MSC Cruise out of Genoa to Civitavecchia, Palermo, Malta, Barcelona, Marseilles

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Boarding

The Yacht Club experience starts from the time you drop off your luggage. I made this video on the experience, right from dropping off the luggage, to the butler bring us to the check-in suite, to the check-in, to another butler leading us on board, to the YC concierge, and to yet another staff showing us around the Yacht Club. The check-in suite (only for YC guests) has small nibbles and drinks. I had a bubbly. Right from the start, they try to make you feel special. Very cool. Definitely a ship within a ship! Here is the video.

This picture shows you the nice layout of the small nibbles and drinks available at the check-in suite. I had some bubbly!

Great start to a cruise.

A model of the MSC Preziosa. She is the newest ship in the MSC fleet and is about 140,000GT. (In my mind, her size is similar to a Royal Caribbean Voyager Class vessel)

Once onboard, the butler brought us to the concierge at the Yacht Club. I had to register a credit card to open a shipboard account (for the gratuities and other incidental expenses).

I also get to choose a daily newspaper that would be printed and delivered to our cabin. Awesome! This is the list of newspapers. Rather comprehensive.

I asked whether they had papers from Singapore, and they did! So I chose the Singapore Straits Times. This was awesome because reading the papers allowed us to keep up with the news from home, despite being far away in the Western Med. We didn't purchase any Internet access on board, therefore we wouldn't be able to read it online. Anyway, to be able to read the papers in hardcopy, in the Top Sail lounge, was a very novel and heartwarming experience. See this video I made!

Entrance to the Top Sail lounge. A lovely haven on board.

As you can see in the earlier video, a staff member showed us around the Top Sail lounge. It was a gorgeous lounge, only for YC guests. We would spend quite a lot of time here. There was always something to eat. The challenge was to control one's calorie intake!

 

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MSC Preziosa Royal Suite 16008
Anyway, it was time to head over to our cabin, suite 16008. They called this the Royal Suite. I made a number of videos of the suite, but here is just two. They should show you what the suite is like.

The first video was made on the first day, I think the first time we entered the cabin. The butler told us that a bottle of champagne would be delivered later. I recall the cabin ready once we boarded, which was quite early, I think around 11am-ish. Anyway, even if the cabin wasn't ready, we wouldn't be too perturbed because there was a gorgeous Top Sail lounge to relax in, and the Suite restaurant would start her lunch service from noon.

Here is the first video.

This second video, taken a few days into the cruise, shows you the same cabin but it has been "lived in" for a bit. This time, you can hear me give you a verbal run through.

Here are some stills. The living area as you walk in. The sofa will become a double bed for the kids.

The main bedroom. The butler had left 2 life jackets for kids in the room.

Later in the afternoon, a nice bottle of champagne was delivered, in an ice bucket.

This photo is from the corner of the main bedroom, looking out into the living room. This perspective gives you a good idea of the size of the suite. Of course, there is still the balcony plus the walk-in closet area and toilet.

If you watch the videos of the suite, you will see that the bathroom can be access directly from the living area, without the need to enter the main bedroom. There is another door to the main bedroom. This design is good. We enjoyed the stay in this suite very much.

 

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Lunch - First time in La Palmeraie

It was time for lunch. The restaurant for YC guests was called La Palmeraie, located on Deck 15, at the aft of the ship. Now, this is definitely one bug bear for YC, which isn't going to change. All the YC facilities are located at the front of the ship, but the Suite restaurant is right at the aft.

Getting to the suite restaurant isn't that straightforward either. The concierge told us that a butler would bring us to the suite restaurant on the first evening (by that time we had already found our way there once for lunch). The route he took was to take the elevators down to Deck 7, then walk over to the aft via the public areas, and then take the elevator up again to Deck 15. Obviously, the process takes some time, as well as the wait for elevators, even though YC cards get priority on certain elevators (to the chagrin of many guests!)

My wife and kids called it the 'power of the YC card'. Basically, when you use your card to call the lift, (only at a certain lobby, towards the front), the lift comes to the floor that you call it from, overriding the other floors. The downside to this is that when the lift door opens, often you see a group of bewildered passengers, wondering why the lift went up to Deck 15 or 16 even though nobody pressed it. Worse, all their floor selection had been wiped out. Well, even though this gave us great fun to use sometimes, it could be awkward too. Imagine calling the lift from Deck 15, the door opens, and the lift is half full and all the numbers wiped out. You walk in and choose your floor. Every other pax in the lift will be looking at you with that deadly stare. Haha. Not very comfortable, in my opinion. So, after a while, unless we were in a huge hurry, we didn't use the card, or we just walked. Climbing stairs is a good way to exercise.

Coming back to how to get from the Yacht Club to the suite restaurant, ultimately, our preferred route would be to walk. We would go down 2 floors (from Deck 15 to Deck 13) and walk to the aft of the ship along the cabins, and then walk up the stairs to Deck 15 again when we reach the aft. The walk was good, at least it gave us more exercise.

This is the entrance to the restaurant.

This video shows you the menu for that lunch and the food we had. You could have as much or as little as you want. The main courses for today's lunch were Roasted Dover Sole Fillets (fish) and Filet Mignon with Porcini mushroom.

The food. Some salad.

My seafood soup.

The fish - dover fillets.

The filet mignon.

Check out the video for what else we had (I think desserts for sure). Also, note that even for lunch, most (if not all) the drinks that are available on the complimentary menu are available in the Suite restaurant. I will show you the menu for the complimentary YC drinks later.

