Tag: MSC

5 Things We’re Excited for on MSC Seaside!

(Note – Any Seaside images/renderings used here belong to MSC Cruises)

In 4 short days, we embark on MSC’s newest ship, the Seaside, for two back to back sailings, kicking off with the 2-day inaugural that includes the naming ceremony, followed by an 8-day Christmas sailing. This is one we’ve been excited for going back well over a year, as we’ve become big fans of the MSC product, and are really looking forward to checking out their brand new ship! If you’re not familiar with what the Seaside has to offer, this post is for you! Let’s take a look at the top 5 things we’re looking forward to seeing onboard!

Our Cabin – Aurea Suite 9250

While the inside portion of the cabin itself doesn’t appear to be any bigger than a standard balcony room, it comes with a longer balcony, giving us more space outside, and it overlooks the outside boardwalk area. Having done standard balconies, larger Yacht Club balconies, and even an aft wrap, we wanted to try something new this time around, and this seemed to fit the bill! With this cabin comes all the Aurea benefits, which are a nice added bonus! I’ve circled the area where our cabin is here:

seaside5

Zipline and Waterslides

Ziplines at sea are always a blast. We’ve done the one on Oasis of the Seas, and very much look forward to trying out the one on the Seaside. I hope they allow you to take a camera, too, as I’d like to make a 360 video of this similar to the one I did for Royal Caribbean’s zipline on Labadee! The Seaside’s zipline is billed as the largest at sea, and I’m excited to take a run or 3 down this. Check out Captain Scala’s test run to see it for yourself!

The 4 water slides available on Seaside far surpass the single slide on the Divina, and include two high-speed racing slides that include clear loops extending over the sides of the ship. Yes please! They also have something called “Slide boarding technology” that, in their words combines “an interactive game, lights, music and a 367-foot water slide”. Sounds like fun!

Dan Marino

Okay, he’s not really a feature of the ship, but he’s going to be present for the naming ceremony on Thursday evening, which we’ll be at! I admit, I’m a fan, and hope that we get the chance to meet him! Yes, with all of the celebrities they’ve announced as being part of the ceremony, Marino’s the one I want to meet :). Pretty sure if you asked Jen who she wants to meet, it’d be Mario Lopez, but does Lopez hold the record for most games with 450+ passing yards? I think not!

If you want to watch the naming ceremony live, keep an eye on the event page around 6:45pm ET on 12/21!!

Boardwalk-Style Design

The Seaside’s design is a new take on exposing passengers to the sun. Instead of only offering the traditional upper deck outdoor spaces, Seaside takes that a step further with the Waterfront Boardwalk and Infinity Bridge on deck 8, and the South Beach pool at the rear of deck 7. The ship itself is modeled after the South Beach condo scene, with the pool sitting below all of the aft balcony cabins and the panoramic elevators that are between those cabins. It definitely gives off that vibe in the pictures, and I can’t wait to check it all out!

Restaurants

While I’m exited to try the included main dining room and really looking forward to that awesome MSC pizza, this is more about the specialty restaurants. As I mentioned in a previous post, we finally tried a couple of the specialty restaurants on the Divina during our last sailing, and loved them! The list of restaurants on the Seaside includes one that we’re definitely going to visit, the Teppanyaki restaurant by Roy Yamaguchi. We love a good Teppanyaki style eatery! We’ve eaten at ones on the Norwegian Escape, Norwegian Epic and Royal Caribbean Harmony of the Seas, and the ones on the Escape and Harmony set very high bars in our eyes (both were outstanding in their own ways), so I’m excited to see how the Seaside’s compares!

The Crew

I know I said I was only going to mention 5 things, but I simply couldn’t leave out the crew, so consider it a bonus! We’re excited to see some of the same faces we’ve come to enjoy from our past Divina sailings:

  • It all starts at the top, as we’re very happy to be sailing with Captain Scala again, easily one of our favorite cruise ship captains.
  • This sailing will be the 4th one with Andre Schlemmer as our cruise director! Woot! I’ve talked up their entertainment team in past posts from each sailing, and that all starts with Andre!
  • A few members of Andre’s Seaside staff have been on at least one of our past Divina sailings, including Carlos and Wally!
  • We know Erwin from our last sailing is on, and think that Noel may be too, can’t wait to see them again!

