Tag: theater

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 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)

Sailing with Disney – Pirate Night!

Pirate night is one of the busiest nights on a Disney Cruise. What’s it like? Read on!

After a little rest following our fun on Castaway Cay, it was time for pirate night aboard the Disney Dream! This is another part of the cruise we’d been looking forward to, as we’d even picked up some Disney-themed pirate shirts for this night while we were at Downtown Disney a couple weeks earlier. Disney also leaves you Mickey-themed ‘Pirates in the Caribbean’ bandannas to wear as well, as we found out when we got back to our room!

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First on the night’s agenda, pictures with Captain Hook and Mr Smee! These took place down in the little rotunda outside the shops, and there really wasn’t too bad of a line:

We walked the shops a little during that time, and one little tip for those who want to participate but didn’t have a chance to pick up pirate shirts or gear prior to sailing: There’s plenty on-board. Disney knows it’s worth stocking the stores on pirate night, and they had a pretty good selection of shirts, hats, and other pirate garb.

At this point, it should have been show time for us, but based on the schedule, we decided to skip it. It wasn’t a Disney show, it was one with the on-board magician, and while I’m sure we’d have enjoyed the show, we wanted to partake in as much pirate goodness we could. As such, we also decided to skip eating in our assigned dining room (a repeat of Enchanted Garden) and instead headed for the buffet to try and save time. On arriving, we encountered a twist we’d never seen with any other ship’s buffet before: it was table service, and pirate themed at that. The service was outstanding, and while the food was good, I’d have preferred to have had a full buffet selection vs a smaller table service menu. We went to the buffet for a reason, to shorten our dinner time, and table service doesn’t really accomplish that.

After dinner it was time for the first pirate show, so we headed up to deck 12 to get a good spot overlooking the stage. Having decided on a faster dinner, we got a pretty solid spot that gave us a clear view of the entire deck below, and even allowed us to participate in the pre-show fun. They have various cast members dressed in pirate garb walking around  deck 11 playing various games with the guests. In our case, Bayley played ring toss with one of the girls. In addition, there was some pirate ship basketball going on a little farther aft on 11:

The first show, named Mickey’s Pirate Academy, was more targeted at the younger kids, and was a musical show that taught them the necessary steps to be pirates in Mickey’s crew. As you can see from the video, it’s a typical high-energy show Disney that the kids seemed to be enjoying!

Once over, we had a bit of time on our hands before the show that opens the fireworks, so we headed inside and walked around a little before getting in line for pictures with Pirate Stitch. Bayley’s always been a huge Stitch fan, and waiting for this was a no-brainer for her. We got there early enough to only be 78 people back in line, but this line did get and stay pretty long, so if you have plans to get pictures with pirate Stitch, get there early! Right below Stitch was Pirate Minnie, so we ended up getting pictures at both places! Those lower lines had been pretty long at one point as well, so we were happy to at least get shots with Minnie!

Shortly after, we ran in to the cruise director, who in my opinion had the best costume of the night. I’ll add that there were a number of guests in some pretty good costumes, but living on the ship, especially in an entertainment role has its benefits, one of those being that you have a reason to go all out for your theme costumes :).

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After all of our pictures, the time had finally come for the fireworks! We headed outside and found ourselves a spot a little over halfway back in the pool area on deck 11 (which they cover for these shows). In hindsight we probably should have gotten there earlier to get a little closer, or even aimed for the starboard side of deck 12 to keep the water slides out of our view. No matter, the spot still wasn’t bad, and we were able to sit down for the show and fireworks and still see all of it. Note that deck 13 aft was closed for this show, so don’t assume that area will be open if you want to see fireworks from there.

The pre-fireworks show was a Pirates of the Caribbean themed show where Jack battles for possession of some, for lack of a better work, magical wrist guard, which is billed as the ultimate weapon. The show is fine, but went on a little too long in my opinion. Most of it was made up of the bracelet going back and forth between Jack and those trying to get it. A long game of keep-away, basically. We really just wanted to get to the fireworks, so we were happy when they finally began. As you can see, even sitting in the back half of the open area on deck 11, we were able to have a pretty clean view of the show:

Not a bad show, especially on a moving ship at sea! Once again, Disney does not disappoint! That wasn’t the end of the night, either, we still had a couple of things going on, starting with the 10:45 pirate themed buffet! As soon as the fireworks ended, we headed up and grabbed some food, eager to get to our final event of the night. One thing I might not have mentioned yet is that Disney has a pretty large movie theater on-board, equipped with a solid snack bar. They do charge for items on the snack bar, but they also allow you to bring in other food, including stuff from the buffet, so all three of us had loaded buffet plates, including some dessert crepes, tacos, and other goodness.

The nice thing about the theater is that it plays some popular movies from the Disney catalog along with a first-run movie or two, so on pirate night, our goal was to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean while sailing in the Caribbean on pirate night, and by the time we got there, we realized we weren’t the only ones! The theater was pretty full, but we managed to find 3 seats down low and spent a couple of hours enjoying a movie that had only released days earlier while eating our buffet food. All in all, not a bad night!

A successful pirate night behind us, we headed back to the room to get some rest for our last day on the ship, which just happened to be a sea day! Next up, all the fun we had on that final day aboard the Disney Dream!

 

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