Well, day three on my sojourn to southern climes in search of the allusive sun that has been a mark of the Scottish summer up to
now.
Today is our first land fall and it is La Caruna in northern Spain. A lovely, clean city which is a pleasure to wander through its well laid out grid formation of streets.
Just sitting at a streetside cafe having the obligatory capachino and having a long hard think about the cruise up to now.
I had my reservations about MSC based on two previous cruises on their ships some years ago but I had been swayed by several good reviews by seasoned cruisers, and therefore my present contemplation of the days ahead.
One thing I am at least sure of and that is that I won’t be on another MSC cruise. My present conundrum is whether to continue with this one in the hope that it might improve, or to make arrangements to head home when we reach Malaga on Thursday.
Several things have come together in the past couple of days which has made me reconsider the wisdom of once again trying MSC.
The Virtuoso is a huge ship with more than 6000 guests , it is a vacation factory and is run much in the same way as a factory with the guests the production line attendants, the products which come down the line , the components that go to make up a cruise vacation such as food, drink, entertainment.
The production line is designed to entice you to spend additional money on additional products , not to enhance your experience, but to make it more tolerable.
The whole ship is digitalised to the extreme, to the point that there are no menus or price lists and you have to be technologically savvy in order to function as a vacation participant.
It is as though the MSC management have employed AI software under instruction to design a cruise scenario to maximise profit without consideration for Age, digital savvy, good honest service , or indeed, good old fissioned one to one service.
A couple of examples of this are, I always purchase a full cruise internet package as I write a couple of blogs. I alternate this package between my phone and my laptop, so I always buy a single d device package and alternate between both devices. In this ship I can’t do that as I would have to buy two packages even although I would only be using the exact same amount of WiFi units. A single package costs £190.
Yesterday at lunch I ordered a main course and a desert. After a considerable time the desert arrived. I explained to the waiter that I had ordered a main course and he argued that I had not. I simply got up and walked out.
It is things like that that spoil a cruise and therefore why I am considering cutting short the trip and leaving the ship in Malaga and heading home.
I wouldn’t recommend MSC to anyone unless they are looking for an experience like entering the Matrix 🙂
A few photos of La Caruna including one if Joe Biden and Donald Trump . Guess which one.
Bob Costello 