MSC Bellissima the Inaugural cruise – part 2

Following on from my last blog MSC BELLISSIMA THE INAUGURAL CRUISE – PART 1 here is part 2 for you all.

The last blog I covered the beauty of the ship along with the bars and cabin. This blog I want to give you more information about dining, entertainment, and overall sailing. Again this is a good and bad report, so my honest review. It is a long blog and plenty of content as I didn’t want to stretch out to a 3rd blog, so bear with me….

Let’s start with the dining, MSC over the years has been criticized for it’s dining especially by the British market and when I sell MSC I make guests aware of how the dining works, this way I rarely get any bad feedback as guests have been pre-warned. I am happy to say that in my opinion, the dining has come along in a huge way and all for the better. On previous cruises, you were normally offered a 5-6 course dining menu for dinner, including a soup or salad, pasta or rice course, fish and a meat course and then dessert. The portions were normally small and could be described as lukewarm rather than hot. I would also advise that this is quite typical of the Mediterranean way of eating.

My surprise was only 3 courses are now offered with a starter, main and dessert. normally around 5-6 options of each and if not happy with any of them a limited but efficient submenu. When I spoke to the head waiter, he advised that they had taken the feedback and was now implementing this across the fleet. The food was delicious, no matter what we ordered we enjoyed it all. The portion sizes could have been a bit bigger, but the quality was fantastic. Some of the choices didn’t come with maybe the desired extras such as potatoes or veg, but you could ask for a side portion of steamed veg with your main. So a big thumbs up to MSC for changing the menu and making it a whole lot better. On the 8 nights, I did not have one bad meal in the dining room and would have gone for seconds if allowed!

The market place buffet which is located on the aft of Deck 15 is huge, they also have a small area for the kid’s section too. The main stuff is repeated around the buffet, so you could always get what you wanted and no matter what time of day we went for breakfast or lunch we always found a table straight away. Breakfast you could get anything from cereals to pastries, cold meats and cheese and of course plenty of cooked items such as bacon, sausages, eggs (made to order too), pancakes and waffles.  For Lunch and during the evening, they have a great section for pizza and pasta (of course) and they varied the options of flavours daily. Also a great salad bar along with fresh bread at the bakery section. There is also a carvery with different meats each day and an ‘ethnic’ corner, which again changed daily, so we experienced Chinese, Indian, West Indian and Brazillian food delights.

The buffet had a great variety which sometimes with the choice meant we had some very odd combinations for breakfast and lunch! To Bonnie’s delight, they also stocked Yorkshire Tea on board but had plenty of choices for teas and coffee all day in the buffet and juices which are only served in the morning.

There are a few specialty restaurants onboard, however, we did not get to try these, which I am now regretting, but purely it is more about the cost for me than anything else.

On deck 6 you have the Hola Tapa Bar – beautifully designed and made as a sharing experience. You also have the Jean Phillipe Chocolat and Cafe and his Gelato bar. On deck 7 you have the Butchers Cut which specializes in meat. You also have the  Sushi and Teppanyaki restaurant again on deck 7. As tempting as the food looked, with MSC Bellissima you do not pay a set price for the specialty dining as you do on other ships. It is costed per item ordered, so when looking at the prices it can make it a very expensive meal. A lot of these are also franchised and are not actually owned by MSC, so if you have a drinks package included you will find that you cannot use it in some of these specialty dining venues.

Probably the biggest thumbs down from me about the whole sailing was the day time entertainment and activities. We had to miss a port after leaving Southampton due to the weather conditions, so this meant another day at sea before we reached Lisbon. MSC have their own in-house entertainment team, a bit like an all-inclusive holiday resort. They are around in the morning, afternoon and evening. They were mainly based in the Bellissima lounge and offered silly games and dance lessons. The only problem is, that it is the same each day and gets very repetitive. Other than the theatre shows, which is around 35 minutes and they offer 3 shows per night, there was no other entertainment. You do have Cirque du Soleil on this ship, but you have to pre-book and pay, as again it is a franchise and not owned by MSC. You book for the show and a cocktail for around €15 or a meal and show for around €35, with drinks on top. However, due to some issues before boarding, they had cancelled all shows and then reinstated only a few during the sailing which meant those that had already pre-booked got priority and we was unable to get booked in for a show.

MSC does not offer any other form of day time entertainment or talks like you would get on other cruise lines. There are no seminars or demonstrations, it is just the entertainments team playing a few silly games and showing you how to merengue. We did like to sit in the bar of an evening and watch the other guests participate and the Italians are very competitive so it was great for people watching.

You do have an entertainments/sports area at the back of deck 16 with the Formula 1 simulator cars, 4D cinema and bowling alley, but again to use any of these items you have to pay.

MSC Bellissima Sports Lounge

However, each evening around 11pm, they turned the Bellissima Gallery into a dancing venue for an hour and the atmosphere was amazing, I posted live a few times and this was probably the best part of the night. I actually broke a favourite pair of shoes after dancing for so long!

My other criticism of the sailing was the captain. I know, I am treading on thin ice here but I have never been on a ship before (even on a previous MSC ship) where the captain doesn’t give you at least one announcement a day. We heard nothing from the captain for the whole 8 days. The only announcements made on board was for safety and that was it. No ‘hello, how are you all today, we are near the coast of Portugal’ or ‘just coming through the straights of Gibraltar’. Zilch, nada, not a dickie bird from the captain or any of his crew.

They did do an officers dance one night but no captain to be seen again. As a past MSC passenger, I was invited to the captain’s cocktail hour, which for some strange reason was at 10am in the morning. I did not attend (I actually forgot) but from guests that did, it was nothing special, everyone was gathered in the Bellissima gallery, so not even a private function, given a glass of fizzy wine and a wave from the captain who overlooked everyone from a balcony! Again he didn’t even say hello. So again I was not impressed with the captain or his staff with communication.

So my only negatives are the rubbish entertainment (except the musical theatre shows) and lack of communication from the bridge. Specialty dining could be better priced but otherwise, the overall cruise was great, the ship beautiful and spacious and the food well improved.

So a question I asked many onboard – would you travel with MSC again and on the newer ships and the answer from me is yes.

Dawn

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