Planning a cruise on the MSC Poesia? If you’re looking to get acquainted with the ship before you set sail, join us for our full MSC Poesia ship tour! During our 7-night Alaska cruise, we explored the ship from the upper decks down to the lower decks, checking out the swimming pools, hot tubs, fitness center, restaurants, lounges, theater, atrium, and more.
In this deck-by-deck MSC Poesia walking tour, we’ll show you the ship’s layout and amenities so you can get a better idea of what to expect onboard.
🎥 Watch Our Full MSC Poesia Ship Tour
🏊 Exploring the MSC Poesia Upper Decks
We begin our tour on the upper decks, where you’ll find the Top 15 Exclusive Solarium, sports court, complimentary fitness center, kids and teens clubs, and outdoor viewing areas.
On Deck 13, the MSC Poesia features two outdoor swimming pools, four raised hot tubs, a children’s splash area, bars, and plenty of loungers. We also explore the Villa Pompeiana Buffet and some quieter outdoor seating areas with beautiful ocean views.
One of our favourite discoveries was the forward-facing observation balconies on Decks 9, 10, 11, and 14. These are wonderful places to enjoy the scenery, especially during an Alaska cruise!
One of the MSC Poesia’s outdoor swimming pools, with raised hot tubs and loungers on Deck 13.
🎭 Lounges, Restaurants & Entertainment Venues
As we make our way down to the lower decks, we’ll explore the outdoor promenade, Pigalle Lounge, Il Grappolo d’Oro wine bar, Casino Royal, and the beautiful Teatro Carlo Felice theater.
We’ll also visit the Zebra Bar, Bar dei Poeti, shopping areas, and both main dining rooms, Le Fontane and Il Palladio.
Inside Teatro Carlo Felice, the main theater aboard MSC Poesia, featuring tiered purple seating and decorative balconies.
🚢 The MSC Poesia Atrium & Public Spaces
One of the more interesting areas of the MSC Poesia is its three-story atrium, featuring decorative lighting that extends up the wall and across the ceiling.
Throughout our tour, you’ll see how the different decks connect, where the elevators and staircases are located, and how to find many of the ship’s public spaces.
The beautiful three-story atrium aboard MSC Poesia, featuring colourful lighting that extends up the wall and across the ceiling.
More MSC Poesia Cruise Planning
If you’re planning a cruise aboard the MSC Poesia, we also have several other guides you might find helpful:
Whether you’ve already booked your MSC Poesia cruise or are still researching the ship, we hope this deck-by-deck walkthrough helps you get acquainted with the layout and amenities before setting sail!
Planning a cruise aboard the MSC Poesia and wondering what’s on the menu? During our 7-night Alaska cruise, we collected several MSC Poesia main dining room menus, including breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, Gala Night, and drinks menus. We’ve put them all together here so you can take a closer look at the dining options before your cruise.
We enjoyed several meals at the Le Fontane Restaurant on Deck 5 and Il Palladio Restaurant on Deck 6. From traditional breakfast favourites to seafood, steaks, pasta, and desserts, there was plenty of variety throughout our sailing.
Below, you’ll find links to the actual MSC Poesia menus from our cruise, organized by day. All menus are available as PDFs, making them easy to view.
Please note that menus, selections, and dining availability can change depending on the sailing, itinerary, and ship operations. These PDFs reflect the menus available during our cruise.
🎥 Watch Our MSC Poesia Free Food Tour
If you’d like to see what the food actually looks like, we also put together a complete MSC Poesia food tour on our Northern Viking Explorer YouTube channel.
In the video, we explore the complimentary food available throughout the ship, starting at the Villa Pompeiana Buffet on Deck 13. We take a look at breakfast, lunch, dinner, desserts, complimentary beverages, and soft serve ice cream.
We then head down to the main dining rooms to show you some of the meals we enjoyed, including breakfast, Tour de Brunch, lunch, and dinner. Some of our highlights included filet mignon, lobster tail, prime rib, and Baked Alaska.
One thing we appreciated about dining on the MSC Poesia was the variety of food available throughout our cruise. The main dining room menus changed regularly, giving us opportunities to try different appetizers, main courses, and desserts.
We also enjoyed having the option of a sit-down breakfast or lunch at Le Fontane instead of always visiting the buffet. During our sailing, we had dinner at Il Palladio, where we were assigned a table for two.
Our Gala Night dinner was particularly memorable, with filet mignon, lobster tail, and Baked Alaska among the options we enjoyed.
Whether you’re planning your first MSC cruise or have already booked a sailing on the MSC Poesia, we hope these menus help give you an idea of what to expect onboard.
🚢 More MSC Poesia Cruise Videos & Information
If you’re researching the MSC Poesia, we’ve also shared several other videos and articles from our Alaska cruise.
We hope these MSC Poesia main dining room menus give you a helpful look at the breakfast, brunch, lunch, and dinner options available onboard. We certainly enjoyed trying the different dishes throughout our 7-night Alaska cruise!
