With great food, good company, and a few surprises, a first-time cruiser gets a taste of the high seas. Photo / MSC Meraviglia
With great food, good company, and a few surprises, a first-time cruiser gets a taste of the high seas. Photo / MSC Meraviglia
From non-stop buffets to Broadway shows and an unexpected ‘code red’ on the high seas, eight days aboard MSC Meraviglia is anything but ordinary for novice cruise-goer, Matt Martel
The first few hours on a cruise ship are a loud, emotional display of first-day-of-school jittery nerves as grown adults attempt to find their rooms and navigate the numerous bars and the massive buffet.
At least, that is what I did.
I’m not alone in this. Beers start about 1pm and mojitos not long after. At 5pm I’m drinking a blue cocktail made of sugar and god knows what in something called the Panorama bar. Dinner, with wine, is at 7pm and bed is about 9pm. I wake at 1am to listen to the ocean waves.
Welcome aboard the MSC Meraviglia, a 171,598-tonne floating city cruising from New York to the Bahamas.
On my first full day, breakfast is served in the cabin before a ship’s tour consisting of several impressive numbers: 1036 staff on board “here to make sure you have the best time possible” (those who interact with guests are required to know at least four languages), 5000 guests and 61,000 crystals in the Swarovski staircases.
The MSC Meraviglia weighs a massive 171,598 tons and carries over 5,000 guests. Photo / MSC Meraviglia
Buried in the ship is a 96m promenade with two storeys of restaurants and boutiques on either side. It has a curved screen for a roof that displays scenes a bit like in Harry Potter.
With a steel drum band playing and lots of talking, it is a loud environment. At one end, manly men attempt to break some sort of Guinness world record for pulling a heavy rope off a spool. One of our party, a cop, manages to do it in 58 seconds and is temporarily second best. In another area, parents and kids try to beat the record for most throws of a beachball. No Guinness records are at risk of being broken today.
MSC has 22 cruise ships, with more on the way, and about 800 container ships. The family-owned company controls 20% of global shipping container capacity and has 200,000 employees. It plans to be carbon neutral by 2050.
As well as the locations of many of the 20 bars/restaurants and two big theatres, I learn children travel free on many cruises and solo parents with a kid get a discount, rather than paying for two adult tickets or a room supplement. On cruises 10 days or fewer, there’s no minimum age for children. The youngsters get a lot of activities, including various clubs depending on age group. Teens get a space with bean bags, good Wi-Fi and screens – just like home.
Staff will pick your kids up from dinner and babysit as late as 2am. You’d hardly have to see them.
MSC offers discounts for solo parents travelling with kids, making family cruises more affordable. Photo / MSC Meraviglia
One of the surprises of going on an eight-day cruise is that you are forced to just stop. Generally, there’s no sightseeing to be done. There are no chores. You can just unwind and listen to the waves, or percolate in the sauna. Fancy a beer and a swim at 10am? No problem. Want to stay up late watching shows or taking part in trivia nights? Come right in. You are welcome.
I spend an unconscionable amount of time in bed with the balcony door open and the constant noise of the ocean hitting the ship as it slices through the sea. It is about 25C most of the time, with calm sailing. I relax.
We’ll stop at Cape Canaveral and Ocean Cay, the latter of which MSC went to the trouble of buying so it could offer its cruise-goers an island where locals don’t get annoyed by relentless cruise ship visits.
MSC Meraviglia (Italian for ‘wonder’) is a complete world. It has 2214 rooms, bars and restaurants tailored to every interest, three pools, a waterslide, and two theatres. One plays Broadway shows and the other has a Cirque du Soleil-like experience called Carousel.
In the Broadway theatre, we watch a show called Journeys, an uptempo 50-minute song and dance routine featuring old-time hits from Europe – a journey across the continent through music. Eleven energetic dancers and singers gave it their all with everything from Danny Boy to a Moulin Rouge high-kick routine.
The next night I see a show called House of Houdini. The act’s highlight is a super buff guy hanging off a rubber rope doing high-speed spins. It is truly impressive, but weirdly all any of the women in my group could talk about afterwards was how good-looking (and buff) the man was. The singing was also great – a string of hits worthy of Pitch Perfect (and that’s not a complaint).
It may be a European company operating in the Bahamas, but portions are definitely USA-style. At the onboard steak house Butcher’s Cut, I order a 28-day-aged bison steak, served with mac and cheese and a variety of sauces. It is a serious piece of meat and I manage to eat about two-thirds of it. The steak was well-cooked and tasted like a leaner version of beef. The next night we have teppanyaki, followed a day later by specialty seafood.
Buffet meals are included in the price, with a supplement charged for the individual restaurants. They are all busy, but you could quite happily eat at the buffet for a week. The problem is always just eating too much. MSC being an Italian firm, the pizza was excellent.
