7 Nights Alaska Experience Cruise Cruise

Thank You, MSC!!

This was our first cruise with MSC. I was a little nervous due to the price and some of the reviews on this site. However, I was pleasantly surprised. The staff were kind and professional, the food was great, and it was very family-friendly. Though our room had a small shower, it was clean and suited our needs. The kids loved the pools and arcade. Ocean Cay was absolutely gorgeous! It’s not a big water park, but an extremely well-maintained preserve with several beautiful beaches and lagoons to explore. I liked that there was only one ship at Ocean Cay, so it was peaceful instead of crowded. We did the stingray excursion and thoroughly enjoyed it. If you have young kids who go to bed early, I would recommend staying on floors 10-13. They are staterooms only and away from everything. We were on floor 12 and it was pretty quiet. 100% recommend MSC!!!

Wonderful Experience.

There were many activities to take part of on the cruise such as watching violin players, watching performances in the spectacular theatre which was very entertaining. And watching small performances occurring around the ship such as guitar playing near the casino. The cabin was great, very comfy and clean room. The dining was the excellent part. The menu had a wide list of different foods to choose from in which each night the menu changed so you could pick a variety of food. The staff were very welcoming and enthusiastic making the place much more wonderful. The service was quite enjoyable since staff on the boat were very kind. The ship had a three different children's clubs for each age section, which lets the kids get along with each other very well. The disembarkation was smooth as all you needed to do is collect your luggage and walk follow guides that staff give you.

Excellent Cruise; Star Class is overkill

I read a lot of reviews and insight prior to my trip and all I can say is - YMMV. For all I read about how crowded this cruise is, how long the lines are, and how incredible "Star Class" is, my experience doesn't align with what I read. This was a fully booked cruise and I expected it to be insanely crowded. Honestly, I never felt like this was overcrowded and didn't experience any really long lines anywhere. My only observation in that regard is that the pools could have been bigger. There are 4 tiny pools for 6000 people and that makes no sense. Apart from that, there is plenty to do. We needed a true two-bedroom suite, so our only option was the 2BR Aqua-Theater suite, which happens to be star class. We had a "shore-side genie" reach out to us about a month before sailing to start making all of our arrangements. After several emails back and forth over a 4 week period, everything the genie told me was inaccurate, and the itinerary she set up was not close to what my royal genie had at our first contact. I found the shoreside genie to be an annoying waste of time. The onboard genie was definitely helpful securing seats to shows, getting us the best tables at our restaurants, and helping us with a refund for an excursion that didn't go as planned. She also reserved the best overwater cabana at CocoCay for us, and (offered to) escort us off the ship in both ports. The zip line and ultimate abyss (giant 10 story slide) also have a priority lane for all star class guests and key holders. Having said that, you can easily make reservations for shows yourself and if you arrive 15-20 minutes prior, it was easy to get good seats. We saw folks getting better seats than the ones we had reserved just minutes before showtime...and this is on a fully booked cruise. It was also a little awkward having to chat with the genie before every dinner to go over our next plans. Getting on and off the ship was easy if you don't mind taking the stairs. Her real value was helping with accounting issues and coordinating expedited room service on demand (my sons really appreciated this). Those two things alone don't come close to justifying the cost. The 2BR ATS was a great room and the balcony is amazing. We still went to the aqua show in person and I can tell you it's much better to see it from the audience than it was from the balcony. We also hated having to walk down a long, narrow (and smelly) corridor any time we wanted to get to or from the suite. In contrast, the suite neighborhood hallways are almost 3x wider, and the rooms are spread out nicely. It was never a problem getting a table in Coastal Kitchen. The suite sun deck is also beautiful, and the bar in the suite lounge will give free drinks and beers from 11AM to 11PM daily whether you have a drink package or not. An actual pool in the suite sun deck would have been awesome, but it's still very nice up there. Only folks in suites have access, so it's much less crowded up there. I didn't see benefit to the "key" besides the internet, but again YMMV. It was easy to enter or exit the ship no matter what room you have. The Windjammer is huge. There are more than enough tables there, and so many food and drink stations that you can easily find what you want without a long wait, so the debarkation day breakfast really isn't a necessity. If you're paying slightly more than what the internet costs, the key is probably worth it for the boarding day lunch and priority access to the slide and zip line. There are also show seats allocated to key-holders, but again this isn't necessary because anyone with a reservation who shows up early can easily snag great seats. I saw this for myself and again, this was a fully booked to capacity cruise. The shows were all terrific. The aqua show is by far the best, but the ice show, "all in" production, comedy shows and game shows were all well done and a lot of fun. The promenade is very lively all day long and especially at night. The boardwalk offers a little of everything with a sports bar, carousel, a couple of dining options and of course the aqua theater. Central Park is a beautiful place to walk around and has some high end restaurants. The Trellis Bar is a great place to sip a few drinks and soak in the atmosphere. Chops, Izumi, and 150 Central Park are all terrific restaurants. The best one in our opinion was Izumi, but all are terrific. The Mason Jar was so-so. Playmakers didn't really have a broad selection of sports events to choose from...the only channels they have are ESPN 1 and 2. The food there was really greasy and meh. Giovanni's overlooks Central Park and has outstanding food. Nassau is a giant garage sale (excellent description by the comedian on board), the excursions there were very disorganized. We ended up walking around the newer shopping plaza there and did venture on to Bay Street; it was a nice change of pace from the ship, but we would have been fine staying on board for the day. CocoCay was beautiful, but they seem to cancel just about every excursion there due to wind and don't notify anyone. It would be great to send push notifications via the app when an excursion is canceled. We walked all the way to the jet ski stand just to learn that the tour was canceled for the day. All in all, it is a great ship. For us, we feel like we'd have gotten maximum value by booking doing the following: -Book two neighboring grand suites and opening the balcony between them so that they are effectively adjoining rooms. This would have given us two bedrooms and two bathrooms, while granting us access to the suite neighborhood. -Get the key if it's slightly more than the internet costs. The additional perks would cost very little since we need the internet anyway. -Reserve the premium restaurants that we want individually. Pass on the unlimited dining package. -as for the drink package, it really depends on what you're looking to do. We definitely had our fair share of drinks, but that was mostly due to taking advantage of star class. Again, it's a great ship, but a ship this size should probably go on longer (7 night) cruises to better destinations than Nassau.