We cruised on MSC Orchestra on Jan. 10, 2009 for 7 nights. My first impressions were not that great, this was the first full sailing with passengers. The ship is very nice, no complaints about the ship at all. I also feel that inspite of the some of the bad things, we had a great cruise vacation. I also believe once a little time goes by, most of these problems will disappear.
The problems were with the crew, having found out that a brand new crew was just put on board, they moved the more experience crew to a different ship. It seemed like the crew did not know how to handle a ship of this size nor how to handle people in general and were a little rude. Here are just a few examples:
It seemed like the buffets stations were empty unless you went when it first opened. If you ask a question all you got was a shake of their head, since they didn't speak English and didn't understand was you were saying. They also didn't change the times of breakfast and lunch according to when you arrived and left ports. Many other cruiselines alter the times to make it more convenient. There was one day, when we got back from a shore excursion and went back to the boat to get some lunch (since we didn't have enough time to eat in port) and there was no food was to be found anywhere. We even asked. That's the first time that I've ever been on a cruise were there was no snacks available or any buffet open throughout the day.
When arriving at ports that required tendering (a smaller boat that takes you to the port if the boat is too big or not enough dock space) you had to obtain a tender ticket with a number on it. You had to wait for the number to be called to go down to the appropriate deck. Well instead of only have the announcement in one specific area of the ship, the announcements were heard everywhere so people were gathering around where they needed to get off making it over-crowded. Since there were so may people no one was checking to the tender numbers and everyone was just pushing to get on.
The main dining rooms were located mid-ship, where most have them either in the front or the back. I had second seating which was originally schedule to start at 8:15 nightly. The waiters and the asst waiters didn't quite have the system down yet so the first night we basically missed the show, which started at 10:00. After the first night, they moved up both first and second dinner time by half hour (7:45 for us) so that we would have enough time to make it to the show. Well that didn't work either. First seating still ran over therefore we didn't get into the dinning room until about 8 and we finished around 10:15 every night.
Thing did seem to get a little better as the week went on, but only time will tell.
