MSC World America - Yacht Club

We ordered a spread of Greek small plates at Paxos, but the grilled John Dory is what we would come back for.

We booked MSC with low expectations, and we should be honest about why.

MSC has a reputation among many American cruisers, and nearly everything we had heard came down to the food and the service. Some of that may be fair. Some of it may be Americans meeting European service norms and a European menu and reading both as failure. What we did know is that MSC prices sit below almost every line sailing out of the United States, and we have cruised long enough to have an instinct about what a lower price buys you.

Seven nights out of Miami, with San Juan and Puerto Plata before a day at Ocean Cay. We sailed in the MSC Yacht Club with one of the couples we travel with most often.

Those expectations were set far too low. Every part of this came in better than we thought it would, several by a wide margin. We have already booked another Yacht Club cruise.

MSC says World America is the first ship it designed with the American guest in mind, and it shows. It shows most in the part we were most skeptical about. We are putting together a full comparison of the suite enclaves, and after a week here we rank the Yacht Club above Celebrity’s Retreat and Norwegian’s Haven. Facilities and food across the three mostly even out. The service did not, and that was the entire margin.

The Stateroom

We were in the entry level suite category, the Yacht Club Deluxe Balcony Suite, in its accessible configuration. Space was never a problem, though this is a smaller suite than we have had on other lines. The lip out to the balcony was low enough to roll over without a second thought, rarer than it should be, and the bathroom entry was flat.

The bathroom is the one real flaw, and possibly the smallest we have had in any suite anywhere. Everything worked and nothing was a struggle. There was simply less room to turn around than a suite category led us to expect. The power door worked properly all week, which we no longer take for granted.

There is also just one accessible suite across the whole Yacht Club, which is a real disappointment and a miss on MSC’s part.

We did not choose where that suite sits, because with one of them there is nothing to choose. Seeing it on the deck plan, immediately beside the forward Yacht Club elevator lobby, worried us. An elevator bank usually buys a week of overhearing strangers at midnight. It was the best spot on the deck. We heard nothing, not one night, and that lobby serves only the suite decks, so every trip to the lounge or the sundeck skipped the main elevator traffic.

The room earned its keep in other small ways. The bed was among the more comfortable we have had at sea, and they keep several kinds of pillows and will bring whichever you want. Tell them what you actually drink and they will stock the fridge with it and keep it stocked. Still and sparkling water appeared faster than we could get through it.

Our Yacht Club suite and bathroom were smaller than ones we have had on other lines but still had plenty of space.

The Dining Scene

Yacht Club Restaurant: The food sat at roughly the level of specialty dining on other lines, which is where an included suite restaurant ought to land and frequently does not. The menu also changes every night. Norwegian’s Haven restaurant runs the same printed dinner menu all cruise, and by day five on a ship like that you order out of obligation. We have started to wonder whether that is partly deliberate, because a guest bored of the included room is a guest who books specialty dining.

Our first night we had a server named Mat who was good enough that we requested his section every night we ate in the Yacht Club Restaurant. He learned our preferences quickly, which we appreciated.

La Brasserie: The surprise of the trip. Every evening MSC converts one level of the two-deck buffet into a full Yacht Club restaurant with its own name and a separate menu, and it is excellent. We went in skeptical about eating dinner in a buffet space and stopped thinking about it before the first course arrived. So Yacht Club guests get two included restaurants. The Retreat and the Haven each have one. Across seven nights that matters more than any dish on either menu.

Paxos: Greek, out on the aft World Promenade. Service and food were both excellent and we would go back without hesitating. The grilled John Dory was the best seafood we ate all week, with the Dover sole right behind it. Order either. We took a table outside on the patio, which turned out to be the best people watching on the ship.

Ocean House: The Yacht Club restaurant on Ocean Cay, out on the point with water on both sides of you. The cooking was solid and the setting did the rest. One problem, and on a hot day it is not small. There is too little indoor seating, so arrive late and you eat in the sun and the heat, which was more than a little unpleasant.

Eataly: The Italian specialty restaurant, and the only place on board where service was merely average. The cooking was fine. The rules around it were not. You get one appetizer, one main and one dessert, and a salad counts as your appetizer, so having both costs another eight dollars on top of the specialty surcharge you already paid. Pasta works the same way. At an Italian restaurant you would normally eat a pasta course before the main, but here pasta is the main, so it is one or the other unless you pay twenty dollars to have both. With the service, it was the one meal all week that mildly disappointed us.