I’m sure there are some crew I’m leaving out, and apologies if I did, it wasn’t intentional. There are others we’re not sure of, like Giuseppe from Le Muse. Even though we’re not in Yacht Club this time, it’d be cool to stop in and say hi!

Well, that about covers it. There is a lot more to look forward to on the ship than the things I’ve covered here, so feel free to check out the Seaside info on MSC’s site, and follow us on social media (Instagram / Facebook / Twitter / YouTube) for pictures and video from the ship!

 

MSC Divina: The Ship!

As we’ve mentioned in past posts, this was our fourth sailing on the Divina. Our first trip, back over Christmas of 2015, was our only other non-Yacht Club sailing, so while we did miss some of those amenities, it was nice to get back on in normal rooms and get a feel for the parts of the ship we may not have frequented in the Yacht Club sailings.

Let’s start with the rooms! We’d originally booked two insides for this sailing back in April, but upon logging in a couple months before departure, noticed we’d been upgraded to two balcony rooms. Awesome! The specific rooms assigned were cabin 10275, an aft balcony, and 9054, a port side forward cove balcony. We’d made the decision to put Jen and her mom in 10275 and Bayley and I in 9054, and I admit I was a bit jealous initially, as I fell in love with the views an aft balcony provides back when we sailed the Celebrity Summit to Bermuda. That jealousy subsided a bit after we got on the ship and checked out the rooms. It’s not that I didn’t like the room or balcony itself, it’s that an aft balcony tends to get little to no airflow, even at sea, and as a result, it’s really humid this time of year on that balcony. I did end up spending more time on mine than theirs as a result. Don’t get me wrong, we very much appreciate the upgrades, and 10275 is a beautiful room with an amazing balcony that’s nice and deep, and including chairs and loungers is a really nice touch. Additionally, both rooms had plenty of storage, and ours came with plenty of hangars! Jen usually brings extras, as most rooms tend to be a little light on them, but Bayley and I had no need for extras in 9054.

Enough talk, let’s take a virtual tour of both rooms with these 360 degree photos! Hit play on each one, and drag your way around to check out each room and balcony!

10275


9054


Moving on, the ship itself is still just as beautiful as the first time we sailed her. The layout and decor are a large part of what make the Divina one of our favorite ships. Frankly, after sailing a couple of other lines between our last Divina sailing and this one, we’ve come to appreciate the Divina’s theater that much more. It’s got some of the best sight-lines of any ship-board theater we’ve sat in, and the seats are pretty comfortable compared to others we’ve used. One thing they’ve added since our last visit is reserved seating for Yacht Club, a nice addition that some of the other lines also do for their suite guests. The location’s a bit questionable though, as they’ve blocked off the entire starboard side section in the upper deck. I’d have expected a lower level section near the front, but I’m sure there were reasons for the location.

Take a look around the Divina’s theater!

On a related note, we were happy to see there have been changes to some of the shows. We do enjoy their entertainment, and while the overall show lineup was pretty close to what they had on previous sailings, there were some changes to the songs and visuals in The Mask, the pirate show, and the Michael Jackson show. All were still excellent! Additionally, they’ve added one musical show, a tribute to the band Queen. We were pretty excited about this one, but admittedly left this one underwhelmed. Bohemian Rhapsody just didn’t have the punch we expected, and one thing we heard more than one passenger say: “How can you do a Queen show without performing Fat Bottomed Girls?”. Outside of that, however, we still thoroughly enjoyed the shows. Keep in mind that with such a mix of passengers and languages, they work to make their shows appeal in more of a visual manner, with a reduced focus on spoken story telling, and in our opinion, they do a pretty solid job of it!

Bayley and I each also took a couple of turns in the F1 simulator, one of my personal favorite things about the ship considering I’m a big open wheel fan. In addition to the F1 simulator, they also have a 4D theater and mini bowling (in the sports bar on deck 7) for those wanting to do something a little different. Note that, as of the time this was written, the pricing for a single turn at each is:

  • F1 simulator: $9.90/pp
  • 4D theater: $8/pp for adults, $6/pp for kids 13 and under
  • Mini bowling: $8

Or you can buy a per-cabin pass for $85 that allows everyone in the cabin to use those three things as much as you want! Frankly, that doesn’t seem like a bad deal to me if you’ve got a cabin full of kids, or simply want to make use of these things yourself.

