Arrived on the 15th of December with my fiancé. I would like to first point out that the staff are the most incredible group of individuals I’ve ever came across. Every single one of them kind, polite and go above and beyond for you!
I’d like to give special mentions to the following employees.
Chris from housekeeping, everyday cleaning our room TWICE! Every single day greeting us in the most professional manner possible. We brought 2 spare blankets and on most days he would go out of his way to fold them, it really is the small things that you notice. Anything we needed he was never to far to answer our questions. 10/10 really doesn’t justify how amazing he is!
Dan & Michael from Seashore restaurant, again both of them extremely polite and just go the extra mile every single time. Greeting us with the highest levels of respect. It’s just unfortunate the food isn’t up to the high standards the waiters set…
Finally I want to give a mention to Abdul from the lounge bar. I watched him work on his own with no help for about 15 minutes whilst having about 20 docks and not once did he sigh or complain. His work ethic is incredible and although he’s constantly busy he always finds a couple minutes to engage with the customers. PS: Also makes very nice hot chocolates!
Unfortunately this is were the good ends…
I’d like to start off with the food. We spent a total of €7,850 on this trip and surely when spending this amount of money you expect a certain level of food. The food was absolutely disgusting and every single one of the chefs needs to just retire or jump overboard. Seashore Restaurant was our complimentary restaurant, according to documentation we had a seating for 7:45PM, they had us for a 5:15 seating. Who eats dinner at 5:15pm. So I requested to changed and I was asked wait for about 30 minutes only to then be told I have to go by what was on my cruise card. Although 7-8 people ahead of me in this queue were allowed to change. Eventually I spoke with a senior manager and changed our time. Some staff members although extremely nice lack training and basic hospitality skills. Especially in the restaurant. Right so onto our first dinner experience, I ordered the meatball for starter. Cold as ice and completely and utterly raw! Consistency of dog food… New York steak is an embarrassment not only to New York but also for actually killing a cow in order to completely serve an inedible steak. Desert was about the only nice thing on the menu the first night and I can almost guarantee they aren’t prepared in house… staying for 2 weeks I expected a new menu for each week, well if you also expect this then your out of luck as it’s the same set menu week on week. What lazy group of chefs can’t organise new menus? Food just got worse and worse, tasteless, bland and completely disgusting I would not feed this to my worst enemy. I went in for brunch one day and was waiting 20 minutes to take our order and another 40 minutes for a cup of tea. Orange juice was hot and our server AGUS hadn’t a clue what on earth she was doing, making tables instead of getting our tea. So we’re waiting approximately 50 minutes for this brunch to come out. When I tell you this was the saddest plate of food I’ve ever seen would be an understatement. My Eggs were raw, bacon burnt to death, the smallest piece of steak bland with not an ounce of seasoning and then to add insult to injury my “fries” were so damn hard I could beat it off the table and it didn’t even break. My fiancé ordered the cheeseburger… This was the most disgusting burger I’ve ever tasted in my entire life. It looked like a hockey puck and for the first time in my life I couldn’t even swallow the meat I had tasted. Spat it out and walked out of there… buffet is also a joke. If you don’t like hot dogs, pizza and burgers you completely out of luck. Food is always freezing cold and I’ve had diarrhoea for almost 2 weeks from trying my best to eat something. When we tried to get omelettes we were told there is a 40 minute wait… Entire system is an embarrassment. We decided to eat in specialty restaurant butchers cut on our first week, they left us waiting there for 37 minutes without anyone coming to our table then finally admitted to us that our table wasn’t assigned to a waiter! Thankfully the food was actually good but for $233 it better be good… Which only angered me even more if you spend more money food is nice and it’s like a completely different ship.
complimentary & buffet - 0/10
Speciality restaurant - 6.5/10
Onto our cabin we stayed in a Bella cabin with balcony. We bought the premium extra drinks package… there’s a mini fridge in our cabin and none of the drinks we could have as they were not included in our package although we could have every single one of them in any of the bars. HOW DOES THIS MAKE ANY SENSE! I got this fridge emptied and kept having to go back and forth to bars to get drinks so we could use the fridge. What a complete joke! Cabin is nice but the bed is like sleeping on a board and to add fuel to the fire it is not even a double bed. Took both of us hours to sleep at night due to the complete discomfort!
Entertainment is non existent nothing but the same nonsense every single night. Didn’t bother with the theatre shows as they are so childish. We spent most nights in our cabin as the entertainment was a train wreck. Reminded me of some cheap holiday to Portugal…
Being Christmas i expected something from the cruise line, a cracker, little gift, a voucher off something or even a damn candy cane on our door… NOTHING AT ALL how ridiculous, They should be ashamed. The people who are higher up are a bunch of complete and utter snobs, I watched the CAPTAIN in the lounge one day standing there not even engaging with anybody and then when a waiter asked if he wanted a drink he said NO In the most disgusting way. Just because he’s the captain doesn’t mean he can’t be nice. He also only addressed the ship TWICE in 2 weeks. Would’ve liked more updates from our so called captain! Cruise director TED is a very nice individual we met him on the stairway as we were trying to get off the ship at Miami. Staff members sending us to deck 4 to get off, then they’d send us to deck 5, then they’d send us back to 4 and back to 5 and then finally TEDs colleague escorted us to DECK 6! 45 minutes trying to get off the ship, the way off in Miami when you are back to back is the same way on as the emerging guests! In the end we decided it was more hassle than what it was worth and just stayed on the ship. We just got constantly Harassed by staff members trying to sell us drinks packages although we are back to back. They need a system of where staff can identify who are back to back so they don’t have to constantly keep asking!!!!!! the safety drill is at 4pm on Sunday and even though we was back to back had to get out of the jacuzzi and wait until everyone had completed the drills which we thought was a complete and utter joke.
Excursions are the most biggest rip off you’ll ever experience in your life. Not designed for the average working person, most of them were completely out of our reach. On our first day in ocean Cay we RENTED a UMBRELLA for $29… the stupid workers didn’t put the pin in correctly and it hit my fiancé in the head! We waited 25-30 minutes for anyone to knowledge us and get help. Ridiculous, if it’s not bad enough you are charging to use an umbrella at YOUR own private island the staff can’t even make them safe!
Spa treatments are the most overpriced things you’ll find anywhere on earth! $239 for massages are they taking the piss or what? $49 pp to use the thermal area + 18% gratitudes? For what applying a sticker to our cruise cards? This costs $16 what an absolute JOKE!!!!!! It’s supposed to be an All inclusive cruise! There is only 3 swimming pools on board and 6-7 jacuzzis. You can forget about using any of them, always packed and full of kids screaming which left us with no option to pay for thermal area only to find out everyone has the same idea… they are also PACKED and we couldn’t get seats inside most of the time.
Ports are just one big joke, only about 3 of them are worth actually getting off and you only get 7hrs maximum not a single overnight stay… we arrived in Costa maya and then WENT back up the coast of Mexico to Cozumel only to then travel back down to Roatán in Honduras! WHO plans these routes! Nassau & Dominican were the only stop offs we found good. Every single one of the others looked like the slums.
WiFi costed $237 for 2 weeks for 1 person and it’s the slowest wifi I have ever witnessed in my entire life. May as well just have done without it.
We spent €7,850 all in and we really thought this would be the holiday of a lifetime and unfortunately it was one of the worst experiences we have ever had. This was our First and ultimately our last cruise this has completely ruined our cruising experience forever. Do not book with MSC Seaside or any other MSC cruise. Best thing for MSC seaside is to sink to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
