A strawberry crêpe at Jean-Philippe on MSC World America, left, and a cocktail at Eden on Celebrity Beyond, right.
Spoiler alert: we think the Yacht Club gives you more for your money than the Retreat does.
We did not expect to write that. We are fans of Celebrity because we think nobody below the luxury lines beats them on service or on food, and their ships are the best designed we have sailed in this price range. The Retreat is the top of what Celebrity sells. We had never sailed MSC, and MSC does not carry much of a reputation among American cruisers. So we booked the Yacht Club braced for a competent imitation at a lower price.
These are the two suite enclaves we know best, and we have sailed Norwegian's Haven too, the third product in this category, though we are leaving it out of the head to head. The Retreat here is on Celebrity Beyond, the Yacht Club on MSC World America. Each sells the same promise: a private restaurant and lounge, a reserved sun deck, a butler, and a way out of a ship carrying several thousand people whenever you want one.
One caveat before any of the rest. The Beyond is Edge class and World America is World class, which means this is each line's largest and most expensive version of the idea going against the other. The Retreat on a Solstice-class ship is a different product at a different price, and so is the Yacht Club on a Seaside ship. What follows holds for these two. Do not carry it across either fleet without checking.
Both ships have a full review of their own if you want the detail rather than the comparison. The Beyond review lives at tudortravels.com/how-we-sail/celebrity-beyond-the-retreat, and the World America one at tudortravels.com/how-we-sail/msc-world-america-yacht-club.
Service decided it, and service is supposed to be the thing Celebrity never loses.
The Stateroom
Sky Suite: The entry level into the Retreat, and the better room by a wide margin. Where standard cabins on the Beyond use infinite verandas, which are really drop-down windows, the suites get a traditional balcony with a sliding door and real outdoor space. The bathroom is where it pulls away. There is a full soaking tub and a separate shower, which is rare enough at sea that we noticed it on day one and used it all week, and the sink is enormous, with two faucets and counter space we never came close to filling. In the accessible configuration the shower rolls in and has a built-in bench, with enough turning radius to stop thinking about turning radius. The look is the more modern of the two and the style we would pick if someone handed us the choice. Of everything we have sailed, this is the suite that comes closest to a well-appointed hotel room on land.
Yacht Club Deluxe Balcony Suite: MSC's entry level with a balcony, and smaller than suites we have had on other lines. There is one category below it, an interior suite with no balcony, and if you can do without the view it is the cheapest way into the enclave and a good buy for everything else that comes with it. It has no accessible version, so that saving is closed to a wheelchair user. The bathroom is possibly the smallest one we have had in a suite. Everything worked and nothing was a struggle, but there was less room to turn around than the category led us to expect. What MSC does better is the small stuff. Several kinds of pillow, brought without ceremony. A fridge stocked with what you actually drink rather than what they assume you drink, and kept that way. Still and sparkling water arriving faster than two people can get through it.
Where MSC does win is position, and it has nothing to do with which cabin we happened to get. The whole Yacht Club is one block of the ship, so the lounge, the restaurant and the sun deck are a short indoor walk from any suite door. Ours sat beside the forward elevator lobby, and that lobby serves only the suite decks, so a week of trips up and down skipped the main elevator traffic. Retreat suites are scattered through the Beyond, and some of them are a long way from the two rooms you are paying extra for. A butler comes with the suite on both lines, included in the fare, with no option to decline it or trade it for something else.
The rooms themselves are not a close call. Celebrity designed a suite. MSC designed a very good cabin and called it a suite.
Celebrity's Retreat suite on the left, MSC's Yacht Club suite on the right: a full wall of glass on one, a sliding door to the balcony on the other.
The Dining Scene
Luminae: The Retreat's included restaurant, forward, with floor-to-ceiling windows and tables spaced far enough apart that you cannot hear the next conversation. The menu changes nightly and carries Daniel Boulud dishes, and you can order off menu if the kitchen can source it.
Yacht Club Restaurant: MSC's equivalent, with a nightly menu of its own. It lacks Luminae's room, but it has one thing Luminae does not. It overlooks the Top Sail Lounge, so on a night when there is a band playing below, dinner comes with it.
Both restaurants land at roughly the level you would pay a surcharge for on other ships, and that is the whole argument for either enclave. Seven nights of it, included, rather than a splurge you book on day two.
La Brasserie: The structural difference between the two products. Every evening MSC converts one level of the two-deck buffet into a second full Yacht Club restaurant with its own name and a separate menu. So the Yacht Club guest has two included restaurants and the Retreat guest has one.
