Tag: Divina

MSC Seaside: The Ship!

The Seaside is, in a word, beautiful. There’s no denying that. If you want to see for yourself, check out the videos we’ve been posting from on-board that include public area walk-throughs and cabin tours. We’ve got plenty more to come too, so be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel! If you’d rather watch them on a dedicated VR platform, follow us on VeeR, as all of the 360 videos in question are posted there as well! In addition to all the video, throughout this post I’ll be including pictures we’ve posted on Instagram of the ship, and even including a slideshow of mostly interior shots at the end, including a bunch of shots from the various kids club areas, so read on!

I called this out in my “initial thoughts” post, but if you consider the traditional ship design, you generally an open open upper deck or two, and one lower deck that while providing a view of the ocean, also has a number of obstructions of that view, typically involving the ship’s lifeboats. The Seaside changes that by moving the upper decks inward, allowing them to create an open lower deck that gives you a much more immersive outside feel, almost like walking in a park, if that park was in the middle of the ocean. I’m once again going to be using one of MSC’s initial renderings to show what I mean:

The design definitely lives up to the goal of bringing you closer to the sun, and provides plenty of lounger space on those outer decks. There are multiple highlights of these new outdoor spaces, as well.

  • Infinity Bridge: On each side of the ship out on deck 8, there’s an Infinity Bridge with a clear glass floor that allows you to walk out over the ocean. 360 video of this is coming soon on our YouTube and VeeR channels!
  • Bridge of Sighs: At deck 16 aft they’ve placed another clear glass bridge that allows you to walk out over South Beach pool, which is 9 floors below. It’s an incredibly picturesque spot, definitely one to see during multiple times of the day. Don’t believe me? See for yourself with our 360 degree tour of it!
  • South Beach Pool: In the rendering above, this is the open aft section on deck 7 that contains a pool, loungers, and a bar / gelato station. When you’re hanging out back here on a sunny day, the look of it, with the condo-style balconies towering above you, really does give you that South Beach condo-scene feel.

  • Forest Aquaventure Park: A multi-story waterpark in the center of the ship that contains kids pools and 4 water slides. One kids slide, two high-speed racing slides, and one with Slide-boarding technology, combining an interactive game, lights, music and a 367-foot water slide. We rode the racing slides and the interactive slide, and personally, I prefer the racing slides, mainly because the whole points-based game on the other slide didn’t really appeal to me. The kids riding it really seemed to like that one, however, as there was usually a line at the bottom to get one of the slide boards you have to ride down on.
  • Zip Line: The Seaside boasts what MSC calls the longest zip line at sea. We took a run down this while docked in Nassau, and I have to say that it’s worth a ride, it’s definitely better than the zip line on the Oasis class, and gives you a great view of everything around you. The downside of the open design of it is that windy sea days might mean closure, as we encountered early in the cruise. On our sailing it was free, which meant really, really busy. I’d heard of people waiting ~45 minutes to ride, as they were only opening one side at a time. We got there about 30 minutes before it opened the second time in Nassau and were first in line for a 2pm run. We’ve heard that after our sailing they implemented a fee for the zipline, $10 per person or $50 per cabin. As mentioned, it’s a fun time offering a great view, easily worth a try!

Even though the decks above 8 appear to almost be squished inward to accommodate the open-air design, you don’t really lose anything in the way of public space. That mostly appears to be due (in my totally uneducated guesstimate) to the public areas like the atrium, shopping, and entertainment spaces existing on decks 5 – 8, where the ship is still the full width. Those interior public areas are just as beautiful as the outside area, too, with the Seaside’s atrium being the center piece of it all. In keeping with previous MSC designs, this 4 deck atrium houses the signature Swarovski crystal staircases, along with a bar on the bottom floor, and stages positioned on each of the three floors above it. I’ll have some pictures of it below, but if you want to take a virtual tour, check out my 360 degree walk-through!

Up next on page 2, interior entertainment venues!

Pages: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3

MSC Seaside: Initial Thoughts

Well, the fun has come to an end. We debarked the Seaside yesterday morning for the final time on this trip, so I figured I’d get a start on covering our time on board. I purposely held off on writing posts while on the ship to allow myself time to digest everything that we saw and experienced. This is a brand new ship, and as such, there is a lot of interest in it. Hopefully the information we provide by way of this blog helps paint a picture of our experience for those sailing or thinking about sailing the Seaside any time soon. I have a short series of posts I’ll be doing on the experience over the next two to three weeks, starting with this overview of some of the highlights and lowlights. Details may be light, but in most cases will follow in the more detailed posts that come later.

First, we had an absolute blast during the two day inaugural. I previously covered the naming ceremony itself, but as far as the time on board, we had fun, and were very happy to have been invited to be part of it! The crew treated us very well, and while there were a few hiccups, those two days on board were really fun. Getting to see the ship while she’s not even close to capacity was awesome, as it really allowed us to explore the various public areas, as well as different categories of cabins. I’ll be including the latter in my planned posts on cabins.

