MSC Lirica Review

Wasted Potential

Review for the Southern Caribbean Cruise on MSC Lirica
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daveco58
First Time Cruiser • Age 60s

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Sail Date: Mar 2009

I am just going to give an overview of my recent 10 day Caribbean sailing on the MSC Lirica. For those who might be interested in more day to day detail, I wrote a live daily review, and you can view it here: http://www.boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=941026

First to give credit where it is due, the ship is maintained beautifully, and there was no hint that she is six years old, although the basic design is older than that, and from the wheelchair accessibility angle, definitely a generation (or two) behind current cruise ships. Every threshold is square, and most quite tall, making any navigation around the ship painful. Doors in several areas, and the elevators, are barely wide enough for a wheelchair, and as a result, after only 10 days the rims on my brothers chair are dinged up badly, and the wheels are actually loose, and need maintenance (it is a nearly new chair). Likewise, debarking the ship (from a separate but equal ramp down one deck from where the able bodied have a staircase)in most ports required 4 steps at the end of the ramp, which is just silly, because 4 steps or a hundred is no different if you can't negotiate even one. And apparently no one in this 400 ship company is aware that the problem is solved with A LONGER RAMP! It's not rocket science, but it is pretty simple physics. So, no matter what this line and ship have to recommend it, if you are disabled STAY AWAY!!!

Also, the front line staff (stewards, dining room and bar staff, etc), as with most lines are some pretty great, hard working, eager to please folks. There is, though, a palpable tension between the front liner's and the supervisors, who are uniformly haughty and arrogant, both with passengers and with the staff they supervise. One "for instance" - the gentleman assigned to assist wheelies and slow-walkers, etc, off the ship, a great guy from Montenegro whose name I will not even try to spell was GREAT!!! He was friendly, never seemed to mind the extra work his employer was putting him up to, etc. The boss man at the top of the gangplank was a different story. After making a comment about how silly it was to have steps at the end of the ramp, he replied to me in his best practiced sneer "Don't worry, we are professionals!", to which I could not help but reply "Maybe you should go to work for Carnival or something, so you would know what that means".

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