MSC Virtuosa 2023 - How NOT to Disembark A Ship... 

Glad that you posted this. I'd read reports of disembarkation chaos on this cruise, but the Facebook fan pages were blaming the passengers, rather than looking at the real cause. Embarkation and disembarkation are essential parts of the travel experience, and the cruise lines shouldn't be able to excuse themselves of responsibility for this.

This is shocking behaviour by an MSC employee and such a shame, as everyone always says how good the MSC employees are. He really appears to have let the side down for them. I hope MSC take your video seriously. I hope your mum didn't suffer too badly.❤

Hi Matt. We were on the same cruise and totally agree with you 100% about this employee as he barged myself and my wife out of the way as well and treated us like we were steerage passengers. Couldn't fault the rest of the staff onboard but this one guy needs some sort of refresher course on treating / dealing with customers. Super vlog as always and hope your Mum is ok.

Well done for standing up to the employee. Nobody has the right to barge past anyone its extremely rude. I have been in this situation with someone who thought they had the right to barge me out the way at 6ft2 and 19 stone they didnt succeed in barging me very far

Had our first cruise September this year. 6000 passengers. Our disembarkation time was 8.45, we were in our car at 9.00. Had the best time ever d

Disembarkation 2 weeks ago on Virtuosa in Southampton was fast and very well organised.

Hi I have watched a few of your videos so far and good to see your perspective on things. As luck would have it I was on the same cruise along with five friends. The disembarkation process issue I believe was definitely caused by border force in the main. You may recall the captain making announcements that border force was suspending disembarkation and then there would be a gap of 15-20 minutes before calling out the next group. Last year I travelled as a Yacht Club member and one of the negatives was that priority embarkation and disembarkation where they were pushing past people caused a lot of friction and to be honest you felt a bit threatened and when leaving back at Southampton people were deliberately moving their hand luggage to try and stop people getting past. Whilst it is a perk of having paid twice to three times the price dependant on cabin and as you say and as I suggested last year, either have a separate time or a separate level after all there are generally only 250 in yacht club. This time I was in the main part of the ship and when we were getting off, after your time so even worse possibly, part of the issue was there was also a lot of crew getting off as well which made a bad situation worse. The luggage area was complete mayhem with no one taking charge in any way with people jumping the queue etc MSC may not have authority to be in that area though.. Given that they were trying to get 4200 people off the ship and because of the delays people were also trying to embark along with I believe 3 other ships going through the same process. You can self disembark if you take your own suitcases off early which two of our party did and were back home before we had even got out of the car park. We took, similar to you, 3 hours from leaving the cabin to leaving the car park and google maps sent us all over the place to avoid the gridlock. This is potentially going to have a knock on effect as certainly the people in my group have vowed not to use Southampton again as it soured what had been an excellent holiday and I would think others may feel the same way. A bit long winded this comment all the best keep up the good work and kind regards.

We were on the cruise coming aboard that same day you were getting off and it was a total nightmare, due to booking our cruise very late 2 weeks before the port car park was fully booked so we ended up parking 3 miles away from the port not an issue we could just grab a taxi and complete the 15-minute journey, our time to arrive was 10am so we started to leave around 9am, we got a mile from the port and this was were the fun began, traffic from all directions was at a total gridlock in all directions coming and leaving the port area with no directions from any police officers for a very long time, people myself including were getting very frustrated at the gridlock and many people were simply just getting out of taxis and walking to the port, at one point it seemed like the opening of the film LaLa land where traffic is at a total gridlock and people were getting out of there vehicles, finally traffic started to slowly move and we got outside the port at 1:30pm, four hours to travel 3 miles not fun especially when one of your group is disabled and needs to be able to access a toilet frequently, when finally boarding the ship it was very easy and we had an enjoyable vacation around Norway taking in the lovely scenery, leaving the ship was a nightmare we were group 50 and it was announced it was our time to leave so we made our way to to get off the ship and was greeted with a que of around 800 passengers, in fairness I pointed out to the lady from MSC that my friend was disabled using a stick and there was no way on earth he could stand for that long and she allowed us to join the front of the que along with an older couple we had made friends with, thank you MSC, however after a few minutes in the queue there was a lot of pushing and shoving and just like your experience there was a chap from MSC barging past folks with luggage getting YC members off the ship, whilst I agree if you are paying big bucks to be a YC member you deserve to get on and off the ship quicker and a perk much deserved, however I don't care if your a bin worker or the mayor of London manners are manners and this does not give you the right to push past elderly and disabled passengers, thankfully I'm 6ft3 and built like a small building and nobody pushes me around especially when I am with my best friend that happens to be disabled and I made this quite clear to him and the officer who was watching this unfold whilst trying to check out and she nodded and made him and his YC guests wait for 5 minutes whilst me and my disabled friend got off the ship, again this did not stop this guy racing past us 5 minutes later and jumping into the lift barging past my disabled friend, I don't care who you are or what class of ticket you bought manners are manners and no matter how much money or class you might have respect for other people costs nothing, MSC could easily solve this issue and allow there YC members to get off the ship first rather than allowing there staff to barge and push past others, sort this out MSC!!!!!

Just returned from msc virtuosa yesterday. The disembarkation was excellent. The issue we had is that the boat was fully booked with Iver 6000 guests but they didn't seem to have enough staff to cope with this amount of people.

I've given MSC two chances to prove they were worth cruising with instead of my regular cruises on Royal and Norwegian. I will never cruise on MSC again. I had a major issue on embark out of Cape Canaveral and then three months later had a horrible disembark problem. If MSC ever wants to pull customers from other cruise lines they really need to clean up their act.

Does anyone know: What did these impromptu security checks by Border Control amount to? How many passengers were searched and what were the results?

Thug is a perfect description for this....thug.

Bit worried now going on our first cruise next year with a disabled husband who can’t stand up for long periods of time.

That is nothing next to what we had in 2014 in Italy, after the ferry from Greece arrived at Ancona, 3 hour wait on our bus with italian border guards with Machine guns, looking for illegal immigrants from Africa who had climbed under the undercarriage of the bus - a African American guy on tour was harassed by the guards until the tour operators speaking frantic Italian speakers had to convince 'Frontieri" that he was a Black American and not a Nigerian overstayer. Turned out our friend was Portorican and could only speak Spanish hence the suspicion. I got a couple of looks because of my brown Maori skin and big Maori lips - but was left alone. - Racism pure and simple. I was penalised for TWB = Travelling while Black or Brown.

Don't hold your breath waiting for MSC (Mediocre Shipping Company) to ask you for the video of the crew member thug. Their customer service is non-existent.

Terrible behaviour by MSC. Hopefully a swfit resolution will help the situation. By the way... Route 66 booked for end of April 2024 :)

Hi Matt. Hope you mum is OK after this ordeal👍 Absolutely absurdly ridicoulous behaviour by an absolute idiot and thug. You were restrained, I would have decked the clown🥵. This is just not on and based on this behaviour, even one rotten apple, I probably won't ever cruise on them. Please keep your honest and valuable reviews coming. I for one appreciate them💪🇿🇦

Wow, what a horrendous experience. As for the butler, you should report him to the police for assault. He'd have been flat on his back if he had done that to me. I hope your mum was ok after this. It will be interesting to see MSC's response. frankly you should have included the edited out footage.

I think I would of pushed and swore at that violent tyrant!.