Jean Philippe Chocolat & Café: Down in the World Galleria, and worth every dollar, because none of it is included. The gelato was as good as any we have eaten in Italy. They make fresh crepes to order and keep a chocolate case deep enough to take several visits. We stopped more times than we will admit in print.

Luna Park Pizza & Burger: The complimentary spot on the Galleria’s lower level, as busy as you would expect something free and decent to be. The menu runs wider than the name suggests, the pizza beat most cruise ship pizza, and the Freestyle machines mean nobody waits on a bartender for a soda.

Sweet Temptations: The candy and ice cream shop back out on the World Promenade, not down in the Galleria. Our friends ate there and said it lived up to the display. We visited but never made it back to eat, which is no reflection on the shop. We are not candy people, and Jean Philippe had already settled that question for us. A complimentary cart out there hands out cotton candy, and watching grown adults work through a cone the size of their head was a small daily pleasure.

Il Mercato: The ship’s buffet, which we walked through several times without ever eating in, so take this as observation only. The decor was the surprise, more upscale than we have seen on most lines.

We looked into the main dining rooms as well and they look good. We ate in neither, since we had the suite restaurant.

Nothing at Jean Philippe is included in the Yacht Club fare, and we still stopped in multiple times.

Life Onboard

Top Sail Lounge: The room we kept coming back to. Rarely crowded, real ocean views from most seats, live music most evenings. The service is what made it. By midweek one of the bartenders had stopped asking what we wanted and started building cocktails from things we had mentioned in passing days earlier.

A few things we would change. The decor is modern but drab, with browns and tans doing nearly all the work, and the seating is almost all low chairs and low tables, with nothing for guests who would rather sit upright with a drink and a plate. The bar is small, and the same few people occupied it all week, which tells you how fast those seats go. None of that kept us away. We loved that room, and it was where we went when what we wanted was to do nothing at all.

Afternoon Tea: Held once during the sailing and well attended. It was good and not more than that. We have had better at sea and better in hotels. What we will remember is what happened after. Our friends missed it, having assumed a tea that popular would run more than once. When the Yacht Club director heard, he arranged a second one for them and invited us along. Nobody asked him to, and that is the whole distance between good service and great service.

Ocean Cay: MSC’s private island, and comfortably the best of our three stops. A different proposition from Royal Caribbean’s CocoCay, with far less built on it, and that is deliberate. The island is big enough that people disperse across it, and we passed beach after beach with almost nobody on them. Excellent sand, clear blue water. The Yacht Club area sits on a small peninsula with a beach on either side facing opposite directions, and Ocean House at the tip. The one real miss is that the island has no pools, which anyone hoping to swim without salt water will notice.

The Yacht Club Sundeck: The weakest part of the enclave, and still a minor complaint. The space is generous and we never struggled for a spot. It is also dull. Seating is loungers and little else, and the pool is small and set so far inboard you cannot see the water from it. We still preferred it to the main pool deck, where the pace and the crowds are not what we want on a sea day.

Yacht Club Grill: A separate venue on another deck, with good food and good service. Less than half the seating is shaded, which only bit us the one day the deck filled up, and the menu holds all week. Treat it as a lunch you drop into, not a place you plan around. The staff here work La Brasserie at dinner, which is how we ended up with one of our favorite servers, Jordan, twice in one day. Ask him what to order. He was right every time.

The Speakeasy: You have to find out this exists on your own and then work out how to get in, and the secrecy is not a marketing posture. The room is tiny. The entertainment was the sharpest we saw all week, helped by how close everyone sits, and they pour drinks you cannot order anywhere else. Our butler got us in without any of the detective work, the clearest thing a butler did for us all week.

Aurea Spa: Our biggest complaint about the ship, and it comes from two people for whom the spa is usually the center of a sailing. The product sell is aggressive in a way we expect on mainstream and premium lines, but this went further. Mid-massage we were asked whether we wanted a paid foot product applied, a disorienting question to field face down with your eyes shut. A second pitch came at the end.

The thermal suite is the bigger problem, and it is a question of size rather than service. Access comes included with every suite, which reads as a real perk until you see the room was never built for the number of people entitled to it. MSC sells passes to the rest of the ship as well. This was the first ship on any line where we have been told to reserve a time for a thermal suite, and even then it was packed and we did not enjoy it. Single biggest disappointment of the week. When we sail MSC again, and we will, we expect to skip the spa.

The World Galleria: The interior heart of the ship, running across several decks, and MSC’s answer to the Royal Caribbean promenade. The pinball machines are what make it, keeping a noise level in there that a corridor of shops never would.

