3-Day Cruise to the Adriatic Sea Aboard MSC LIRICA

My First Experience with MSC

This was my first cruise with MSC. I regularly cruise with American cruise lines such as Royal Caribbean and Celebrity, so I was prepared for a somewhat different experience — and it certainly was.

One of the biggest positives was the quality of the food, especially in the buffet. The selection can be quite repetitive, with a lot of pasta and bread, but the overall quality was good. We also tried one of the specialty restaurants, the sushi restaurant, which I would rate as average.

The ship is clearly showing its age, which is particularly noticeable in the corridors and some of the common areas. The biggest disappointment for me was the bathroom in our Ocean View cabin. Having a shower curtain instead of a proper glass shower door felt outdated and, personally, I found it quite unpleasant.

The entertainment was also quite disappointing from my perspective. In the evenings, there was mostly live music in the various bars, while the shows in the theater were, in my opinion, below average.

The service in the bars and cafés was another weak point. What particularly bothered me was seeing members of the crew — especially senior officers and managers — spending quite a lot of time sitting in the cafés rather than actively overseeing operations and looking after guests. It was not unusual to see as many as six officers sitting behind or around a bar in the morning, having coffee and chatting. From a guest's perspective, this gave the impression that management was not sufficiently focused on the actual operation and service.

One thing I have to praise, however, is the embarkation and disembarkation process. Both were handled extremely well and were among the smoothest I have experienced.

Overall, I would say the cost-to-benefit ratio is reasonable. However, if you are used to cruising with American cruise lines such as Royal Caribbean or Celebrity, you may be somewhat surprised — and potentially disappointed — by the differences in service, entertainment, and overall onboard experience.

For me, MSC was an interesting experience, but based on this cruise, I would still prefer the overall experience offered by the American cruise lines I am accustomed to.

My main warning: stay away from the onboard casino. During a game of Bingo, the first prize was awarded to the wrong person by mistake, and casino manager refused to correct it. The casino manager insisted nothing could be done because the game was already “closed.”

A mistake is forgivable. Refusing to correct it is not.

Reception was also very slow, and on several occasions they called our cabin in the middle of the night – once around 5 a.m. – asking whether we had booked our roomservice. Not what you want when you’re trying to sleep.

We had also pre-booked three excursions, and two of them were cancelled the day before.

On the positive side: the staff in the restaurants and around the ship were genuinely great, and the food and drinks were very good throughout. It’s just a shame the service issues stood out as much as they did.

We booked this cruise as we were visiting Venice, and liked the stops the cruise was going to! It was a cheap price as we booked it 6 days before it left so we did get a great deal, thank god for that.

The staff are mostly rude other than the dining and house keeping staff. Had multiple staff push in front of us at buffet, and just have zero manners at all.

The buffet is the smallest cruise buffet I have ever seen with barley any variety or quality.

Got harassed to take a picture at dinner by their photographer even though we declined multiple times. They have zero entertainment in English (all live shows in IT). My biggest surprise was to see they don’t even have a soft serve ice cream machine for free. It’s a 3.5 euro charge. They also have gelato where the soft serve machines are, but again they are all 3.5-4 euros which is more money then off the ship in all the ports!

Our blankets on our bed have yellow stains on them… they are washed and clean… but why re use blankets that have gross unpleasant stains like that?

Me and my partner prefer to not have anyone enter our room to clean ect during the day or anytime… so we chose to clean ourselves… which isn’t a big deal as there isn’t much to do on this ship for North Americans anyways. But we were hounded down by our cleaner multiple times after the first two days of having the do not disturb sign constantly in. After telling him politely how we feel, the next day we got a call from guest services asking if all is okay and that they were notified that the do not disturb was in the door for over 48hr… ridiculous to have to explain we prefer to not have anyone come in. And we explained it’s not due to not trusting our cleaner personally, it’s just how we are.

On our boat tender back from Mykonos there was staff coming back from visiting the island as well, and while getting off the tender to the boat stairs… the group of 7-8 staff (including 4 males) shoved and squeezed in front of my girlfriend hitting her and did not even look back to apologize.

This ship is so cheap they don’t even offer juice like standard on other ships during any hours other than breakfast. And the juice isn’t even real juice. It’s the fake stuff you mix in water. I have been on 8+ other cruises and have NEVER seen this. The only options during the day is water, or tea & coffee… unless you have the drink package of course.

There is a few other things I could mention, but I’ll leave it at that. Thankfully we paid just around. $520 CAD per person for interior cabin that sleeps 2, and were upgraded to a window room without request before boarding the ship.

The ports were all beautiful which was great… but for the two sea days we had… it was draining. If I didn’t buy the wifi package, I’m not too sure what we would have done for those days.

Again I didn’t expect luxury as I know this is an older ship, but juice and soft serve ice cream, as well as ALL staff being friendly is generally standard business on any cruise I have ever been on.

Not saying don’t take this cruise, but make sure you are aware of these things, and please book as late as possible to save $. I know someone who booked same interior room for $1100 per person and didn’t even get upgraded… and they have cruised with MSC multiple times. This was our first.