MSC Seascape Full Cruise Ship Review from a First Timer

Prior to embarking on the Seascape, I had heard a mix of negative and positive reviews about MSC as a whole, and wasn’t quite sure what to think. Some I read were from people who swore to never sail with them again because they claimed their experience was so bad. Not the greatest thing to read.

I had very specific dates to take this trip, and MSC’s itinerary for the week of July 4th was the most interesting: Ocean Cay, The Bahamas, Jamacia, and Grand Cayman. So I braced myself and booked it. Worst case scenario, it wasn’t for me and I never book with them again, right??

I’ve only ever been on American based cruise lines such as Norwegian and Royal Caribbean. MSC on the other hand is a European based line that’s been picking up more popularity for its affordable fares. They spout “European style with American comfort”. So here are my thoughts after cruising for one week on their Seascape vessel!

I left out of the Miami cruise port, which I’ve done once before, going on an NCL cruise. However, each terminal has a different feel depending on the line you’re sailing with. MSC is located at terminal AA, and I was very impressed with it!

Upon arrival, a porter met us to collect our bags. I told him I wasn’t able to get bag tags, to which he was able to print and attach a label to our suitcases. I think this was so much nicer than previous lines I forgot the tag for, as everything had to be handwritten. We tipped him $5, which is my standard for this service. Once inside the terminal, the space was sleek and very clean! They also had infused water available! The options were cucumber mint and orange. Honestly, they did need a bit more infusion.

Getting on the Seascape itself was also an easy process. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a digital boarding pass. I had added my credit card to the account under 48 hours prior to sailing which was a crucial step….whoops. Luckily, this wasn’t an issue, and they were able to print one for me onsite. We had new photos taken and then walked over to pass our carry-ons through the security scanner. Once done there, we walked straight onto the Seascape, did our muster check-in, and the vacation had officially begun! I was very happy with how easy this was and the fact the crowds in the terminal were minimal. The whole thing took less than 30 minutes, while our check-in time was 1pm.

During my booking, I selected a “balcony guarantee” cabin, which means I’ll get a balcony or better. This also means I don’t get to pick where my cabin is on the ship, which can be risky. This is typically a much cheaper option, though. Fortunately, it worked out! I was in cabin 14205 which thankfully was surrounded by other cabins (no late night blasting music!) but also was a Balcony Deluxe! So we did get a small upgrade, which was really nice. The only thing that made this deluxe compared to a regular balcony cabin was that we had a full bathtub instead of just the standing shower. No complaints from me though!

Speaking of the bathroom, since we did have a tub, that meant we also had less standing space. I didn’t find this to be a huge issue, though. There were also plenty of small shelves to place everything I needed and hooks on the back of the door to hang my toiletry bag. Inside the shower was a soap drain, complimentary shampoo and shower gel, and the edges of the tub were great for placing a razor. I never used the tub for a bath, but it did make actual showering significantly more comfortable compared to other cruises I’ve been on.

The closet had about ten or so hangers with a mix of regular and pant and an elevated base for shoes. On the other side were shelves, with the safe, and two drawers. These were plenty for my clothes, as I also tried to pack on the lighter side. There were two sliding doors so you can close this if you would like.

The desk had pull out chairs to use as a vanity or as a work space, a huge mirror, shelves up the wall, and more drawers. We wound up using these drawers as more clothing space. The outlets on the wall were universal, so no matter what kind of plug you have, you should be good to go. I used my multi-port universal power adapter and was able to plug in everything I needed! Literally will never travel without it. I have two. There were also USB ports directly in the wall.

Built under the desk was also a mini bar. This was a bummer because I like to place my own things in the mini fridge to keep cold, which was tricky with it being full. Prices for the items were on the desk and were reasonable but I opted to not touch anything. They also put pringles in the fridge which I can only imagine would make them stale.

The bed was a king and generally pretty comfortable. I slept like a rock every night. That might also just be from all the walking, excitement, and excess sun, but whatever. My one complaint though would be the pillows. I kind of felt like goldilocks where one was too puffy, and the other was too flat, but sadly neither was just right. I really needed something in between. If you’re sensitive about pillows, you might want to bring your own. I opted for the flatter one just because I absolutely would have screwed up my neck on the bigger one. Also fun fact, there’s a HUGE mirror right in front of the bed.

On the actual balcony there were two chairs and table. This is pretty standard, and the balcony itself wasn’t any bigger than a regular balcony room. I only do balcony or better because I love being able to access fresh air from my room first thing in the morning. It’s also really nice to sit in peace and just stare at the ocean or play a little music.

