We sold our house in Canada so that we could travel the world by cruise ships. Our intention is that we could see the world, and report to our followers about the great itineraries, and different ships that are available to travel the world.
This blog is about the MSC Fantasia. We boarded it in mid October, 2023 in Barcelona. We will briefly cover what we loved, and what we didn’t love, and get to more specifics in some of our videos found on our YouTube channel.
BOARDING THE MSC FANTASIA
We were assigned a window of time from 11 am to 12 pm on the day of our boarding. It was pretty easy to get there on time as we were walking from terminal E to terminal A in the same cruise port in Barcelona. The MSC boards and disembarks people in every single port, so it isn’t like they board thousands of people at once. It was pretty quick overall, and relatively pain free. The rooms weren’t ready, so we wandered around the ship for a few hours before unloading our hand luggage.
One thing that we were expecting was a welcome drink, and a welcome package for being GOLD MEMBERS on this cruise line. MSC is a cruise line that matches your status with other cruise lines, like Princess Cruises, and gives you a few perks that generally show you that you are a valued passenger.
We never did get our welcome drink, and we never did get any kind of welcome package or any information about our status match. In general, other than having a GOLD colored MSC card, we didn’t get to embark or disembark early, we didn’t get the drink that we mentioned, and we didn’t get any other discount or special anything. I actually DID go to the reception and ask about the welcome drink that I was told that I would get when we booked this trip, and she said that I will get a special invitation.
This is one thing that I really found with MSC Fantasia, is that they love to talk and make up stories, and then they don’t follow through or provide resolution.
THE MSC FANTASIA BALCONY STATEROOM 11198
The stateroom was a decent size overall. It had a queen size bed, 2 end tables on either side of the bed, a small desk with a chair, table and mirror, a TV, a lamp, and a couch. The bed was two singles that were pushed together, which is pretty standard on cruise ships, but the two beds hand a huge dip in the middle that caused us to both slide into the middle. It was a challenge actually to get to our own side of the bed at night!
For the most part, the room was pretty comfortable, until we got new neighbours on the third day of our cruise. Sadly, this ship attracts a lot of large groups of people, whether they are family or friends… Regardless, they ALL like to hang out on one balcony, and for us, it turned out that we were the unlucky neighbours… on both sides! We had a large balcony, and our neighbours had the same style, so we noticed that all of their chairs from inside their room would come out to the balcony, so that groups of 6 or more of them could talk loudly with one another, and smoke.
I think that the whole ship experience, especially in the privacy of our own room, would have been a lot better with a different clientele of people. This room, although it was nice, (you can see the room tour on YouTube), it was just really loud and smoky giving us no chance to unwind and relax.
THE MSC FANTASIA BATHROOM
The bathroom was a good size, and was well lit. There was a lack of hot water in this room. The first day that we were in the room, we had NO hot water, and I was wondering if we were going to have to change rooms, as it barely got luke-warm after running the water for so long. The hot water got better by day 4, and we were able to have our first COMPLETELY hot water shower for the first time. If you are ever staying in on this ship, please note that they do have shampoo and body soap, but no conditioner or lotion.
THE MSC FANTASIA BALCONY
Our stateroom was fairly large. We purposely purchased this room because of the angle of the balcony. The glass is clear, and therefore, you get an amazing view of outside from inside your room!
What we DIDN’T like about the balcony is the fact that it seems that EVERYONE on the ship smokes on their balcony. There are signs and videos all over the ship asking people not to smoke, but everyone does. We constantly had to run into our own room and close the door, because it was pretty overwhelming.
The ship does NOTHING about the smoking, and they do not enforce their own rules about no smoking on balconies. It is just unfortunate that as a non-smoker, there is almost nowhere to go without being affected by all of the smoke on this ship.
OUR OBSERVATIONS OF THE MSC FANTASIA
Overall, there were a handful of good moments and then the rest of the time was pretty uneventful and frustrating. Please keep in mind that the are only OUR opinions about OUR experience on the MSC FANTASIA while onboard, and also it is our opinion of coming from primarily north American ships.
1. The MSC Fantasia is a cheap cruise, and it attracts lots of families and groups of friends traveling together because it is so affordable. We found a lot of kids on this ship, and a few babies. We also noted that there were packs of friends all in the same room, for instance, there were a few groups of guys and men just hanging out on their balcony calling out to people. I guess it is a pro that MSC makes it affordable for everyone to travel together! 2. Compared to other cruise lines, considering the amount of people on this ship, there are not too many fun things to do. They have a show, and a disco at night, but honestly, unless you want to learn to dance within a large pushy group, or sit in a crowded hot tub, there isn’t anything much to do.
3. One big difference between a lot of the ships that we have been on, and the MSC Fantasia, is that they have people embarking and disembarking at every single port. The rotation of passengers is always different! It’s a large ship and it holds over 4300 passengers and 1300 crew. Despite the size, the ship didn’t feel as stable or as smooth as other large ships. We felt the ship rock a lot during the day and night.