Moving on, our actual sailing over Christmas is what I suspect those interested in the Seaside want to read about. This sailing represented the first time the ship was taking paying passengers out of its new home port of Miami, and it was amazing to be a part of. Full disclosure since I’ve seen people in various online communities make accusations of paid cheerleading by anyone that had anything positive to say: We paid full fare for this trip. No TA rates, FAM rates, or any sort of industry discount from MSC, we were just normal paying passengers who booked on our own over a year ago out of excitement for the product, and this is written from that point of view.

Going in, I expected there to be issues. I assumed we’d hit some of the following, and adjusted my expectations and patience level accordingly:

  • Embarkation would be a little chaotic in the newly renovated terminal F
  • The new technology on the ship (the MSC for Me app and wristbands) would be problematic
  • Dining might be a little out of control the first night as getting seating and serving processes down when the ship is at capacity might take a night or two
  • Room issues might arise. By this I mean things might physically fail or break. The ship is brand new, and even new things fail when introduced in such a large scale. We were aware of a few room issues during the 2-day, so as the ship reach capacity on the Christmas sailing, I figured we might see or hear of more of it.

Some of those did occur, and in larger doses than others, but nothing that ruined our trip. Let’s take a high level look at some of the good and bad. I’ll start with the latter so we end on a high note 🙂

Keep in mind that the ship just launched, this crew has only been working together a short time (since training started in Italy like a month or so before the ship launched) and as a result, I personally expect this to get better as systems get ironed out and processes are made more efficient.

The bad

Storage space in some of those cabins is really at a premium. We were in 11054 (Fantastica Balcony) for the inaugural and 9250 (Aurea Suite) for the Christmas sailing. Calling 9250 a suite is incredibly generous in my opinion. The interior of the room was identical to 11054 except for the bed and couch positions being reversed. Both suffered from the same lack of storage space. You get a closet, two smallish drawers, and three and half shelves (the half is shared with the safe). You also get two very small shelves in the nightstand on each side of the bed. Jen and I never unpacked in 11054 due to the short time on-board, but having that same small amount of space in 9250 with 3 people was a challenge. I think we’d have used the mini fridge for storage if we could have. We made it work, but due to the closet access being partially blocked by the sofa, all had to store our shoes under the bed instead of in the closet, which really wasn’t ideal. The bathroom is also really small. That shower (the same in 11054 and 9250) was absolutely tiny, and if you’re at all tall, forget about drying off in there :). Here’s a look around both the room and bathroom in 9250:

I also have 360 degree walkthrough video of this room and a few others that I’ll be processing and posting on our YouTube channel after we get back to Charlotte, so subscribe and be on the lookout!

Calling guest services proved to be frustrating. We had an issue the first night regarding luggage delivery with a key bag, and after calling a couple of times and getting no answer at all, the automated system finally asked if we wanted to request a callback, so we did. It never came. Ever. Okay, that was on the first night, so maybe they were just overloaded. Well, people were still having issues getting anyone on the final night. Someone next to us in line to be seated in the MDR had been trying to call room service for over an hour, no one ever picked up, and they also requested a callback that never came from the automated system. Not good.

The buffet is a mess. Literally. First, there are two buffets on the Seaside, the main one on 8, and a smaller snack-sized one on 16. This may end up being a common theme in my posts, but it just feels like they don’t have enough crew to service a full ship. When everyone was on board (sea days, before getting off in port or after getting back on), the buffet areas weren’t well-kept during prime eating times. In multiple instances, it was nearly impossible to find silverware and/or napkins. Paper napkin dispensers were constantly empty, and you could pretty much forget about finding cloth napkins/silverware. Tables also took quite a while to be cleared from what we saw. It wasn’t that crew were standing around doing nothing, we saw them busting their butts, it really just seemed like there weren’t enough of them to keep up with the crowd.

Note that this was far less of an issue on port days since many passengers obviously aren’t on the ship. The staff was better able to keep up in these situations.

Public bathrooms are also a mess. I actually don’t think I ever used one, but Jen and Bayley did (or attempted to) on multiple occasions and almost always complained of toilets that didn’t work, either overflowing or continuously flushing, stall doors that didn’t stay latched, bathrooms that were really messy overall. In each case where they encountered someone trying to clean a women’s bathroom, it was a man, and no announcement was made before he entered in any of those instances.

