I am planning on going on a Mediterranean Cruise with MSC Orchestra. It's a new ship. Has anyone been on it?

i have been on the opera and melody both fantastic so you will have no problems on the new ship except the announcements being in about 6 different langs and english is always last as not many brits on the ship

Hi! Just got back from the MSC Orchestra going out of Venice. The ship is just beautiful and the cabins are larger and better situated than the other cruise lines that I've been on. Being an American, I felt kind of "left out" on this cruise since 90% of the travelers were European.

The food in the dining room was not as good as the other lines. The seafood items were very fishy, the meats were overcooked, and the desserts were disappointing. The pastas and soups were good, so that's what we mostly ate. The food at the buffet upstairs was pretty decent, but it was the same items everyday. Also, the buffet is not available for dinner.

The daily night shows were fantastic and were 30-40 minutes long. The bar areas were beautiful and the disco are was pretty cool. I guess the Europeans like to sun bathe since every single deck chairs at two levels were taken every single day! And old fat men in speedos were not fun, especially when they come into the buffet area in their speedos.

The price that we paid for this cruise was excellent, but the food quality was awful. Our nightly joke as we went into dinner was, "Let's see how bad our entrees are today." Oh, and they only had goat milk for the coffee. The daily activity was almost non-existent, and we went to two quizzes and we were the only ones there.

All of the dining room staff and cabin stewards speak excellent English, but many of the front desk people don't, which made it frustrating to try to figure out where and what to do (but we understood that we were in their turf).

Overall, the ship was spacious, beautiful, and well run. The negative was the bad dining room food and it being too crowded at the upper decks.

Thanks Anne, for your feedback. I am leaving on August 3rd on the MSC Orchestra. I hope the food will be better.