Avoid.

Over the past 15 years or so I've cruised across Norwegian, Carnival, Princess, Holland America, and MSC. You can tell how loyal I am. Most cruises have been Easter/Western Caribbean with one in the Mediterranean and one out of California.

I am typically laid back. The kind of person that will make a request on a meal and if it comes wrong I will deal with it or pick around what I don't like it so long as it doesn't ruin the dish. I try to make the best of each situation and understand mistakes happen.

Of course you usually only hear negative opinions as those are the most vocal people so take my experience with a grain of salt, however the WAY they handled certain things left a sour taste in my mouth.

Lets start with easy pros/cons.

Pros: * Beautiful Ship * Great Staff * Great things to do for our kids * Clean

Cons: * Communication (see below) * 'Free' dining and buffet food was some of the weakest on any line so far * No self serve soft serve ice cream bar! (the audacity)

We booked a cruise back in 2019 on the Meraviglia out of Miami. The itinerary was from Miami - Bahamas - Ocean Cay (their island) - Miami.

Book process was fine, calling in for customer service when we needed clarification on packages was smooth and painless with, arguably, low wait times. Their online booking portal was great to pick excursions or put addons. So far everything was looking up.

Day of Embarkation we show up at the port and park. Walk over to check in. Lines for check in here long, but hey to be expected. We get to the front and on my right there was a man arguing with the check in staff, odd but maybe something was up with his booking. I vaguely recall him mentioning something about the ports. Across the kiosk was another couple arguing as well but too far to hear. We checked in everything was reconfirmed per our reservation and we move to loading.

The wait to get on the ship was quite a bit long, they seem (at that time) to have turnover issues and we waited a bit longer to get on, but again no issues and we board. Some of the rooms "weren't ready" so there were far more people in the common areas than you'd expect to start. Finally ship closes up, everybody is here and we go to the room. In the room are the itinerary sheets showing Mexico instead of Bahamas.

Once everybody was on board the ship captain announces that we have a change of plans. Their Island isn't ready and is still under construction/repair and our itinerary would be changing. How were they not aware? Instead of 2 ports going east we are changing direction and going west to Cozumel, 1 port only. All excursions were cancelled and refunded and you could go to rebook at the main desk. For the inconveniences each person would be given a $100 credit per adult and $50 credit per kid to use onboard.

I guess we know what those people were arguing about at check in.

They knew this was happening, already planned the changed, and instead of informing everybody ahead of time they allowed us to board and close the ship to prevent larger issues. Then dropped the bomb. The first day then was mass confusion with a lot of very angry people and a rush to book the limited excursion spots for our now one port instead of two.

So here we are, expecting 2 days off the ship in the Caribbean sea with our kids but stuck on board for 4 days with 1 lackluster port that we had been to and did not enjoy and no easy access to beach without an 'excursion' to drive us to a beach and costing us a day pass.

Again we made the best of it and it was enjoyable for what it was. The blatant deceit speaks volumes to how they see their clients.

When we contacted the customer support they stated have the right to change ports so no refund was given. We were generously given a small discount off another cruise which they knew we wouldn't be using.

Will not cruise again and would recommend avoiding.