Meraviglia in Cozumel

There are always things people really like about any individual cruise and things they could do without or feel could have been done better. Some things are likely seen as either good or bad by pretty much everyone onboard, whereas with other things some people may not care or may even feel exactly the opposite of my opinion.

HITS

The boarding process on MSC Meraviglia was easy and efficient. For the first time that I’d seen since covid they let people into the terminal before the ship actually started boarding. We were allowed wait until the ship was ready to board in those multitudes of chairs in the terminal where people used to go pre-covid, but have just walked past the rows and rows of empty chairs after waiting sometimes for hours outside since. Other than priority boarding, of which they had just one group rather than the many seen on some ships, people were given boarding group numbers as they checked in, again like the good old pre-covid days.

room full of chairs on the Meraviglia

The ship was nice, clean, spacious, well cared for, and had mostly tasteful décor.

Carousel Theater show

Most of the shows were entertaining to watch.

Meriviglia’s take on pecan pie – a normal on-menu dessert

For anyone not on a special diet they had mostly good food. They were pretty lacking in accommodating with things like gluten and dairy free options though.

cloudy sky in the dome

dome show

dome portraying a stained-glass ceiling

One of the highlights of the ship is the dome over the galleria, or promenade area. Patterns change throughout the day portraying anything from fancy ceilings to sunny skies. Several times throughout the day there’s a dome show on that ceiling. Some were patterns of light and color where others were a sequential show.

balcony cabin

The cabin was nice, and the bed had a comfortable mattress.

There were lots of different things to do onboard.

waterslides

The ship had fun waterslides where you go down on tubes, of which there were options for singles or doubles.

The crew was friendly and helpful.

MISSES

The muster drill was a crowded cluster. Instead of watching the safety video individually and going down to your muster station to get your card scanned on your own, they had everyone go to their cabin at the same time to watch the video, then call a number given at the end to prove they’d watched it – after which they announced the code so anybody could call whether they’d actually seen it or not. Then they called several decks at a time to all go down to their muster stations together for card scanning. They started with the highest decks, so those people were all on the way back up as they called lower decks to go down. This made for a huge pile-up on the stairs as elevators were not allowed and none of the crew stairways were open like they used to be back in the days of the in-person muster drill. That jam-packed stairway is a great way to spread all the germs not having the in-person muster drill is supposed to prevent as well as just being an annoyingly slow pile-up of people. Plus they kept repeatedly announcing that it was mandatory to go there as if people weren’t bothering to do it rather than being stuck on a crowded stairway unable to get through. The way all of the other ships we’ve been on since covid have done muster where you just watch the video on your own and wander through your muster station at will sometime during the boarding hours works far better.

no kleen-x in the bathroom or anywhere else

This was the second ship we’ve sailed on that had no kleen-x box in the room. The other was a different cruise line and also a newer ship.

gluten and dairy free tapioca dessert with fruit sauce

There was no gluten free food made onboard so their only option was removing sauces and things from meals or thawing frozen pre-packaged items. Getting something as simple as a pre-packaged croissant took forever from the buffet because they had to go all the way down to the dining room to use a microwave to thaw it out. Also the only gluten-free dessert offered in the dining room was cake (from the freezer of course) that was covered in whipped cream frosting so useless if dairy is an issue as well – and their so-called sorbet from the dining room contained dairy so it wasn’t even real sorbet. They did have actual sorbet for sale at the gelato shop, but would not serve that in the dining room even though they had nothing else to offer. The only dessert they ever came up with that was both gluten and dairy free was some sort of tapioca thing that was almost edible when served with a fruit sauce, but pretty bland and tasteless by itself. Of course dessert should be tasty and enjoyable, not just almost edible.

The cabin came with neither washcloths nor bathrobes so we had to ask for both at the start of the cruise and they stopped including fresh washcloths with the room cleanings a couple days before the cruise ended.

not quite dry laundry hanging on the wall with magnets and clothesline

There was no self-serve guest laundry so we had to hand wash in the cabin sink because we’re too cheap to pay the exorbitant prices cruise ships want for doing people’s laundry and we were on too long of a cruise to pack enough clean clothes to last the whole time.

MSC’s website and app leave much to be desired. Things that should work online and in the app don’t so people end up in long barely moving lines onboard for stuff that could have been taken care of in a few seconds if either the website or app worked as it should.

casino

Lines are a constant for just about everything. For example on most ships you can go into the theater ahead of time, find a seat, and wait for the show to start. On this ship people stand in line outside the theater until nearly time for the show to start even though most shows required reservations in advance. Getting on or off the ship often involves a slow-moving line too. There were also those long lines to get reservations for a lot of things that should have been done through the app, but it didn’t work. MSC is not very good with lines. Even the always long line at the customer service desk barely moves – and most of the movement it does get comes from the screener removing people that can get the help they need elsewhere.

Looking at the backside of the Houdini show from seats behind the stage in the Carousel Theater

Worst of all was the line to shows at the Carousel Theater because the doorway to that theater was at the back of the casino so the wait for those shows was inside of the smokey casino – and you had to get there pretty early if you wanted a seat where you could see the front of the stage. The first time we went to a show there we ended up behind the stage where we just saw the backside of everyone in the show. There were also seats going way out to the sides of the small round stage where views probably weren’t the best either. The view was excellent from the few available seats front and center which meant being at the front of that really long line to get them.

sorry, there’s no reservations available

There are no free eateries other than the dining room, buffet, and pool grill & ice cream. All of the specialty eateries require reservations even though some of them could handle a whole lot more people if they did walk-ins and filled tables as people left instead of reserved seatings a couple hours apart. Even if you are looking into a totally empty restaurant you can’t get in without a reservation, which you can’t get on the spot. We had dinner at the Mexican place one evening and there was only one other occupied table the whole time we were there, yet nobody who stopped by the door was allowed in. We also were not allowed in when trying to eat there another time when the place was completely empty other than the people who worked there, yet their reservation system said it was full.

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