Isn't it a shame that a ship this beautiful, with a staff that is clearly dedicated to excellence, is forced to operate under circumstances that reflect so poorly and unfairly on them? Our embarkation went smoothly with a 14:30 appointment but reports I heard from earlier passengers was that it was a madhouse for them. MSC seems to be the Southwest Airlines of the cruise industry when it comes to information technology and management. The cruise cards are easy enough to manage but the procedures the crew must go through seem onerous and antiquated in their interaction with the passengers. Getting a drink is a good example. In any bar on any deck there is a dearth of bartenders which causes a consistent que of 15 to 20 thirsty passengers or more waiting for an order. Compounding the problem, the bar-tenders have to type in the drink recipe for each order to keep track of the inventory supply which slows them down even further. Even still, the ship ran out of many mixers, wine and booze in all of the bars. Getting on and off the ship is also a tedious process with a minimum of persons available to scan the cruise cards when disembarking and even slower to do the security checks when reboarding the ship. And yet, the service by nearly every crew member is great, given with a smile, and an apology if necessary when the entire ship is out of tomato juice or any red wine but Pino Noir or Merlot. Really, no bloody Mary's on this ship two days in. I will be interested an updated Cruise Critic review of this ship because Cruise Critic was on board my cruise and had a few special receptions that I witnessed. I even got to sample some of their leftover Hors devours (caviar, stuffed mushrooms, etc.) from their end of cruise party. Given my and other negative experiences it's hard for me to understand a 5 star review for this ship even though the crew deserve it very much as does the ship itself.