For an even closer look at the complimentary food, be sure to check out our full MSC Poesia food tour.
Watch the Full MSC Poesia Food Tour:
Thanks for visiting Northern Viking Explorer, and happy cruising! 🚢
After our seven-night Alaska cruise from Seattle, we’re sharing our honest MSC Poesia review to help you plan your own sailing. We cover the ship’s layout and amenities, our aft balcony cabin 11250, the complimentary food and restaurants, and the entertainment and activities.
We had a wonderful week aboard MSC Poesia, but there were also a few things we wished were different. Here’s a quick overview, with the full discussion in our video below.
In this section of our MSC Poesia review, we explore the ship’s layout, pools, hot tubs, fitness centre, lounges, and outdoor viewing areas. We discuss how the different spaces connect, where to enjoy the scenery, and what amenities are available onboard. We also cover the pool and hot tub hours and the differences between public spaces and areas reserved for certain guests.
The outdoor pool deck aboard MSC Poesia, one of the areas we discuss in our review.
🛏️ Our Aft Balcony Cabin 11250
We take you inside our aft balcony cabin 11250 on Deck 11 of MSC Poesia. This section covers the room’s layout, bed, seating, storage, charging options, and bathroom. We also discuss the balcony, wake views, and what to expect when staying at the back of the ship.
A look inside our aft balcony cabin 11250 on Deck 11 of MSC Poesia.
🍽️ Free Food & Restaurants
Our MSC Poesia food review covers the complimentary dining options, including the Villa Pompeiana Buffet and the main dining rooms. We discuss breakfast, lunch, brunch, and dinner, with examples of the meals and desserts served throughout our cruise. This section also covers dining arrangements, requesting a table for two, and additional charges to be aware of.
Baked Alaska, one of the desserts served during our MSC Poesia cruise.
🎭 Entertainment & Activities
We cover the entertainment and activities available during our MSC Poesia Alaska cruise, from theatre productions to live music, comedy, and onboard games. This includes the two different Dirty Dancing performances, Big Band at Sea, naturalist presentations, and themed parties. We also discuss the activities offered throughout the ship and what families can expect from the onboard attractions.
The evening Dirty Dancing: The Celebration show aboard MSC Poesia.
Whether you’ve followed our Alaska cruise vlog series or are just starting to research MSC Poesia, we hope this review helps with your cruise planning. Watch the full video for our thoughts on each of these four areas, including what we liked and what we wished was different.
Day 2 of our 7-night Alaska cruise aboard the MSC Poesia was our first full sea day as we continued north toward Alaska.
The morning actually started out beautiful. We had sunshine, fairly calm seas, and some great views outside. As the day went on, though, the ocean started getting a little rougher. The pool water was sloshing back and forth, and we even noticed seasickness bags appearing near some of the stairways.
We had plenty planned for the day, including breakfast in the main dining room, Alaska enrichment talks, some time relaxing around the ship, and of course Gala Night aboard MSC Poesia.
Watch our full Day 2 MSC Poesia Alaska cruise vlog here:
☕ Breakfast at Le Fontaine Restaurant
There were two main breakfast options that morning. The Villa Pompeiana Buffet was open from 6:00 until 11:00, while sit-down breakfast was available at Le Fontaine Restaurant from 7:30 until 9:30.
We decided to give Le Fontaine a try and arrived right around 7:30. It was already fairly busy, and by the time we left around 8:30 there was a lineup of people waiting to get in.
We asked for a table for two and ended up with a nice spot beside the window.
Some of the breakfast items we tried included the smoothie bowl with yogurt, banana, kiwi, and pineapple, steel-cut oatmeal, an omelette, French toast with bacon, and the All American Breakfast with eggs, bacon, sausage, and hash browns.
There were also pastries and plenty of coffee, so it was a nice relaxed way to start our first full sea day.
🐋 Learning More About Alaska
After breakfast, we grabbed our coffee mugs and headed to Teatro Carlo Felice for the morning’s Alaska enrichment presentation.
The first talk was called North to Alaska and covered a little bit of everything we might experience during the cruise, including whales, wildlife, forests, fish, culture, and the different areas we would be visiting.
We especially enjoyed the information about the whales. One of the whales shown during the presentation appeared to be the same well-known whale we had seen on a previous Alaska whale-watching excursion, which was pretty neat to see again.
One of the Alaska enrichment presentations aboard MSC Poesia helped us learn more about the ports, wildlife, excursions, and things to see during our cruise.
Right after that was the Cruise and Travel Show, which went through the different ports and some of the excursions that were still available.
If you’re sailing on the MSC Poesia and are interested in the excursions, it may be worth showing up a little early because they also handed out raffle tickets and gave away an excursion for each port during the presentation.
There were more Alaska presentations happening later in the day as well, including one called Glaciers, Volcanoes, and Wildlife, so there were plenty of opportunities to learn more about Alaska while we were at sea.
🌮 Lunch at the Villa Pompeiana Buffet
By lunchtime, we were ready to head back to the Villa Pompeiana Buffet.