Overall, I felt this fit two people comfortably and was very happy with it! Just those darn pillows……

No matter where I went on the Seascape, every single employee was extremely polite and provided excellent service! We became great friends with our main dining room waiter and quite friendly with a lot of the casino staff. Be kind as these people work very hard and if you’re polite to them, they will go above and beyond for you. Especially if you interact with them consistently throughout the week. 10/10

Obviously, Wi-Fi is by no means essential, and you may prefer to not get it and totally disconnect. If so, you can totally skip this part!

Just as a side note, if you don’t book a package you can still connect your phone and have free access to their app and will also need it to scan QR codes in the restaurants as there aren’t physical menus.

If you are getting a Wi-Fi package, first off dear god, do not pay full price. Book before you leave, and also keep an eye out for additional coupons to your email. I booked a “Surf and Stream” package for one device that was on sale for about 30% off online, and then I had an additional 25% off coupon MSC sent to my email. So instead of paying $150 or so, it only cost $109. You can get this even lower if you do multiple devices and split the cost with other people going. Just note when adding extra devices make sure you fill in the information of the person who booked it when you go to activate the plan on the ship or the device won’t connect. It’s also cheaper to do multiple devices, rather than each person getting their own plan.

The connectivity itself I found pretty good! I used it on my phone and only every so often did a video lag or the connection drop off, which was easily fixed by just re-selecting the network. Hard to complain when you’re in the middle of the ocean.

This might sound conflicting, but I really don’t like their app, however, I HIGHLY HIGHLY HIGHLY RECOMMEND you download it before you embark. In general, I don’t find it user-friendly, but it’s more user-friendly once you’re connected to the Seascapes’s Wi-Fi and fully functional.

It’s important I believe to have because you can view the day’s events and even make reservations. We were not given a paper daily itinerary, so your other option would be to use the big screens around the Seascape to see when things are happening. This is less convenient, but manageable.

The app also has a free messaging feature, but one friend in our group didn’t have a Wi-Fi package and was able to send iMessages and WhatsApp texts successfully through the free connection. You can also preview menus at the restaurants for each day, which can be super helpful to plan if you have any dietary restrictions or are just picky.

So I think the app sucks, I don’t like how it’s formatted, but did find it very helpful when on the Seascape.

Just want to note that I did not go to any of the specialty dining while on the Seascape, so I have no opinion on those.

There are multiple main dining rooms throughout the Seascape, and you will be assigned one during your stay. This is printed on your sea card along with your dining time. I was assigned a 5pm seating at the Green Wave on deck 5. On the first evening you’re shown to your table, but each night after you can walk straight to it. There does appear to be about a 30-minute grace period, however, if you’re too late you will be asked to return for the next seating and will have a different table.

Each table had cards with the names of your main and assistant servers, which will remain the same throughout the cruise. There’s also a card with QR codes to scan for that evening’s menu. You will need the Wi-Fi, free connection works, to be able to open this. I wasn’t a huge fan of not having paper menus, but you probably can get one if you ask.

I ate dinner here every single night. The food quality is the best I’ve had of all the three cruise lines I’ve been on so far, truly impressed for the complimentary restaurant. There was only one evening that I didn’t like what I ordered, so I’m calling 6/7 dinners a success. Each night had a rotating menu of daily specials in the appetizers, main entrees, and desserts so that helped to keep things interesting. There was also a set menu each night which included things such as a New York Strip, Atlantic Salmon, and penne with a sauce of choice. On the final evening, the entire restaurant was rebranded as Italian, but honestly it was more American-Italian, which I really enjoyed!

The breakfast here is decent, but does end around 9:30am as a warning if you’re not an early riser. The menu also doesn’t change except for the international brunch they hold on sea days. This was the ONLY time I was given a paper menu and I thought was a super fun theme! The brunch goes until 1pm.

In all honesty, I was not a huge fan of the buffet on MSC. It’s not that the food was bad, in fact the pizza was on par with high-end restaurants. Not joking. The pizza was surprisingly VERY GOOD! The overall choices felt lacking, which I realize sounds funny to say about a cruise buffet, but it was because so many sections felt repetitive. Another thing that was missing for me was an Indian section for breakfast, which is one of my favorites on a cruise, but it was nowhere to be seen.

Also, the layout of it was very confusing. On prior ships everything felt continuous with perhaps one or two sections off to the side, but I never felt lost. On the Seascape, I found it difficult to find things as the buffet was broken out into sections rather than being a consistent flow. I really didn’t care for this and it was one of the many reasons I only ate here about three times through out the week.

This is the theatre with all the big performaces! I actually attended a seating for every musical plus the comedy and the 18+ comedy show.

