 8. Read more