Overall, the ship’s cleanliness not up to Divina standards. We’ve always found the Divina to be a very well-kept ship, probably the cleanest we’ve sailed. We expected those same standards to exist on the Seaside, but on this trip, that expectation wasn’t met. In addition to the issues mentioned above, we constantly noticed a lack of cleaning across the ship. Examples of this: Coming down the aft stairs a couple of days ago, we came across a piece of bacon just laying on the floor (which we aptly named “stair bacon”), we found half-full cups just sitting on stairway rails a number of times, and more small things like that. Granted that type of thing is just as much on the passengers who felt it was okay to leave things like that in places they didn’t belong, but on Divina, things like that disappear quickly. In a bigger example of what I’m talking about, I went out to the South Beach pool area on the morning of the final sea day to catch the sunrise, only to find the tables and chairs around the bar still strewn about from the night before. Chairs all over the place, not set up with the tables they went with, etc. Tables in the buffet would sit with used plates and cups for long periods of time before being cleaned up, as well. Again, it felt like there simply wasn’t enough crew to keep up.

Bar and gelato service was hit or miss. Of the bars we frequented, we found the best service to be in the Haven lounge, and under the right circumstances up on deck 16. This isn’t a knock on the bartenders, they were doing their best to keep up, they just didn’t have the manpower to deal with a full ship, and bar service could be slow as a result. In a number of cases with both bars and gelato stands, we saw managers and officers stepping in to assist with basically everything, which I highly commend. If empty glasses needed to be removed, they were on it. If drinks needed to be made, they were on it. If gelato needed to be scooped, they were on it. There are also station inefficiencies that I have no doubt they’ll iron out. Heck, we saw one fixed over the course of the week in the Venchi chocolate/coffee station on deck 6. The bar manager was making us shakes and having to walk the length of the station 4-5 times per shake going back and forth between where we were, the milk was, and the gelato was located. A couple of days later, we noticed the milk had been moved to the chocolate side of the station in a chilled bucket to save time. Things like that will definitely help over time.

MDR service was very hit or miss. When it was a miss, it was a big miss. Being Aurea, we were assigned any-time dining in the Seashore restaurant. The first night there were no signs out telling Aurea/wellness guests where to check in, so it was a little chaotic among the other passengers that were trying to get MDR issues sorted, but once I got to the podium and asked, we were seated immediately. Service that night was pretty bad, with speed being the primary issue, taking over an hour and a half to serve 3 courses. I assumed that being the first night it’d get sorted out, but in the end really didn’t seem to be a process issue, more of a training issue. One night would be really slow, the next great, it really depended on what section you got seated in. The same held true for lunch in Seashore. I think the longest we spent in there for a dinner was 2 hours one night, while tables in other servers sections were out in well under that. On the bad nights, it really felt like we were being served by head waiters that had never worked on a ship prior to Seaside and didn’t understand any of the flow in how it all worked. I will say that on the good nights, we had servers who really knew what they were doing. Overall, the women were killing it, with two of our best nights being at Barbara and Brenda’s tables. I don’t want to leave Kikit out of this either, the night we were in his section was probably our quickest dinner all week. Those bad nights and lunches were incredibly frustrating, though. The last couple of nights we let our servers know ahead of time that we were trying to get done quickly to get to a show or some other activity, and that did help, but that really shouldn’t be necessary. It shouldn’t take 20 minutes to get a menu, and then another 15 minutes to get a drink, and so on. We actually walked out in the middle of one lunch in Seashore because we were tired of waiting and our wait staff had simply disappeared. Don’t get me wrong, they were all friendly, and all appeared to be working their tails off, but it again seemed to come down lack of experience with some of the head waiters.

Things around the ship were literally breaking. Remember that expectation of room issues I mentioned earlier? Yea, we’re aware of several instances of it. I’m not surprised. You install this many of the same items at this scale and some are bound to break, it happens. We had one panel in our first room on 11 (below the storage drawers) that was broken off, and our bathroom door wouldn’t latch shut, but other than that, nothing wrong in either of our rooms. We did, however, see reports in the Facebook group for our sailing and the group for our travel agent community of other things, like power outlets not working for the first few days, water leaks under floors, and other breakdowns like that. The worst, however, had to be the balcony issue for one family. The parents got up early on Christmas morning and went out on the balcony to see the view, only to get trapped out there when their balcony door wouldn’t open back up. After finally flagging down someone else out on a balcony, ship’s security had to guide them back in via another balcony, with their own taking a few hours to be repaired. With small kids in the room during all of this, I can’t imagine how they felt.

The Good

The ship is beautiful. Seriously. The design is stunning, and it’s a really photogenic piece of hardware. You’ve got the signature Swarovski crystal stairs in the atrium, well decorated hallways, elegant shopping areas, and awesome venues around the ship like the Sports Bar, the Haven Lounge, and of course the atrium. Oh that sparkly atrium. I can’t wait to get my 360 video walk through of that processed. In the meantime, here’s a full view of it from the top level:

I posted other shots of it here, here, here (that’s a multi-shot post), here, and here too. There may be a few videos from events in there on our Insta, too.

