In 2016 we won a free cruise on MSC Splendida through a cruising forum owned and run by a cruise agent, during that cruise we attended a talk on MSC’s plans for the future and I remember them showcasing the new Seaside class of ship. The external renderings of these new ships gave us the impression that they were very similar in appearance to Royal Caribbean’s Oasis class and at 154.000 tonnes were much larger than the majority of the MSC fleet. I remember thinking at the time these weren’t really our sort of thing, however after reading on one of the forums that there was an offer on for the inaugural cruise on MSC Seaview which is the second ship in this class, our weakness for new ships kicked in and we ended up booking a 5 night cruise at what I would consider an absolute bargain price (£64 per person per night). We booked cruise only and directly through the MSC website which was a first for us. Everything went very smoothly and I was surprised how simple the process was.
Over the next twelve months the price crept up to almost double what we had paid which is always very pleasing when it happens to you. However, in December 2017 MSC announced that the ship was going to be finished early so a couple of cruises were added before ours, this unfortunately resulted in our cruise losing its inaugural tag. We were offered the option to rebook but with flights already paid for we decided to sit tight with what we had already booked (the price we got it for originally contributed heavily to this decision).
Our itinerary is as follows and there will be two new ports for us, Genoa & Messina. We do have plans for each stop and because it will be June there is a fair chance the weather will be nice too.
| DATE | LOCATION | ARRIVAL | DEPARTURE |
| Sunday, Jun 10, 2018 | Genoa, Italy | 05:00 PM | |
| Monday, Jun 11, 2018 | Naples, Italy | 01:00PM | 07:30 PM |
| Tuesday, Jun 12, 2018 | Messina, Italy | 08:00 AM | 06:00 PM |
| Wednesday, Jun 13, 2018 | Valletta, Malta | 08:00 AM | 06:00 PM |
| Thursday, Jun 14, 2018 | At Sea | ||
| Friday, Jun 15, 2018 | Barcelona, Spain | 09:00 AM |
My cabin selection was made very quickly and I selected a cabin close to one of the stair lobby’s for ease of ship navigation, one of my pet hates is walking along lengthy corridors just to reach your cabin. We have a port side cabin near the front of the elongated hump which should allow us to see both forwards and backwards.
On 8 May, just 33 days before our sailing we received news that the ship is going to require a few more days to allow completion at Fincantieri’s Monfalcone shipyard. Because of this delay the short cruise originally planned for June 7-10 was cancelled. Seaview’s first cruise is once again our sailing on June 10 which is a day after the christening in Genoa on the 9th.
Great articles!!!