By the time you read this, I'll have already packed for my cruise. It's a simple 7-day run from NYC to the Bahamas via Port Canaveral.
I'm not much of a fan of visiting Port Canaveral, as it is only a restocking stop for the ship gussied up as a place worth visiting. If one wants to go to Orlando's theme parks, one has to take an overpriced shuttle to reach them AND pay for a 1-day pass which will only be used for less than half of a day.
Given the relative cheap price for me to take a solo cruise, I figure that I'd try out MSC as a cruise line. Even if I like this cruise, I don't intend on cruising on the line that often, as they do not yet have any West Coast / Alaska cruises which would make it worthwhile to use them for special vacations. Yes, I could have tried them out for our Norway cruise next year. But I didn't want to risk having a bad cruise with RQS taking money out of her savings account to finance her trip.
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I've been told that MSC's basic drink package works on their private island. This means that I'll be able to have a beer or two while there and not worry about getting nicked when back on the ship. (Some cruise lines' private islands do not honor the onboard drink package when on some of their private islands.) Since I don't drink much, this is not much of an issue for me. But it might be for some of my readers.
For those who cruise often, MSC is an outlier in the way it does things. For example, it doesn't attach your credit card information to your cruise card account before embarkation. Instead, it requires that the cruiser to register his/her card shortly after embarkation. To make things worse, since the line is headquartered in Switzerland, one should bring a credit card that doesn't charge foreign transaction fees, as one might get nicked extra service charges on every shipboard debit made to one's account. (The big 3 "American" cruise lines all use American banks. so one doesn't have to worry about these fees when one is onboard the ship.)
I'll miss RQS on this cruise. But it'll be nice to travel as Marian again, and will be even nicer to see her when I get back to NYC....
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