Who MSC is for
MSC Cruises is the cruise arm of Mediterranean Shipping Company, the largest container line in the world, and it is still owned outright by the Aponte family that founded it. It began in 1989 when Gianluigi Aponte bought the remains of the Lauro fleet and ran it as StarLauro; the MSC name went on the funnels in 1995. It is now the third-largest cruise company on earth, behind only Carnival Corporation and Royal Caribbean Group, and it got there by ordering ships continuously through periods when everyone else stopped.
The practical consequence for a passenger is that MSC’s fleet is young. A line that has taken delivery of a new ship almost every year for two decades has very little old tonnage to hide, and the ship you sail is likely to be five or ten years newer than the one a comparable fare buys elsewhere.
The other consequence is price. MSC is usually the cheapest lead-in fare in any market it enters, sometimes by a wide margin, and it uses that deliberately to buy market share. On a Mediterranean week the difference against an American line is not subtle.
It is a European line, and that is the thing to understand before booking. The crew and the passenger list are international, announcements are made in several languages, the buffet leans Italian rather than American, and the service style is more formal and less chatty than a US mass-market ship. Dinner is a real dinner and the coffee is good. Plenty of Americans love it. Some find it impersonal, and their reviews are the ones that drag the line’s US ratings down while its European ratings stay strong.
What to know before you book
The Yacht Club is the best thing MSC does. It is a keycard-gated neighborhood at the front of the ship with its own restaurant, lounge, sun deck and pool, its own concierge desk and a butler for every suite, and drinks are included inside it. It is a genuine ship-within-a-ship rather than a lounge and a bathrobe, and it competes with products costing considerably more. On a big MSC ship it converts a crowded vacation into a quiet one.
The low fare is a lead-in, not a total. Drinks packages, wi-fi, specialty dining and gratuities are all extra and are sold hard. A cruise-only MSC fare and an all-inclusive fare from another line are not the same product; price the week, not the headline.
Service consistency is the honest weak spot in North America. MSC’s US-based ships have a mixed reputation for embarkation, guest services and problem-solving in a way its European operation does not. It is improving and it is not universal, but it is real, and a traveler who expects a lot of hand-holding should factor it in.
Ocean Cay is worth the itinerary. The line’s private island in the Bahamas is a rehabilitated industrial sand-mining site, replanted and given a marine reserve around it, and it is a quieter and less commercial day than the private islands its competitors run. Ships stay late into the evening.