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Wonderful

Rostock (Warnemunde)

After reading the previous bad reviews I must admit I was very worried. Well, all I can say is as a family ranging from a 1 year old to a 70 year old, we have had an absolutely wonderful cruise.

The staff are very attentive and friendly, and great at remembering your name and order. From the bar staff, table servers and room service. The food was lovely. Always plenty of choice, always hot and fresh and never a shortage of anything at all. We had no problems ordering drinks. Sometimes at theatre show times the bar was busy and there was a wait, but that is understandable. Gym was great and clean, spa great, entertainment 1st class.

Free sunbed towels everyday. The only downside was lack of sunbeds on sea days due to some guests putting towels on and not using them. 

Apart from that we can't wait to come back.

Don't read the bad reviews!!!! 

I have cruised over 14 times, first and last time with MSC! Overcrowded, understaffed and dirty. Purchased a drink package, but getting a drink from the bar is a mess. Servers are overwhelmed, waiting 30 minutes, begging a bar tender to fill you order. The food is terrible! I won’t cruise with MSC again. Royal Caribbean is night and day difference and much higher quality! The buffet can’t keep up with the demand. The food is the formal dining room is terrible. This is usually one of the highlights of a cruise. The staff is not friendly because they are understaffed and overwhelmed. I really feel sorry for them! There are no extras on this cruise, Towel animals, ice sculptures, friendly dining room servers, quality shows, etc very disappointing! Water is the only beverage option. The ship needs a major overhaul!! It’s time for an upgrade and new and improved management!

Worst cruise ever

MSC Armonia was the perfect cruise for the time that we had in Europe, visiting Kotor Montenegro, Mykonos and Santorini over 6 nights. The cabin was comfortable, plenty of storage and amenities. I would highly recommend Portside for anyone booking as you will see the beautiful coastal scenery from the cabin if you have a window, porthole or balcony.  The ship overall is a little old, but has been refurbished well. 

The service on the other hand was appalling. We happened to be on the 2nd cruise of the season out of Venice (the ship having come from Brazil).  Staff struggled to keep up with the service (the ship holds 2500 and was full). There was very little table service for drinks, unless you found a waiter or waitress that you became familiar with, which was very rare.  

The waiters at dinner had no idea how to serve food, handing plates to guests (rather than placing plates on the table) and leaning over guests to put food on the table. On the At sea day, they also closed the main restaurants for breakfast and herded everyone into the buffet, where there was not enough seating for everyone.  Pure Chaos!!

The drinks package was also a challenge. No real explanation as to what was included (as the menu's are rare to find). 

To order a drink you must do this through a QR code on the table (if you have WIFI - which does not work if you have not purchased the package) or you must go to the waiter at the end of the bar, wait in the line (usually up to 10 people waiting), obtain your order via a ticket and then wait at the bar for the bar tender to prepare your drink and call out when it is ready. It then gets more confusing if someone else has ordered the same item and you are both fighting over it. (Quite laughable). 

I would also recommend you avoid this ship if you are Gluten free. There is no support for people with food allergies, other than some bread (that is really not great), and modified meals in the main restaurant that are unappealing and tasteless.  And when the main restaurants are closed, you must run the gauntlet with the buffet (which is highly questionable on cross contamination).  One good thing is we did get served first at the main restaurant at lunch, when I explained I was gluten free. Whereas our fellow guests at our table waited for over 45 minutes for their lunch. 

The icing on the cake though was the call from reception on day 3 asking if I was happy with the service (being gluten free). I explained that there had been some challenges and was told that unfortunately the ship was not set up to cater for this. In addition if I wished to order room service for breakfast, I would need to first go to the restaurant (Marco Polo) at 7 am in the morning, order my meal and then they could deliver to my cabin... Really!! 

MSC really needs to spend some time training staff. It is evident there were lots of newbies on this cruise who had no idea of hospitality.  Such a pity as it is a cruise which attracts a melting pot of cultures, ages and experiences and offers some great activities, shows and wonderful ports.

Ship Good, Service Terrible, not good for people with Food Allergies.

Very smooth experience priority boarding in terminal.

I had booked two suites and the Aurea experience, so we had a nice check in. 

It ended there as there was a long queue and wait for the tender.  

