First time Cruising with MSC: On the Meraviglia

Aaron found us a rather last minute 4-day cruise aboard the MSC Meraviglia that fit conveniently within our stay at Sunshine Holiday Daytona, allowing us to just leave the RV parked and hooked up to utilities for the few days we were away.  An escape to a tropical paradise was just what we needed after the dreariness and stress surrounding Hurricane Nicole.

This was our first time aboard an MSC ship of any kind.  We had planned to cruise with MSC during the European expedition we planned for 2020 (which COVID cancelled), so we had a bit of cruise credit with MSC that we needed to use up.  Turns out, with MSC, you have to use all of your cruise credit in one go - you can't use part of it and then use the rest later...and since we had originally booked a 2 week cruise and were now looking at a 4 day cruise...we had a lot of credit to use up!  The representative we spoke to eagerly helped us with this, booking us on the top level room category (the 'Aurea' experience - which included drinks, wifi, and access to an exclusive area on the ship, among other things) and adding all sorts of drinks and fruit baskets in our room.  So we were doing MSC in nearly the top way that we could - exciting!

Sure enough, when we entered our stateroom, our desk was COVERED with food and drink - from the two bottles of wine and two baskets of fruit the representative had ordered us, plus another set we assume was either due to Aaron's status (MSC allowed him to transfer his top-level status from his hotel status he acquired when he used to travel every week for work), the Aurea experience itself, or something else we booked that we didn't fully understand.  We received ANOTHER bottle of wine, a plate of cookies, and chocolates the next day.  We just took all the wine bottles off the ship for consumption over Thanksgiving - since we had the drinks package - but did try very hard to eat all the food we couldn't take off the ship (we made a sizeable dent but sadly didn't quite finish everything).

The spread greeting us when we entered our room

Enjoying the quiet and serenity of the exclusive Aurea area of the ship

We had mixed feelings about our first-ever purchase of a drinks package.  On the one hand we appreciated being able to pick up Coke Zeros at will around the ship and ordering beverages from the strolling attendants who were always eager to grab us drinks.  It was also really nice to have on the private island, where we went 'bar hopping' all around the island.  However, we felt like we needed to get our money's worth out of the package, which meant we drank more than we really wanted to (and still failed to drink enough to make it worth it), and since the package only covered drinks up to $9, we weren't able to get some of the more fun looking drinks that cost $10 or $11...if we hadn't had the package, we would have just paid for the fun drinks, but since we had it, we couldn't see paying extra for drinks on the ship!  So we're glad we finally experienced what the drinks package was like, but will definitely never do it again.

A few cool things on the ship itself...first, this was the only stateroom we've been in that had buttons INSIDE the room where you could set yourself in or away...I mean, the buttons were labeled differently, but they were there to tell your stateroom attendant where you were so he knew if he could make up your room.  I love it!  They triggered a set of lights above the door that indicated whether the room was clean or dirty, whether you'd chosen do not disturb, or whether you'd indicated you were out and ready for your room to be made up.

The main inside promenade area of the ship had a cool LED display on the ceiling - it reminded us of the light canopy on the Fremont Street Experience in Las Vegas.  The ceiling alternated between different scenes throughout the day, and a few times a day would have a scheduled animated show (dinosaurs, famous ceilings, etc.).  It was unique and quite fun!  The main promenade shop also included a chocolate shop with some incredible chocolate sculptures.

Here the ceiling was showing the world
in cloud form

Aaron loves Moana so I had to get a 
photo of him with the chocolate sculpture 
of Maui from the film

The highlight of the cruise itinerary was a two-day stop at their private island, Ocean Cay.  This island has a neat history as MSC reclaimed it from industrial use and turned it into a natural paradise.  It is a TINY island and you can easily walk the whole thing in no time at all.  They have a nighttime light show on the lighthouse for ships that stay overnight (like ours).  It was all blissfully relaxing and beautiful.  This was the one time we really enjoyed having the drink package as we did kind of a 'bar crawl' to explore the various beautiful settings to sit and have a drink.  Our ship was only about half full, so we had as much privacy as we desired the whole time.  We did meet some like-minded passengers at one of the bars, who live in their RV as well but also try to cruise as much as possible! 

A view of one of the beaches

The lighthouse bar with a view of our ship

Aaron at the lighthouse bar

Light show on the lighthouse!  We watched from the beach.

Overall we had a great experience with MSC.  Being a European-based cruise line, it did have some quirks like a lack of flat sheet on the bed (Europeans only use duvets) and (bonus!) a distinct lack of tipping culture.  All the staff we encountered were helpful and friendly, the ship was fun, and we loved the private island.  We are curious though how we'll feel in the future with only the base level stateroom package...time will tell.