A Christmas cruise with MSC: My week searching for Santa and the perfect cup of tea
Self-confessed Scrooge Marc Shoffman discovers how festive a Christmas cruise can be
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Your support makes all the difference.They say the more the merrier at Christmas – so why not share it with almost 7,000 other people on a cruise ship?
I have always found Christmas to be a strange time of year. I’m generally a bit of a Scrooge-like character at home during this period. There is a part of me, probably the Jewish bit, that is uncomfortable with the stress about making just one day perfect.
So it has been a nice change for my wife, our two daughters and my in-laws to do a Christmas cruise over the past three years.
This year, we spent the festive period onboard MSC Cruises’ MSC World Europa, the largest ship in the Italian brand’s fleet, with capacity for 6,762 passengers. Setting sail from Barcelona, the itinerary was full of stops, with ports of call including Marseille, Genoa, Rome and Palma de Mallorca.
MSC Cruises has spent much of the build-up to the season addressing how Santa makes it onto a cruise ship; MSC Preziosa even built a landing pad for his sleigh.
There was no landing pad on World Europa but there were nods towards St Nick across the ship including snowman cushions on the public seating and a life-size chocolate Santa – for display purposes only, sadly. Christmas trees were lined up across the indoor world promenade and a jolly inflatable St Nick even managed to raise a smile out of me.
The ship is the first of MSC’s World Class fleet – launched in 2022 – and will be joined by World America in 2025 and World Asia in 2026. It is powered by liquefied natural gas (LNG) as part of efforts to be more environmentally friendly.
At 1,093ft long and with 20 passenger decks, MSC World Europa is pretty spacious. A crystal chandelier hangs from its World Promenade as you enter on deck 6 but there is less of the glitz and crystal staircases that passengers may have experienced on other MSC ships, such as Virtuosa and Euribia.
Interiors have a more toned down, modern look, with soft seating and arty LED strips on white walls that effectively light up its main atrium.
The World Promenade area stretches across 341 feet, helping to ease the crowds. There are plenty of spaces for people to spill into across the ship’s 20 bars and restaurants.
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Showtime
One thing MSC Cruises does well is entertainment. The brand is known for its party atmosphere on board and our sailing was no different.
While Christmas music has been blaring out of the radio since mid-November in the UK – far too early in my opinion – we were slowly eased into the festive season on the ship. We boarded on 20 December, and it wasn’t until Christmas Eve that we probably first heard about what Mariah Carey wants from this time of year.
There was plenty of fun in the build-up, from dazzling shows dedicated to Broadway songs and famous divas to a silent disco and golf putting challenges.
You could tell once Christmas had arrived by the sea of Santa hats among the staff, and activities such as “name that tune”. The shows suddenly had a more festive theme.
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Santa even appeared running down the aisles of the World Theatre during the Christmas Eve show and later hosted a disco in the grand Panorama Lounge.
There was also a meet-and-greet with Santa on Christmas Day where the World Theatre stage was turned into a grotto, and kids (whether naughty or nice) lined up patiently for a photo with Father Christmas.
Christmas cruising
One of the benefits of being on holiday during Christmas is that you avoid cooking. That does mean adapting to someone else’s rules, though.
Passengers are encouraged to scan a QR code to access the menu. This brought some of the traditional Christmas dinner chaos to mealtimes as we navigated the language barrier with our helpful waiter who was doing his best to take orders from the ship’s range of English, Italian, French and German passengers all pointing to tiny mobile devices. Everyone got fed, and all our orders arrived correctly, but it has felt easier and quicker on other ships to point to a dish on a printed menu instead of on a small screen, especially for older passengers.
MSC follows the continental European traditions, so Christmas dinner is served on Christmas Eve, with traditional options including generous portions of succulent turkey and mouth-watering beef for a main course. We couldn’t convince our children to try the Brussels sprouts but the waiters were happy to satisfy our requests for extra roast potatoes. There was also a proper taste of Italy with panettone for dessert – but there wasn’t a Christmas pudding in sight. It was also strange that there were no Christmas crackers, but this may also be down to the ship trying to be more green.
As if that dinner hadn’t filled us up enough, there was a midnight buffet on Christmas Eve where we enjoyed smoked salmon, cheese and biscuits, plus no one had to wash up.
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The global tea shortage does seem to have made it onto cruise ships, though.
My father-in-law spent much of the week pocketing rare English breakfast tea bags when they appeared, in order to sneak them back to his cabin for later. The buffet manager later commented to me that it was a struggle to keep up with the demand from tea-drinking passengers.
An unexpected sea day due to storms in the Mediterranean meant we missed a scheduled Christmas Day stop in Malta, which contributed to another thing MSC has an unfortunate reputation for: queues.
It may have been a mix of low staffing levels or just the number of people, but we waited with hungry passengers for close to half an hour to get into the restaurant to be served Christmas lunch.
Passengers and the helpful waiting staff remained jovial, and we even met a fellow cruiser who was like the mad relative that joins at Christmas, running in and out of the kitchen to fetch other tables bread rolls and butter.
Lunch was less festive on Christmas Day – perhaps as passengers were expected to have been off the ship – and there wasn’t even any turkey on the main dining room menu. It felt like any Wednesday as we enjoyed a festive-themed “Christmas salad” of mixed greens and hearts of palm followed by a tender duck. Panettone returned for dessert but there was still no sign of Christmas pudding.
The festivities weren’t too “in your face”, catering for the odd Scrooge or Grinch on board, and it was easy to escape to enjoy other activities for all ages, such as dance classes and karaoke – where I treated fellow passengers to my version of Soft Cell’s Tainted Love.
Our daughters also enjoyed the arcades, roller skating, bumper cars and the 11-deck high Venom slide, plus they were happy to be outside in the hot tubs and swimming pool – a benefit of sailing around the Med during winter.
For a more luxury experience, we tried an afternoon tea of delicious scones and sweet treats in the Yacht Club, MSC’s high-end focused area within the ship. Yacht Club passengers get their own suite and dedicated “butlers” as well as a private lounge, restaurant and pool area.
Its Top Sail lounge was decorated with gingerbread houses and Christmas trees that sparkled against the sunny backdrop of the sea, with Palma de Mallorca in the distance.
Festive fashion
It is always interesting to see the various approaches to fashion on a cruise, with passengers feeling comfortable walking around in pyjamas or expressing themselves in anything from football shirts to tuxedos.
This sailing was at least a chance for me to model my Christmas jumpers – one of the few modern traditions I like about this period.
When they weren’t drinking the tea, American passengers were pretty impressed by my Avengers jumper and fellow cruisers had their own styles, such as Donald Duck, The Grinch and even matching family ensembles.
Festive friends
I have found that cruise passengers are more friendly compared with when you meet people on land-based holidays.
We even met another Jewish family, and when we weren’t looking at the menus on our smartphones at dinner, we took the opportunity to use the torches on them for a makeshift menorah so we could mark the first night of Hanukkah, which also fell on Christmas Day.
Doing Christmas for six can be a challenge, let alone for 6,762 – and we still had fun despite the odd queue and tussle for a cup of tea.
In many ways, a cruise itinerary is a perfect way to run Christmas or any family event. Activities were limited to slots of between 30 to 45 minutes, which may well be a tradition we take back ashore to help limit arguments over Monopoly or charades next year – plus we will make sure we have enough teabags.
How to do it
Cabins are available on MSC World Europa for a festive sailing next Christmas, departing Barcelona on 19 December 2025; from £829pp.
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