The real beauty in the design of the ship comes from the awesome outdoor spaces. The ship’s design is inspired by the Miami condo scene, and it doesn’t disappoint. Outside there’s a lot to enjoy. There are Infinity bridges on each side that extend out over the ocean with see-through walkways, along with a “Bridge of Sighs” on deck 16 aft that extends out over the South Beach pool and also features a see-through walkway so you can see what’s happening below. It’s also a prime picture spot, with my favorite examples being my 360 shot on one of the sea days:

along with my shot of Bayley standing out there on our final formal night:

Seriously, this ship is incredible. Most ships have a lower outside deck, but on most, your view is obscured in some way by lifeboats. Like the outer deck lit in blue light here, with lifeboats overhead:

(Note – this obviously isn’t just a Carnival thing, I just happened to take this picture while docked in Nassau with this specific post in mind 🙂 )

Liberty

That’s not the case at all on the Seaside, as the lifeboats are on a lower deck passengers can’t get to, while the outer boardwalk style deck on 8 has no lifeboats in view anywhere. The original renderings are pretty accurate in this regard, showing the deck 8 outside areas right above where the lifeboats are kept:

I know I’ve already said it, but she really is a beautiful ship, and if you’re not following us on Instagram, you’re missing out! I’ve still got plenty of ship shots left to post, so feel free to check us out over there!

Our balcony was pretty nice. While I stand by my point above that the room doesn’t really warrant the “suite” title, even with the Aurea benefits, having a longer balcony with loungers on it was nice. No crowding of the balcony if all three of us want on, and a place for all three of us to stretch out. The only downside was that we did end up with some trash out there, mostly in the form of jellybeans. Not sure if someone on an adjacent balcony dropped them and they rolled in, or if they were thrown from a higher balcony, but they got there, and got stepped on accidentally. Note that while people can see down in to this balcony from above if you’re out in the sunny part (on a lounger, near the glass, etc), you can slide back under cover near the door and get more privacy if you want. Take a look around and see for yourself!

The new technology on the ship worked really well! We got RFID-ish wristbands at check-in (free for Aurea and above, small charge for everyone else if I recall), and Jen only wore that, didn’t carry her ship card with her on-board at all, and we had no issues. We could pay at the bars with them, use them to open our cabin door, basically use them anywhere you’d normally use your ship card. The only exception to this was at the spa. If you use the thermal area, they prefer you hand over your card to get your pass into the thermal area vs handing over the wristband.

The MSC For Me app seems to really work well on-board. There were issues with it before sailing, like the itinerary not including Christmas day, but once you’re on the ship’s wifi, it really lights up. Bayley used it to book our show times all but one night, and it worked perfectly.

Additionally, the little tablets the bar staff had seemed to work pretty well for ordering an paying. You tell the server what you want, they enter it into their tablet and scan your card/wristband for payment. Then the order is transmitted to the bar to be made. I was surprised at how well these things worked so early in their use, and wish that they’d extend use to the MDR to make ordering/food prep more efficient vs using the old “write orders on a pad” method.

The buffet design is soooo much better than Divina. I’m sure I’ve noted in past Divina posts that one of my biggest gripes on that ship is that the walkways in the buffet are too small, with posts popping up at bad times, resulting in backups during busy times. That’s all been sorted from what I saw on Seaside. Walkways are much wider, allowing better flow. Obviously you still get people walking slowly in the middle of a walkway, or stopping for no apparent reason right in front of you, but the overall layout is much better in my opinion. There’s also more than one pizza station in the deck 8 buffet (the larger of the two buffets), so during busy times the wait for whatever flavor of pizza you want should be non-existent. Maybe I just got lucky, but I had zero wait getting a slice or two of pepperoni whenever we went, no matter how busy things were.

The entertainment team is still tops. This groups is one of the things we fell in love with on the Divina, and to be honest, I was a little worried they’d lose their edge on a bigger ship, but that wasn’t the case. It’s mostly a new cast of characters for us, with a few returning favorites (Andre as CD, Tyrone, Carlos, Wally, and Chante), and whether new to us or returning, they were all great. We attended numerous activities including trivia, scattergories, the evening parties in Haven, and all of the “moment with your cruise staff” activities in the atrium and enjoyed them all. Those last ones, the cruise staff moments, are oddly fun. It’s a 5 minute dance party with the entertainment team dressed in whatever the night’s theme is (Gatsby, horror outfits, western wear for country night, etc). They’re also well attended, with each floor of the atrium packed with people at each one we went to! Honestly, this team puts in more effort than I’ve seen on any other line to help ensure passengers are having fun, and they genuinely seem to be enjoying themselves regardless of the long hours they put in. They easily cancel out any of the issues I called out in the “bad” section.

