Cabins 9003 and 9006 are special Family Cabins, and we were fortunate to grab one. These cabins are really two-room suites, but they are priced the same as other Oceanview staterooms.

In addition to the typical space for an Oceanview, there is a separate adjoining room that's about 65% the size of the original room (you can see the layout here: https://www.cruisemapper.com/cabins/MSC-Armonia-607). The second room is essentially the same size as the original room, minus the bathroom. Both rooms have a window (one out the side, and the other with an obstructed view out the front), and both rooms have closets.

The main room has a hide-a-bed sofa, and the second room has two twin beds (mergable into a queen) and a bunk bed. We chose to have the parents in the sofa, and the kids in the twin beds in the second room. The sofa bed wasn't as comfortable for the adults as the queen bed would have been, but we chose this option for privacy.

We talked to the head of Customer Relations at the Meet & Mingle Party (https://www.cruisecritic.com/rollcall/), and he said that they used to market these cabins as special inside suites, but passengers complained about the lack of a balcony. So, now they are just marketed and priced as Oceanviews. They are so much more than a typical cabin, though.

The only downside for the cabin is that the shower is _tiny_, but that would be true of any cabin (oh, and the hideabed sofa needs new cushions).

Grab one of these if you can. The availability (combined with 100% initial refundability of the deposit) is why we signed up.

Getting to Cuba is more involved that getting to the other countries. There's a $75/person visa to enter the country. The visa forms were delivered to the cabins, and the fee was charged automatically. If we hadn't wanted to use it, we could have turned the forms in for a refund, but only if the forms were not altered in any way - an accidental pen mark would be a $75 pen mark. And if you messed up the forms at all (by using a date format like 12 25 2000 instead of the Cuban format of 25 12 2000), you've have to pay for a brand new form. When we actually disembarked the first time, it was with the mad rush of hundreds of people, and we had to wait in line for about an hour, get our passports stamped, and then we were able to enter Cuba. Every time after that, we would just say "we've been off the ship before," and they would wave us through without looking at our passport. I'm not saying that you wouldn't necessarily need the visa if you just waited until the initial crush was complete, but it's possible.

That was the Cuban side - there was also additional bureaucracy on the American side. Before we arrived, the Cruise Director had a meeting in which he said that he knew we might have heard online (like on these boards) that cruise excursions weren't necessary, but the only way he knew for sure that we wouldn't have problems re-entering the US would be if we bought an excursion from them and showed our ticket stub to US Customs and immigration. Well, we didn't do that. Instead, we bought a 3-hour walking tour of the Old City and a 4-hour driving tour of the rest of the city from havanacar.net (the guide was better with the car than with the walk), and we didn't have that ticket stub. Havanacar recommended that we enter "Support for the Cuban People" on our form at embarkation, so that's what we entered as we boarded, and we never saw the form again. And when we left the ship in Miami, the Customs agent just waved us through when we said we had nothing to declare, and the immigration agent looked at our passport and welcomed us back.

So, in practice, there were no US restrictions on us at all. I'm not saying that everyone would have the same experience (we're a white family - maybe that helped; this happened during the partial government shutdown - maybe that had an effect), but we had nothing to worry about.

For the visit to Havana itself, we had a great time. Unlike many Caribbean stops, Havana is a real city. It has 2 million people and 500 years of history. There's a lot of real local culture there. We were lucky that our overnight coincided with a free performance by the National Symphonic Orchestra of Cuba in San Francisco Plaza, and we loved watching the Cuban audience sway and dance with the music, even though we didn't know the music ourselves. Havana could easily be a place to visit for a week-long trip later on.

which was the only stop we'd visited on previous cruises. It was also the only stop on which we bought a ship excurion - a trip to the Tulum ruins. We went with the ship on that one because the logistics of getting to Tulum were more complicated (two ferry rides and two bus rides), and we didn't want to risk being independent of the ship's responsibility for that. We were in the first group to leave the ship, the first ferry to the mainland, and the last ferry back to Cozumel - it really was a full day. The excursion itself was pretty good, with information about the Mayans and the site. We had time to use the beach, but the lack of a changing facility and the crowded beach dissuaded us. The only (minor) downside was the attempt by the guide to sell us customized Mayan jewelry.

We booked an independent Stingray cruise with Captain Marvin's Watersports, and it went really well (and was cheaper than what the ship offered). We had booked a 10:30 outing because we didn't know when the ship would get in, but we were able to tender to the island by 8, and thus switch to the 8:30 trip instead. We really enjoyed meeting and feeding a large ray at the sandbar and then snorkeling at the reef.

The first stop was supposed to be Montego Bay, Jamaica, but they announced the day before that we were going to Ocho Rios, instead. We didn't care, because we didn't have anything planned for that day. When we got there, we disembarked, walked through the gauntlet of taxi drivers, explored the tourist fake town a bit, and then found another taxi driver to take us to the Blue Hole (a series of waterfalls on the White River with places to play in the water). Everything (taxi drivers and Lonely Planet) said that the entrance fee would be $10, but it was $15 instead - we barely had enough cash on hand for that and for the driver. But it was a fun time there, and a decent exposure to Jamaicans having Boxing Day fun.

We drove to the Terminal, parked in the garage, and embarked. And at the end, we went directly to the car and drove away. We did nothing in Miami except spend $22/day at the parking garage.

Other parking options are cheaper, but this seemed safer.

Miami

So, besides popping our heads into the room once on the first day and seeing kids dressed up for Christmas at the end of the cruise, we didn't experience it at all.We were in the first group to leave the ship, the first ferry to the mainland, and the last ferry back to Cozumel - it really was a full day.

MSC Armonia Review

Good value for Cuba cruise, especially in a Family Cabin

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Oceanview Stateroom

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