Carnival’s Funship Sensation more fun now

Carnival Cruise Lines has introduced a new children’s dining program that provides kids with delicious supervised meals with their fellow young cruisers in the ships’ casual poolside restaurants while parents enjoy a night to themselves.

The new children’s dinners – the latest component of the line’s complimentary “Camp Carnival” program – are available fleetwide and take place in the ships’ Lido Deck eateries, the “Seaview Bistros.” Dinners take place from 6-7 p.m. After which children are welcome to partake in regularly scheduled “Camp Carnival” activities until 10 p.m.

The children’s dinners are available nightly on three- and four-day voyages except for the first night of the cruise. On voyages of five days or longer, the dinners are available nightly except for the first and last night of the cruise.

A different menu is featured each night and includes items such as spaghetti with meatballs, chicken quesadillas, hamburgers, hot dogs, roasted chicken drumsticks, pepperoni pizza, fish sticks, chicken nuggets, roasted turkey, and grilled salmon steak. Popular side dishes include French fries, corn on the cob, mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese. A 35-item salad bar is also available. Desserts include assorted ice cream and seasonal fresh fruit.

Other popular dining options for children sailing aboard the “Fun Ships” include 24-hour pizzerias, a grille serving hot dogs and hamburgers and 24-hour ice cream/frozen yogurt stations. Children’s menus are available in all main dining rooms. A special children’s turn-down service offering freshly baked chocolate chip cookies on the first and last night of the cruise, and the “Fountain Fun Card,” which, for a one-time fee, provides unlimited soft drinks throughout the cruise, are also available.

The new children’s dinners complement the wide variety of fun morning-til-night activities included in the line’s popular “Camp Carnival” program, featured on all 19 “Fun Ship,” which are expected to host some 400,000 children this year.

“Camp Carnival” activities are geared toward children ages 2-15, who enjoy such amenities as indoor and outdoor play areas, computer labs, arts and crafts centers, video game rooms, a new EduCruise science/geography program and more.

A ride on Majesty of the Seas

Simply sailing from Miami is part of the fun

Royal Caribbean’s Majesty of the Seas offers a value-priced short cruise sailing from Miami. This is a great cruise for those within driving distance or those who might combine one of these sailings with a land vacation in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale area.

This is not one of Royal Caribbean’s new ships with all the bells and whistles they’ve become famous for like Oasis of the Seas debuting at Port Everglades next month.   But the ship is well-maintained and the service on a par with any other in the fleet.

Embarkation in Miami is a breeze. By completing registration information online we were able to print a SeaPass which makes things move along very nicely. I like Royal Caribbean’s terminal operations and the ease of which one can get in and out of the Port of Miami, still the busiest cruise port in the world. I was somewhat surprised to find security lax in comparison to other, recent, visits. It has been the norm for several years here to be stopped on arrival and required to show identification. Not this time. In the terminal itself, it looked like even the cruise lines security requirements had been loosened up a bit.

Surely, the cruise lines x-ray stop is not as thorough as the airlines but on this occasion they seemed much more interested in moving the line along than what was in our luggage.

On this cruise, being just a 3 day, we’d not packed much and opted to carry on everything in our individual luggage, one for me and one for my wife. Again I was surprised that I didn’t even have to take my laptop computer out of the bag. I guess it all works out though because I am writing this at the end of the cruise and the ship hasn’t been blow up yet.

OUR CABIN

We’d opted for the least expensive, inside cabin on this cruise. The accommodations were tight at 120 square feet but had everything we needed and offered plenty of storage space. A highlight of this cabin was the shower. Unlike some other seafaring showers, this one packed a punch equal to any land based showers and offered plenty of space. Considering the age of this ship I’d expected the old-fashioned phone booth variety. This one was about double phone booth size. Still not what one might find in a hotel but, again, adequate.

One part of the cabin experience that I found odd was the television programming. I’d heard that Royal Caribbean (RCL) had a new person in charge of this area and that things had really improved. Not on this ship. We have been in the habit of watching at least one movie on each cruise. If you’ve not done this you really should. For years after when the film you saw onboard is mentioned or you see clips of it elsewhere you’ll remember it and say “Oh, we saw that on the cruise! This was the first time were we’d not been able to find a schedule of what was playing in the daily Compass ships newsletter. We did manage to figure it out though and saw our movie.

An area of cabin operations that was quite impressive was our cabin steward, Sydney. This guy did a great job of getting in and out of our cabin when we were gone. He paid attention. Some don’t. He didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. He didn’t blow us away. He just paid attention. We had a small soft-sided cooler we’d brought because we like to have extra ice in the cabin. We didn’t even mention filling it up or keeping it full; he just did it.

He paid attention.

We found service in every area of the ship to be consistently attentive. That’s saying a lot. Often there are some areas better than others. On this ship all areas were efficient and friendly.

What more could you ask for?