The Specialty Restaurants: Both lines charge for these in the suite categories we sailed, so neither has an advantage on cost, but the rosters are not comparable. The Beyond carries Le Voyage, Daniel Boulud's restaurant, along with the best steakhouse we have eaten at on any ship. World America carries a Greek restaurant that was excellent, where the grilled John Dory was the best seafood we ate all week, and an Italian one that was the only mildly disappointing meal of the trip, undone by average service and a rule structure that charged eight dollars to have a salad and an appetizer on the same night.
Call the dining a tie. The food inside the two enclaves is equal. Luminae is the better restaurant. But MSC gives you two included rooms against Celebrity's one, which across seven nights outweighs any single dish on either menu. Widen it to the whole ship and Celebrity pulls back level, because Le Voyage and that steakhouse are worth paying for in a way that nothing on World America quite is.
Specialty dinners on both ships: Paxos, the Greek restaurant on MSC World America, and Fine Cut Steakhouse on Celebrity Beyond.
Life Onboard
The Retreat Lounge: Forward, with complimentary food and drink through the day, a concierge team that handles reservations so you never stand in a line, and it is the nicer lounge by a clear margin. The decor is better and the wall of glass gives it views the Top Sail has no answer for. What it does not have is live music. One night they ran a silent disco, which was the closest the room came all week.
Top Sail Lounge: MSC's version has a band, which the Retreat Lounge does not, and that changes how an evening in the room works. The hours are short, though, and for most of the day it is as quiet as Celebrity's. The decor is worse, browns and tans doing nearly all the work, the bar is small, and the seating is almost all low chairs around low tables, with nothing for a guest who would rather sit upright with a drink and a plate. We were in it every evening anyway.
Celebrity takes the lounges, but barely. Put more hours of music into the Top Sail and the result flips.
The Retreat Sun Deck: Reserved for suite guests, which on the Beyond is around twelve percent of the ship. One morning, with the main pool deck filling up three decks below, there were six people up there. Us and two other couples. Two hot tubs, a private bar, a pool butler, loungers you would choose for a whole afternoon, and a pool that is much better than MSC's. We spent more time here than anywhere else on that ship.
The Yacht Club Sundeck: Generous, and we never once struggled for a spot. It is also the weakest part of the Yacht Club. The seating is loungers and almost nothing else, with none of the variety that makes a deck somewhere you want to settle into, and the pool is small and set so far inboard that you cannot see the water from it. Celebrity wins this one outright.
The Door: Every Yacht Club suite sits behind the Yacht Club door, so one key card covers the whole thing and you are inside it from the moment you leave your room. The Retreat has no such perimeter. Its lounge and restaurant sit together in the forward section, off the public elevators, where anyone can walk up and read the sign. Both rooms are key carded, so nobody gets in who should not. The difference is that MSC gates a neighborhood and Celebrity gates two rooms.
Entertainment: Short of Disney, the Beyond has the best entertainment we have found at sea, and its theater is the best designed room of its kind we have sat in for sightlines and sound. Retreat guests get reserved seating in it, which means walking in when you feel like it rather than lining up for a sightline. World America has plenty of entertainment and some of its venues are too small for the crowd, so most shows take reservations. The shows themselves were average by mainstream standards. Celebrity wins the stage and the seat.
The Speakeasy: MSC has something Celebrity does not, a bar you have to find out about on your own and then work out how to enter, with maybe a dozen seats and drinks served nowhere else on the ship. The entertainment in that room was the sharpest we saw all week, and our butler is the only reason we got in.
The Wristband: Yacht Club guests wear a wristband that moves them ahead of everyone waiting at the forward elevators, and if the car is empty, a second tap sends it straight to your deck without stopping. It sounds like a gimmick. On a ship this size, in a wheelchair, it takes the elevator wait out of the day, and Celebrity has no answer to it.
The Thermal Suite: The Yacht Club fare includes access to the Aurea Spa thermal suite. The Retreat fare includes no thermal access at all, which on paper is a clear point to MSC. In practice MSC also sells thermal passes to the rest of the ship, and the room was never sized for everyone entitled to be in it. World America was the first ship on any line where we have been told to reserve a time to use a thermal suite, and even with the reservation it was packed and we did not enjoy it. An included benefit you cannot get into is worth less than a benefit you can buy.
MSC's Top Sail Lounge on the left, with the stage for its evening band, and the Retreat Lounge on Celebrity Beyond on the right.
