Sinfonia

The Ship

The MSC Sinfonia is a modern large ship, built only a few years ago.  She has all the usual large cruise ship facilities - restaurants, buffets, bars, shops, a theatre, 2 pools and so on - and is kept reasonably spick and span by the staff and crew.

The Cabins

We had booked an inside cabin, and were upgraded to an outside cabin, with a gorgeous view of (wait for it) the back of a lifeboat!  The cabins were adequate, but they seemed smaller than we were used to. In particular, the bathroom was very cramped.  The balcony cabins (which are sold as premium on this ship) seemed to be closer in size and facilities to the cabins that we have used in the past.

Food and Drink

The food on board was on the whole good, verging on the occasional excellent.  Breakfast was standard international fare, pretty much the same as on any other ship that we have travelled on (although they did an excellent muesli in yoghurt).  Evening meals were multi-coursed (starter, soup, salad, pasta, main course, pudding and coffee if you go for the full works) and of a consistently good standard.  Each night was themed around a different Italian region.

We only ate in the buffet a few times, and found the food there to be adequate, but the quantity of seating totally insufficient.  From memory, drinks seemed to cost around the same as on other cruise lines. 

Dress on the formal night was mainly jacket and tie for the men - less than 10% wore black tie, while another 10% seemed to make no effort what-so-ever (jeans and t-shirts).  As usual, many of the ladies totally out-shone their partners.

Onboard Entertainment

The onboard entertainment in the main theatre was excellent - the best overall standard of any cruise that we have taken.  The production shows were done to taped music, which meant that the performers could concentrate on dancing (which they did very well) and looking good (ditto).  The fact that there were so many different nationalities on board meant that entertainment tended to be either all musical, or geared to work for many different tongues, such as the (superb) ventriloquist we had one evening.  The fact that he told his jokes in different languages meant that the laughter tended to roll around the theatre as each different nationality finally realised what the punch line actually was.

There was less day-time entertainment on board than on other ships that we have travelled on.  Such as it was consisted mainly of pool games - there were no (for example) trivia quiz's, speciality lectures or (thankfully!) art auctions.

The Gym

The gym was too small for the number of people on board, and tended to get very crowded at peak times (such as a few hours before meals).  It only contained 6 treadmills, 6 bikes, 4 steppers (!) and a small weights area.

The Crew

The restaurant staff were excellent - friendly, attentive and efficient.  We hardly ever saw the room stewards, but the cabin was cleaned twice a day and was always left neat and tidy.