In the past I’ve heard others say and even on occasion said myself “they treat you like kings on a cruise” I’d found that pretty truthful and accurate in the past but had kind of shied away from it on recent sailings. The staff on this ship brought that phrase back into the spotlight with brilliant clarity.

ONBOARD ACTIVITIES

What we like to see

What can I say?  I won in the casino and that washes away a whole lot of negatives.  Not that there were many on this sailing but you get the idea.

The cruise director and staff also did a really good job of packing all the activities you might find on a longer cruise into this short one. It did not just seem like there was something going on all the time, there was. Pool games, dance lessons, rock-wall climbing, a full blown kids program in Adventure Ocean, nightly production entertainment, all the elements were there.

This would have been a great “sample cruise” for someone who had not sailed before in the entertainment area. It was also a great cruise for locals from the Miami area. With a high percentage of Hispanic guests onboard, music contained a higher amount of Salsa and Latin-beat selections.

The Cruise Director and staff were paying attention; they gave the guests what they wanted.

TECHNOLOGY

Even computer access was great. On other ships the connection has been slow, this one was good and fast. Wi-Fi access was also a breeze to get signed up for and various packages could be purchased at reasonable prices.

Cell phone use was also available at all times on this ship. A strong signal made communicating with the outside world doable if one wanted to. Again, somebody was paying attention. I did not see many using cell phones but the service was available to those who needed it.

FOOD

Let me start by saying that we tried something different on this cruise. We never ate in the dining room. We had tried this on Royal Caribbean’s Sovereign of the Seas a few months earlier with great success and I wanted to see if that was a fluke or if there was consistent quality in the buffet operations.

What I found was that this is the one area of this ship that needs work. The taste of the food is always a very subjective element and difficult to define. One person may like the flavor of a particular item while another doesn’t care for it. The trick on a cruise is to offer a wide enough variety so that there is truly something for every one. In most cases I’ve found that there is a lot of variety and finding something you like is not an issue. Here too, the variety, for the most part, was there.

There are, however, certain aspects of foodservice that are not difficult to define at all. Food handling procedures are one of these items. I was in the restaurant business for 20 years and know a thing or two about the workings of a mass feeding operation. One of the simple, basic, and critical rules written in stone is “Cold things Cold and Hot things Hot”. This operation failed miserably in this area at every turn.

Here are a few examples

Part of every buffet is a cold section with deli meats and cheeses. These are placed on a bed of ice to maintain a safe, cold temperature. Several times I saw where the ice was allowed to completely melt and the food left to come up to room temperature. On this ship part of the Windjammer service area is in the open where the ambient temperature was 80 plus degrees, a breeding ground for food-related illness.

On the hot side, the same could be said for just about everything. I wish I had a thermometer with me because I’d bet that most hot products wouldn’t make it past 100 degrees, again in the danger zone. The only products we had on this cruise that were truly hot were cooked to order omelette’s at breakfast and cooked to order pasta for dinner.

TIP: Get to know the Pasta Chef who works in the dining room preparing pasta dishes to your order. Best food on the ship.

I’ve run into this before, this is not unique to this ship. But on other ships we’ve had alternative restaurant choices. On this one, it’s the dining room, buffet or room service, that’s it.

The thought crossed my mind that it would not be entirely inaccurate to say “If you want some good food on this cruise, bring it with you” But I think that might be a bit harsh.

As mentioned, variety and taste are very subjective areas and difficult to rate. Except when it came to desserts on this ship. Somebody must have gotten a real deal on cake mix because cake was the anchor of the dessert menu that caused the menu to sink.

Don’t get me wrong.

I like cake.

But this flavorless, unfrosted, lackluster substitute, which might have been a treat to a prison inmate, was just horrible. That wouldn’t be a problem if it was just one part of the menu but often it was the entire menu with the exception of Chips Ahoy quality cookies.

This area of the ship had “we’re really trying to cut costs” written all over it.

It was at this point that I started looking for other signs of a tight budget manifesting itself into an effect on the quality of operations.

Don’t get me wrong; I think any business needs to be run in an efficient and cost-effective manner. That’s just good business.

But when budget-controlling measures affect the quality of operations to the point where they begin to define the operation then I think somebody needs to be really sure that’s what they want to do.

It’s hard for me to imagine that Royal Caribbean wants to be known for being the cruise line with the lousy desserts. Or the cruise line that can’t afford to buy enough plates so guests wait for them at the buffet line or can’t hold them in their hands because they are too hot because they just came off the dish machine and were run to the buffet line. I doubt they want to be known as the one who let spills sit on the floor, creating a safety hazard.

But maybe they were just not paying attention.

I watched one day at lunch as a uniformed officer/manager roamed the dining room completely oblivious to what was going on around him. He wasn’t paying attention. He never spoke to any of the crew. He never spoke to any of the guests. He just walked around doing nothing about elements of the dining experience screaming at him for attention. These were easy-fix things too. A guest wandering around looking for a glass of water, a spilled drink all over the floor, dirty tables everywhere with other guests looking for one to use to name a few.

