Planning your MSC voyage? Browse up-to-date bar menus, cocktail prices, draught beers, and wine lists across the entire MSC Cruises fleet. Shortcode error: Both "config" and "type" parameters are required.
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If you’re looking for a more upscale, bubbly-forward experience, then Fizz Champagne Bar is the place. This is where MSC offers champagne, sparkling wine, and on some ships – oysters, caviar, and the whole “look at me making questionable financial decisions” experience. It’s definitely one of the prettier bar concepts on the ship, and if you want something that feels a little dressier before or after dinner, this is it.
Fizz Champagne Bar on MSC World America Then there’s Jean-Philippe Chocolat & Café , which is not really a bar in the traditional sense, but it absolutely deserves a mention because it covers coffee, chocolate, gelato, crepes, and all kinds of sweet damage, including a few “spiked” options. This is where you go when you want something caffeinated, chocolate-covered, frozen, or all three. It’s also one of the more dangerous spots on the ship if you’re trying to show even the slightest bit of restraint, because the chocolate treats and gelato make it very easy to convince yourself dessert is a legitimate afternoon activity.
Jean-Philippe Chocolat & Café on MSC World America For places that mix drinks with food in a more casual setting, the two worth calling out are All Stars Sports Bar and Masters of the Sea . All Stars is the American-style sports bar on Deck 8, with burgers, wings, loaded bar food, and TVs. It is very much a grab a beer, watch a game kind of place. Masters of the Sea is the British pub, and it has a different feel entirely, with pub-style atmosphere, live entertainment nightly, and its own onboard-brewed signature beers along with a wider beer selection. If beer is more your thing than cocktails, this is the better choice.
Masters of the Sea on MSC World America Beyond those, you’ve got the pool and public area bars like Mar Azul Bar, Botanic Garden Bar, La Perla Bar, Zen Bar, Dolce Vita Bar, Panorama Lounge Bar, the casino bar, The Box Bar, and the Yacht Club bars for those staying up in that part of the financial food chain. These all serve their purpose well enough, but menu-wise most of them are variations on the same theme. If your goal is finding something unique, stick with the specialty concepts.
MSC Drink Packages
Now, when it comes to drink packages, MSC has simplified things over the years for ships sailing from North America. That is an important distinction, because outside North America the package lineup can be different. For North America sailings in 2026, MSC now mainly offers the Premium Extra Package for alcoholic beverages, along with an Alcohol-Free Package and a Minors Package . The old Easy and Easy Plus packages are no longer offered.
The Premium Extra Package is the one most adult cruisers are looking at. It covers drinks up to $16 each, includes the 18% gratuity in the package price, works in specialty restaurants, and is honored at Ocean Cay MSC Marine Reserve. It has a limit of 15 alcoholic drinks per 24-hour period, while non-alcoholic drinks included with the package remain unlimited. If you order something above the package limit, you pay only the difference plus gratuity on that difference.
The Alcohol-Free Package is the option for people who want sodas, mocktails, coffee, water, and other non-alcoholic drinks without paying as they go, and the Minors Package covers the younger crowd. MSC also continues to require that if one adult in a stateroom buys a drink package, the other adults in the cabin have to buy one too, while kids and teens need the Minors Package. That is one of those rules people always hope will not apply to them, right up until it does.
As for whether buying a package is worth it, that really comes down to how you drink. If you’re having cocktails throughout the day, wine with dinner, bottled water, specialty coffees, and maybe a frozen drink or two by the pool, the math can work in your favor pretty quickly. If you’re more of a one-or-two-drinks-a-day person, it may not. That’s exactly why my MSC beverage package calculator
Beverage Tasting Events on MSC World America
That’s the bar scene in a nutshell. Plenty of places to drink and a few bars that are absolutely worth making a point to visit. Next, I’ll get into the two special beverage events I booked with the first event, the “Welcome to the World Wine Tour ,” which was held in the Fizz Champagne Bar. It started at 12:30 p.m., ran until 2:00 p.m., and cost $30 per person plus gratuity.
This tasting was a little unusual for a couple of reasons.