There was a good selection of the usual buffet options, including burgers, hot dogs, fries, breads, deli meats, cheeses, and salads. We also found a Mexican station that looked pretty good, so that ended up being part of our lunch.
The weather had changed again by this point. It had been sunny, then cloudy, and suddenly the sunshine was back, although the ship was still rocking quite a bit.
After lunch, we figured we should probably walk some of it off.
🚶 Walking Around Deck 14
Above the main pool area on Deck 14, there is space that MSC lists as a power walking track.
It isn’t really marked like a traditional running track, and parts of it can occasionally be obstructed, but it is still a great area to walk around, get some steps in, and enjoy the views.
We spent some time walking around before deciding that the rest of the afternoon was going to be a little more relaxing.
🛁 Hot Tubs, Our Aft Balcony & Ice Cream
There were lots of activities happening around the ship that afternoon, but we decided to take things a little slower.
We headed to the hot tubs and ended up sitting there for about an hour while chatting with some other passengers. The hot tubs aren’t particularly large, so they fill up pretty quickly, but it was a really nice way to spend part of the afternoon.
After that, we came back to our cabin and spent some time sitting on our aft balcony.
We were really enjoying having that view from the back of the ship. The sun was shining and it was a great place to sit and watch the ocean, even though the seas were getting fairly rocky.
By this point, the motion of the ship was definitely becoming more noticeable, so some seasickness medication came in handy.
We also spent some time walking around the main public decks and discovered the soft-serve ice cream station outside the buffet. They had chocolate, vanilla, and swirl, with either waffle cones or cups.
Needless to say, that was a pretty good discovery.
✨ Getting Ready for Gala Night
That evening was Gala Night aboard the MSC Poesia, so we headed back to the cabin, got dressed up, and made our way to Il Palladio Restaurant on Deck 6.
One thing we noticed was that there was a really wide range of clothing around the ship.
We saw some men in suits, others wearing shirts and ties or collared shirts, and plenty of people dressed more casually. We even spotted one tuxedo. There were also some beautiful formal dresses, but you definitely didn’t have to dress extremely formal to take part in Gala Night.
It was really a mix of everything.
🥩 Gala Night Dinner at Il Palladio
Because we had the same assigned table every evening, we didn’t need to wait for anyone to seat us. We could simply walk into the dining room and head straight to our table.
There were quite a few tempting choices on the Gala Night menu.
For starters, we tried the lobster bisque, Alaska smoked salmon dip, and Caesar salad.
For our main courses, we both ordered the filet mignon with truffle-flavoured whipped potatoes, asparagus, and mushroom demi-glace.
We also ordered the Duo of Broiled Lobster Tail and Jumbo Shrimp to share. It came with asparagus and risotto and gave us a chance to try both the steak and seafood options from the Gala Night menu.
We ordered the Duo of Broiled Lobster Tail and Jumbo Shrimp to share during Gala Night at Il Palladio Restaurant.
For dessert, we tried the Royal Cake, a rich dark chocolate mousse with crunchy praline and vanilla anglaise, along with the classic Baked Alaska.
It turned out to be a really enjoyable Gala Night dinner and one of the meals we had been looking forward to trying.
🎭 Club Disco at Teatro Carlo Felice
After dinner, we headed back to Teatro Carlo Felice for the evening production show.
The show was called Club Disco, but the evening started with the captain and senior officers presentation.
For roughly the first 15 minutes, the cruise director introduced the captain and some of the senior officers, along with a few interesting facts about what goes on behind the scenes aboard the ship.
Then the Club Disco production started.
The Club Disco production show brought colourful costumes, singing, dancing, and acrobatics to Teatro Carlo Felice during Gala Night.
The show had a fun 1970s theme with lots of singing, dancing, colourful costumes, and some acrobatics mixed in.
One of our favourite parts involved a performer using a large ring on stage. There were a few moments during the performance that definitely got a reaction from the audience.
The Club Disco portion lasted around half an hour and made for a fun way to finish off Gala Night.
🎺 Big Band at Sea
We weren’t quite finished with the entertainment yet.
After leaving the theater, we headed toward the lounge at the back of Deck 7 where Big Band at Sea was performing again.
We had seen some of the musicians the night before, but this time there was also a vocalist performing with them.
Between the brass instruments, vocals, and classic big-band style, it was a really nice place to sit and enjoy some live music before calling it a night.
There was plenty of other entertainment happening around the ship as well, including a saxophone player performing in the atrium.
🚢 Final Thoughts on Day 2
Our first full sea day aboard the MSC Poesia ended up having a little bit of everything.
We learned more about Alaska during the enrichment talks, tried breakfast at Le Fontaine, spent some time walking around the ship, relaxed in the hot tubs, enjoyed our aft balcony, found some afternoon ice cream, and finished everything off with Gala Night, dinner, a production show, and live music.
It was a great sea day, but we were especially excited about what was coming next.
Day 3 would take us to our first Alaska port of the cruise, Ketchikan.
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