The Captain is out and about quite a lot, and always friendly. We’ve sailed with Captain Scala before, during one of our Yacht Club sailings on the Divina, and were happy he’d be the captain for the first sailing of the Seaside. In that time, he’s developed quite a social media following and stays pretty active throughout each cruise posting various pics. We saw him out a number of times with his family as well, once at the Jungle Pool where he was filming this, as well as at shows, and even making an appearance at the Cruise Critic Meet & Mingle! I have to say, it was a pretty well attended event, and very well done on MSC’s part, with a couple of cakes prepared for us, as well as a variety of cocktails handed out to everyone. Good times were had by all 🙂

The crew were always friendly. No matter how hard they were working trying to keep up, they were always smiling, asking how you were doing, and how your day went. I can’t imagine the hours they were having to put in to try and keep up with some of the issues I called out above, but they always seemed to do it with a smile.

The gifts! The wonderful gifts! There are two parts to this one. First, all cabins got presents for being on the first full sailing out of Miami. We came back to the cabin one night to find these sitting on our bed!

Combined with the gifts we got on the 2 day inaugural (these, among a few other items), we’ve got some cool stuff that we’ll definitely treasure!

Second, Santa did show up again this cruise, and like our Christmas sailing on the Divina two years ago, handed out gifts to all the kids 11 and under (I think that was the age group, anyway). Santa and his helpers (Rudolph and some elves were positioned at center stage in the theater, and lines were formed in different areas for different age groups. Kids went up, got a gift, and had their picture taken with Santa. I love that they’re still doing this 🙂

All in all, it was a great week. Yes, there were issues, and things on the MDR and buffet side really need fixing, but overall we had a great time and would do it again without question. I have no doubt they’ll get past the issues experienced this week over time, but I can understand how what we saw this week could frustrate people considering it was a Christmas sailing, and a fairly pricey one at that. Keep in mind that everything I’m posting here was based on our own experience, so what you read elsewhere may vary. Personally, I’m happy to have spent another fun Christmas at sea, this time aboard a brand new ship!

This is definitely a ship I expect we’ll sail on again, which isn’t something I say lightly, since we rarely sail a ship twice (the Divina being the only ship we’ve sailed on more than once at the time of this). Over the next two to three weeks I’ll be writing in more detail on the ship, the rooms we saw, the food, and maybe a few other things, and as previously mentioned will be working on getting all of my 360 video uploaded to our YouTube channel, but for now, it’s a New Years Eve in Miami for us!

MSC Divina: Debark and Final Thoughts!

Debark on our fourth sailing of the Divina went pretty smoothly. Returning on a Saturday has its advantages, and in this case, it meant we didn’t really have to rush to get off the ship right away, as we had all day Sunday to relax from the long drive home before returning to work. This meant we could stay on the ship longer, waiting until our group was actually called vs taking our luggage off ourselves as soon as they started letting passengers off the ship. We ended up with a later debar time, I forget exactly what, but we stayed in our rooms until just before 8am, then headed to the dining room for a quick breakfast.

Like previous ships we’ve been on, that last breakfast in the MDR is from a pre-set menu with a few key items they can quickly put together. They’re pretty efficient about it, but everything on my plate above was nice and warm, so no complaints here!

After eating, we headed to the main lobby to wait for our debark group to be called. We ended up hanging out in the Divina Bar for a while, and during that time only heard one or two groups called. After seeing a good chunk of the crowd clear out, we finally decided to head for the exits after 9am. There wasn’t much of a line to get off the ship by that point, and frankly getting our bags and getting through customs was pretty quick too. It wasn’t quite the escorted exit of our past stays in Yacht Club, but it was pretty painless nonetheless!

After another fun sailing on the Divina, there really isn’t too much to say that I haven’t said already. We had a great week, enjoyed the food, ship and staff, and saw a very noticeable improvement in the service. When I originally wrote my “Is the MSC Divina right for you?” post, my only real negative was the dining room experience, but this time around, our table staff were excellent, and things didn’t feel as crowded as it did on our first sailing. I’ve happily updated that older post accordingly.

If you’ve followed my entire series for this sailing, our only real issue was the embarkation experience, due more to how the contractor on the land side was handling the lines. It was a reletively small issue in the grand scheme, and aside from that, we had another amazing time on the Divina, and are really looking forward to sailing on the Seaside over Christmas!

Next up on our cruise list before that, however, is the Harmony of the Seas over Halloween! Follow us on social media, I’ll be working with a new camera and hope to do some cool things with it on this trip!

 

 

MSC Divina: The Food!

We’re now on the last day of our current sailing on the Divina, and with some free time while we’re docked in Nassau, I figured it was time for an update! The past four days since my last post have been a whirlwind of fun, and being totally exhausted from it, I hope this post makes sense. This is the first time in four sailings on the Divina that we’ve done this itinerary, and even though we had fun on the previous three, it was, in some ways, a nice change of pace, but three back to back ports where we spent a lot of time in the sun has me a bit, well, off ;). I’ll save the port-specific stuff for a later post and focus this post on the food and dining service on board the ship this week.