Apparently, the boat was late arriving and therefore late disembarking.

These things happen but we weren't informed and had to sit freezing on the tender for over two hours and felt very frustrated.  By the time we had queued 45 mins for drinks the buffet etc had closed for the safety briefing. We hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

Too many issues to mention but no wifi solution and the Pergola restaurant was nice when we finally got a table (we had a reservation every night at 19.15).  Gelato closed, Vitamin bar closed, Surf and Turf closed.  Inadequate seating capacity in the buffet. Bars understaffed and many staff under trained.  

The Pergola was fine when we got sat down, nice food and staff.  One night we waited 1hr 25mins in the queue and then I was told I couldn't have a T'Bone as it took 25 mins to cook from frozen (medium rare) and they needed the table for the next sitting.  We had to eat as an adult couple and not as a family two of the four nights as the kids couldn't wait any longer and had to go and get pizza.

The London bar was a shocker.  My first drink (30 minute wait at the bar) was a Mule a Poire.  I was served Engine Oil gin with fruit juice and sprinkled with cinnamon powder (completely the wrong ingredients).  It was revolting.  The Rum bar was good but stood out as the only bar with efficient staff.

Too many onboard facilities were closed or oversubscribed.  It was a really cheap cruise but we got substandard service so felt the need to eat at the ports of departure and many of the things we paid for just didn't happen like the birthday cake and the wifi.  I tip very well but only if I get good service.  I tipped ten euros every drink at the rum bar and that seemed to work.

The boat was clean and the rooms were fine and well serviced.  The food and drink offerings were incredibly hit and miss.  Cold burger and chips on arrival, long queues at our reserved restaurant, no specialty dining, and the deck 5 and 11 bars just took so long to get served it wasn't worth it.

I wrote to MSC both by email and then letter.  That was two weeks ago with no reply so their customer service is up there with their bar and restaurant service.

In summary a clean boat with good schedule but serious staffing issues and restaurant problems.  

Delayed embarkation.  

Very slow bar service.  Queues for everything.  Many attractions such as vitamin bar and gelato bar closed.  Surf and Turf closed for the duration.  Waited 1hr 25mins (booked for 19.15 and we were on time) to get a table at the Pergola restaurant on Wednesday night we left half an hour in the queue on Thursday to use the buffet as we didn't want to go through the ordeal again.

The customer service solution was to turn up at 18.30.  

My son's birthday cake was delivered at 22.00 on the Friday night instead of at dinner on the Wednesday.  

No tables available in the breakfast buffet for the whole trip.  

Wifi did not exist on 4 of our five devices and the one that worked was extremely inefficient. Internet cafe was down the entire trip.  Guest services and wifi team were unable to help.

In general, understaffed and error after error and I didn’t enjoy standing in queues to find no solution to problems.  

I was expecting a 3-star holiday and had low expectations as this is a smaller boat with less choice, but it was terrible from start to finish.

This will be my first and last cruise with MSC as the service both onboard and afterwards was well below acceptable standards.

As other reviews on the same cruise have stated don’t waste your money.

Avoid!!!  Understaffed, long queues, cold food, dirty tables,  zero response from customer services. Don't waste your money!!!

The MSC Armonia is old and tired. Smoking is allowed in the casino and outside at designated smoking areas. Doesn’t make the ship smell very nice. The tendering process for embarking was not explained beforehand and is extremely slow. Service is awful in the restaurants as well as the quality of food. The only reason we picked this specific cruise/company was the travel dates. Bed sheets were stained. Bath towels were hard, probably 15+ years old and stained as well.  No tissues in the room.

We will never cruise with MSC again. The majority of the staff is unhelpful, unorganized, and has no idea what’s going on. Every person in our travel group was told different answers to the same question. The positive thing was the ports visited and getting off the boat for the day. Our cabin attendant did a good job of cleaning the room. This ship and staff made us never want to cruise with MSC again.

Do not waste your money

Tortola

It was last minute and the only one leaving from Athens at the time. I should have just flown to Rome and jumped onto a better Cruise company. 

Armonia old, dull, boring, over priced for what you get, catered towards Italian and Spanish. Cabin and serving staff were all friendly and polite. Definitely over promise and under deliver. Very disorganised for excursions. Not enough time at ports. Activities are suited to those in retirement homes.My mother always cuises with MSC and encouraged me to chose them. Mothers can be wrong. In saying that, she never ever cruised with Armonia. 

