We chose this cruise since we were going with a group of 22 people. Now the issues started since half the group was booked in Aurea and the other half in Yacht club. We booked far in advance so the difference in price was nominal but knowing what we know now, it would have been worth the upgrade to Yacht club. The biggest differences we noted was the priority elevator on the ship for Yacht club guests. Of course this is not all elevators but it helps when you are on a ship as frequent cruisers know on busy evenings. Priority exit and entry off the ship at most ports and when you exit your butler brings you down via a separate exit so you do not have to be jammed in line with everyone else. Slides are included in Yacht club not in Aurea. A larger selection of alcoholic beverages. The list just goes on and on. It would be nice if MSC would give travel agents all these details when they book the trip to avoid negative reviews OR at least post it on your website. We did check the online difference and all we saw was frivolous differences that were noted such as the quality of the pillows which for us was not important since we did not plan on spending our holiday sleeping.

Now this is definitely not a cruise for kids. We had kids on the cruise ranging from ages 10-16. All of them agreed that this cruise does not stand up to Norwegian or Royal Caribbean standards. Every time they went to join an activity such as basketball. The ball was never there and nobody was there to help them get a ball. Activities in teen/kids club were minimal and were not always done since staff would always have a poor excuse. Plus customer service is definitely not a high priority throughout the ship. We had 2 occasions where we ending up having to yell at onboard staff just to get issues they caused addressed. For example, our prepaid tour tickets were missing from our cabin the night before so we went down to retrieve them ourselves from the ticket counter. However, we pulled up to the counter at 11:00pm on the nose and the lady behind the counter did not even ask what our issue was. Immediately she said we are closed!! My husband said no you are not since we are missing tickets for our offshore excursion tomorrow morning. After a lot of back and forth someone finally took ownership of the situation and wrote us tickets for the next morning! We are so glad we insisted because of course every where we went the next morning they asked us for the tickets! Issue number 2, on our one sea day I was too ill in the morning to leave the cabin so we left late in the afternoon. We were going to enjoy some sun in the Aurea Lounge. However, little did we know the sun loungers in the Aurea section can be sold until they are full. This means if you prepaid for Aurea do not count on a seat unless you get out there early in the morning. Yacht club members access can also be bought same day but it is done so in smaller numbers. Any way once this happened to us in Aurea the guest services manager could not apologize enough. Really she was the only person onboard who cared about what image we would be left with. However, really it should not come down to this. You only get one chance to make a first impression and MSC failed us!! MSC ships sparkle but customer service is horrible in all areas. "All that glitters isn't gold!"