MSC Armonia Adriatic Sea Cruise: Bottom Line Review

A few days ago, I disembarked from the MSC Armonia, which made for my third “free” MSC cruise thanks to casino status matching (more info can be found in the “What did it cost?” section below). We picked this cruise entirely for its port stops. The port stops made this an amazing deal. We loved Kotor, Montenegro, but also had a great time walking the walls of Dubrovnik, Croatia enjoyed an absolutely perfect day at the beach on Corfu, devoured a delicious Greek meal on Zakynthos, and were totally charmed by the streets of old town Bari, Italy before returning to Venice. The ship itself was kind of boring (which we expected), the food was much better than we’d expected, and the entertainment was much worse than we expected. Despite a couple of areas of disappointment, we wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this itinerary, though only if the ship itself doesn’t much matter to you.

MSC Armonia “free” Ocean Prime cruise: How much did it cost?

For perspective, full price for four passengers in an ocean view room on the itinerary we booked would have been more than $4,000. We booked through an Ocean Prime MSC offer. That means we only paid a $400 deposit for the first two passengers, which we got back as an onboard credit. There were no taxes. We had to pay a supplement of $359 for each of our two kids plus $59 for the “fantastica” experience to choose our own cabin.  In total, that’s $777 for the two kids and choosing our cabin. I therefore paid $1177 up front and got $400 back in on-board credit. I loaded that to a slot machine early on (simply charging it to my room) and I spun for a little while and hit “cash out” after I got bored (while still even), so I got that $400 back in my pocket for a net cost of $777.

That’s a pretty fantastic price when you consider all that a cruise includes — lodging for 7 nights, transportation to 5 different European cities, meals, entertainment, etc. Cruising still isn’t my favorite way to travel, but I do enjoy that we got to spend time in 5 different cities (at least one of which I don’t know that we ever would have planned a trip around visiting before but will now) and only had to unpack one time.

MSC Armonia Bottom Line Review

The MSC Armonia is an older, simpler ship that is missing many of the more exciting bells and whistles of newer ships. That said, we basically treated the ship like a floating hotel with free breakfast and dinner that brought us to 5 different places that we were excited to visit. Through that lens, we got everything we wanted and more.

This cruise differed from others we’ve taken with MSC in several key ways:

• The food in the buffet was much better than other MSC cruises we’ve taken. That’s not to say that the buffet was gourmet, but rather that we liked almost everything we tried well enough. Regular readers will find that in stark contrast with what I had to say about food on the MSC Orchestra last summer. Pasta dishes in particular were significantly better and nearly everything was good enough if not great. As this was a European cruise, we didn’t even try the main dining room. The “early” seating is at 7pm and our kids (ages 3 and 6) aren’t cut out for a 7pm restaurant meal that drags on for 90-120 minutes, so we stuck to breakfast in the morning and then pizza and the buffet in the evenings (and we had great lunches on a couple of port stops).
• The Diamond member treatment was far better than we’ve had on any MSC cruise yet. At embarkation, we arrived about an hour early (our embarkation time was 2pm, but we arrived just before 1pm) and not only was the early arrival not a problem, but there were priority lines at each step so that we dropped our bags and went directly to a counter to complete check-in and directly to a bus to the ship, bypassing a long line to wait for a ride to the ship (Venice is a weird port – more on that in the next bullet point). For our one tender port (Zakynthos), we were given priority tender tickets the night before and simply had to show them at the stairs to go directly down to a tender, whereas everyone else had to get a ticket in the morning and then queue up in the theater when their numbers were called for a tender. In both situations, it felt more like an elite status experience because of the “cut the line” nature of it.
• We boarded at Venice-Marghera, which is a weird port since all passengers have to go through check in at the old Venice Maritime Station and then get transported by bus or tender to the ship in the cruise port (about 15 minutes away by bus or 30 minutes by tender). We got a bus to the ship on the way there, but on the way back we ended up on a tender. Due to our Diamond status, we had Group 2 debarkation (out of at least 12, maybe more), but we ended up missing the call for Group 2 and got off the ship with Group 3, which might be why we didn’t get a bus. Nonetheless, they didn’t pack the tender full, which I think was because of the special status nature of the first few groups to disembark.
• The entertainment was far worse than on our other MSC cruises. We only went to 1.5 theater shows – and the only reason we went to that many is because we only caught about half the show the first night and I said that I should try a different show all the way through before passing judgment. The dancers were very good….most of the rest of it was not. The El Dorado Band (essentially the house band) was great, though. They were mostly hidden away in a lounge outside the main restaurant on a deck that had nothing much of interest otherwise, so I often found them playing to almost no crowd – and that was a shame, because they were very good.