Food was  average at the most. except for pizza, it was yum!!

A senior staff member was extremely personally rude, and inappropriate, but I wont publicly shame him by calling out his position. 12 floors, over 1500 passengers and mostly one lift operational. On a good day 2. I could go on but won't. ........

If I could give less than 1 star I would 

Pros: Low price/good value, most staff, especially cabin steward and bar staff, itinerary.

Cons: Entertainment was poor, buffet food was poor and very odd choices, customer service staff.  Entire cruise geared toward Europeans.

Specifics:

Room: we had 2 balcony cabins and 1 inside cabin for my family members- the inside cabin was bigger than the balconies.  No matter, as Marta, our excellent cabin steward opened the balcony separator so we had a double balcony and spent much time there.  Very small cabins compared to other ships- not a deal breaker though.

Entertainment: Quite poor.  The 2 main female singers were quite good and the 2 male singers were good, however, the dancers in the shows showed a lack of choreography.  They were often out of sync.  My daughter commented that her middle school musical had the dancers in better time than them.  The LaFerice Theatre was extremely hot as well.

The other entertainers were quite limited in their abilities: a piano player, who played ok, but was just that, a rhythm guitarist who played oldies from the 50's with limited vocal range, and a pair in another lounge where one played the keyboard and the other sang.  They were also pretty poor in ability.  Lastly, there was an event by the pool with an actual band.  They played well, but they took a lot of poetic license with the songs, making songs that were popular sound quite odd.

Bar staff: fantastic job.  Wira from Bali in the White Lion Pub was great and had my choice of beer ready when he saw me.  Many others, such as Joel as the bar near the pool also did an excellent job, worked hard and were very friendly.

Customer service: seemed to have no clue. I went there to have OBC applied to offset the tips added to the bill so that the OBC would be used and not lost.  This confused them to no end.  It took 2 staff members and 15 minutes for them to understand what I wanted.  I can't be the first person to apply OBC to a bill.

Food: this was really odd for my family from the US.  The food was really geared toward the European palate. There was heavy reliance on lamb, veal and mussel dishes.  There was only 1 day where I found beef on the buffet at the sliced down meat at the end- it was almost always lamb or fish.  There was never any shrimp dishes and no shrimp cocktail in the MDR,  There was almost no chicken to be found on board.  Think about that for Americans with kids... no chicken strips or nuggets.  Almost no chicken or beef dishes at all.  Breakfast was very odd to us.  There was always: baked beans, oven roasted potatoes, cooked carrots, and cooked tomatoes.. (yes that was every breakfast). Yes there were a few other choices like terrible scrambled eggs (how can they ruin scrambled eggs?), bacon and sausage as well as rolls and croissants.  I mainly ate fruits for breakfast every day.

The main dining room food was generally good, but the choices were limited as above- almost no beef, no chicken.  The pasta dishes were good and always available, so my family ordered spaghetti bolognese or lasagna a number of times.

This cruise left from "Venice", but really the ship left from Marghera across the bay from Venice.  This made a difficult embarkation experience.  You go to the cruise terminal in Venice, go through the lines, security, etc. and then get bussed out of Venice through the industrial zone and then to the ship- about 20 minutes by bus.  After the trip, you do the reverse and go by small boats back to the Venice terminal.

Ports: we really enjoyed all of them.  One issue we had was we booked a trip to Ostuni on MSC's trip which was listed as "easy" and wheelchair accessible.  My 85 year old mother was in a wheelchair and I was pushing her around Ostuni that was definitely NOT wheelchair accessible.  Cobblestone streets, no ramps to sidewalks, etc.  We ended up just sitting in the town center while the rest of my family continued the tour.  After we returned we went to the excursion desk to tell them to take the wheelchair accessible icon off that tour and explained to them- they were aware as a person from the excursion team was also on the trip.  They said thanks for letting them know, but offered no compensation of any kind.  Other excursions were fine and we enjoyed them.

We had the port of Mykonos, Greece changed to Kusadasi, Turkey.  While I wanted to see Mykonos, we did enjoy Turkey.

