Welcome to my notes! First of all to those solo cruisers worried about going on a cruise solo and not knowing what to expect this is especially for you. BOOK IT, book the vacation, you won’t regret it. As a first time cruiser I was anxious about a lot of things but it turned out to be an experience of a lifetime and I’m already looking forward to my next cruise.

Would i have loved to have my friends/family with me? Yes of course. Did I miss some company at times? Yes of course. But the complete experience outweighs all of that. I would say going into the cruise i was a little overwhelmed trying to figure out the culture of how everything works but was super surprised about how quickly i caught on. There’s a ton of information given to you and plenty of friendly staff to answer any questions and guide you. The MSC for me App is a golden tool for your cruise. Everything you can ever need to plan and make sure your cruise experience goes smoothly can be done thru the app.

I got to the cruise terminal at 10:30am and was already in my cabin by 11:15ish. As soon as I arrived to my cabin I was greeted by the managing room attendant who was super friendly and already knew my name. He gave me a quick 20 second run down of my room and told me if I needed anything to let him know. As I was already in the ship by 11:15am with a 3pm departure time, I was able to grab lunch at the Buffet and explore the different decks of the ship so by the time we sailed away I already had a good layout of where everything was.

I have heard bad reviews about the food beforehand and I’m not sure if I’m just a simple guy to please but the food was honestly good to me. Was it the best thing I ever tasted? No. But the food most of the time was decent. I’m sure by now if you have been looking at reviews, you may have heard about the pizza! It lives up to the hype, the pizza is great! Even better that you can literally walk up and grab a slice anytime from lunch time…11:30am to 2am. (basically almost 24hrs) I definitely indulged in some late night slices. They literally keep just turning out pies the whole day basically and they do different types from cheese to pepperoni to meat lovers to Hawaiian.

All the free entertainment at the Broadway theater were good, though I wish there had been more variety. A lot of the shows are themed singing/dance shows. It would have been great to maybe have a magic show, or a full on musical one night, etc…just more variety. Although the performers were outstanding and wouldn’t take any credit away from them, a few nights of themed singing shows felt a little cheap to me as they could definitely hire a variety of acts. That’s why whenever the comedian had his show it was great because it added some variety and even then, the entertainment was either comedy or themed singing.

As to wondering if I felt lonely during my solo cruise….um yes and no. I wouldn’t say lonely in the best way to describe it, I think because I was having such an amazing experience on the cruise, I would have enjoyed to have one of my loved ones with me to share the experience with at times. But those were only short and few moments. It was honestly nice to have a cabin to myself and to be in complete control of my vacation. For the 7 days of my cruise I did exactly what I wanted to do without having to be considerate to anyone else. I was as active and as lazy as I wanted to be. With that being said, they Jam Pack the days with activities, so if you really wanted too you could be doing something different in every hour of the day. And along with that, you’ll find a group that you get along with thru the activities you choose to indulge with, whether that’s going to the spa everyday or playing basketball at the gym.

I had the basic interior cabin and it was honestly great as a solo cruiser. Had more than enough space and everything I could have needed. I benefited from my excursion as a solo cruiser. We stopped at port canaveral and I chose to go to DisneyWorld for the day. The ride to Disney is an hour and having to travel back an hour you have a limited time to truly enjoy the park. We had about 4-5 hours to enjoy give or take. Because you are on limited time it meant I didn’t have time to waste where normally if you were to go to a theme park you would take your time and go at your own pace. But it was to my benefit because I was able to do everything I wanted to do and experience by just going after one attraction after another and using single rider lines. But it comes with a price as I was exhausted after lol

The staff were extremely friendly, professional and truly felt like they all wanted you to have the best experience you could have. It is truly felt that MSC cares about customer experience. The room attendants are truly amazing as they literally clean and make up your room 3 times a day at times. They deserve a lot of props. At the end of the day, your vacation is dictated by how you make it. Like I said before you can be as active and as lazy as you want to be and that’s the cool thing about cruising. The only con I had wasn’t with MSC or the staff, it was with some of my fellow cruisers. Lol Especially at the Buffet, I’m not sure if it’s a cultural thing but some of the Asian foreign cruisers (if you know, you know) didn’t really know how to act at the buffet. All cruise long they would jump in front of line, jump in front of me to get what they want, bump into me, not care about personal space, I saw a multitude of them cross contaminate the juice/water machine as they would stick their personal water bottles right on the nossle of the juice dispenser. Again, I’m not sure if it’s a cultural thing where they don’t understand the norms but that’s literally it. Other than that they were great fellow cruisers.