When we sailed over Christmas in 2015 (our only other non-Yacht Club sailing), we were assigned to the Black Crab restaurant, and if you saw my recap post, it wasn’t the best experience. It felt too crowded, service was really slow, and the food was hit or miss. This time around, we’ve enjoyed the MDR experience so much more. We’re in Villa Rosa this time, and were assigned late dining. At first we considered requesting a change to early seating, but after our first meal decided we against that, as we really like our table staff, Erwin and Noel. They’ve done an awesome job all week, so I’m glad we chose to stick with the later seating even though we prefer to eat earlier. The food itself does seem better than last time, but still has hit or miss moments. Take last night for example (as seen below), the 90-day aged carpaccio was excellent, but the beef wellington was just okay, as it was a little tough for my liking. I’d say most of the nights have been like that, but I’d say that’s par for the course with the main dining room on any contemporary line. Feeding 4000 people isn’t an easy task, and frankly most of it’s been pretty good all things considered! I think the only real complaint would be from Jen. On the 2015 sailing, the tiramisu parade was followed by the waiters cutting slices from the ones they paraded around, and she absolutely loved that specific tiramisu. This time, you don’t get served from the paraded ones, you just get pre-sliced ones that she says aren’t nearly as good as the ones on that Christmas sailing, so Italian night was a letdown for her.

As mentioned in my first post, we also decided to try some of the specialty restaurants onboard this time. With the current dining plan pricing, it just seemed like too good of a deal to pass up. We chose the 3 meal plan at $50/pp, which gave us a night in Eataly Steakhouse, Galaxy Restaurant, and La Cantina di Bacco. The first two do require reservations, but having never seen either of them busy, we didn’t bother to get any reservations ahead of time. The plan was to check out the MDR menu each day and decide based on whether or not we wanted anything on that menu. The first night we ate in one ended up being the first formal night, and for that we went to the steakhouse. Beef? Yes please! On the dining plan, you get something off the appetizer or pasta menu, one entrée, and one dessert. As shown below, I went with beef carpaccio, filet mignon, and the bomboloni (donuts with ice cream). It was all very good!

Next on our specialty dining tour was Galaxy Restaurant. We did this after our stop in Cozumel, again because there was nothing on the MDR menu that really called out to us. We didn’t call for a reservation until after we got back on the ship, but were able to easily get a table at 7pm. Arriving at the restaurant, we were seated at a spot by the window with an amazing view, and given our Samsung tablet containing the menus (ordering from a Galaxy tablet in Galaxy restaurant, clever 😊). Now at this point the one annoyance of the evening hit, as it took almost 40 minutes for our server to take our order, which seemed odd considering there was only one other group in the place, but other than being slow, the experience in Galaxy was great.

On the dining plan, you get one thing from the appetizer menu, one from the pasta menu, an entrée, and a dessert, so one more course than we got in the steakhouse. I admit that going in I was a bit concerned about this one, as my daughter and I are picky eaters, and I having seen the menus ahead of time, I didn’t think there was anything on the appetizer menu we’d eat. I decided to put that aside and try something new, so for my starter, I went with the duck breast morsels. I’d never had duck before, and frankly I’m not a big fan of bird meat in general, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Well, it was absolutely delicious! The teriyaki sauce on it was excellent as well. For my pasta selection, I decided on the homemade tagliatelle, and the pork in it was cooked to an almost bacon-like consistency. If this dish was the only food I had in here, I’d have left stuffed and happy! For my entrée, the tournedos of Angus beef, which was cooked to a perfect medium rare, and on par with the filet I’d had at the steakhouse a few nights earlier. My final course was the moelleux au chocolat, basically molten chocolate cake in vanilla sauce. Amazing, absolutely amazing. The warm chocolate gushed out of the cake as soon as I cut the firstbite, and when combined with the vanilla sauce the taste was just perfect.

The entire meal was excellent and well worth the money in my opinion. I really don’t understand why the steakhouse and Galaxy restaurant aren’t busier, they’re both great!

For the final meal on the 3 night dining package, we had lunch at La Cantina di Bacco. We decided to go the lunch route specifically so we didn’t miss out on another evening in the MDR. In lieu of individual pizzas off the menu here, we chose to go with the meter of pizza. We’d done this once before and loved it, with it being my favorite of the three different pizza styles you can get on the ship. Keep in mind that this isn’t traditional pizza, and as such, more traditional American toppings like bacon or pepperoni aren’t available. For the meter of pizza, you can divide it up into 4 different sections, with different flavors on each. We ended up with prosciutto on two sections, one margherita section, and a four-cheese section. Each and every one was delicious!

