Is Butcher's Cut Steakhouse worth the cost? MSC Meraviglia
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 ก.ย. 2024
- In this episode of Lauren of All Trades... Lauren tries the dining experience at Butcher's Cut on the Meraviglia.
Butcher's Cut can be found on many of MSC's ships and the experience should be the same at all of them. Find it on Bellissima, Divina, Fantasia, Grandiosa, Meraviglia, Preziosa, Seashore, Seaside, Seaview, Splendida, and Virtuosa (so far).
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Thank you for this video… We will be on the seashore in just a week or so… We have been to the steakhouse on meraviglia.... not quite my favorite either… I have since learned that ordering the salad I'm not sure which one is supposed to be very very good as a side which I will do next week… I did not care for the melting cake… I'm not in big meat eater, so I'm sure I ordered the salmon which was probably good… I can't remember what my husband ordered but we will give them another try in a week hope you're having fun!!🚢
Good to know since there are few specialty restaurants so we’d probably go back! Thanks for watching!
@@laurenofalltrades will you be going to Hola? I'm anxious to try that one as well.
@@grannyoffive1313 We loved it! th-cam.com/video/xHx9_sMOZdA/w-d-xo.html
The bone marrow actually looked good and what I would've picked! Did husband like it?
It was very good and my favorite part of the meal. The parsley sauce on it was a nice touch that balanced out the richness of the marrow; definitely something I would order again.
The steak itself was a bit disappointing - good, but not the perfectly cooked, flavorful steak that I would expect from a steakhouse. Taking another look at the menu, it looks like only the tomahawk and T-bone are dry-aged (which are quite expensive and unavailable with the dining package), so the lack of dry aging is probably most of what I was missing in my strip steak.
@@HusbandOfAllTrades okay first it's hillarious that you're husband of all trades! 2nd interesting about the marrow and the parsley sauce helping cut it, makes me want to try it even more. Sorry to hear the steak wasnt great, and a little annoying that the top end steaks were only dry aged. Which Steakhouse at sea would be your fave?
Fahrenheit 555 (and the other Carnival steakhouses) has been my favorite and the most consistent. They also specifically advertise all of their steaks as being dry-aged, so that's a plus. I did also like Chops Grille on Royal, but we've only been there at lunch so far, while Cagney's on Norwegian was great once and disappointing once. It won't be soon, but we'll eventually do a full comparison video.
first off, you have maybe the best intro of the channels I follow b/c you don't spend 5 minutes blathering to me about how you don't babble or waste my time, and that you just cut to the chase (but first you need to spend 5 minutes explaining this to me). Secondly, I know you do a lot of Carnival, what was your overall takeaway on if you have a preference between msc and carnival.
I know that generally, MSC is a budget line. People consistently say that if you keep in mind 'bang for the buck' it is good for that. Ignoring bang for the buck, some come away loving it, many come away with various aspects that were super annoying (eg. lines to get back onboard at port, really crowded buffet, maybe not enough food variety at buffet?). So if you were looking to cruise out of a certain port and they had some different Carnival and msc sailings, I'd be curious to know of your preference.
Thanks for the note about my intro! I too hate the filler most creators have at the beginning of videos. TH-cam’s algorithm favors longer videos. I favor production value 😄
Of Carnival, Royal, and NCL, it felt most like NCL. But we like all of those brands better, with Carnival being our favorite and Royal our second favorite.
We booked the MSC cruise because it was super cheap even with the drink package added in and it was going to Bermuda for three days. We had such a good time between Bermuda, having included drinks, and the specialty restaurants that we convinced ourselves that we liked the cruiseline and looked for another one to book right away. But then all of the Bermuda sailings were expensive as the other cruise lines and the cheapest 2024 Bahamas sailing cost enough that I talked myself out of booking it. So MSC isn't cheap anymore. And I started to remember things we didn’t like...
1) Assigned dining in MDR - you have to be booked in suite or pay extra (for the "Aurora experience") to get anytime dining. Otherwise you pick early or late and they assign you to 5:30, 6:30, 8:30, or 9:30 but you don't know until you board and you have to stand in a long line to change it if you don't like it (and I met people on board who had chosen Early and got 9:30 for dinner so...??). I didn't know there were two times per early/late so I picked late. I prefer to eat at 6:30/7pm. We were assigned 9:30 but we were able to change it to have 8:30 every night except the first night.
2) The only other free option is the buffet (although the buffet is extensive). On port days, the only option for lunch is the buffet.
3) Even if you buy the specialty dining package pre-cruise, you can't make reservations until you're onboard. You have to stand in a long slow moving line to make reservations and they're system is janky so it takes forever to find a time for each restaurant. The restaurants are tiny so reservations are super limited. We ate at 9 at one of them and 9:30 at another.
