We have fortunately been on a few cruises with different cruise lines and unfortunately this time was nowhere near as good. We had a party of 8 people all booked under one name. When the times were issued for embarkment MSC had split us into 2 parties with different arrival times.We called to change this but was told it was impossible. This caused us stress but in fact we were all able to board at the same time. All the staff at Southampton terminal were friendly and competent as we had one disabled party member and they helped them with supply of wheelchair and using lift etc. First impression of ship was very grand and glitzy but it soon became clear that there were no relaxing chairs or areas to make yourself comfortable. The music in the Antrim was very loud but only a very small amount of seating and the noise travelled up through the ship. The other music down the main walk area wasn't at all good. The singers had no lighting on them and very poor voices. Again very limited seating. There were 3 sittings for the shows and you had to book seats before arriving which was fine but the show only lasted 35 minutes and to be honest were nowhere near as good as the shows on other cruise liners. This was very disappointing and if you wanted to see 2 "special shows" you had to pay extra to see these although other passengers said they were good. We had to go to customer service desk about our cabin cards but as the desk was right next-door to the music in the Antrim the staff couldn't hear or understand what we required, so again this caused us stress. It was a really stupid idea to place the help desk in the same place as the loud music. On our first morning there was no hot water in the cabin which was very poor. We were given a 6pm dining time but on the first evening it was chaos in the restaurant. The staff didn't seem to have a clue what they were doing so we were seated at the table for 2 hours by which time they wanted us to leave for the next sitting at 8pm. We were still waiting for our coffee and were told we weren't entitled to it. My husband produced confirmation on his phone and eventually we were served coffees but it was unpleasant to have to insist we were entitled to it on our dining package. The food in this restaurant was mideoca to say the least. Many times in came cold as it had been standing out under plastic food covers waiting to be brought to the table. We consider the choice on the menu wasn't up to the standard we expected. Unfortunately due to all the mis-haps we won't be booking with MSC again.