We've been on MSC twice before, and didn't much care for it, but figured this was the inaugural US trip on a brand new ship, so our party of 16 did our annual Thanksgiving cruise on the Seashore. Right off the bat I want to say we had a great time - we love cruising together and make the best of any situation, so the cruise was a success. BUT, I'm fairly certain we wouldn't pick MSC again.

Before the cruise even began, our carefully selected rooms were all changed to random ones all over the ship. Not the end of the world, but we chose our rooms to be together, near elevators, and this was all done without communication from MSC. Suddenly we're checking in on line and the rooms listed are different than the ones we'd chosen. And the check in - OMG MSC, can you get a decent IT person to work on your back end? The online app and the web site all had glitches and took days before we could get checked in. Again, not a biggie, because in the end we were able to print out our docs and show up at our scheduled time...

Which was a JOKE. No one was checking your check in time, and it was a total cluster f**k at embarkation. I haven't seen check in lines like that in a decade. Strange way to start a social distance cruise - with hundreds and hundreds of people all crammed together waiting in a line that snaked this way and that way, so that we could come into contact with as many people as possible. After over an hour of this, when we finally got to the front of the line, they made us give them all the same information we've done online - the passports, the vax cards, the test results, the photos. Why even bother with the check in ahead of time? Read more