Getting Back to Cruising...My journey back to sailing.

If you read my post, What’s Included in Your Cruise Fare or if you follow my socials, you know that I AM BACK to cruising! I know with all the bad publicity cruises get, travelers always wonder, how safe is it on a cruise? I can attest that cruises are safe!

Prior to Covid, I was always impressed with the cleanliness of the ships. Staff is always moping, sweeping, wiping all things down and that is just on the inside of the ship! Do not be surprise to get a notice the night before getting to a port, that there will be balcony washing during the day. The cleanliness has always been part of cruises, so nothing surprising there. Now that we have to deal with Covid as part of life and travel, new safety and health protocols have been added throughout the ship as well as your cabin, making any cruiser feel more comfortable. It is obvious that the health and safety of the passengers is top priority.

With that out of the way. I would like to bring you along my journey back to cruising!

MSC Cruises gave Travel Agents (TA’s) an amazing opportunity to sail aboard their ships. So I took the opportunity to check out what MSC Cruises had to offer and took the chance at solo cruising for the very first time as well. A couple of firsts for this girl! That review will be coming soon, as I am still on-board the MSC Meraviglia, I want to be able to bring you guys a full honest review of my experience, so stay tuned!

Costa Maya 😎

Getting Back to Cruising:

To start, TA’s had to be fully vaccinated in order to take advantage of the offer. MSC is currently not 100% vaccinated as there are children on-board. Vaccination card will be needed at check in, along with your health form. It is also needed to get off the ship at the different ports.

You will need negative covid test result. Fully vaccinated passengers must have a test done no more than 2 days prior to sailing. KEEP AN EYE ON THE WORDING! Not 24 hours. 2 days. Which means if embarkation day is Saturday, you can get your test the Thursday prior. I scheduled one at Quest Diagnostics for Thursday, I had my result by Friday afternoon. Make sure to print the result and have them handy!

Try to do all the check-in you possibly can at home prior to embarkation. It will make the check-in at the cruise terminal a much smoother process. I arrived with my boarding pass, health form, negative covid test, vaccine card and passport all ready to go. The entire process took about 10 minutes and I was on my way to that wonderful walk aka the gangway! PS… Masks are worn at Port of Miami cruise terminal at all times!

Once I went through security, I had my sail card scanned and I was given a wristband to be worn at all times. The wristband will open your cabin door, you can charge things to your room and keeps track of where you are for contact tracing purposes.

Now it was time for the happy dance! I AM FINALLY ON-BOARD A CRUISE SHIP!

Masks are required indoor unless you are eating or drinking which on a cruise can be the entire time you are on-board 😂. It is no different than some of the restaurants and stores at home. The cruise lines have added more hand sanitizer stations, and there is staff ready to hand you a mask if you forget yours in the cabin. After boarding, I decided to explore the ship a bit before heading to my cabin.

As you can see, I made some new friends 😉.

While exploring I came across the theater. There are 2 showings for their shows. The first one is for all passengers and the second is for fully vaccinated only passengers. I also found a couple of areas designated for fully vaccinated passengers which can be found scattered around the ship. MSC Meraviglia has a “vaccinated only” pool which is the Horizon Pool in the back of the ship. Plenty of seating and right above, there’s the Horizon Bar. You can also find a hot tub over looking the sea.

I finally make my way to my cabin. As I come to expect from any cruise line, my cabin was spotless and sanitized. The remote control for the TV has been sanitized and put in a bag to ensure I knew it was clean, there is an envelope with disposable masks just in case. Plus you have reading material on what safety and health protocols MSC is taking. The staff is fully masked at all times. Which is definitely different. I love to put a face to the name. But, I understand the need at this time.

Muster drill…To avoid crowding, the safety muster drill is done from your cabin. Everyone is instructed to go back to their cabin to watch the drill. I had to watch a 5-7 minute video in which at the end of, you get a code which has to be called in. Once you call your code in, you have to go to your muster station ( you have to walk down, NO ELEVATORS) and get your sail card or your wristband scanned. That will let the staff know that you participated in the muster drill. Between us cruisers here, I REALLY hope they keep the new way of muster drills. We all know we have to do it, but no one wants to 😬.

Muster Drill Video

Something else that was different, was, the staff being able to get off the ship at different ports. It is usually on their day off, where they get to go shopping for necessities or just explore. Right now on MSC, the staff is only able to get off the ship at Ocean Cay ( MSC's private island). Again, keeping the staff within that safe bubble. Just something I thought was interesting.

Now for the one question most cruisers want the answer to: Is the buffet open? The answer, at least on the Mareviglia is YES! Now, it is not the buffet you are used to. Your sail card will be scanned prior to entering and your temperature will be taken. The hand-washing stations are there as always and now they have added more hand sanitizer stations throughout the buffet. It is not self serve as there is plexiglass covering the food. The staff is serving the food, you can still get as much or as little as you want. The drink station is manned by the staff as well. Once you get your food, you find your table and someone from the waitstaff will take your drink order. I actually really enjoy that part. Not sure how possible that would be when we start sailing at 100% capacity but, for the time being, I will enjoy the pampering! Something else, every other table is marked some signage that indicates not to sit there, to keep social distance and avoid over crowding. Not that difficult when we are sailing at about 30% capacity. To give you and idea on what that means, MSC Meraviglia holds about 5,000 passengers and from the information I got, we have 1,500 passengers on-board currently. Which is definitely an easy way to get spoiled.

With the cruise ships not sailing at 100% capacity, there is plenty of space to move around and enjoy every single inch of the ships. I highly recommend getting back to cruising, it is clean, it is safe and as always, anytime you're on a ship, always a great time to be had!

Have you sailed in 2021 or are planning on it? 🤔

Let me know what was your experience in the comments!

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