There are many cruise ships that sail to Havana but not all spend an over night in port. We checked the fares on all ships and MSC was the most reasonable. Plus I just had a friend who came back from this same cruise who could give me insight.

Even though all the reviews said this was an old ship, it was clean and staff very friendly. It is a smaller ship and with that you do have less amenities. Since the ship was not crowded this was not too much of a problem. We did not have kids with us but there was a lego playroom and a spray pool water area for kids to play in. Other ships have more amenities for kids but this didn't concern us. Our only complaints would be the size of the shower in the ocean view staterooms. They are tiny and we hated the curtain sticking to us. The other complaint was the lack of dinner seating options. Since we were only "fantastica" level, we could not have any time dining. Apparently if we were the next level higher we could have dined any time. So we had a choice of a very early sitting around 6:15 or a late seating at 8:30. We chose the later one so we could spend more time in the ports and watch the sunset as the ship sailed away. The sittings coincided with show times but we found we were only able to eat dinner 3 times in the dining room because of our sitting time.

The shows were entertaining and even though this is an Italian ship, most crew knew enough English. It was interesting hearing the announcements in several different languages. Most staff were fluent in several languages. Read more