Entertainment: There is a lot of it, and some of the venues are too small for the crowd on board. Most shows require reservations, and without a butler making them for you we suspect getting into the ones you want is hit or miss. The shows were average by mainstream standards, and the variety across the week beat the productions themselves.

The Wristband: Suite guests wear a wristband that does something we have not seen elsewhere. Tap it at the forward elevators and you move ahead of everyone waiting. Once inside, if the car is empty, tap again and it runs straight to your deck. It sounds like a gimmick. On a vessel this large, in a wheelchair, it removes the most tedious part of the day.

The glass canopy at Top Sail Lounge in the Yacht Club lets in the whole sky, and the room was rarely busier than this.

The Experience

Cruise Line: MSC competes most directly with Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, and Carnival, and holds up against all of them. On price it averages near Carnival and below the rest, which is the entire case for the line. That is an average, so a given sailing can land above or below a competitor. Price the specific week rather than the reputation.

Atmosphere: The ship was clean all week and moves people around intelligently. For a hull carrying this many passengers it rarely felt crowded. The exceptions were the crush after shows, the pool decks on a sunny sea day, and the casino at night, which we try to avoid anywhere. What we liked most was the mix of people, more nationalities and a wider spread of ages than on most of our recent sailings.

Crew: We expect excellent service inside a suite enclave. That is what the premium buys, and MSC delivered it at the highest level we have met in one. The surprise was outside it. Service everywhere else on board ran above average all week, ahead of what we have found recently on MSC’s closest competitors.

These enclaves all do service well. That is the product. What was different here was warmth. We lost count of how many crew used our names unprompted, and a bartender rebuilding our drinks from remembered conversation happens only when people have enough time to pay attention.

Then there was Brenda. We have had butlers before and never found much use for one. We pack and unpack ourselves and rarely order room service, so the role has always seemed aimed at somebody else. Brenda got us into shows that were already full and into the speakeasy. She turned up wherever we happened to be rather than waiting to be called, always working out what else she could do. On the last morning we carried our own bags off as we always do, and she came along anyway, all the way to customs. It is the first time a butler has changed how a cruise felt.

Accessibility

The Good: The best accessible design we have found on any mainstream or premium cruise line. Pool lifts at multiple pools, including the thermal suite pool, a first for us anywhere. Accessible restrooms nearly everywhere on board that has them. Real accessible seating in the main showroom, in our opinion better than Norwegian’s. Every part of the enclave is accessible. Past the obvious items were small considerations most guests would walk straight past. We noticed every one.

Ocean Cay held the same standard, which is where most lines stop trying. We saw a dozen or so beach wheelchairs without covering even half the island, so there are surely more. Accessible restrooms across the island. And a fully accessible golf cart to get us around, which no other line we know of operates and which matters on an island this size. Suite guests also get a shaded waiting area with drinks and a cart of their own, worth a great deal once the lines for everyone else had grown long.

The Reality: One accessible suite in an enclave of 152 is indefensible on a ship this new. The practical cost is availability. One booking removes the category for every other wheelchair user sailing that week, and we cannot promise a client this enclave on a given date the way we can a Retreat or a Haven suite. The tight bathroom compounds it, because there is no second accessible suite to try instead.

We watched the sun go down over the Caribbean from a table right against the glass.

The TudorTravels Perspective

This ship is for travelers who want the mega ship experience at a good price without giving up good service or good food to get it. If you normally sail Carnival, Royal Caribbean, or Norwegian, put this on the list for your next booking.

If you already like the suite enclaves on other lines, the Yacht Club will probably surprise you the way it surprised us. The pitch is not better facilities, and Celebrity’s has more style. It is warmer and more personal service, and every suite sitting inside the enclave rather than scattered across the ship. We would choose it at the same price, and it usually costs less than that, which makes it an easy call.

It also suits a specific kind of luxury traveler, and we count ourselves in that group. If you want refined surroundings and real service but you also want to go out in the evening, with entertainment to choose from and bars worth working through and some energy in the room, a small luxury ship may feel too sleepy. A suite enclave on a mega ship gives you both, which is the whole argument for the format.

One caveat. This is the newest ship in MSC’s newest and largest class, and the one the line built for this market. Older ships may run more European, which will suit some travelers and not others. We can only tell you about this one. On this one, our expectations were far too low.

Ready to sail MSC, or looking for the right suite enclave for your next cruise? Contact us to start planning.