My number one piece of advice if you are thinking of booking MSC is DONT .
We have cruised about 20+ times previously so know what to expect .It helped to be experienced cruisers and know what we were doing ,but there is so little information in English .
We never went to a Safety Drill ,no health declaration as you got on .
No attention given to hand hygiene .
Our Grand Voyage felt more like a Caribbean cruise ferry with 4 embarkation and disembarkations for local islanders .
The ship felt full to capacity all the time .The excursions desk could not speak great English and had no background information of the ports .
The food was very average and basic even in the sit down restaurants ,with the buffet very busy always ( with the same repetitive boring things).
Dine as you like when you like doesn’t really exist and we were made to feel like an inconvenience,squeezed between the 2 seatings.Eventually we compromised and had the same table at 8.30 every night,so much for flexibility! I cannot fault the waiters,bar staff and cabin steward ,who all work extremely hard and do an excellent job,the ship is lovely and our cabin very well appointed and comfortable( though we would have like a couple of English speaking channels on TV) We booked because of the fantastic itinerary and didn’t expect everything to be in English ,we didn’t need that but we were so disappointed by the food,the attitude towards their so called Anytime dining and the fact that it was a glorified Caribbean ferry
