Like many other visitors to this site, I have read some pretty horrific reviews about MSC, so much so that you do embark on a MSC cruise with some trepidation. Well my wife and I, along with a male friend, have just experienced our first MSC cruise. This may be a wordy tome but I hope my review will help other travellers in the future.
A couple of days before the cruise we travelled from Sheffield to the Arora International Hotel, Crawley for an overnight stay before our BA flight to Venice the following day. Our first time at the Arora and we knew we would not be disappointed when we say a crew from Emirates Airline arriving in front of us. I had booked the hotel (including a fabulous evening meal), parking, taxi transfer to North Terminal with meet and greet service on our return with Holiday Extras for less than £180 for the three of us (2 rooms) which was a real bargain.
Our flight with BA to Venice was booked 7 months ago and we paid less than £200 each for the Club Europe tickets so no worries about baggage allowance with a whopping 46k each and use of the lounges in Gatwick & Venice. The flight was on time and arrived ahead of schedule in a wet and windy Venice. A quick transfer by taxi to our overnight hotel, Hotel Tritone in Mestre opposite the railway station. We have stayed in Mestre before and found that staying landside has always been very convenient thus avoiding the struggle with luggage on water taxis and dragging luggage over the bridges in Venice - we are getting too old for that! The Tritone was very good and offered good service similar to that previously experienced at the Hotel Bologna Best Western 100 yards down the road.