4) On Meraviglia (idk if other ships have this) they have a "circus" (like cirque de soleil) theater in addition to the regular theater. It's $12 to attend these shows which includes one watery cocktail or mocktail - or $5 per show if you have a dining package. I think you have to stand in the specialty dining line to make reservations for this. Or maybe you can go to guest services for this? We were already doing our dining reservations so we did them at the same time. The shows were okay, but I won't pay to attend the same ones a second time probably.
5) Because of 1 & 4/5, we spent a huge amount of time standing in lines the first day of the cruise instead of enjoying ourselves.
6) Speaking of lines, check in was SO slow. Maybe this is specific to Brooklyn. We were nearly last to board the ship (we arrived at 1:30pm because we heard that check in was backed up), so there were fewer people ahead of us than there could have been and it still took 45 minutes to go through security and then get checked in.
7) You can't pick your boarding time. So people who are assigned early boarding times but can't get there early because they're driving in show up late with the later boarding people and it messes everything up (I'm blaming MSC for this issue, not people who choose to drive).
8) MSC publishes a deck plan that includes crew elevators and stairs so you can't really tell how few options are available to guests. i.e. on Meraviglia, at least, there is no stairs/elevator in the back of the ship so it's a long a** walk to get to stairs/elevator to then the same long walk get to bars/restaurants/etc that are also aft. (PS, this is true for NCL Prima and Viva and Aqua bc they designated the aft elevators for Haven guests, but those ships are smaller and the mid ship stairs are farther back on the ship to compensate and the deck plan reflects that said elevators aren't public per se).
9) You can't bring wine or soda onboard with you like you can on Carnival.
10) Very little closet space in Interiors, Oceanview, and Balconies.
11) You can't pick or see times for shore excursions, so you don't know your excursion time until you get your tickets for them onboard.
12) Online check in didn't work on the website as it was supposed to. I had to do it in the app.
13) We like all the comedy shows that Carnival has, so that's missed on all the other cruise lines including MSC.
14) MSC has status sort-of matching (I'm platinum on Carnival and that only got us Gold on MSC - and I think Diamond would also only gets me MSC gold). But your points will go back to zero if you don't cruise with them at least once every 3 years - so sort of a hostage situation. They will only do the match once ever so you can't let your MSC status lapse and then get it back. I think having the gold status added to our thinking we liked MSC but I don't specifically remember why anymore lol.
...And probably more issues that resulted in a generally less enjoyable customer experience for us.
So yeah, some of my complaints are nit-picky. The dining situations and the lines were the big misses. We'll go on again if we find a really good deal. If we were choosing between Carnival and MSC for the same itinerary, MSC would have to be a lot cheaper for me to pick it. However, I do feel inclined to keep our status per # 14, so I'm going to try to go on MSC once in a while for that reason alone.
@laurenofalltrades thanks for the info. Yeah, I think I got the rest of my family convinced that MSC just entails quite a bit more lines/annoyances than every other cruise line. We used to do more NCL (with the 'free at sea' dining) and liked it. Choir of Man (on NCL) is still one of our favorite sea shows ever. But it hasn't fit our schedule lately. I haven't done an Oasis class ship (and only did one Celebrity on an older ship). We're mostly pretty happy on all of the large cruise lines--but dealing with slow-moving lines, mediocre service, being forced into super-early or late dining times is not my thing.
Our next one is a 5 night repositioning cruise on Hal out of San Diego. We used to think of Hal as being only for 80 yo's, but we've done two out of FLL due to great summer pricing and we liked it. There were many families. Service is great, food really good (overall a bit of a step up from Carnival, with carnival's main advantage here being Blue Iguana, plus better pizza). As mentioned, we are cruise wh-res who will do any cruiseline, but msc just doesn't impress me much...
@@monkeyb1820 I haven't really considered HAL yet, but good to know! We do care about food quality as much as stuff to do. We liked Oasis a lot but Royal is often out of our budget. NCL is also usually not in-budget but they have more interesting itineraries than Carnival which are worth paying for once in a while - although I'm less convinced of that after our cruise on Prima which had a lot of guest experience issues related to the brand more than the ship. We had a better time on Viva, but still not convinced that we want to keep going on NCL past the cruises we already have booked with them (one in late 2024 and one in 2025 - I book way in advance lol).
@@laurenofalltrades We've also noticed in general Royal (or at least their newer ships) is priced a bit higher than others. We haven't done ncl in around 5 years (something about price/logistics hasn't been just right). You are probably able to cruise any time of the year, but we did Hal during school breaks, when it's at it's most lively--but it likely does skew much older during non-school break times. But I'd say 'don't fear the Hal!'--we were hesitant before trying it. We also recently did a Princess Canada/NE and it a full mix of age-ranges. That's a good North America itinerary to do when you can fit it in. Hal/Princess/Carnival all get the $100 credit if you have the stock shares.