First, as you can see below, it featured a whopping 11 wines. Yes, 11. Five whites, five reds, and one rosé from different regions around the world.
Wines offered for the wine tasting on MSC World America Now, you may be saying, “Yeah Scott, 11 wines, but probably just a sad little sip of each.” Not exactly. These were generous pours, somewhere in the 3- to 4-ounce range, and definitely not one for the lightweights. Well, sort of kidding.
The lineup included:
Greco di Tufo DOCG Feudi
Mer Soleil
Riesling d’Alsace Schlumberger, France
Conundrum White by Caymus, California
Bramito del Cervaro Castello
Agiorgitiko Nemea Reserve
Bulizio
Château La Pierre, Côtes de Castillon
Viña Erázuriz Carménère
Torremasca Torcicoda Primitivo
Whispering Angel
Another thing that made this event unusual was that it was basically a DIY tasting.
While wine stewards were there to pour and tell you what wine you were getting next, there was no sommelier or cellar master leading the tasting. Nobody was walking the room, talking through the wines in depth, or explaining why this one mattered more than that one. Instead, you were pretty much left to your own pace for the full 90 minutes. The placemat and the tasting sheet were your guide, and that was that.
Wine tasting on MSC World America So in a lot of ways, it felt less like a formal wine tasting and more like a “show up and drink a lot of wine” event.
Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Along with the wine, there was a small buffet set up with fruit, meats, and cheeses, and they kept replenishing it throughout the tasting, so there was plenty to nibble on as you worked your way around the world, one glass at a time.
Wine tasting on MSC World America
Wine tasting on MSC World America
Wine tasting on MSC World America
Wine tasting on MSC World America
Wine tasting on MSC World America
Wine tasting on MSC World America
There were only around a dozen of us there, and a few people tapped out after the whites. One or two appeared to make it all the way through. You don’t have to drink every wine, and you can absolutely just stick to the reds or the whites or bounce around however you want, but the intent is for you to work your way through the whole list. I gave it my best shot, but I tapped out after number eight, and I moved the rosé up to be my transition wine between the whites and reds instead of saving it for the end.
For the price, this is an incredible value.
Even though it’s not a true hosted tasting, $30 for 11 different wines with generous pours is a huge bargain. To put it in perspective, Holland America’s premium wine tasting is $49 for five wines, so this one absolutely wins on value. If you’re okay with guiding yourself through the tasting instead of having someone lecture you about hints of whatever, you’ll probably love this.
That said, because it’s not hosted, I think this event works best if you go with a group. I was the only single person there. Everyone else was in couples and had their own little tables, so I just parked myself at the bar. So if you’re thinking about doing this one, wrangle up some friends and go together. It’ll probably make the whole thing more fun.
One other thing worth noting is that they do not give you a fresh glass for every wine. The glass only gets switched when you move from white to red, so if that sort of thing matters to you, now you know.
The second beverage event I took part in was also a very good value: the Macallan tasting , held later that evening at 10:00 p.m. in a small private room at Elixir.
For this one, we got to sample Macallan 12, 15, and 18, and unlike the wine tasting, this one was actually hosted. One of the Elixir bartenders, who has been trained on Macallan, led the tasting and walked us through each of the three pours, explaining what made them different and what to look for in each one. To go along with the scotch, there was also a selection of chocolates from the Jean-Philippe chocolate shop onboard.
The Macallan tasting on MSC World America The Macallan tasting on MSC World America The Macallan tasting on MSC World America Again, this was a great value.
At $30 per person plus gratuity, the pours alone made it worth it. These were full 1.5-ounce pours, and if you bought those same pours separately, the total would have cost more than the tasting itself. So if you enjoy Macallan, or just want to try the different age expressions without paying full bar price for each one, this is a no-brainer.
There were only four of us at this tasting, and even though it was supposed to start at 10:00 p.m., we kept waiting for more people to show up. Finally, by around 10:20, we just told the host to stop waiting and get on with it.
And that brings me to the biggest issue with both events: neither one is mentioned or promoted anywhere.