To be fair, I think everything they needed was in place, they just weren’t utilizing what they had to work with well.

There seemed to be plenty of chefs, foodservice crew and managers but yet the rolls were obviously baked too far in advance. Maybe they don’t have enough ovens to make it happen. Maybe they have to bake bread earlier in the day so the ovens are available to make more cake later in the day.

If they’re serving up this low quality of food in an attempt to save money they’re really missing the boat. If they took a look at the volume of food that was left uneaten on plates they might get a clue. This was not that guests took more than they could eat. This was that they took one bite and didn’t continue eating. I would bet that this ship makes more pizza than others in the fleet. It was not uncommon to see guests eating pizza at the same table as their buffet plate which had barely been touched.

Who’s fooling who here?

On paper they might find that the flavorless institutional cake is less expensive to produce but what are they really saving if they throw it all away?

If you’ve followed my reviews you might be tempted to say “has this guy EVER been on a bad cruise?”

No, I haven’t.

On the bright side:
• The pizza was awesome and room service had some highlights worth mentioning. What made the pizza consistently good is that they never got too far ahead on it. It was always piping hot and fresh out of the oven. The pizza guy paid attention.
• On room service the Tuna Pita sandwich, Cheesecake and even the Hamburgers were very good. Ok so skip my personal opinion that they tasted good and stick to the facts. The hamburgers, for some reason, came hotter from room service than on the buffet line. Somehow the hot food was hotter and the cold food colder.
• The midnight Caribbean buffet served on deck including ice carving demonstration was worth staying up for. Lobbing off the pigs head was a bit much for the kids who probably didn’t sleep real well that night but still a cool deal

With the exception of foodservice, this ship is great. Royal Caribbean does so many things right that it really slaps you in the face when they drop the ball. I hope there are plans in the works to fix this because it is definitely broken.

Carnival really does have the Funships

I have always enjoyed Carnival cruises.

Since our last Carnival cruise on the Carnival Fantasy we had sailed the Celebrity Century, Cunard’s Queen Mary2, Norwegian Sun two times,and Royal Caribbean’s Sovereign and Freedom of the Seas. After all those, it was refreshing to come back home to Port Canaveral and the Carnival Glory.

At 110,000 tons, the Glory is one of the big fish in the cruise business. But on this one, which reminded me a lot of the Victory, Destiny and Triumph, Carnival has done a great job of breaking up large, open spaces, into smaller, more intimate areas. Taking a page from past renditions of FunShips but adding their typical unique twist done ship by ship, they have made a great addition to cruises sailing from Port Canaveral.

At the time of this sailing it was a tie between the Disney Magic or Wonder and the Glory for the “big, nice ships” prize ( If there was one). Now with Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas adding a totally different cruise experience to the mix of what is offered from Port Canaveral, it’s a tougher choice.

Glory is the clear winner, though, in many other areas. The main area, “Fun”, has Carnival clearly in the lead. That’s saying a lot when stacked up against the magical Disney brand. But since we had not only been away from Carnival for a while but had sailed on several other lines, the “fun” atmosphere really slapped me in the face. I missed it and did’t even know it.

Suddenly, what was missing on those other lines was very apparent. Here was a ship capable of holding up to 3700 passengers and darn near every single one I saw was over-the-top happy to be there. The atmosphere was relaxed but the air was full of anticipation, excitement and (again) “Fun”.

Upon embarkation, guests were advised that cabin’s would be ready about 1:30PM and to head to the lido deck for lunch. First, we had a great luncheon in the dining room. By the time we got up to the Lido deck it was packed. The familiar multiple food stations were all running full throttle keeping up with the demand quite nicely. I think it was here that I remembered how well Carnival knows “fun”.

On this visit I spent a lot of time touring the different categories of cabins. Still, my favorite and what I think is one of the best values at sea, is a category 9A corner balcony cabin. Very much like the one’s we’d sailed several times on other Carnival ships, the 9A’s on this ship have a unique layout. The big drawing point, though, is the huge wrap-around balcony.

Touring the Category 11 and 12 cabins was a lot of fun too (and about as close as I will ever get to staying in one). If I die and come back as a cruise ship cabin it would be in one of these categories. Not that the inside, outside and other balcony cabins are not nice, they are. After sailing all those other cruise lines mentioned earlier, some with cabins a lot smaller and most with cabins of varying sizes, it was nice to see the consistency that Carnival applies to their cabins. Each is comfortable and well equipped. OK so the Penthouse Suites have a bigger whirlpool bath than the somewhat smaller standard suites, even the inside cabin showers were quite functional and a fair size.

This visit was just a tour and luncheon on the ship, perhaps about the same amount of time one might spend aboard if in a wedding party. I did’t want to leave. I can’t wait to go back. My record is perfect; I’ve never met a cruise ship I did not like and the Glory I loved!

