We’re avid cruisers and so we have our preferred cruise line, which happens to be Royal Caribbean. However, there are times when the itinerary we want isn’t available with Royal Caribbean so we have to look at other cruise lines. Last year, for a Northern Europe itinerary, we decided to try MSC Cruises for the first time.
Let me start off by saying that each and every cruise line has its own pros and cons. With that being said, overall, we would cruise with MSC Cruises again.
For any owner of any food & drink establishment, all of them know that drinks, especially alcoholic drinks, have the largest profit margins. With cruising, many cruise lines have “drink packages”. They have non-alcoholic soda packages and some also have alcoholic packages for your entire cruise itinerary.
Each cruise line has its own way of marketing and selling its drink packages.
With Royal Caribbean Cruises, they’ll set up booths on the first day or two of the cruise so you can go up and check out the packages they have.
With Princess Cruises, they’re pretty good in that they really don’t bother you at all. I’m not even sure if they had a drink package the last time I cruised with Princess.
With MSC, as soon as you board the ship, you’re directed through an area to sit down with cruise staff to go over their drink packages. Right from the beginning, they’re already trying to sell you on a drink package and it doesn’t stop there.
During meal times at the buffet and even in the main dining throughout the entire itinerary, they still had staff going around asking you to purchase a drink package.
If you decline, some would continue to push and others would give you a dirty look and walk away. It’s almost like their job depends on you purchasing a drink package and that could be the case with MSC Cruises.
So, on one spectrum, you have Princess Cruises where they don’t bother you at all. Then you have MSC Cruises on the other side where they constantly bother you to purchase something.
Despite this annoying sales tactic of MSC Cruises, overall we were still very pleased with our cruise experience.