4. The MSC Fantasia is money hungry. The prices of onboard merchandise seemed more expensive than other cruise lines that we have been on. We literally just got off another ship, and the exact same things in the ship’s stores were more than double in price on the MSC Fantasia. ALSO, MSC Fantasia will make sure to get its money for ANYTHING… One night, our new waiter opened a bottle of wine for us before he had realized that we wanted another kind of wine. Because he opened it, he told us he would be charged for the bottle. Obviously, I felt like we had to purchase the wine as well as the other one that we ordered so that he wouldn’t get penalized… but I don’t think that the waiter should have felt threatened by his manager for an innocent mistake.
5. The ship is well over 20 years old, and you can tell. There were many parts of the ship where it smelled like old smoke, and other parts that smelled like urine. The public washrooms were never really cleaned. The restaurant chairs, if you managed to find a table, usually had crumbs or other food all over them, and the overall sense was that the workers were just overworked.
ENTERTAINMENT ON THE MSC FANTASIA
The shows in the theatre were definitely worth going to. The theatre has a great layout, a great sound system, and really great entertainers. We liked the shows overall.
The MSC Fantasia has a wonderful theatre with an amazing layout. Every single seat was comfortable and offered a good sight line to the stage. The sound system is really good, the entertainers are talented and professional, and the shows were overall pretty great. I think that the shows and the theatre were a highlight of the cruise.
THE VEGAN FOOD ON THE MSC FANTASIA
The MSC Fantasia has a vegan main dish in their regular menu. There is no appetizer option for vegans though. It was nice to have the vegan option in the same menu, as we didn’t feel out of place asking for something different or waiting for another menu to be produced for us.
The other good thing about the dinner menu is that they always had pasta and steamed vegetables available, so if you didn’t like the vegan option, you could always select that option.
The Buffet was pretty incredible though. There were so many options for vegans, that you could almost not believe it. There was cheese-less pizza, salad, a whole Vegetarian section, ethnic, Mediterranean choices, and so much more. The challenge actually was trying not to over eat, because you would want to sample EVERTHING.
The food was really good. It was creative, and it was never the same thing. They had chefs who knew exactly what we could and couldn’t eat, and there was absolutely no problem at all finding anything to eat.
In my opinion, the food was very good, and if I could dare say it, I think that the vegan options and food quality on this ship has been our favorite out of ALL ships we have ever been on.
We ended up having a dinner service at a table for 6. The experience was better than expected, as we had exceptional table mates. The restaurant was divided into two timings, and you are not allowed to be more than 15 minutes late or you will not be able to join your table.
TORI'S TIPS REGARDING THE MSC FANTASIA
1. The MSC Cruise Line matches your status on certain cruise lines. Not that the MSC Fantasia actually DID anything in this case, but we were supposed to get a free drink; a free thermal spa visit; priority embarking and disembarking, and a couple of other bonuses. I suppose if we were on a different ship with better customer service, or on a ship with a longer itinerary, this wouldn’t have been overlooked. At any rate, if you have a high status on another cruise line, you may get lucky and actually get the perks!
2. MSC Cruise line also gives a bit of a discount to some service people. For example, in my case, I was a high school teacher in Toronto. All I had to do was produce evidence of this, and we got a discount on the cruise.
3. MSC uses the old style of cruise card that you can not punch a hole into. You should bring or purchase a lanyard to hold your card!
4. MSC uses Starlink for their internet, but in our case, the internet was VERY unreliable. It didn’t work at all for one of our 6 days, and it constantly booted us off… Even after calling for customer service, nobody seemed to care. They just kept saying that it would turn back on soon… but it was frustrating overall.
5. The MSC Fantasia is a heavily smoking ship. Everyone seems to disregard the rules about smoking on balconies. So, just beware of this. They make the rules, but don’t enforce it.
6. There is no information, or any real customer service. For example, we would call down to reception and nobody would answer… we would go to reception and nobody would be there… we would ask questions, and we would get a made-up story… we had no information about disembarking until an hour before we were to leave our bags outside the door. It was just like we were just a couple of people in a hotel room, not really connected to the experience of the ship. We have never felt so disconnected from a ship before.
IN SUMMARY ABOUT THE MSC FANTASIA
As I had already stated before, I honestly believe that if this ship were travelling with a different clientele, it would have been a lot better. I believe that if this ship were in traveling in North America, we wouldn’t have been exposed to so much smoking, or so many pushy people. There were people who literally just stood in front of elevator doors and wouldn’t move out of the way, there were people who would stand at the food in the buffet and eat from it as if the buffet itself were their own plate, and there were people who would step in front of you as if you didn’t exist!
Overall, this particular ship and itinerary exceeded the capacity, and it just always felt full, packed, pushy, and not comfortable. There was nowhere to go to escape the crowds or the smoke.
I guess we got what we paid for. We were in a large balcony room, and the cost was $1300 US for the two of us for 6 days. Like I said, it would have been a lot better if we could USE the balcony comfortably. To be honest, it was the first time we were excited about LEAVING a ship.
We have been on other MSC cruises, and liked them. So please keep in mind that this BLOG is really based on THIS particular experience with MSC Fantasia. I don’t see us booking any more itineraries on this ship, but because the food and the entertainment is so good, we would consider booking MSC again in the future as long as it was on a longer itinerary (to eliminate the large groups of people travelling together), and on a ship that enforced a no-smoking policy.
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