Some of you may be familiar with the sci-fi cliche of the evil parallel universe where everything good in our universe is evil over there (and presumably vice versa). This is what doing back-to-back cruises on Carnival and MSC feels like. However, at this point in time I'm still not certain which universe is the evil one.

It was almost uncanny. Virtually everything that was good on the Carnival ship was evil on the Musica, and vice versa. The Musica was beautiful and stylish - the Carnival ship was gaudy and tacky. The service on the Musica was pretty terrible, while on Carnival we were treated like gods.

The main problem with the Musica is not that it is a bad ship, nor that MSC is a bad cruiseline, it's just that the multi-lingual nature of the cruise makes it difficult to engage with the ship and feel at home. This affects the service in particular - the lack of a single common language makes it difficult for the staff (who mostly speak English quite well) to connect with some of the passengers so I guess they just don't bother connecting with anyone. Add to that the appallingly low-brow daily entertainment (just watch Italian TV game shows to get an idea) and it's no wonder this ship gets lots of bad reviews. Read more