As someone who’s lived in New York City for the past five years, I’ve seen my fair share of Broadway and I do believe this may have scewed my perception of cruise shows. Not because they’re poor quality but because I find them overall lazy story telling. This is because it feels as an overall theme is chosen and then a bunch of pop songs are selected to tell a story with little to no other dialogue and costumes to fit the theme. Now this being said, there were five performaces in this theatre on my sailing: Love Blooms, Premiere, Comedy Night with Frances DiLorenzo, Concert, and Dreamscape.

I’m going to separate the comedy from the musical performances because it would be an unfair comparrison. In this case, Premiere was my favorite of the shows and this is because there was a main actor which broke the fourth wall between scenes. Each section was a different movie genre where the other performers sang songs from popular movies within that genres and the lead actor would interact with it. This made it a much more fun story to watch, 9/10!

The comedy show can be hit or miss depending on the comedian but Frances DiLorenzo was GREAT! In both her all ages and 18+ shows I was dying! So glad they brought her on. 10/10

This theatre holds a varity of performaces types and game shows. The only thing I came to here was a variety show! What was nice is that it was 3.5 hours long but you could go in and out as you pleased. I actually arrived about an hour and a half into the show and stayed until the end.

The theatre has seats on the ground as well as on upper levels and around the stage with tables. Servers will come around and take drink orders, but there’s also a bar you can walk up to so it’s a much more casual setting than at the Chora Theatre.

The variety show I watched included arcrobatic dancing, singing, contorsion, ariel acrobatics, a band, and a violinist, and that’s only the half I saw! It really was incredible, so I wouldn’t sleep on the these if you’d like to go.

This is the same as a formal night and my sailing only had one due to being seven days. I dressed up for this but it felt about 60/40 with a decent amount of people participating but plenty of others still casual. As a note they are stricter on what you can wear into the main dining room on Gala Night. If you wanna stay uber casual that would be a night for the buffet.

I didn’t personally participate in this, but I was clearly in the minority. People took it very seriously! I just don’t own much white. I’m terrified of staining it.

This was a special celebration since this cruise look place over The United States Fourth of July holiday. Despite being a European cruise line, the Americans went wild in the evening! There was a huge dance party in the atrium with red, white, and blue everywhere.

Being my second cruise I’ve done over a holiday, the first being Halloween, I’ve learned people go HARD for these!

Truthfully, I found the main pool deck to be very underwhelming. The pool seemed small for the area and the whole space felt empty. I didn’t swim here during the week.

Calling this an infinity pool seems like a stretch. The pool is pretty shallow, maybe a foot deep at it’s deepest. It’s meant for sitting, not swimming. It is right against the edge of the ship but the ledge is opaque, rather than clear which is what I think takes away from the “infinity” feel even though you can see the ocean through the other barriers. It is a nice place to sit and relax! You’re however not allowed to have any drinks other than water here. We got called out for our juice brought from the buffet.

Not sure how, but I found this place once and never found it again. Which is honestly a shame because it’s an enclosed, humid pool space with greenery and a whole jungle theme. There were pools and hot tubs, had I been able to refind this place I would have probably loved it! Sadly, the Seascape is a maze and even though the deck plans said it was on 16……it definitely was not. I looked everywhere.

Prior to going on the slides, you need to sign a waiver and get a wrist band. There’s a table to do this by the stairs leading to the slides.

There are two slides on the Seascape: one with tubes and one that’s split into a fast and slower side. I’m sure they have official names, but I’m not too worried about it.

The slide with tubes was fun! You have to line up by the end to collect either a single or double from the people finishing their ride, then proceed up the stairs. The inside of the slide lights up and plays music. Once you hit the water, make sure to close your eyes because you’re probably going to have a huge splash!

The double slide you can go straight up the stairs to get in line. I only went down the fast side, but enjoyed it!

I’m personally not a gambler, but some of the people I was with LOVE Blackjack. So I wound up spending more time in here than I’d like. The casino is smaller than other ones on ships I’ve been in and does allow smoking at slot machines when you’re actually playing. Sadly, the smell travels regardless of where the smoker is and I’m still shocked to this day this is not a major fire hazard. It’s 2025 and we’re on a moving vessel in the middle of the ocean….put out the cigarrette!

Casino staff were super friendly! They’re also more than happy to explain the rules of the game when things aren’t busy.

Make sure you cash out all winnings by the last night of the cruise at the absolute latest because you won’t be able to do it on the morning of disembarkation.

I poked around the shops, but didn’t buy anything here while on board. MSC has your standard mix of duty free, souveniors, jewelry, watches, etc. Pretty much everything you’re used to for cruise shops. Unless you forgot something on land or have your eye on something very specific, these just aren’t worth it. At least not to me.

They do also have a fancy chocolate, gelato, and coffee shop. I never had anything from it, but one of the girls on my trip had a daily coffee from there and loved it. One day she even got it for free because she became super friendly with one of the workers!