The dining packages at current pricing definitely seem to be worth the money if you’re looking to try something outside of the normal main dining room. We all agree the food was excellent, and provided a nice smaller venue free from the noise of the MDR. The only exception was Galaxy, where people kept cutting through to get to the virtual world area, but even then, that was only a small distraction. Why more people aren’t giving the specialty restaurants a shot is beyond me.

Moving on, the buffet. This is one of the places where I immediately started missing Yacht Club. I’m a breakfast eater, and love grabbing some eggs, bacon, bread, etc, and finding a quiet spot with a view to enjoy the morning. Well, unless you get up early, that’s not a thing in this buffet. One of the key things I mentioned in the posts after our first sailing in 2015 was the layout. The way the room is set up, you can easily end up trapped behind slow moving people when moving between stations, or when looking for seating. It can be extremely frustrating trying to navigate the room during busy times, so if a crowded buffet isn’t your thing, go early or late. Exact times for that are hard to pin down, as it changes based on whether or not you’re in port, and I’m sure it changes with different passenger demographics. On the first sea day, I went up around 9am or so, and it was pretty busy. I didn’t even bother waiting for pancakes, as that station was just a sea of people. On port days? Yea, either go an hour before you dock, or some time after. In Ocho Rios I got up there about 15 minutes before we docked only to find all bread stations almost entirely empty. Now today, I waited until about 15 minutes after we docked and it was just fine. Plenty of food, and a small crowd since most of the ship was making their way into town by this point.

As far as quality of the food goes, I’d say it’s pretty standard buffet food. The scrambled eggs have been good, the pancakes, when I did make it there, were delicious, and the bread was pretty good. The one day I had bacon it was a little undercooked for my taste, but still had a good flavor. Then there’s the pizza. Ahh, the pizza. This was my first stop when we got on, and one I made almost every day at some point. I consider their pizza to be the best I’ve had at sea, and the buffet pizza is just as good as the meter of pizza we had at La Cantina di Bacco. If you only eat one thing off the buffet, make it the pizza!

I think that about covers it for the food this week. The very noticeable improvement in MDR service has been a welcome change from 2015 in our eyes, and we couldn’t be happier with our dining staff. Aside from that, I highly recommend trying the specialty restaurants when sailing the Divina, as they offer some delicious food in a smaller, quieter setting. If we have the opportunity to sail the Divina again, I’m planning to give the Italian venue a shot, as it was the only one we missed this time.

That’s all for now. Tomorrow morning we disembark and drive home, and while I am sad in a way, I’m also ready to rest for a few days. We’ve kept ourselves busy all week both on the ship and in port, and frankly I’m exhausted! Here’s hoping debark and the drive home are both uneventful tomorrow!

 

 

 

 

Hello MSC Divina, We’re Back!!

It’s been almost a year since our last sailing on the Divina, and being that this has proven to be one of our favorite ships, I’m glad we’re getting a chance to check it out again and see how things compare to our past 3 experiences. It also gives me a chance to see how my “is the MSC Divina right for you post” has aged.

Kicking things off, embarkation. Generally, this is supposed to be a non-eventful part of the trip, just something you have to deal with in order to get to the fun, but checking in to the Divina for this sailing, I have to say was pretty frustrating. We decided to arrive later than our normal 11am-12pm time that we shoot for in the hopes of a crowd-free stroll on to the ship, this time arriving at the port around 2pm. Didn’t quite work out that way. After breezing through security, we arrived in the lobby to find one of the longest check-in lines I recall seeing for any cruise (if you follow us on social media, you may have seen my pictures of it). Upon entering the line, you’re split off into one of two separate lanes by someone working there, and we definitely ended up in the worst one. After about an hour, we got close enough to see what was going on. For some reason, the line next to us had roughly 12 people serving the check in counter, while we had 4. The girl working the front of our line saw the issue and on several occasions walked over to (what appeared to be) supervisors behind the counter to get things sorted, but each time I saw, her concerns were just met with shrugs. At one point they did open a couple more stations on our side, but usually only to relieve someone else leaving. By the time we got up there (almost an hour an a half after we got in line), there were only 2 people actively working our line. We actually tracked a couple of people who arrived an hour after us that ended up in the other line, and they made it to the check-in counter 10 minutes before we did. Ouch. Score one for the Yacht Club embarkation experience.

Once on, we dropped our carry-ons in one of our rooms and headed for a late lunch. Thankfully the pizza station had plenty of the four cheese variety that I love of theirs, so I grabbed a couple of pieces and found a table for us at the back of the ship. We wished we’d also grabbed some dessert at that point, as we arrived at that station a while later to find most of it (the things we wanted, anyway) had been cleaned up already. I guess the lesson here is to go back to our early boarding time so we don’t miss out on buffet items in the event of slow check-in!

