I started planning that vacation 5 months before it left port. The first time I heard that we could not get off the ship unless we had MSC excursions planned was at dinner the first night. I literally have been on the MSC website almost daily for MONTHS and did not hear of such a rule. I planned an excursion for every port on our vacation and had to cancel (which we lost a massive amount of money on) and purchase excursions through MSC. I could’ve taken TWO more cruises for the amount of money I wasted because of the lack of communication. When I went to the reception desk, the very rude man told us that it was printed on our tickets (which we were given two days before our trip and at that point, was too late). That information should have been presented at the time of booking and should have been made very clear. However, we talked with an abundance of people that found out they would not be able to get off the ship without MSC excursions. Like I told everyone, if I was made aware of this in the beginning, I would have been very willing to purchase MSC excursions. I actually tried to book the excursions through MSC when I first planned the cruise. However, they only offered a few, and many were already full. Now, we lost a lot of money because we were not willing to stay on the ship since we were traveling all the way from the United States to celebrate our anniversary. I have been on over twenty cruises in my life and never have I been on a ship that tried to sell me so many packages. When we were eating, when we were standing on the bar, when we were walking anywhere, we would get stopped by people trying to sell us drink packages and speciality restaurant packages. Once again, a lot of guests pointed this out and also thought it was very distasteful. Fast forward to the last day when we got our bill and they had the audacity to charge a few dollars for a donation to their MSC program! When I called to get it removed, the receptionist told me I needed to fill out paperwork to get it removed from our bill. Being that it was just a few dollars, we left it, like I assume a lot of others do. It’s pure robbery. I felt that MSC tried to suck every dollar out of us the whole trip and I’ve never felt that way from a cruise before. Very disappointed with the entire experience. Pros: food was good and the ship was beautiful.