A week later

Oh, I received my $200 future cruise vouchers too. You might think that would be a joyous moment. Not so much really. In the cruise line Guest Relations departments they weigh such matters as this cruise experience as to how much of a “failure of service” was experienced.

A week later, as is usual, the pain of the moment had subsided but this cruise is still very solidy the crown champion of extremely rare disaster cruises. This was one you read about but doesn’t happen to you. I am sure there are cruises that were worse but this one has a firm hold on last place on my list of “Cruise Lines I Would Like To Sail Again Really Soon”. That is a short list too.

If there is a list of all time horrible cruises, this one is surely on it.

Titanic
Poseidon
Whatver the name of that ship was that George Clooney drove in “The Perfect Storm”
MSC Orchestra 2-night wonder cruise
The Ghost Ship
Enron

I guess there IS such a thing as a bad cruise

MSC Orchestra

Having never sailed on an MSC ship I decided to take a two night ride on the MSC Orchestra. I didn’t know a whole lot about MSC besides the basic training we get as Travel Agents. When I thought of MSC I did have several thoughts that came to mind through the experiences of others. Maybe we should call those pre-conceived notions. They were

• MSC is the largest container shipping company in the world
• I had heard on multiple occasions “There are lots of pushy Italians and other Europeans”
• I had also heard that “the food is fabulous, absolutely fabulous” from some and awful from others
• Any dealings I had had with MSC over the phone or through email indicated a class in phone skills and email etiquette would be a good idea

So I wanted to find out which of these notions were accurate, which were not and get a good feel for the ship and the cruise line in action. I have been fortunate (or not) enough to sail 43 times with 9 different lines and always been able to get a good feel for a ship or line with one small voyage.

This two-day sailing from Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale to Nassau, Bahamas and back should compare well. I had done many 2 or 3 night introduction cruises before and knew the drill.

• I would not get the same “feel” as I would doing a 7 day or longer cruise
• I had to cover a lot of ground really fast to collect the information and documentation I needed to make a accurate report

With that in mind we chose to arrive at the pier at 1PM, two and a half hours later than we would normally have done. Going early is always the smart way to go. Much like flying in to the departure port a day early as insurance against a delayed flight, arriving at the port so you can be at the front of the line almost always benefits by getting you on board well ahead of the crowd that will come later.

In this case coming early would have been a really good idea. But I had not come at 1PM since our first cruise. As a result we never stand in a very big line because it is behind us.

When we arrived to part at Port Everglades we could have had a really bad time finding a parking space but we got lucky and found a place right away. Approaching the terminal we saw a little line so I was not concerned and thought this was not a bad idea

It was only after we turned the corner and found what would be a line about three football fields long. With no apparent direction the line had formed a sort of serpentine shape, wrapping around Pier 4 then bunching up. No problem though I thought, these cruise lines really move the lines pretty quickly. I estimated the wait time to be about an hour, 45 minutes if we were lucky.

That bright side 45 minute to an hour estimated quickly stretched into an hour, then two hours then three hours then 4 hours until it started moving. But lines are lines and even in the most capable hands like the king of lines, Walt Disney who, from the grave, keeps things moving right along at the parks every day of the year.

I have a pretty good idea of how long it takes to move a bunch of people too from quoting wait times to people in a number of busy restaurants decades ago. Something was really wrong here.

The problem here was not that they had a big line but that we were kept in the dark about what was going on. I have experienced catastrophic delays on other lines and seen everything from a cruise line rep telling us and updating us on what was wrong then reassuring us that they were doing all they could to get us on as soon as possible to cruise line reps setting up a buffet and offering complementary beverages. Either was always accompanied by a good dose of really sincere apology.

This time we had no information so the crowd mentality starts to take over, members agree to hold the place in line for some elderly people that they can go to one of the few benches to sit down and occasional chants run through the group. Next time I am going to add “Start doing the wave and other wacky group games if line is dead for hours” to my to-do list.

It should have been a good sign that this was not going to end well when the vending trucks you might see by the crew entrance, well out of the way of the embarkation activities are coming within service distance of the crowd. We were going to be a while. Ok yeah it would have been nice for someone to tell us what the problem is or provide some food and beverages. Heck, we would have all been up at the buffet with that initial gorge of our gaping maws anyway. But the line started moving after about four hours. When it did it seemed to go rather quickly, at a pace one would expect for a group so large. Once inside the terminal we were placed in a rope line that went back and forth 23 times; about 75 feet each time. (That equals 1725 feet)

This line was not unanticipated.

Why would they intentionally be planning on having so many people in this queue? What an unpleasant first impression.

But it got worse. After that initial queue we were went into another area where there were five queue’s 300 feet long each. (Another 1500 feet) Let’s do the math; that’s a total of over 3000 feet of line. They were planning on it being a long wait.