The Experience
Cruise Line: Celebrity sits in the premium tier and the Retreat builds a near-luxury product inside it. MSC sits in the mainstream tier and the Yacht Club builds the same kind of product inside that. The Yacht Club costs less, and across the two fleets it costs a great deal less. Between these two particular ships the gap tightens, because Edge class is the most expensive way to buy the Retreat while World America sits at the top of the Yacht Club range, and MSC bills a weekly port charge that Celebrity does not. Treat all of it as direction rather than arithmetic and price your actual week, because any given sailing can land anywhere in the range.
Atmosphere: The Beyond draws a more design-conscious crowd and is not a loud ship. World America is bigger and busier, with more nationalities and a wider spread of ages than we usually see, and we liked that about it. Americans are still the clear majority and the ship is built for American tastes, but the passenger mix feels less uniform than most.
Crew: We think Celebrity has the best service of any line below the luxury tier, which made the Retreat the half of this comparison we were sure about. The Yacht Club staff were better. The Retreat butler is reactive rather than anticipatory, so you get the most out of it by asking directly, and the concierge team is the stronger half of that pairing. The Yacht Club anticipated instead, and what separated it was warmth rather than polish. We lost count of how many crew used our names unprompted. Outside the two enclaves the two ships run roughly even, so the whole margin sits inside the door, and inside the door it belongs to MSC. And there was Brenda, our butler. She got us into sold-out shows and into a speakeasy we would never have found, and turned up wherever we happened to be rather than waiting to be called. On the last morning she walked us all the way to customs carrying nothing, because we carry our own bags. It is the first time a butler has changed how a cruise felt.
Accessibility
The Good: Both ships are strong. The Beyond has pool lifts and consistent ramping, and the reserved theater seating for Retreat guests includes dedicated accessible spots, so there is no arriving forty-five minutes early to claim a sightline. Its best feature is the Magic Carpet, which drops to water level on tender days and turns tendering from something we plan the week around into something we can just do. The Beyond also keeps open spots beside the rounded bench seating on the pool deck so a wheelchair user sits with their group rather than off to the side.
World America answers with pool lifts at multiple pools including the thermal pool, which was a first for us anywhere, an accessible restroom beside nearly every set of restrooms on board, and real accessible seating in the main showroom. Its private island holds the same standard. We saw a dozen or so beach wheelchairs without covering even half of it, and a fully accessible golf cart ran us around the island, which no other line we know of operates. Accessibility is a tie, and a high one. These are among the most accessible ships we have sailed, period.
The Reality: Celebrity Beyond has two accessible suites in the Retreat, out of 198. They are cabins 11122 and 11123, side by side on Deck 11. MSC World America has one, out of 152. Two is better than one and neither is defensible. Numbers that small mean a single booking can close the category for every other wheelchair user sailing that week. Accessible cabins are very limited, not only in the suites, and they go early. If you need one, book far further ahead than you otherwise would, and further still if you have a particular destination in mind or a fixed window for the trip.
Outside the enclaves: a covered pool on MSC World America, left, and the main pool deck on Celebrity Beyond, right.
The TudorTravels Perspective
Book the Retreat if the room is what you are buying. It is the larger suite with the better bathroom and the decor we prefer. The sun deck is better, and if the evening matters to you, the Beyond's stage and its theater are far ahead.
Book the Yacht Club if the week is what you are buying. The service is more personal and plainly better, there are two included restaurants instead of one, and everything you paid for sits behind a single door in the same part of the ship, which you feel every day.
The food is excellent on both. So is the service. Both suites are comfortable, and we would sail either again without hesitating. These two are far more alike than they are different, which leaves price and itinerary, and those are the two things we decide on ourselves. The Yacht Club is cheaper on the averages, and an average is not your week. Plenty of sailings price the Retreat below it, and plenty of weeks the better itinerary is the stronger reason to pick one. You cannot go wrong either way.
What we would not do is skip the enclave. If the suite product fits your budget on either line, buy it. It changes your cruise experience drastically.
What neither of them has solved is the accessible suite. Two on one ship and one on the other, on ships carrying thousands of people. For a wheelchair user that inverts the choice. Picking between these two assumes both are open to you, and on most sailings neither will be. The first question is which ship still has the room, and the answer usually settles the rest.
We sail the Retreat again in the spring, on the Xcel, which is currently Celebrity's newest ship but is still the same ship class as the Beyond, and we are already hunting for a Yacht Club trip on one of MSC's next two, World Asia or World Atlantic. We will then confirm how much of this holds.
Ready to sail Celebrity, MSC, or another suite enclave for your next cruise? Contact us to start planning.