MSC Meraviglia Aurea Spa. Photo / MSC Meraviglia
I loved meeting people from all over the world, but especially the diversity of Americans. From Kyle and Niles from Omaha to prison guards from Pennsylvania and a Dominican guy from New York, who doesn’t drink or eat gluten.
The Penn guys love cruising. They’ve done more than a dozen. This one was US$850 including drinks. But parking at the port was nearly as much as the cruise. Next time they’ll work something different out. Nice guys.
The drinks here are not standard pours. They are “American pours”, from the bottle with no measurer, which means you can easily find themselves five negronis deep chatting to people from around the world about life or politics while eating buffet pizza at 1am. That is the magic (and misery) of a cruising holiday. It gets you out of your zone.
On this cruise, drinks were served “American-style”—straight from the bottle, no measurer. Photo / MSC Meraviglia
I’m told a few times that you are either cruise people or you are going to be cruise people. So many of those I talk to go on many, many cruises. They knowledgeably discuss the merits of pricing strategies, ships and companies and everyone I spoke to said MSC was best for them. Plenty of people were doing the same cruise next week – they won’t even get off when we get back to New York. Others have cruises booked for months ahead. It is a way of life for them – a cheap-ish all-ages holiday and escape from the grind. These are cruise people.
Sadly, I do not think I am cruise people, but I adore those who are. They’ve found their thing and it involves lounging in the sun with a cold cocktail, enjoying an abundance of dining options or other, less expected activities.. One guy I spoke to, a chef from Washington DC, booked a follow-up cruise for next month so he can have another go at the rope pull challenge on the Guinness Book of Records Day. He did it in 58 seconds. The world record is 31 seconds. He is going to be taking a lot of cruises.
The ins and outs of an off-ship excursion
My excursion from Florida’s Port Canaveral is a two-hour kayak trip in the brackish waters of the Indian River Lagoon State Park. We’re searching for manatees and the small local dolphins that live in the large estuary and never head to sea as abundant fish life means they don’t have to. We don’t see manatee, though in days previously there had been eight in the area, but we see plenty of dolphins close to our kayaks, as well as huge grey herons, diving osprey and other bird life. It is a lovely antidote to the hustle and bustle of the ship.
The water is mostly calm, but choppy as we get further out. It feels good to be doing something physical after days onboard. True, I could have used the gym, but who wants to do that on holiday?
On return to Meriglivia, we’re informed that a rocket will launch that afternoon from the Kennedy Space Centre not too far from our dock. While I wait, I photograph the hundreds of birds that circle overhead including more pelicans than I’ve seen anywhere.
The rocket is from Elon Musk’s SpaceX and carries his Starlink satellites. Although the rocket itself is little more than a speck, the flames trailing behind it are spectacular as it quickly raises and arcs overhead, before disappearing into the atmosphere. The noise arrives about 10 seconds after launch and it is as good as the visuals.
MSC Meraviglia has its own private island, Ocean Cay, restored from an abandoned sand mine. Photo / MSC Meraviglia
The next stop is Ocean Cay, a 42ha island MSC purchased in 2015 and docks at six times a week. It was an abandoned sand mine and MSC removed more than 6000 tonnes of derelict equipment and gear, as well as fixing contaminated soil and other environmental dangers in a US$200 million restoration project.
They’ve gone far beyond just writing a cheque to get a permanent base. They’ve planted 75,000 plants and shrubs and 5000 trees. Millions have been invested to create what will be an eco-sanctuary with significant local involvement and outreach. Ecologist Owen O’Shea has worked with a team to build coral nurseries offshore that will allow for future significant amounts of coral reef. Once coral is split and seeded it “grows like weeds”, he says.
O’Shea’s team is also identifying the specific coral that is less susceptible to warming oceans to create future resilience. More than 400 individual hard coral colonies were relocated from the debris littering the island’s coast.
Later this year, a public eco centre will open on the island to give visitors an easy way to experience and learn from O’Shea’s work. His vision, and that of the MSC Foundation, is for Bahamian teens and students to be able to come to the island to learn conservation techniques to benefit the whole country, which is already the world’s biggest shark sanctuary.
Ocean Cay. Photo / MSC Meraviglia
For now, Ocean Cay is a tropical paradise that you can circumnavigate in under an hour. It has plenty of safe swimming beaches, food venues and excursion opportunities. Your ship food and Wi-Fi packages work here, too.
Since the afforestation started, back in 2016, the island has begun attracting more and more wildlife, such as nesting turtles and abundant birdlife. Somehow, green iguanas have also made it to shore and are now plentiful in numbers. However, these cuties are an invasive species and local staff are working out the best way to remove them before their numbers are too large.
Details
For more information about the MSC Meraviglia and other MSC cruises, visit msccruises.co.nz
