I recently went on a 3 night cruise from Southampton on the Virtuosa. We had a very cheap price (around £350 each for a balcony cabin, inclusive of drinks package) so my expectations were pretty low to start. We have previously sailed Cunard and Princess and whilst I knew MSC were very much the other end of the cruising spectrum, I didn’t expect it to be quite as rough as it was.

Embarkation itself was very speedy- we were onboard by 10.30am. However, the cabins don’t open until 4am, so it’s s case of killing some time on the ship before you can go and change/unpack. The cabin itself was a good size clean but very basic. If I had to liken it to a hotel chain, I would say Premier Inn at best. The toiletries provided were cheap, and the towels were poor quality. When we arrived at the cabin, the bathroom hadn’t been cleaned very well- there was no clean hand towel and no soap. The desk area in the room was sticky and hadn’t been wiped down properly, and the kettle was filthy. The toilet also didn’t flush, and we had to report it 3 times before it was dealt with (3 hours later).

The ship itself is huge but even so, spacer per person felt very limited. It was hard to get a seat in the bars in the evening, especially the adults only bar which was completely packed by 8pm. Wait times for drinks were routinely in excess of 20 minutes, sometimes longer. However, the drinks package was great and the section available was huge. The queue at the buffet was incredible- on our first morning there were no seats available at all in the (large) buffet area so people were taking plates of food back to their room. Getting off the ship at ports was also a nightmare and it just felt like we spent the entire weekend waiting in line. Read more