The MSC Seaside – one of the most popular ships in the MSC Cruises fleet – has failed on a recent inspection by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Alarmingly, the score that the ship received is significantly below the pass mark – ships required at least an 85 to pass the inspection, and MSC Seaside received only a 67.
The report from the agency listed a number of issues with the ship while she was inspected during a random visit from the CDC. The ship has previously passed inspections with scores of 92 and 94 in 2014 and 2018, respectively.
The overall score of 67 is the lowest recorded on a cruise ship since 2017. Three other ships have failed inspections during this time – Regal Princess of the Princess Cruises fleet scored 77 and Un-Cruise Adventure’s ship Safari Endeavour scored a 79 when both were inspected in 2020. In 2018, Compagnie Du Ponant’s ship Le Boreal scored 84, just missing the pass mark.
Many ships have passed with a perfect 100 score, showing that the scoring criteria is not impossibly strict. Some of the ships to have passed with a perfect score include Celebrity Edge (Celebrity Cruises), MS Rotterdam (Holland America Line), Carnival Sunshine (Carnival Cruises) and Disney Fantasy (Disney Cruise Line).
You can see the full list of the cleanest cruise ships here.
Some of the issues reported by the CDC on MSC Seaside include:
- Flies around bars and food-handling areas
- Water pooled on decks
- Poor record-keeping for crew and passenger numbers
- Improper handwashing protocols by staff handling raw meat
- Self-service tongs left touching food in buffets
- Cooking utensils not properly cleaned
- Food and water residue in restaurant condiment storage inserts
MSC Cruises will now have to file an official response to the inspection, addressing every infraction individually, including the causes and fixes being put into place to address them.
If the response is considered unsatisfactory, the CDC does have the power to issue a do-not-sail order, which would impact cruise itineraries until the proper measures are taken.
Related Posts:
- Why Are MSC Cruises So Cheap?
- MSC Cruises Ships by Size, Age and Class
- List Of The Cleanest Cruise Ships
Jenni Fielding is the founder of Cruise Mummy. She has worked in the cruise industry since 2015 and has taken over 30 cruises. Now, she helps over 1 million people per month to plan their perfect cruise holidays.
We are due to sail on MSC Seaside on 5th October. Hopefully things will be sorted satisfactorily by tnen.
I’m sure they will be! Another inspection will be happening soon so they ship should be spick and span for your cruise.
Greetings. I just disembarked from MSC Seaside. I would like to take a moment to give you a quick synopsis of how our cruise went.
We had a number of issues some of which were resolved and some were not resolved I think you might be interested in knowing what these issues were so you could take some measure to correct them for future customers. I’d like you to know this was my first cruise on MSC. I’ve proved many times on carnival celebrity Royal Caribbean and others and I wanted to try MSC. I think you will find it interesting that my experience with MSC would likely lead me to the conclusion that I won’t book MSC again.
Upon arrival in Orlando we found your transportation to and from the cruise ship to be excellent the bus service was on time courteous and they really treated us very nicely.
Upon arriving we were told our cabin would be ready by 1:30 so we went to have lunch and then we waited till 1:30 our cabin was not ready at 1:30 nor was our cabin ready at 2:30 3:30 4:30 5:30. When I finally get get into the cabin we noticed that the bed was only made for a couple we were traveling as friends we are not a romantic couple therefore I asked our room Stewart to please make sure and divide the beds into two beds she informed me at that time that she didn’t have time to divide the beds we should just sleep together that night and she would do it the next day. I took her out into the hallway I gave her $20 and I asked that she please have the bed separated that evening before we went to bed. She promised she would have the bed separated. That evening upon returning to our room at 11:00 p.m. the beds were not separated I called customer service and they assured me they would send someone up in 15 minutes to correct the problem 45 minutes later I went down to customer service again this time they sent up a person to change our beds into single beds I asked customer service to give me a different person for our week since I did not know trust our room attendant. The new room attendant that we had her name was Kathleen or Catherine she was from Honduras. She was absolutely excellent and we were very grateful for her excellent service. I think it was very inappropriate of the first room attendant to treat us with some disrespect even after accepting my gratuity.