After the required safety drill, we headed to guest services to change out our room cards. There are four of us in two separate rooms this trip, and we decided that morning to change up who was staying where, so after a short wait in line, the woman working the desk got us set up with the appropriate keys. As far as the rooms go, we’re happy with what we have. We booked inside rooms through the travel agent program, but early on logged in to find out we’d been upgraded to balcony rooms. They’re at opposite ends of the ship, but that’s perfectly fine, I’m very happy to have a balcony 😊. Bayley and I are in a forward cove balcony, cabin 9054, while Jen and her mom are in an aft balcony, 10275. While the aft balcony is very roomy (really deep) and has my favorite view on a ship, the one downside seems to be lack of airflow. It’s been pretty hot and humid out on theirs, so I like that I’ve got the cove to come back to, as it has plenty of airflow. My only issue with cove balconies is the lack of view, with the bottom half being steel instead of glass. No complaints here though, it’s a balcony we weren’t expecting, and it’s comfortable! I do have 360 shots of both rooms and will post them after I get back, as I’m currently having issues with the Ricoh Theta software preventing me from uploading full 360 shots.

For dinner, we’ve got late seating in Villa Rosa at the back of the ship. This is a welcome change of venue, since we had Black Crab on our first Divina sailing in 2015, and felt it was too crowded. We do prefer early seating, but decided to stick with this, as we also have a dining package that allows us to eat in three of the specialty restaurants, so we won’t be eating at 8:30 every night. After last night’s dinner in the MDR, however, I’m pleased to say that so far our dinner experience is vastly improved over our 2015 sailing. Our waiters were great last night, and the full meal took just over an hour, far better than the 2+ hours we averaged on that 2015 sailing. Last night’s food was pretty good too, but then again, I went with the pasta for my first two courses, and as we know, being an Italian line, they definitely know how to do pasta!

The evening saw us head to the Black and White Lounge for the entertainment staff intro. Pretty sure they used to do a game here, so a little disappointed it wasn’t something like that, but still fun, and there were plenty of people out on the floor dancing, so a good time was had by all!

Our first full day aboard also happens to be a sea day, one that we used to relax and let go of some of the line stress from the past couple of days (we visited Animal Kingdom the day before we boarded). We started off with breakfast in the buffet, and every time I eat at the buffet on board, I’m reminded of another reason I love Yacht Club. Eating breakfast up at The One Pool is so much more relaxing, as you’re not subject to the standard buffet crowds. The passenger behavior at the breakfast buffet this morning, complete with people using their hands to put food back on the buffet, made our lunch decision easy, skip the buffet and head to the MDR! Come on people, there’s a certain etiquette around food that just makes things better for everyone.

Our activities today were pretty standard; lost a couple rounds of trivia, Bayley played in the foosball tournament, we wandered the ship a bit, and of course attended tonight’s show, The Mask. It seemed like they’ve changed up the show quite a bit, which is a good thing. As I’ve mentioned in the past, we do enjoy their shows, and tonight’s performance was just as entertaining as part ones. Oh, I almost forgot, we also attended bingo this afternoon, and were happy to see the bingo boys are still around! I always worry that someone’s going to decide that it’s too juvenile and cut it, but frankly things like this are a big part of the allure of MSC for us. It’s nice to see an entertainment team that’s trying to have fun, and not just going through the motions.

One other change for us on this trip, we’re actually eating at some of the specialty restaurants! With the dining packages they have, it just seemed like too good of a deal to pass up. We’d talked about it on past trips, but enjoyed the food and service so much in Yacht Club on the last two that we never got around to it. Tonight, with nothing on the MDR menu that we were all excited about, we hit Eataly Steakhouse. With the dining package you get one appetizer, one entrée, and one dessert per person. As you can see in the picture, I went with the beef carpaccio, filet mignon (ordered medium rare and cooked perfectly), and for dessert, the bomboloni, which is three donuts with vanilla ice cream. It was all excellent, well worth the price of admission. The cannoli was Jen’s and it too was delicious!

We closed out the evening in the Black and White Lounge once again, this time for the Stardust dance competition. As with our last sailing, Bayley ended up being a judge for this, as knowing a member or two of the entertainment team has its advantages 😊. Good stuff, I always love watching events like this, and have nothing but respect for anyone willing to get up in front of a crowd like this and have fun on the dance floor. There are things I’ll participate in during the week, but this just isn’t one. Partly due to a foot injury I’m dealing with, but mostly because I just flat out can’t dance.

That about does it for our opening day and a half. We’ve got three ports on tap, starting with Jamaica! We’re spending the day on the beach at Sandals, so I expect to be completely wiped out by the time we board tomorrow afternoon. Stay tuned, there’s more fun to come from the MSC Divina! Be sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter to check out the ship and activities!

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