Thought it best to start with a bit of background. I have previously cruised with P&O, Royal Caribbean, Thomson and NCL. I saw this cruise with MSC come up and for the price of a balcony I couldn't resist trying out MSC. I did quite a bit of research so was prepared for the mix of europeans on board which was not a problem for us at all. Myself and my husband did a week around Northern Europe on the 20th September. I was a bit worried by some of the bad reviews and I know the same cruise which was two weeks previous to ours had a nightmare with stopping at ports of call, arriving back late to Southampton etc so I was preparing myself for the chaos.... which fortunately we did not encounter too much of!

Embarkation

We were given an embarkation time of 1pm. We got to the port at Southampton, straight through security and then we were given a number and had to wait to be called. It didn't take too long however when our number was called and we went through the next bit of check in there was quite a queue and wait to get on the ship. Read more