MSC is the best value in the mainstream market and the most divisive line in it, and both facts have the same cause: it is a European line that Americans keep booking expecting an American product.
The ships are new, enormous and genuinely impressive. The prices routinely undercut everyone. The service style is European — more formal, less chatty, not the relentless friendliness of Carnival — and people who read warmth as competence often come away thinking the crew were cold when they were simply not American.
Announcements run in five or six languages, which is either charming or exhausting.
Yacht Club is the thing worth knowing about: a gated ship-within-a-ship with its own pool, restaurant and butler service. Priced like a premium line, delivers like one, and it is a completely different holiday from the same sailing in a standard cabin.
Did MSC meet or miss your expectations, and what were you comparing it to? The comparison is the whole story with this line.
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