One of the other things about the Divina that we love is still intact, the smoke-free casino. Of all of the ships we’ve sailed that have casinos, this is the only one that’s not covered in the smell of smoke, which is really nice for non-smokers. Here’s a 360 degree view of the casino, as seen from the awesome staircase in the center!

I think that about covers what I wanted to talk about this time around. I’ve gone over the ship a lot after our past Divina sailings, so I don’t want to repeat too much of that again, but if you want to check out those past posts, I’ve got them organized here:

Additionally, feel free to take a look around some of the other areas of the ship I took 360 shots in! She really is a beautiful ship!

The lobby, in all of its sparkly splendor 🙂

Piazza del Doge

The amazing view from the upper decks (shot in Nassau)

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!

Our 3rd Sailing on the Divina Comes to an End

As you may have noticed from all of our pictures, we’ve had another amazing week on the MSC Divina. As we sit in Top Sail Lounge and delay our departure as much as possible, I figured I’d go ahead and get one more post about our trip out before they kick us off the ship :).

First and foremost, we all agree that things seemed to get even better this trip than last ones, and if you followed our previous sailings, you know we really enjoyed both of them. We’re truly sold on the product MSC has brought to the US, and have seen additional changes this week that have been made since our last sailing to make the Divina even more appealing to this market. So what are those changes?

Pricing of things on board: They have added some incredible deals since we last sailed:

  • If you’ve got kids with you, and they want to try out the F1 simulator and/or the 4d theater, the Divina currently offers a package where for $60/cabin, you get to visit all the tracks on the F1 circuit, plus unlimited visits to the 4d theater, and unlimited bowling! Considering one trip to the F1 simulator was $10/pp when we were here in March, this is a great deal!
  • Spa treatments in port seemed really cheap compared to other port-day deals we’ve seen. I got a 45min Balinese massage for ~$50, and the girls got 55min facials for around the same price.
  • At Piazza Del Doge, you can pick up gelato and pastries for a very reasonable price (and they’re really good, too). I had a small gelato one day for $2, and for the amount I got, I’d likely have paid at least twice that on some of the other ships we’ve sailed. Some of the amazing pastries they have in there are under $1, too!
  • They now have specialty dining packages that are crazy low. We’ve done them before on other lines, but generally end up paying more for similar experiences. See here for more info on what you get and how much they cost!
  • Internet pricing is far more reasonable to me now (full package info here). They moved from time-based to amount of data you use, and for the lower-tier packages they now throttle speeds like other lines do. One tip here: purchase this in advance! You get bonus time for doing so, and in our case, we got 1800MB for ordering the Streamer package (1500MB). With the Streamer package you can post pictures and video, unlike the lower packages that throttle to picture-only speeds. Additionally, we were offered more data at a very reasonable $16 / 500MB if we needed. The internet speed and reliability was far better than past sailings, too, and light-years ahead of what we saw with Royal’s Voom internet back in May on the Oasis.

I’m probably forgetting something in this list, but these are the big ones that come to mind.

They’re getting better about explaining why some things are the way they are. The truth is, catering to the American cruise market is very different from other regions. MSC has traditionally been a European line, and as they’ve ventured into the US market they’ve taken the time to learn and to implement changes based on customer feedback. One of those is the thorough explanation given about the shows near the start of the cruise. This time around, Andre, the current CD, explained to the audience why they don’t have things like comedians on-board, and that the shows aren’t really meant to tell a story, they’re meant to be visually entertaining, with a lot of action, and we definitely find them to live up to that billing.

They’re constantly adding to the entertainment options around the ship. They have a very engaged and intelligent entertainment staff that seem to always be coming up with new ways to entertain the passengers. We’ve seen a few new things added, including a game show or two, and had a blast at every event we attended. Whether you want to be outside or in, there’s almost always something going on, and this entertainment team will bust their butts to ensure you’re having a good time. They’re far more engaged with passengers than most of the ones we’ve encountered on other lines.

The current Captain, Pier Paolo Scala is a very engaged and warm captain. He’s far more visible than most, and happy to hang out and chat with you should the opportunity arise. Heck, I was lounging in the pool in Yacht Club yesterday when he showed up with his wife and son, and he was more than happy to hang out in the pool chatting with all of us. He genuinely seems to care about how things are going for the passengers.