Lucky for us we had filled out the online advance check-in and it looked like 90% of the other guests had not. We were put in a much shorter “Express” queue which also doubled as the World Club past guest entrance. I don’t think I have ever been so happy to have done that. On other lines it has almost become unnecessary.

In the beginning of the boarding card craze, it was like going through the express line at the grocery store, there was a line but it moved along way quicker than if you were behind three or four people with full carts. Carnival (who started it); Princess, Celebrity and Royal Caribbean have gotten so good at it though that they rarely set up a rope queue at all.

Finally when we got to the check in station we were told that it was a computer problem causing the delay. They had been down for several hours.

(Can you say “reboot” and see what happens?”)

At this point things were going about as anticipated except that the check in rep told us we would have to stop by the purser’s desk to present our credit card to guarantee onboard purchase. By chance I noticed that the rep next to this one was swiping cards and gathering authorization signatures just fine. When I brought it to her attention she conferred with one of the ships officers and after a lengthy discussion agreed to do ours. Good, the thought of 2300 people more at the purser’s desk in the next 24 hours could have really been a mess. The crowd pretty much universally agreed that they had robbed us of a good part of this short cruise and that needed to be the end of that.

I wanted to thank that officer for saving me from that and waved to get his attention. That was when I first saw it

The MSC Stare

Most cruises are identified with a theme or have established a 2, 3 or 4 word slogan that fits. Carnival has “The Fun Ships” and I think of wildly happy crew members. Princess has “Escape Completely” and their happy crew members while a lot less wild, make pleasant eye contact and say hello when you pass them in the halls. Celebrity has “Starring You” which while I have never seen an actual celebrity on one of their ships; they are masters at creating a great feel on board. Royal Caribbean for years challenged us to “Get Out There”

All of those and others seemed genuinely happy to see us and honestly wanted us to have a good time. I had grown accustomed to that. This mean, unemotional, detached look this officer gave me was scary. But being optimistic I hoped that this was just a junior officer who should probably be working down in the torpedo room rather in a guest contact area.

So very unfortunately this would not be the last time I saw it. I never once saw an officer laugh or seem at all happy except when talking with other officers in their native language.

This attitude would turn out to be the reason for many unpleasant experiences aboard the ship. I have seen this before in other businesses and it always ends in the business going broke. There are just too many competitors to not have your best job on display all the time. That is where it starts. When the management is lacking in customer service in major ways, many of the negatives I had about this ship, the crew and the cruise line happen and turn off customers.


Here then are specifics on what was experienced while on board the MSC Orchestra. I picked areas to evaluate that either struck me as really different than other lines or simply easy to compare along with a grade.

Embarkation
Grade: F

The F is for the poor job they did communicating with the waiting crowd. Handled properly they could have minimized the fueling effect it had on growing negative attitudes. The thing about those is that once they start and get in most peoples heads, they taint other experience onboard which might not have been as good as they could have been but would have been tolerated.

The passengers would have been upset but with the strong knowledge that the cruise line would stand behind their decisions and actions. They would make it right. The level of commitment to that universal business model simply was not there with the management of this event and the ship. That’s two different departments; shore operations and ship operations. They both failed. Would the ships maintenance department fail as well; the ones that shovel the wood into the burners that make the ship move?

So far no but if we had to drive one of the lifeboats home we had done this route so many times that we could probably do it.

Cabins
Grade: B

These were nice, new cabins with a unique feature. In order to keep the lights on in your cabin you had to put your card into a reader by the front door. When you were out of the cabin the lights went off which they had to do because you had to take your key to get back in.
I think that is a fabulous way for them to save energy and in turn save money that does not inconvenience the guest. Good Job there. That also triggered a light in the hallway that the stewards could see (I guess with their heightened awareness training because I sure never saw it) that indicated if you were or were not in the cabin. No more barging in as someone stand in the hallway drying off after a shower since the bathroom is too small for we fluffy people.

I give them a C as average because they were pretty much the standard cabin you might find on any cruise ship.

Cabin Steward
Grade: B
I would later find out that each steward had 24 cabins to clean twice each day. That would explain never seeing ours. No time for small talk, special requests, complaints or compliments. There was much to complement for too. They did a really good job every time they did their run through the cabin.

Embarkation Buffet
Grade: F

Ok let’s try to keep count. So far we had no contact while waiting, passed by some contract security people with the stern but expected demeanor like the TSA at airports and gotten our first MSC Stare. Not looking really good at Creating A Good First Impression 101. They had to have cheated horribly on the final to pass. Hmm, maybe they dropped out?f

This was going to be the first time we had the opportunity to try the legendary great food. I was excited because I used to have some very dear friends as a young boy who were really Italian and those people really knew great food. I couldn’t wait to try the Fettuccini Alfredo to see if it was as good as the wonderful product they served on Princess. I make a pretty darn good meatball when I put my mind to it so I was really looking forward to that too. We knew there was no way to enter points in our Weight Watchers thing so we were totally off diet to the point that I really wanted to see what their idea of authentic Italian Pizza was.

