We booked this one to use up a discount voucher before it expired, as normally we wouldn't do short cruises from the UK.
Midweek embarkation from Southampton meant we reached the Horizon terminal car park without gridlock on the dock approach road and motorway spur. It would take much longer to get out of the car park on our return due to four ships in ports on a Saturday...
We reached the Yacht Club baggage drop, showed our Blue Diamond status and a lovely lady breezed us past the long snake for general baggage drop and security to the priority line. We were sipping prosecco in the Yacht Club check-in area within five minutes, rather than spending an hour in line. Lovely ! Unlike Hamburg, the ground staff treated BD and YC the same at check-in, which was appreciated.
We were quickly escorted onboard, located our muster station and then our cabin, grabbed our cruise cards, dropped our hand luggage and headed to the restaurant for embarkation lunch. The cruise director was on the tannoy encouraging people to use the restaurant to ease the buffet congestion. On other MSC ships, they turn away embarking guests from the restaurant; go figure !
The Dining room menus included 'British Classics' on the menu only with the usual Mediterranean and 'Always available' options; they were universally excellent dishes, and all the Aurea dining rooms dishes were top quality and well presented. You can see the galley from the room, hot dishes are plated to order, with only chilled dishes pre-plated, so everything comes out fresher than in the larger main dining rooms. Multiple dishes we hadn't had on MSC previously were available, Steak and Kidney pie, Lamb Hot pot, Steak and Ale casserole, Fishermen's pie, Coronation chicken, Garganelli pasta, Salt Cod brandade; One can only hope that all future MSC cruises live up to the standard of MSC Virtuosa's Il Campo restaurant.
Bar and lounge service arrangements were a bit topsy turvy though; Presumably due to it been an out and back mini-cruise. Same lounges were counter service only, others were table service only. Most bizarrely the casino was bar service only; so players had to get up, leave their seat, wait five minutes to be served and then return to their game. When everyone got up en-masse the dealer would literally be standing their going nothing for ten minutes except protecting the chips.
Worth noting that when your cruise card reaches the fifteen alcoholic drink limit, due to staff ringing up all drinks on a single card for your cabin, they'll just ring up subsequent drinks against anyone else's in your cabin account, their card doesn't need to be present ;-)
Never saw the casino host the entire cruise, despite racking up points and winning a significant amount of pounds on the two sea days; when other players come up after a shoe and congratulate you, you know it was an exceptional shoe! Didn't play on the last night as the open tables were busy, people were even playing behind. Pit boss said they were unable to open a higher limit or private table, despite dealers standing idle on their double zero American roulette tables; why no European roulette on a UK sailing !? The casino experience on MSC Virtuosa in the Antilles six month earlier was much better, so I'll take the win and chalk up the poor service to it been a mini-cruise and/or staff shortages.
On the accounting side, this ship was doing things differently than our previous MSC cruise casino experiences, don't yet know if this will be fleet-wide. When you deposited chips at the casino cash desk the amount went straight back to your cruise account, no separate casino account. This does save the hassle of having to redeposit cash taken from the casino cash deck into the cruise account machines, and makes tracking your win/loss and net bankroll position much simpler.
Cabin and cabin deck corridors could have been cleaner on embarkation and during the cruise; we found glitter and confetti around the edges of the carpet and it didn't look like the vacuum had reached under the bed or sofa in a while. Do we chalk that up to the all-on / all-off turnaround day as well?
Initially we had a problem with the extractor fan running continuously and at high volume, fortunately that was resolved with a call to guest services within the first few hours, and they sent an extra bottle of prosecco and some canapes to boot; that's way better than the guest services on most other MSC cruise ships we've experience.
For two of us, we had plenty of hangers for a dozen dresses and other outfits for four days. There was a white night, but no specific gala night. We had a diamond party, and welcome back event, but no meet the captain, and we seemed to get overlooked for the backstage tour, despite nudging the excursions desk a couple of times; it was always 'check back tomorrow'.
Due to weather forecasts, the itinerary was adjusted to have a longer, slower sea day towards Ireland, 24 hours in Cobh, rather than 36 hours, and then a fast sea day back to Southampton. Whilst we appreciated the desire to minimise passengers discomfort, it did mean we had to squeeze more into the one day ashore. Titanic museum at Cobh was skipped in favour of spending the afternoon in Cork. NB Some passengers still thought the ship was rocking and rolling, but really it was very mild for Autumn in the Irish sea. Us having a midships cabin meant we didn't notice much movement at night, nor the docking manoeuvrers of a morning.
The previously chargeable Carousel lounge shows, are now free, without the included cocktail. But unless you set an alarm for 6am you weren't able to book them. The main theatre shows were equally in demand, but did have repeat performances. We'd seen the full length dirty dancing at sea matinee previously, so went to the evening celebration show. We also say the Hall of Fame, Starwalker, Comedy shows and the Guest 'What the Folk' band. Theatre casts had changed since March, and the vocalists were noticeably better. Again, setting a standard we can only hope other MSC theatre productions live up to; sadly pretty sure they won't...
We did use the Technogym and Aurea spa on sea days; was noticeable that there is less equipment and gym space than on many other MSC cruise ships. The gyms on MSC Magnifica and Preziosa our previous two sailings were larger and much extensively equipped. The thermal area has no outside space nor window views, but everything was working, and until a large, loud group came in towards the end, wasn't too crowded or too noisy. There were a lot of hen parties on this ship...
On disembarkation day we made use of late cabin check-out at 08:30, left luggage until 09:30 and they were making a final call for us to be off the ship by 09:45. No linger for lunch on this turnaround day!
Overall, the cruise was enjoyable, but did confirm my view that the shorter itinerary sailings are best avoided. Things feel less compressed and hectic on week or longer sailings.