In terms of where things are located on the Seascape such as buffet and pools on upper decks, cabins throughout, theatres on lower decks, etc. all made sense. However, there were so many twists and turns that made finding certain things tricky. This wasn’t the case for everything as I was pretty good at locating our cabin, the theatre, our assigned dining room, and whatnot, but there were lots of little random places that were hard to locate or if I found it noticed myself going, “oh that’s where that is!”.

The Seascape itself is beautiful, but I often felt I was discovering uncharted territory and if I didn’t map it would be lost forever. Not a great feeling when your on there for a week. Maybe I’m also being dramatic……but that’s fine.

I’d also like to mention the elevators. You click a touchpad which tells you which one is coming and how long. I HATED this! I would much prefer any elevator was able to arrive rather than a designated one. Once the wait time for an elevator went up to four minutes. Sometimes you’d call it, the time would pass, it never arrived, and now you had to wait all over again. Absolutely horrible system. I took A LOT of stairs on this cruise. Sometimes I would get on whatever elevator came and just got off at the closest deck and then made up the difference on the staircase as well. This needs a MASSIVE rehaul.

MSC offers a wristband as a supplement to your ship card which I thought was a pretty fun thing! If you buy them early on in the cruise they’re discounted, we got a two pack for around $20 which came to about $10 each instead of $13 or so for a single. These also appear to be reusable on future cruises as I saw people holding ones to get them programmed for their new cabins.

To better explain this more, the wristband works in place of your ship card to tap into your cabin, use for purchases, or anything else you might use your card for while ON THE SHIP ONLY! Exception is if you want to earn casino points while playing slots, you’ll need your card to put into the machine. You still need your card to get on and off the Seascape when going into port or when you disembark. I found the wristband helpful because then I didn’t have to wear my card around my neck the whole time. They’re also waterproof to wear in the pool!

The wristband is by no means essential and honestly I would have been fine the whole week without it. I liked having it for the ease of getting back into my cabin and will definitely save it incase I ever sail with MSC again.

To get your ship card, head to your cabin and they’ll be outside in an envelope. I would make this the first thing you do after your muster drill so you can start using it! This card is also what you’ll put in the slot in your cabin to turn the electricty on.

The night prior to leaving you’ll get paperwork about how to disembark the Seascape. If you’ve been on any other cruise this shouldn’t be foreign, but if not they’ll give you luggage tags with a number that you’ll attach to your suitcase and place outside your door by 10pm the night before for the staff to pick up. On the paper you received you’ll see which time correlates to the bag number for when you can get off the Seascape to which you can then collect your bags in the cruise terminal. You must be out of your cabin by 7:30am so staff can start turning them over for the next cruise. Breakfast is also available that morning in both the main dining room and the buffet, but for much more limited hours.

If you’re like me, you’ll skip putting your bags out and will opt to walk it off the ship yourself. I much prefer this, because the one time I gave my bag up the night prior, finding it in the morning was a nightmare. That was also my first cruise ever and a family vacation, so there was a big learning curve. I’m also then able to get off the ship whenever I want once we’re cleared by the port. Since I usually go for earlier flights to get home, around noon, this works better for me.

To physically get off the Seascape, I followed the instructions on the paper for those doing the self-assist to go through deck 6. Make sure to have your sea card available because they must scan it to confirm you’ve departed! All remaining cruise charges should be settled, this won’t be an issue as long as you have a valid and active card on file, before trying to leave. Once you’ve been scanned off the Seascape you CANNOT get back on. So be 1000% sure you have everything before you go.

Walk to customs to clear officially back into whatever country you’re docked in, in my case this was The United States, and you’re done!

MSC was a unique and calmer experience compared to Norweigan and Royal Caribbean. I wasn’t a huge fan of the Seascape layout, but my cabin was great and everything was clean! I also rarely saw my room attendant on this ship, but it might just be because I spent so much time out of the room. When I did speak with him, he was extremely polite and super helpful!

The shows were hit or miss, but the comedy is always the best of them all. I never got to any of the game shows, but they did do a great job of always having something to do and there being a large variety.

The food on the Seascape, at least in the main dining room, was great! I was extremely happy with its quality overall but especially compared to other lines I’ve been on, not including special dining of course. Buffet was just ok and I really only went there to take a break from the sitdown or if I wanted something quickly and on my time. But I’ll reiterate, the food on the buffet wasn’t bad. I just felt something about it was missing.

So would I sail with MSC again? Yes, I would absolutely give them another go. I have been warned though by people to stick to only their newer ships but as I’ve never been on any of their older ones, take that with a grain of salt. I had a great time, even with my few critiques…..the pillows and elevators. Every cruise line and even ship within its fleet will have their ups and downs. I’ll give this a 7/10.