More key stuff:

• Price : Net $777, which was the fees for two kids plus a small fee to choose our cabin. See the “What did it cost?” section above for more.
• Value: Outstanding considering the fact that $777 for 7 nights of accommodations alone is a deal in most of Europe. When you consider everything else that comes with a cruise (meals, entertainment, transportation to several destinations, etc), it was a really compelling value in my opinion.
• Cabin: We booked an ocean view and received an ocean view (some Diamond members occasionally report getting upgraded close to departure, but no dice for us). Our cabin was fine and about what we expected, but we weren’t thrilled. The space itself was a bit cramped (we had two singles pushed together as a double in the middle of the room with a pullman bed coming down from the ceiling on either side. There was no couch / sitting area to use during the day, just a desk and one other stool sort of chair, which basically meant that the four of us needed to share the same bed for a sitting area during the day. The bathroom was in rough shape, with a bunch of chrome chipped away from the sink drain and corners of the bathroom just clearly showing their years of wear. We initially weren’t sure we could fit all of our stuff in the cabin, but the room had a deceiving amount of storage space, so that worked out OK. It was fine for a week, but got a little cramped at times.
• Internet: Really good….and also really disappointing (but hold on for why). The speed was terrific – I got as high as 210 Mbps down and 31 Mbps upon the Space X Starlink Internet on the “Premium” browse & stream package. We got kicked off two or three times over 7 days and got logged back in pretty easily. I should note that I met another American on board who reported awful WiFi reception in their cabin, so YMMV. The reason I was disappointed is that this was the first cruise where I’ve been unable to get the WiFi on my phone and then hotspot  from my phone to connect my laptop at the same time. While I could turn on my phone’s hotspot feature and “connect” to the phone, I couldn’t get on the Internet on my laptop via my phone’s wireless hotspot, nor tethered via USB. We paid for a 2-device plan and connected my wife’s phone and my phone, but MSC doesn’t allow device switching, so the inability to hotspot meant that I couldn’t get my laptop online with the 2-device package I’d bought. That was really annoying. I ended up having to pay for 24-hour access one day when I had to work while we were at sea. We paid $189 in advance for the two-device premium Internet package and 30 EUR for the single-device 24-hour package for my laptop the day I had to work. I probably wouldn’t have done things differently even if I’d known that I couldn’t hotspot, but it was annoying because there are a lot of little things I usually do from my computer throughout the week after the kids have gone to bed that I couldn’t do at night on the cruise. If I hadn’t taken vacation, I’d have ended up needing to buy a plan for the full cruise for my laptop and that’s annoying (and expensive).
• Service: Service aboard most cruise ships is pretty good on an individual basis (like from waiters in restaurants and cafes), but conventional wisdom is not to expect anything above and beyond when things go wrong on MSC. That said, when the onboard credit from my casino offer did not automatically get applied to my folio, Ariana at the reception desk was very helpful. She called the accounting department and sent them an email and within minutes it was fixed. On the flip side, a few of the staff working the security checkpoint on this ship (where they scan your cards when getting on and off) were the rudest we’ve encountered on any of the 8 cruises we’ve taken in the past 2 years. Most of the ship’s staff was very friendly though.
• Dining: This ship had no specialty dining, just the main dining rooms and the buffet. That meant that we didn’t have a chance to take advantage of our Diamond member specialty dining benefit. MSC being an European cruise line, the main dining room’s “early” seating was at 7pm and the “late” seating was something after 9pm. Our kids just aren’t cut out for a 2hr meal at 7pm, so we only ended up eating in the buffet / pizza spot. It was a solid fine. Pasta dishes were served proper al dente and there was often a pasta station where someone was cooking the dish of the day. There was a lot of repetition (the meats and cheeses station was basically the same all day long and the repertoire of pasta dishes was limited, but it was enough for a 7-night cruise, particularly since we came in with low expectations for the food.
• Spa: My wife visited the spa for both a massage and a facial. She reported being very pleasantly surprised with the quality of the massage (they did a promotion one day to “pay for 50 minutes, get 80 minutes), so she paid $160 for an 80-minute massage; the facial was $130). The downside was some slight pressure to buy (overpriced) products after her treatments. It wasn’t unexpected.
• Fitness room: There was a fitness room. It was sufficient, but not impressive.
• MSC Diamond elite benefits:
  • Priority Embarkation: This was delivered very well. When we arrived at the port, we showed our fast track boarding passes and were more or less whisked through the process, straight to the front of each line and onto a bus to board the ship.
  • Priority tender: The sole port that required a tender was a breeze. We were delivered priority tickets the night before with instructions to skip queuing in the theater with everyone else and to instead head straight to the stairs when we wanted to get off the ship and show our tickets. That worked as advertised.
  • Welcome amenity: On the second day, we received a bottle of prosecco on ice, a plate of macarons, and two chocolate bars, the same as we have on each MSC cruise.
  • Robe & slippers: We received robes and slippers on the first or second day, which was kind of nice.
• Would I cruise MSC again? Yes, I would. I’d do so with the expectation that I’m going for the trip itself – as in the port stops – and not the ship. I probably wouldn’t sail MSC on an itinerary with a lot of sea days

Image gallery

MSC Armonia Ocean View Cabin pictures

The ship

Port stops in one picture each

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