The food was simply awful.

I wondered if it was that it was ready 4 hours ago and since people were not boarding it just lost its luster. No, there was no luster on these products ever. I had a former career when I was much younger in the restaurant business. One of the things I did was manage a large volume cafeteria in Kansas City. We served 4 or 5000 people a day on two straight line cafeterias. That was their first problem.

I wonder if the people that designed this ship had ever been on a cruise on any other line. If they had they would have discovered the latest common design, the revival of the “scatter” line cafeteria with stations that one can go back and forth too. With a straight line cafeteria everyone has to pass by everything. That’s great if you are selling the ala carte. You can use strategic product positioning to put the high dollar or high profit products within easy reach.

But they were not selling these products; they were included in the price. The obvious name of the game is to get them through as quickly and efficiently as possible.

With the scatter style cafeteria, guests can simply walk by the station that does not have anything they want rather than waiting in line (again and not a popular activity with this bunch) They move through quickly and are at the table enjoying your food with the minimum travel time and eating the food as you wished it to be.

But that was just the tip of the iceberg. The meatballs were lousy and cold, the pizza was burnt and sort of like the “pizza” I made as a kid with Hungry Jack biscuits, pizza sauce and cheese. Mine was better.

What looked like it could be a flavorful dish was bland and cold or warm depending on what it shouldn’t be. You would think Spicy Cantonese Rice would be a real taste sensation. No, very much like
Green Giant Steam In The Microwave-safe Bag quality, only cold.

While seated and eating we saw a lady approach a manager. She was just furious. It seems that over an hour ago, she had given her card to one of the servers to go get her a Diet Coke and they had never returned. After getting the MSC Stare while explaining her problem the manager told her to go the Pursers desk and get a new one. Stupid me, I was thinking they might want to find that server, get the card back and get this lady her Diet Coke. No, she was sent packing without her Diet Coke (well they couldn’t get her one now anyway: she had no card!)

Probably just as well, they serve Pepsi Light anyway. Those were cool though, they had a foil cover over the part where you pull the tab and apply your lips. (I had lowered the bar for all things dazzling

I gave up on trying keeping up the counting thing after this.

Breakfast Buffet
Grade: F

Let’s just finish off the buffet area with this report about breakfast.

By this time it had become painfully obvious that these people had chosen to work with the bare minimum crew on hand to take care of business. They are cheapskates.

It’s a classic pattern.

• We don’t have enough guests sailing
• We lower the price
• We have more guests sailing but uh oh; we are not making as much money on them
• We cut back on the labor and put out as much low cost food as possible

The breakfast buffet was one of the best examples of this I had seen and here is why

• No omelet station. Thank god, the line would have moved even slower. I had chosen to go up for breakfast really early so there was no line. At 10:00 the line went out of the door of the cafeteria and far out on to the pool deck, on both sides.
• Bacon from last week. This was more old, crumbled and nasty than any I had ever seen in public. This had reached the point where it could have been used as an ingredient or seasoning but that’s about it.
• They messed up the canned baked beans. Ok this is an odd English thing that seems to be on a lot of cruise ships. I can see the allure of them as they are really cheap. But the master chefs of MSC had watered them down. I guess they thought they would go farther and feed more people.
• While they did not have an omelet station they did have “plain omelets” pre-made and ready to be picked up. I fail to see the difference between a plain omelet and scrambled eggs (they had those too). I kept looking for an eclectic array of creative toppings maybe thinking it was a “make your own omelets” idea that was just not well thought out. The closest thing I could find to a topping was the scrambled eggs sitting next to them. Later on about 20 feet down the line were some cold, canned “sautéed” mushrooms.
• The coffee station was manned by a crew member who was pouring the coffee for the guests. I sat right next to this area and watched. As the guests arrived the line grew long at the coffee station (OK “line” is officially a bad four letter word at this point) The reason for the hold up is that the crew member had a little shield for each guest explaining that they had “strong” and “weak” coffee and they had to choose one. He went on to give his personal recommendation (oooh! Step back Emeril Bam!) for the strong coffee but watered down. Most agreed to the strong but watered down. This could have been an American thing though with the Americans always choosing strong over weak to this crew member struggling (unbelievably) hard to communicate. The guests were having trouble with his recommendation though and it took a while for them to inevitably pick his recommendation and that really slowed down the line. The other problem was people who understood him to mean that the strong was regular and the weak was decaf. When specifically asked if they had decaf he said “I don’t know, maybe at the other station”
• Double shot glasses for water. I forgot to mention that I had heard that they were charging for water in the dining room on the last cruise without the option for complementary tap water. Horrible idea for the American market, glad they did not do it. But these glasses were about as big as two shot glasses. I assumed it was to prevent waste of the complementary frozen concentrate Juicy Juice dispenser liquids. Understandable and acceptable for “high cost?” juice-like substance but where were the glasses for the low cost tap water?
• The crew member with the refill cart. There was one for both dining rooms. I watched as she went a certain distance with one cart, stopped when she was empty, went back and filled up on some other ship in a different ocean then came back and traveled the same route. She appeared to be stopped along the way by about half of those she had served on the previous run then continued on down the road. I think the ones at the end of the other dining room have probably become dehydrated and soiled themselves waiting for her to get there. They couldn’t leave or they would get nothing and they didn’t want to miss her

Casino
Grade A++ and F

This one gets two grades. An A++ because I won two big jackpots on the slots, an F because I waited 45 minutes for the one crew member working the whole casino other than dealers at gaming tables to pay out the excessive sum.