After our March sailing, I wrote up a post entitled “Is The MSC Divina Right For You?” to try and help people decide if the Divina is a good fit for them, and after sailing her again 6 months later, I feel like it still applies. This ship and everything on it represent a nice change of pace from the typical contemporary cruise lines, and I encourage anyone looking for something other than the standard US cruising experience to give her a try. I keep thinking that it’s time for us to take a break from sailing the Caribbean, but they keep offering some amazing deals, and we keep getting sucked back in because we like the product so much. It’s a good problem to have 🙂

Anyway, I think that about covers it. Between my handful of posts this week and the ones from our past two sailings (December / March) I hope you’ve found some useful info on the MSC Divina, and should you want to sail with MSC, please give us a call, we can certainly help! Hope to see you soon on the Divina or even the Seaside after she arrives next year!

MSC Divina: Third Time’s a Charm!

We’re starting day 6 here, and as we enter our final sea day I wanted to talk about how things have been on board this trip. Our March sailing was the first time we’d sailed in a suite on any ship, and I wanted to use this cruise as a comparison to make sure that our happiness last time wasn’t clouded by that step up in service. In short, it wasn’t. We’re enjoying this cruise just as much, and in some cases more!

This time around, we’re taking a much more relaxed approach than before, skipping activities we’d normally do in favor of more quiet time, more relaxing in Top Sail or at The One Pool, and in some cases, more naps :). The service in Yacht Club has been amazing all week, and the one issue we had last time with the attitude of the concierge has been resolved with a new face at the desk who is always smiling and willing to help. All of the staff who were here on our last sailing have been great as well. How so many of them recognize us from a sailing that happened 5 months ago is beyond me, but quite a few of them have stopped us to say hello and welcome us back. Between the service, food and the overall ambiance, Yacht Club has definitely proven itself to be worth the money to us.

On the activities, we’ve enjoyed them all so far. We’ve attended and lost at multiple rounds of trivia, and even though Jaime isn’t here on this sailing, Wally has picked right up with challenging questions that don’t feel repeated and phoned in, like they did on the Oasis of the Seas in May. We did have an incident at yesterday’s round of general knowledge trivia with a gentleman who takes this all way too seriously, however. After accusing one team of cheating (which he also did to me earlier in the cruise) and loudly telling our host that one of his answers was wrong, a few of us had had enough and showed proof that the given answer was in fact correct and more or less shut the loud gentleman down. Hopefully he’ll arrive at the remaining rounds of trivia with a more relaxed attitude. There’s no need to take this so seriously, it’s all in good fun. Don’t ruin that fun for the rest of us.

While we’ve been more relaxed during the day, I think we’ve attended more of the late night activities than we have in the past. We’ve pretty much attended every night party they’ve had this trip, and enjoyed every minute of it. The one exception was the White Party, where I headed back before it was over while the girls kept on dancing. I wish I could have made it longer, I just needed sleep. Between the White Party and Cigars Under the Stars with the Captain (he was one of the last people to leave that!), the deck was packed. Our Captain this week has been awesome. Far more visible an engaged than most, with the exception of our captain from the Celebrity Summit. We’ve seen ours in multiple places, including his normal stop in Yacht Club on the second sea day for a meet and greet. During that, we learned that the private island MSC purchased in the Bahamas (for use when they launch the Seaside next year) is the largest of any cruise line, and will have a dock (no tendering!). It all sounded really cool and solidifies our desire to sail the Seaside after she arrives next year.

I’m sure I’m forgetting pieces of the last few days, and if anything comes to mind I’ll be sure to include it in my next post. The final 3 days of the cruise are pretty much sea days for us, as we only got off for about an hour yesterday in San Juan, and don’t plan to get off for more than that in Nassau tomorrow. At some point, we definitely plan to hit the waterslide and F1 simulator again, as well.

As you can probably gather from this, we really do enjoy being on this ship and like the product MSC currently has in the US. They’ve made some positive changes between our last sailing and this one that I’m going to cover in my last post, too. If you’re interested in sailing the Divina, feel free to give us a call for help with booking, contact info is at the link below. After 3 sailings on her, we can certainly help with all of your planning for it!

http://www.wanderlistvaca.com