This was a 7 night cruise and not 5 as stated above. Having been on Royal Caribbean and Princess I was expecting a similar experience on MSC but with more sparkle. The ship was beautifully decorated and very sparkly but I would not choose MSC over other cruise lines again.

Embarkation was quite chaotic. It wasn't clear where to drop bags and people were queuing for ages outside in the boiling sun. I was lucky to get in the cruise terminal but had to sit on the floor for 2 hours to await boarding. Our room was a bit smaller than on other cruises we had been on, despite having a balcony, and we were given bunk beds for our children despite stating when we booked these were not suitable. We were told there was nothing that could be done so we made do. Our son was old enough to use the top bunk but to our horror the beds collapsed with him on top and the top bunk fell down. He was very shaken. We were lucky our daughter hadn't climbed in the bottom bunk. We complained but were told there were no other rooms for us. Our only option was for our son to sleep on a mattress on the floor and our daughter slept in our bed. There was no way we were going to use the bunk beds. We discovered later that there was a lock on the side and this had obviously not been put in place.

The beds were also left out the whole time so we had no settee to sit on. On other ships the bed settee was always converted back and set up again in the evening. Our room felt very cramped because of this especially for 4 of us. Read more