MSC Splendida Review

[loopylaura]

As promised here are some thoughts about about our cruise aboard MSC Splendida. We got home yesterday after a lovely week away on this huge ship!.. Our itinerary was Dubai-Abu Dhabi-Sir Bani Yas Island-Muscat-Khasab and back to Dubai.

MSC Splendida – I have only been on one other cruise (P&O Aurora). Splendida was much larger and what I would call very glitzy in comparison….lol… Lots of sparkles everywhere, but very pretty! Atrium was large but with loads of seating and in the evening plenty of music.

We had a balcony cabin on Deck 9 which was great. Large and clean and a very comfortable bed! Shower room usual size but shower cubicle itself was a bit small with a shower curtain. Pressure pretty good though. Only disappointment was TV. Only had BBC World Service but it only worked on our first day and then nothing for the rest of the week! Apparently signal could be a bit hit and miss…..well it was definitely a miss for us!

Plenty of bars/coffee shop areas, we had booked the unlimited non-alcoholic package (we don’t drink) and we used this to its fullest. Plenty of drink choices and very scrummy mocktails/iced coffees. Not sure how many calories in these but I drank loads! Would definitely recommend this one but think you would have to drink an awful amount of alcohol to make the alocoholic package work financially but I’m sure a lot do.

We only did the restaurant once as we were seated on a table of 6 with an Italian couple who spoke little English and a very elderly English couple who were lovely but a bit deaf! We also found out that the restaurant menu seemed to be the same in the buffet so we ended up going to the buffet for the rest of the cruise. Food I thought was pretty good seeing how many were being catered for. The pizza were made fresh and were gorgeous, always a good selection. There was a theme for some nights – Indian, Chinese-American, Italian, Seafood and lways a joint of meat being carved as well. Puddings were a bit samey – small bits of cake/cheesecake/fresh fruit but nice enough. Lovely ice cream one night!

A small variety of shops on board – Perfume shop, handbag shop, duty free shop, clothing shop. Opened at different times depending on where we were. I thought prices for perfumes etc, pricey, as I had gotten better deals in boots for some, but they did have some offers on during the week.

Two Pools were small but kept incredibly clean, drained each night and refilled and kept at a nice temperature. There were plenty of sunbeds about and we always found a quiet spot but this was usually away from the pool. On the only sea day though it was like locusts around the pool, every square inch was taken up! My DH wasn’t keen on the sea day though (his first cruise) so in future we will only do another one if there are relatively few sea days.

Trips – we did a F1 Tour at the Abu Dhabi Circuit. We couldn’t book this ourselves as it was full on their website so we ended up booking the tour from the ship – big mistake…….very very expensive and we had a tour guide who really didn’t know what she was talking about. Still we got to go which was great and I stood on the podium! We also booked the BigBus for Muscat and Dubai – we found this to be great as we saw places we wouldn’t have done otherwise. You can obviously do this cheaper if you know your way about but as this was our first cruise we stuck to being cautious but would venture out on our own now we now a bit more about what to do. Absolutely adored Muscat very authentic and atmospheric, DH was in RAF and did several detatchements here so knew where to go…..gold souk was amazing! Not sure how I felt about Dubai…so much building going on but enjoyed the old part of the city and watching the trading dows come in. Not sure it’s somewhere I would go back to, although, I’m sure there is still so much to see, so maybe.

All in all a great week and I would definitely go back to the area and happily go back on the Splendida. If there is anything else anyone wants to know just post and I will do my best to answer!

[olivia]

Thank you for the review, we are considering this for end of feb so it’s been most helpful.