We travelled from Edinburgh to Southampton by train the day before our cruise and stayed at the Ibis Budget Hotel near the port. It was the only hotel in the area that had an accessible room available and it was budget, really basic, not even a phone in the room, but adequate just for 1 night’s stay. The room they had booked us into on the 2nd floor had twin beds. Luckily, they had a double accessible room available on the 4th floor. Breakfast was adequate. As the port is only 10 minutes from the hotel, we decided to walk it – big mistake! A lack of dropped kerbs meant that I had to drive in my powerchair on a busy road most of the short journey. We were directed by the port officials, and ended up in an area that had no access to the ship. Cruise staff had to move barriers to let us through.
The ship is absolutely beautiful but it has some serious accessibility issues. The cabin itself was ideal for my needs, plenty of space to manoeuvre and turn. The wet room was spacious, had plenty of room to manoeuvre and the shower had a wall mounted chair, but this was VERY narrow and didn’t feel safe. My husband had to shower me for the entire cruise. There was no emergency cord. The balcony was a corner balcony and was a very good size. The mirror is located on the front of the bathroom door. There isn’t a mirror above the dressing table/desk. To use the hairdryer, you had to keep the button pressed. This was a bit awkward and could be very difficult for people with manual dexterity problems
They didn’t have the wristbands as advertised, instead of having to carry cruise cards.
I approached Shore Excursions on day 1. There was not one wheelchair accessible excursion. We were visiting 7 ports. I discovered that their definition of “wheelchair friendly” was that you had to fold your wheelchair and walk up 2 steps and on to the coach! When I told them I couldn’t walk at all, and their definition of wheelchair friendly was anything but, my family pointed out that both there website and brochure advertised fully accessible excursions. I discovered that, at our first port of Cadiz there was 21 shuttle buses and not one of them had a ramp. When I complained to customer services, they said they’d look into it. All of a sudden, there was now two (of 21!) that had a ramp.
When I tried to get off at Cadiz, there was a 6 inch gap between the ramp and the gangway. 5 men turned up to lift me over the gap. My powerchair weighs 154kg on its own. My husband told them it wasn’t possible to lift my chair, besides it was degrading and embarrassing for me. I was stuck, with no way to go backwards or forwards. Luckily, the cruise director was on hand and took us upstairs to another gangway but I wasn’t able to use that one either as it has steps so we returned to the original gangway and engineers came and built a ramp so that I could get off! After this, I was able to get off without incident at all other ports.
We went to a Carousel show. It was difficult trying to find a space to park my wheelchair, despite a row showing a wheelchair icon. The seats were fixed and couldn’t be moved. When we queried it afterwards, we were told that the seats were for “disabled guests”. I quipped sarcastically that I couldn’t be much more disabled, but he didn’t say anything.
I did try bingo once, but one ticket cost 20€. Again, as it was in the Carousel Lounge, I found it difficult to find somewhere to park.
90% of the accessible toilets were a cubicle in the ladies. There was a heavy door with door closure to access the ladies and most of the accessible cubicles were located behind the door – my chair was banged a few times. None of the accessible cubicles had emergency pull cords, and they all had paper towels, but they had driers beside the sinks for other toilet users. I couldn’t even go to the toilet by myself, a member of my family had to let me into and out of the toilet.
Most, but not all doors were automatic. Deck 15, the pool deck, had automatic doors, but deck 16, open deck, where we preferred, didn’t.
On day 1, the captain announced that although there was 6,300 passengers on board, there wasn’t 6,300 sunbeds, and the usual request not to reserve sunbeds. Crew were meant to remove items from sunbeds that looked like they’d been reserved. I never saw this actually happen. The ship was overcrowded and this made the situation worse. You had to be up top before 8am to have any chance of getting a sunbed and, even then, there were rows upon rows of nothing but towels on sunbeds. Even on port days, people put towels on sunbeds before they went into port and came back several hours later. There was no waiter service on deck 16. When we asked why, they told us that they used to have a trolley service but sunbeds blocked the walkway where it narrows at wind breakers, and staff were being abused when they asked people to move their sunbeds. They did try to resurrect this service during the cruise, but it was patchy.
The normal double occupancy of Virtuosa is 4,800 passengers, so at 6,300 passengers it was at absolutely maximum capacity. There may be enough cabins to cram in 6,300 passengers, but there isn’t enough space elsewhere on the ship. It was almost impossible to find somewhere just to sit and read a book or have a cup of tea. The whole ship was overcrowded.
We didn’t go to see any shows in the theatre. Although there were wheelchair spaces, there was no companion seats beside them. We were told it was for safety reasons. This was our 10th cruise and they had them on every other ship.
There were touch screens beside the lifts on every deck with info such as what’s on around the ship, deck plan, where the nearest toilet is etc. I liked the operation of the lifts i.e. you select your floor on a touch screen, it told you what lift to go to, and a lift that was going in your direction. There’s also a disability button so that the doors are open a little longer.
The food was mixed. The buffet was large, but repeated over and over. Personally, I was not a fan and didn’t think the food was great. The Marketplace buffet had an adequate, but not extensive selection. The food display labels were on top of the units at a 45° angle, so even if I managed to get close enough, I still wouldn’t be able to see them.
Left in your cabin every day is a copy of the daily planner, which gives a list of everything going on around the ship the following day, allowing you to plan your day. The app was hit and miss but we did like the ability to message each other using ship’s Wi-Fi. You could also view the menu for all the restaurants. However, the ship map and directions didn’t work for the entire cruise. We tried two of the speciality restaurants and would recommend both Butcher’s Cut and Hola.
There was a huge number of kids of all ages and teens. The buffet was over-run by rowdy kids at midnight snack time, which did put us off using it at that time. A large amount of passengers were able to enter the buffet without sanitising their hands.
On day 1, we couldn’t get into our cabin because it hadn’t finished being cleaned. Later, there was a problem with the lock and we couldn’t get in. Our room steward, Victor got it fixed for us. We didn’t get access to our cabin and case until 21:30.
We tried out most of the bars, and settled on the TV studio on deck 7, where they had a music quiz every night.
My 67 year old step-dad booked a studio cabin (14.215), but this turned out not to have a proper bed, just a couple of pillows and duvet thrown over the sofa. This was hurting his back, and when he complained, they moved him to a double cabin.
The arcade was good, but there were a lot of games out of order, which weren’t fixed during the cruise. By the last night, there were 8 people queueing to use one basketball machine. This was poor, especially since passengers were encouraged to buy a fun pass before boarding. Because of this we couldn’t actually spend it all and my step-dad still had £100 credit at the end of the cruise. Every member of of our party had credit on their fun pass they couldn’t use.
The staff were really helpful, apart from a few. However, a few of them did look at me as if they had never seen a powerchair before.
In summary, I don’t think MSC are geared up for full-time or powerchair users. There was some wheelchair users, but from what we saw, most of them seemed to able to at least take a few steps.
– Shirley Todd
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Totally agree with this review, I use a mobility scooter and travel solo, so heavy doors that don’t open automatically, I really struggle with and had bruises to prove it!!