There’s something about winning big in the casino that makes other things ok. I had seriously forgotten about the embarkation fiasco and school cafeteria operation.

Safety Drill
Grade A++ and F
This one also gets two grades. The A++ because they cancelled it on the first day, rescheduled it the second day and checked to see if everyone was in attendance by knocking two times on the door and going away.

The F because in reality I should have been concerned about this gang actually finding and hitting an iceberg, sinking the ship. Again though as previously mentioned, I was pretty sure I could get a lifeboat back to Florida from here. I would also not have had a line for getting on my lifeboat, would have the chef there serving delights and free drinks for all.

Driving the Ship
Grade C
This is usually an area not even mentioned as the ships crew that does the actual maneuvering of the ship are so good at it. Just watching them move the ship into or out of port is amazing to me.

Imagine my surprise and fear when we were stopped dead in the water outside of Nassau while the other ships caught up and passed us.

Ships Shops
Grade B
Pretty much the typical assortment of jewelry, cologne, clothes, and logo items (probably not a lot of folks on this one wanting a memento to remember this) and booze/cigarettes. I took off because of the limited selection in the shops and the attitude of the people in the booze shop. They were really mad that people wanted to buy booze.
The more booze they bought the more intense their MSC Stare was. I wanted 8 bottles of booze and you would have thought I had asked them to swim to shore to fetch me some snacks.

Those are a whole lot of negative leading to a recommendation to not sail this line. At least until I get reports that things have improved dramatically.

But there are positives too which I saved for last. I have always been of the mind that there is no such thing as a bad cruise. This one put that notion to test like no other. History will prove this one to be the standard for bad cruises. Still, we had a good time because there are things that even MSC could not screw up. One was the view from our balcony while the ship is moving through the ocean. Another was finding a nice lounge to have a drink before dinner. Sure, we needed one before facing the uncertainty of what might be coming, but they have several nice, quiet, and comfortable lounges. For the most part they run a pretty good operation too with plenty of crew members around. Well except for the casino. That one girl working the whole casino for drinks was just sad to see.

Value was a big underlying problem on this ship. Since they were such cheapskates we paid for most everything beyond the basics. Ice cream was never complementary as it is on all other cruise lines at one time or another (or all day on Carnival). I ordered two tall Bloody Marys this morning in tall glasses. That was $27.50 which I thought was a crazy high price.

I already mentioned the cabin stewards and for the most part the rest of the hotel department with the exception of food servivce was right on top of things.

Would I do this again? No
Will I recommend this line to anyone? No

As patient and understanding as I am, I’m writing MSC and will demand a 100% refund just if they are interested in standing behind their product. If they want me to ride on one of their ships again they will need to give me a free cruise. I doubt that either of those things will happen. They probably don’t even realize that they created 2300 bad will ambassadors.

Celebrity Solstice

 

 

It could be argued that the new Celebrity Solstice is the prettiest ship at sea. I doubt that you would find many who would not agree.  But there are a whole lot of steps along the way that make Solstice unique.  Celebrity has done a great job focusing on the total cruise experience and beyond.

It seems that new builds these days all have a flashy signature feature that sets them apart from others.  Solstice is no exception.  The big one here is the Lawn Club.  Located high up on deck 15, Celebrity has grown an expanse of short golf green-like grass about the size of a football field.  Ok maybe more like a large backyard but it sure seems like a huge space in person.  It’s something you just don’t expect to see on a ship and nothing can quite prepare you for the experience. 

Home to picnics, various “yard” games, and even private parties, the Lawn Club comes complete with its own shop, café and bar.  If this were a Carnival ship they would call this the “Fun Deck” because it also houses the Fun Factory Kids club, a basketball court, Video Arcade and another unique experience, the Hot Glass show, where professional gaffers craft works of art right before your eyes.  But this is nothing you will find on a Carnival ship or any other brand for that matter.

These unique experiences have been really well done in a unique signature way that will prove to set Solstice apart from even her sister ships that will follow.  It all comes down to ground level where what they do directly impacts the guest experience.  As with so many other successful ideas it is the details that make the difference. 

 Bartenders that can open a bottle of beer tossed in the air, Pool Butlers actually paying attention to guests and anticipating their needs, as well as very well educated crew members who know their jobs well, make the difference. 

