Big is back

RETURN OF THE BIG SHIPS

MSC’s new Virtuosa marks a milestone for the postpandemic era of big-ship cruising. Sue Bryant was on one of its first sailings from an English port.

The maiden voyage of MSC’s gleaming new MSC Virtuosa was a first in more ways than one. She set sail from a cold, wet Southampton, one of the first cruises to resume in Europe.

The fickle English summer weather aside, this was a milestone for cruising, and an emotional moment. Big-ship cruise fans have largely been deprived of holidays at sea since March 2020.

Swiss-Italian-owned MSC is alone in the cruising world in that it’s actually kept a ship going since August 2020 through all but the bleakest months of the pandemic, sailing from the Italian port of Genoa and only carrying residents of Europe’s Schengen zone.

With ultra-strict testing protocols and social distancing in place, more than 65,000 passengers have sailed on board a MSC cruise without a COVID outbreak. A “tiny percentage” of passengers, the line says, have been turned away at the point of embarkation, either because they tested positive or had close contacts with positive tests. But break the rules on board, or stray from the group on one of the ship’s ‘bubble’ excursions, and you’re kicked off, no questions asked.

The protocols that are in place now are part of a phased restart. The 6,300-passenger ship is only sailing with 1,000 on board at the moment, in line with current British government regulations. From the gangway, I peered up at the ship, towering 18 decks above the quayside. Would we rattle around inside this massive ship?

The answer is no. Sailing at much reduced capacity is a rather luxurious experience. On my cruise along England’s south coast, there were more crew than passengers, as all the bars and restaurants were open and needed to be staffed. In any case, people gravitated to popular venues like the Sky Lounge and the Masters of the Sea pub, creating the illusion of the ship being much busier.

Like MSC’s other new ships, Virtuosa is designed to wow the minute you step on board, all Italian marble and glittering staircases encrusted with 61,000 Swarovski crystals.

The heart of the ship is the Galleria Virtuosa, a 112-metre long, two-deckhigh indoor promenade lined with jewellery shops, bars and restaurants. The ceiling of the gallery is domed, with different videos projected on the ceiling throughout the day. I found it mesmerising, as the dome transformed from a dazzling cityscape to a riot of flower-power colour promoting a 1970s party to a blanket of twinkling stars late at night.

The rules on board are strict. Vaccinated or not, everybody is swabtested at check-in and given a plastic wristband that will facilitate contact tracing if necessary. Check-in and embarkation are carried out in strict time windows. Everybody has to provide proof of insurance against COVID. There are temperature checks and compulsory hand-washing at the entrance to every restaurant, and seating in the bars and lounges is spaced out. Paper menus in the dining venues have been replaced with QR codes to scan.

Rob the robot bartender, the star of the futuristic MSC Starship Club aboard the MSC Virtuosa.

One-way arrows on the floor direct you around big spaces like the cavernous Marketplace Buffet, and masks have to be worn all the time when you’re moving around, including outside. I even had to wear a mask for my Balinese massage in the Aurea Spa.

The lifeboat drill has changed, too – for the better, in my opinion. Now you watch a safety video in your cabin and input a code into your cabin phone to confirm that you’ve seen it. Once you’ve done that, you walk to your muster station, check in and leave.

We’d just emerged from lockdown and a grim winter, so everybody was just enjoying the whimsical fun of this vast, floating resort.”

It’s a smart way to avoid having large crowds congregate.

In fact, everything on board is designed to stop unnecessary gatherings of fellow passengers. Theatre shows have to be pre-booked now, while lifeguards supervise the pools and whirlpools to make sure the maximum allowed numbers are observed.

Most people, though, are so happy to be back at sea that these rules don’t seem particularly intrusive. Britain had just emerged from months of lockdown and a grimly wet winter, so it’s no surprise

that everybody was just enjoying all the whimsical fun of this vast, floating resort.

I donned a headset and gun to battle zombies in the virtual reality games centre and screamed around the Monza Grand Prix course in the Formula 1 simulator. I’m slightly alarmed at how exhilarating these adrenaline rushes were after months of monotony.

Others relieved tension by yelling all the way down the twisty waterslides on the aft deck and teetering across the Himalayan Bridge rope walk in the gusting wind.

Most of the features on Virtuosa are the same as her predecessor, MSC Grandiosa, but something new is the futuristic MSC Starship Club, a novelty bar manned by ‘Rob’. Rob is a robot bartender who is so advanced that he took six years to create. He speaks eight languages.

I selected English on a screen and ordered a drink. “A cocktail a day keeps the doctor away,” he says conversationally, swivelling around and jiggling containers as he prepared my lurid cocktail, presented in a souvenir glass. This venue aside, drinks were included on my cruise, so Rob didn’t have much trade, although he no doubt did well on social media.

The majority of passengers seemed happy in the main dining rooms and the Marketplace Buffet (now manned by servers behind screens), but after months of the narrow choices of lockdown I ate my way around all the speciality restaurants.

My meat-eating companions raved about the Butchers’ Cut steakhouse, while the chefs in Kaito Teppanyaki put on a fine display of knife-juggling as they prepared sizzling hot food in front of us. Hola! Tacos & Cantina is a suitably authentic Mexican, where you make your own guacamole at the table, while Indochine did a mind-blowingly hot green papaya salad. But there’s a price tag on everything: you can dine a la carte and pay as you go, or buy a package to eat in four restaurants.

While my cruise was positively serene, a quieter bolthole might be appealing when the ship is sailing full. The Yacht Club, MSC’s ship-within-a-ship, is gorgeous, an enclave spanning several

Left: a pampering session onboard the MSC fleet. Left below: the outdoor deck area of the Yacht Club. Right, from top: the ornate atrium of the MSC Virtuosa; the MSC Virtuosa at sea; Galleria Virtuosa, a domed shopping and dining strip on the ship.

decks, its inhabitants enjoying allinclusive drinks, their own bar and lounge, with magnificent forward views, a private deck and a smart, light-filled restaurant with daily changing menus. It’s an appealing option if you want the vibe of a big ship but the service and space of a small one.

So is my Virtuosa experience the new way of cruising? Changes, MSC says, will be in line with local government policy for now. So the mask rule may go and more than 10 could be allowed in the sizeable main pool – something important for when the ship moves to the Middle East in November.

Social distancing might be eased and the bubble excursions relaxed. But I can see testing, temperature checks, the newstyle boat drill and certainly the demise of the self-serve buffet as the way forward. None of which is necessarily a bad thing.

FACT FILE

CRUISE LINE: MSC Cruises SHIP: MSC Virtuosa LAUNCHED: 2021 STAR RATING: Not yet rated TONNAGE: 181,541 PASSENGER DECKS: 15 PASSENGER CAPACITY: 6,334 CREW: 1,704

THE VERDICT

HIGHS: Stylish design, quality speciality dining and accommodation for every budget. LOWS: Extra charges for everything from WiFi to VR games, drinks, classes, speciality dining and decent coffee. BEST FOR: Families and younger cruisers looking for sunshine and nightlife.