DON’T WASTE YOUR MONEY! MSC cruises are very inexpensive but no matter how low the price, you get even less than you pay for because there is poor food unfriendly staff, rude passengers and essentially no service. Beyond that we had an experience that was unbelievable. We were in a balcony cabin and just before going to bed one night a few days into our trip we discovered that the carpet between the end of the sofa and the closet was wet. The first thing the next morning we had our cabin steward come in to look at the problem. When he pulled out the sofa we were horrified to see that the carpet underneath it was covered with a very thick layer of white mold. The steward called an engineer who found and repaired the leak. The steward then “sanitized” the carpet. This was not a hazmat procedure. Except for a brief time allowing us to change for dinner we did not have access to our cabin for that day or evening. We should have been contacted immediately and moved to another cabin but we heard nothing from anyone. Late that afternoon I finally spoke to Customer Relations and was assured that someone would contact us by end of the day. Nothing either that day or the next morning so I went to the front desk and stood in their always endless line. When I reached the front I announced that I would not be leaving the counter until someone with authority spoke to us. The officer in charge of housekeeping and assistant supervisor of guest relations finally talked to us and were masters of buck passing blaming low level staff members and not taking any responsibility for themselves or others at the highest levels. It was apparent to us that they don’t have any procedures for situations like this and beyond that, they really didn’t care. In hindsight what we should have done was go to the Miami Health Department immediately after we disembarked and shown them pictures of the mold.

The above just highlights the worst aspect of the cruise but we can't find a good thing to say about anything except the entertainment which was outstanding...but still not good enough to want to recommend MSC to anyone. The food was marginal - somewhat better in the buffet than the dining room plus without exception the dining room staff was horribly unfriendly and the service was consistently poor. At least some of the staff in the buffet was friendly. Anytime you entered the central common area of the ship you were assaulted with ridiculously loud music which made any conversation impossible. All in all except for our cabin steward the service throughout the ship was lacking. The Seaside carries over 4100 passengers and has just 1400 crew so that total lack of service should not be any surprise. But it turned out to be even worse than we expected.

Our Jose Cuervo tasting excursion was pretty good but the one we did in Jamaica seemed more focused on selling us things than showing us the Ocho Rios area.