 Someone was paying attention here when they designed how this was going to go.  Often overlooked while an organization struggles to cover the bases, Celebrity not only covers but blows the bases away, creating an experience like no other.

 It is as though someone said,  “Ok, design a ship, but make it the very best one you can possibly make it.  Spare no expense.  Leave nothing out.  Dream up new features.  And make it all very user-friendly”. Take for example, the live tree growing in the middle of the ship.  Yes I said live tree.  Make that “huge live tree”.  It’s not enough to have it; the crew all knows details about how it was planted, lives and will grow six decks high eventually.  The crew does not hesitate to approach the casual viewer to let them know all about it too.  I think this is one of the most unique parts of the onboard experience.  The crew here really goes out of its way to enrich the experience.

 It is as though not only the needs but the unexpected desires of guests have been not only anticipated but are constantly brought to their attention. 

The staterooms are a great example of this. 

A quick glance would leave one with the impression that these are nicely appointed but nothing unique.  Further examination though reveals many innovative features.  In the bathroom, for example, a low level illuminating light is on constantly to lead the way in the dark.  A huge flat-screen television boasting a nice selection of movies, internet access, ordering for room service and more swivels away from the wall enabling it to be positioned just right for viewing anywhere in the cabin.  15% larger than most Celebrity staterooms on other ships, these offer a very nice space you may not want to leave.

 But leave you will as you explore areas of the ship that flow seamlessly from one to the other.

 Arguably the largest selection of shopping at sea, the “Shops on the Boulevard” flow into the largely non-smoking casino which is an extension of an assortment of lounges, and an area known as the “Entertainment Court”.

 Aptly named, the Entertainment Court features a central space where live music emanates into the surrounding areas very nicely, tying them all together.  While other cruise lines seem to be cutting back on live entertainment, Celebrity has taken a few steps back in time and brought back a wide variety of talent.  Case in point; on deck entertainment. 

 I was on deck enjoying a leisurely afternoon one day, steps away from food and bar service, an indoor pool should the weather turn bad, and the an assortment of lounge chairs, hammocks, and private areas.  As the stage was out of sight, it took me a while to realize that the enjoyable and thoughtful music I was hearing was not prerecorded but a live five piece band.  Later, when their set was over, a different band came to play, followed by a solo guitar player and then others.  This theme was repeated many times over throughout the voyage.   A string quartet filled the atrium area, a jazz trio played in one of the lounges, and a full band played in the showroom, even a piano player in unexpected areas at unconventional times made for a rich experience.

 Dining options also added to this deep, enriching theme.

 In addition to the stunning single main room, Grand Epernay, dining options are plentiful.  The Aquaspa café offering refreshing spa cuisine as well as the always open Bistro on Five with Crepes and Sanwiches in a casual setting.  The Mast Grill I enjoyed while on deck was only steps away from the signature Oceanview Café, a scatter-style buffet with an assortment of stations well-suited to most any taste.

 Specialty dining with a nominal cover charge was not limited to just one or two offerings.  Murano, a sophisticated dining experience featuring European style service and wines from around the world is a headliner.  Silk Harvest, featuring the exotic tastes of Asia in a casual, family-style setting is very popular.  The Tuscan Grille offers a sophisticated steakhouse with and Italian accent and robust wine list.  Finally “Blu” has private dining for AquaClass guests only featuring clean, modern cuisine from the old and new world.  

 The Aqua class area of the ship offers some of the most well appointed staterooms on board too.  But more than just extra features like a superb shower and upgraded amenities, the whole AquaSpa area of the ship is unique unto itself.  This area anchors a “Wellness” theme featuring a full service spa enhanced by the solarium and a quiet renewing space called the Persian Garden as well as medi-spa, salon and fitness center.  

 The whole Wellness concept extends to other areas of the ship as well. 

 All staterooms and verandahs, for example, are non-smoking.  A bold move on the part of Celebrity, this idea came directly from guest requests and comments.  There are adequate but largely removed areas for smokers but the Celebrity is really trying hard to make a statement as part of the whole experience.   Smoking is restricted to a small area of the casino, slots only.  The whole feel of it all reminded me of when restaurants had smoking and non smoking sections before turning all non-smoking.  I suspect that Celebrity will be the first line to pull off the entirely non-smoking concept, once tried but failed by Carnival’s Paradise several years ago.

 To me, the extent that Celebrity is willing to go with the smoking issue is a great example of the direction they are going with this ship and the experience it elicits.  A great diversion from real life is the hallmark of a cruise. Celebrity, through the unique features of this ship, also gives you something to take home with you.  Whereas the end of the cruise often meant the end of the experience, Solstice leaves the door open, allowing one to take home the feel of it all. 

 If you are one of the lucky ones who has fully embraced all that a cruise has to offer you may have felt renewed and maybe even a bit changed by the end of the voyage.   The Solstice experience allows you to not only be changed, but to do something with that change once you return to real life.