First impressions? Very good. What I noticed was that the portion size (especially for the mains) seem to be significantly smaller than say on Royal Caribbean and other cruise lines we have been on.

The cooking style is also lighter,relying more on the ingredients and produce rather than heavy sauces. Personally, I prefer this style of cooking and the smaller portion sizes help control the food intake. If there is insufficient food, you can always order a double portion. That's what I did when I felt really greedy, like ordering 2 mains. Yeah, GO FOR IT!

 

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Lunch Buffet on embarkation day

Just one floor below the La Palmaraie restaurant, was the Inca/Maya buffet area on Deck 14. After the lunch, I walked down to the buffet to check out for ourselves what was offered for lunch. This was the first time we have stepped into this restaurant. Overall, I think the food selection is decent, with an emphasis towards Italian (plenty of pizza and pasta). I wouldn't mind having my lunch here.

Some stills. A cool display of bread. I didn't know whether these were real bread and I certainly didn't want to spoil them by touching them.

The buffet restaurant wasn't very crowded when we got there. The time would have been around 1:30pm.

Some pictures of the food available.

More food.

Desserts

Passengers enjoying the buffet. The buffet area is rather large. Even though the ship has many passengers, there looked to be sufficient space for all.

Since we are on the topic of buffets, check out this video I made of the buffet offerings at breakfast. I can't remember which day this was, but I assume the buffet breakfast would be similar (if not the same) every day.

 

[Magino]

Great to see a review of a cruise. It's going to be interesting to see what you thought about MSC as I do not know much about that cruise line.

 

[guitarsingapore]

Great to see a review of a cruise. It's going to be interesting to see what you thought about MSC as I do not know much about that cruise line.

We had a very good time on the cruise ship, but that is also because we stayed in the Yacht Club, which is MSC's premium product. More of the review coming up!

 

[MegaFlyer]

Jisses, good job in putting this review package together!

The newspaper list is amazing! How do they offer this service - onboard printing?

 

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Jisses, good job in putting this review package together!

The newspapar list is amazing! How do they offer this service - onboard printing?

Thanks. Yes, I was very impressed that I could get a newspaper from Singapore! Indeed, they print the newspaper on board.

 

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First day, after lunch.

We were quite full from lunch. It was time to take a walk to explore more of the ship. We walked around a bit, but I didn't take many photos. Maybe I was too full. But I guess we were just happy to be on board and knowing that there will be more time later, let me just relax for now. Taking all these videos and pictures is quite a lot of work, but I enjoy it.

And relax we did. We decided to get some drinks in the Top Sail. Earlier on, while we were shown around the Top Sail lounge, we didn't eat anything. So now's the time. I know this sounds snobby but stepping back into the Yacht Club area from the public areas of the ship somehow makes us feel 'special'. Haha. I had to educate my kids that this is a treat for the family and not to be taken as the norm. Thankfully, we can afford this luxury, if only for 7 Nights.

Here are two videos of our first experience in the Top Sail lounge. This video shows you the drinks menu.

This video shows you the food available in the Top Sail lounge, this was early afternoon.

In case you are wondering which beers were available (included in the YC package), here they are. Screengrab from the video. Sorry, a bit blur, I didn't realise that the light was so dim that my camera couldn't focus clearly on the words. But should be able to figure out. Not all the brands were familiar to me though.

The lounge was very quiet at this time. Felt very exclusive.

 

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THE ONE POOL
Alright, we have seen the Top Sail Lounge. What about the private pool? Let's go check it out. They call it, the ONE POOL. The name puzzled me a bit. Why call it the ONE pool? Anyway, the pool area for YC was contained within the YC itself. Access if via an internal elevator within the YC, or stairs from one side (I think left side) in Deck 16 on the MSC Preziosa. You can also enter the One Pool area from the public pool area, walking towards the front of the ship from Deck 15.

Well, it is true that they have only one swimming pool, which looks like this. It is not very large, the pool in Solarium is far larger, however, I guess you can't expect MSC to devote too much space for Yacht Club. I know the weather was a bit gloomy, but hey, this was in December and it was a cloudy day and it rained too. Other than the pool, there were two hot tubs, which were fairly popular during the cruise.

This is the bar and buffet area, looking from the pool.

Here is a video I took on this visit. It does look dark and gloomy. Don't worry, I will brighter photos and video footage from the One Pool later during this cruise.

After our brief visit to the One Pool, it was time to explore other areas of the ship. The ship was new to us, so everything was pretty novel. This picture shows the piano at the atrium.

The atrium was a very lively place. Compared to other ships I have been on (especially those in the Royal Caribbean fleet), this atrium isn't very big. However, it is rather stylish. The ship's designers used plenty of Swarovski silver crystals on the staircases, giving the Atrium a very glittery silver feel.

Registration for the kids' club onboard MSC Preziosa. It turned out that my kids were not interested to join the kid's club, so we didn't force them. They entertained themselves in our suite.

A short video clip of the atrium. Lots of activity and people walking around.

The cruise consultant's desk.

We knew that with the YC Suite restaurant, we would not be dining at the Main Dining Room. But I decided that I should try to take photos of their menus if I had the chance, for my own reference, and also to share here. So here is the dinner menu for the MDR on our first day.

Apologies I only took the first page of the two page menu, so you can't see the desserts. Not sure what I was thinking, but at least I got one page quite clearly. For the mains, you had cod, veal, turkey escalope and a vegetarian option.