MSC Cruises UK & Ireland
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MSC takes 'packing them in' to a new level.
We just disembarked the Virtuosa after a 7 night cruise visiting La Rochelle, Bilbao, a Coruna and Cherbourg. This was our second MSC cruise and we booked it because we enjoyed the experience last time. Unfortunately, this experience was not as good. The good bits were, the food (I thought it was excellent on board), the pasta and pizza are brilliant and we all really enjoyed our evening meals. We also enjoyed our shore visits and the guides were brilliant and the places we visited were lovely. The downsides were that the ship was so overcrowded that the whole experience was borderline unpleasant. Last year there seemed to be events going on up on deck each evening that attracted fairly large crowds, I felt that this meant that everyone spread out fairly well throughout the ship. This time, all 6000 passengers seemed to be indoors every evening, this meant that there was nowhere to sit (we didn't manage to find a seat in a bar on any of our 7 nights). Our record for being served was 30 minutes as the staff are run off there feet, it was extremely crowded everywhere, to the point where you couldn't really walk anywhere without shuffling. I expect noise and fun, but this was something else, herds of teenagers were screaming and running around unchecked, people were smoking on their balconies, and in many other places away from the designated areas, the main Galleria inside the ship was so insanely loud that you couldn't have a conversation even if you did manage to find a seat. We took to getting drinks and then basically hiding out in the marketplace buffet (super glamorous) or going back to our cabin every evening. Obviously, this is really subjective and clearly some people were loving it- I lost count of the number of people I heard complaining about the 15 alcoholic drink limit per day. If you like a massive party then this may be the ship for you but if like us, you would just like a nice meal, a slightly calmer atmosphere and somewhere to sit, then maybe look at another cruise line. We saved up all year for this, it's a lot of money even if it is a cheaper cruise line- so I would really encourage a lot of research on what it's currently like to see if it would suit you and your family.