Overall: This was a definite step down from the trip my family took on the NCL Epic from Barcelona in 2017.  The food was much better, the cabins bigger, and entertainment better.  It was though, also more expensive.  Did we enjoy this cruise, even with the items I mentioned? Yes we did.  We really enjoyed the ports and visiting Venice for 2 days before the cruise.  Would we cruise on MSC again? Probably not unless it was in North America where they would likely make the food more geared towards Americans.

Before anyone replies, I have been on over 10 cruises before this one on Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, and Seawind Lines, so I am able to compare this cruise to others.

Geared toward Italian/European cruisers, poor entertainment

We initially booked the cruise for 2020 but finally were able to go on the cruise 3/7/2022. We enjoyed it! We chose this cruise because we wanted to experience a Mediterranean cruise and visit the spesific ports. Embarking was very efficient, check in was great, staff were friendly. Disembarking at the ports was not too much of a hassle. We could not go to Mykonos due to weather but a alternative port was found. Food was great! The Marco Polo restaurant was very good with excellent service. The buffet was very good with lots of options but very busy. Good variety of drinks were available. The evening shows were really fantastic!! We had a inside cabin on deck 8. I was supprised with the amount of storage available. The cabin was cleaned and made up every day. Every evening the program for the next day was delivered to your room as well as your tickets and info for excursions the following day- very organised. Sometimes language was a problem.

We have cruised with MSC Armonia in May 2022 from Venice in the eastern mediterranean. Embarkation was well organized. We checked-in at the cruise terminal in Venice and were brought with small passenger ships to the industrial harbour Marghera where the cruise ship was docked.

The staff on board of the cruise ship was really friendly and outstanding. We did a cruise with MSC Seaside in 2021 but were disappointed by the service, this time it was different. The crew was really motivated and friendly all over the ship. No waiting time at the reception in case of any questions, friendly cabin steward, outstanding servers in the restaurant.

The ship is one of the oldest of the MSC fleet but well maintained and modernized. We had a balcony cabin which was compared to other cruise ships quite small. There was no couch in the cabin and the bathroom was really small, but overall the cabin was fine. On the first day we had problems with our door which was not closing properly but after reporting to our cabin steward a maintenance person from the ship came and quickly repaired it.

The food itself was nice, international meals with focus on italian dishes. Both buffet and regular restaurants were not to crowded. Thats the main thing which made the cruise so positive, it was really cozy. Not too many passengers and a nice athmosphere. 

The entertainment was not really spectacular, some average shows in the evenings and live music in the bars.

Summary: I really like the MSC Armonia, even though its one of the oldest in the MSC fleet it was a great experience and cruise and I had a better cruise than on a newer MSC ship.

Great experience

In my new Cruise I decided to try MSC and we wanted to have at least one stop in Cuba. The desapointment started when I bought the Ticket. A mispelling in my email and it was impossible for me to change anything in my reservation. 

Arriving in the cruise the check in, the informations are poor. The only thing the want is to sell you the drink package. The security instructions failed because nobody was there to give us the information. At least the security information about any emergency event should be taken seriously. Not even...

The Cabin is actually ok. The shower is terrible, but most of the ships have terrible showers. 

During the fisrt dinner we figure out how desorganized this ship crew is. The restaurante is not big enough for all passengers, It took us more than 2 hours to have dinner. It was hard to find somebody that could talk english. In the first morning we went to see the excursions and the sound system didnt work. The lady that was there said it was her first day....so, we didnt get any information about any excursion.

In the following morning, as usual, the people that have excursions leave early. The problem is the crew is desorganized. It took us 1 hour and half to leave the ship. Comming back, we asked to change the dinner hour to have a chance to eat properly. It was better, but the food is terrible. The drinks are not good. In the second day, again, another delay in leaving the ship. It cost us again another hour. In a stop that wasnt that long.  In the last day, the ship left the dock 3 housr later and of course arriving late in next stop...it made us loose our ground transporation. Not even the shop ladies are in a good mood. In some days they didnt have towels forthe rooms and our toilet flush broke. We had to use a restroom in a Friends cabin.

The enterteiament team is surprisely good. It was the only good aspect in the ship. The plays are good for such a small ship. The Entertainment team is very nice and creative.

Worst Cruise Ever

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