Every morning we ate in your restaurant on the 5th floor we prefer the restaurant over the buffet we found the buffet quite disappointing because there was no fresh fruit other than melons. The restaurant that we ate breakfast offered a nice menu we ordered salmon and omelette everyday. However everyday our omelets arrive different than what we had ordered. Only one day of the seven days did I receive an omelette that was correct. I found this very discouraging. My friend ordered salmon smoked without a bagel and cream cheese when it arrived there was no cream cheese and she requested cream cheese. The waiter told her she had told him she didn’t want cream cheese. He never brought her any cream cheese. The staff serving coffee were excellent the staff serving Danish and other breads in the morning were excellent. But we found that the kitchen obviously did not care about what we ordered.
We found it difficult to navigate in our room 12095 it was a balcony room but the distance between the bed and the closet made it difficult to get in and out of the closet and the layout of the room was not easy to navigate. But this was the least of our complaints we did like the balcony and as I said our new attendant was excellent in keeping us well stocked with towels and everything we needed for a delightful experience. It was a shame we had sewer smells in our AC unit which was actually nauseating.
We often ate lunch in your buffet area one day when I encountered a bowl of lettuce that was quite Brown on the edges I pointed out to the person behind the counter that the lettuce was quite Brown he looked at it and he told me it looked good to him. I did not continue to argue with him but the lettuce was obviously not fresh. I found other locations for lunch that had fresher lettuce so I was satisfied but I found his response to be inadequate at best. We were often greeted with a little respect and quite often disrespect I’m not sure why nothing that we did should have dictated that.
Our evening meals in your dining room the Ipanema were wonderful your portions were large your staff was very accommodating very pleasant the atmosphere was wonderful the interaction with staff and other passengers was a great experience. We really had no complaints of the dining in the evening.
Leaving the ship in different ports and returning to this year was very easy staff was very nice security measures were very good and we did not have any lines or waiting coming or going from the ship considering the size of the ship number of passengers I was very impressed with this aspect of our cruise.
Entertainment was wonderful, I have not been on a cruise ship with such excellent entertainment. In the last 13 months I’ve been on 14 cruises so that is quite a compliment to your entertainment staff.
It was unfortunate that our cabin frequently had the smell of sewer coming through our air conditioning system I’m not sure what that problem was it really started on our last evening and I did not make a complaint because it started about 10:00 p.m. and we really didn’t want to have anyone messing around when we were trying to sleep but it was rather distracting because the odor was extremely strong. The bathroom itself was not easy for me to navigate I could not sit straight on the commode because I am over 6 ft tall and I had to sit sideways on the commode . The shower was nice other than that I had no issues with the bathroom it was well stocked and the temperature by the way in the room was easy to control and the air conditioning work wonderfully with the exception of the frequent sewage smell.
I did find your customer service people to be extremely friendly and helpful they even sent a bottle of champagne and snacks to our room as a way of showing apology for the way we were treated upon arrival with our cabin and our cabin attendant this was a nice touch but it felt a little bit short of our expectations on this Cruise. But I will say I appreciate it the gesture.
After seeing the CDC report of Seaside MSC flunking I was concerned and I think you should be as well. As a customer I expected more from your company I did hear from other customers who are also not pleased with the MSC Seaside they told us not to judge your company by one ship that they had found your other ships to be excellent but they too found their expectations were not being met on the MSC Seaside with this in mind I might possibly consider MSC in the future but after my initial experience I’m more prone to go with the cruise lines that we’ve had excellent service and never issues like this.
One thing we did make note of whenever we ordered steak from your restaurant at night it never made any difference whether we ordered it rare medium rare or well done it all came the same every night medium rare the waiter did say that was a trend and that most people experience the same thing he apologized and said almost all of the steaks come medium rare. I think this is something you definitely could make an improvement.
I’m letting you know all of these things in hopes that perhaps you will make some changes that will allow for other guests in future cruises to have a better experience I will say overall I do not feel that we had a bad experience that we had a disciplining cruise we had a wonderful time we had shore excursions we had your private island was exceptional in the Bahamas there were certain things that were very nice and our cruise was okay in that regard but there were too many flies in the ointment to say that overall it was an excellent experience. Thank you for letting me take the time to express my concerns I hope that MSC makes changes and thank you for listening.
Now that we are home, we are being treated for food poisoning. A week of Cipro. Sheesh.
5/07/23
Just returned from cruise on MSC Seaside. Nightmare cruise. Sewage smell in AC, both of us suffered food poisoning, the list goes on and on. We tried msc. Never again.