They’re not in the daily program. They’re not in the app. I only found out about them by asking one of the bar managers if there were any tastings being offered, and he signed me up for both. That pretty easily explains why turnout was so poor. These are supposed to be money-making events, but MSC is doing an absolutely terrible job of letting anyone know they exist.
On top of that, everyone at both tastings had the same complaint: there were no reminder invitations sent to the room like you get for specialty restaurant reservations, and when you sign up for one of these events at the hosting bar, it also does not get added to your itinerary in the MSC for Me app. So it is incredibly easy to simply forget you signed up for it at all. That especially applies to something like the Macallan tasting, which starts at 10:00 p.m. at the end of a long sea day. Without any reminder, it would be very easy to completely forget about it.
That alone could explain some of the low attendance.
Still, both events were very enjoyable and, more importantly, both were great values.
My only other suggestion would be this: don’t schedule both tastings on the same day. Eleven wines at lunch and then a Macallan tasting later that night is certainly a choice. Not a bad one, mind you, but definitely a choice.
Now that we got all that drinking out of the way, let’s talk food.
Italian Night on MSC World America
Tonight was Italian night onboard, and Italian night is usually held on the last sea day of the cruise fleetwide. The menu served in the main dining rooms and in the Yacht Club restaurant is packed with Italian dishes, and since MSC has deep Italian roots, this is always one of the highlights of the week. So naturally, I had to take part.
For Italian night, the servers get dressed up for the occasion in red, white, and green ties and cummerbunds, and the tables are decorated with matching runners, so they do try to lean into the theme a bit more than just swapping out the menu.
Italian Night on MSC World America
Italian Night on MSC World America
For dinner, I joined some friends and we headed to Hexagon for our assigned dinner time of 8:15.
To start, we tried a few different things. The caprese salad, with sliced tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, basil, and pesto, was good, but the portion was definitely on the small side. We also had the fried calamari and zucchini with marinara sauce, which was perfectly fine, but pretty standard. Nothing about it really stood out or made you stop and say wow. The Italian antipasto was a mix of cold cuts and grilled vegetables, and while it was decent, it also felt like something you could have easily assembled from the buffet.
Caprese salad from the main dining restaurant on MSC World America Italian Antipasto from the main dining restaurant on MSC World America Fried calamari and zucchini from the main dining restaurant on MSC World America For entrées, one of my dining companions went with the linguine alle vongole, which came with clams in a garlic white wine reduction. I was told it was very good, and it was also a nice-sized portion. Another went with the chicken parmigiana served with spaghetti marinara and steamed broccoli, and that one was a hit. The chicken was a generous portion and had been pan-fried to a crispy golden brown, which is exactly what you want from chicken parm.
Linguine alle Vongole from the main dining restaurant on MSC World America Chicken Parmigiana from the main dining restaurant on MSC World America As for me, I went with the veal ossobuco served with Parmesan polenta and vegetables, and this was the winner at my end of the table. It was a nice portion of veal, fork-tender, with a really flavorful sauce. I also added a side of pasta because… Italian night.
Veal Ossobuco from the main dining restaurant on MSC World America Penne pasta from the main dining restaurant on MSC World America One thing that was mentioned at the table while we were eating was that MSC gets the pasta cooked perfectly every single time, and honestly, it’s true. No matter what pasta dish I’ve had on this ship, it has always come out properly al dente. That may seem like a small thing, but on a cruise ship, where pasta can so easily turn into soft, overcooked mush, it’s worth pointing out.
When dessert time rolled around, I went with the plum and apple crumble, which was just okay. There was nothing wrong with it, but there was also nothing especially memorable about it either. One of the others had the tiramisu, and that was very clearly the smarter choice because that one got the better reviews at the table and was the obvious winner.
Plum and Apple Crumble from the main dining restaurant on MSC World America Tiramisu from the main dining restaurant on MSC World America Once dinner wrapped up, the servers gathered for a little Italian fiesta, with singing, dancing, and a conga line as they made their rounds through the dining room. It felt a little like a farewell even though we still had one more day left, but that’s all part of the show.
Overall, service was good and once again the food in the main dining room impressed. At this point, I can pretty confidently say that MSC has really stepped up its game in the MDR. If you’re still clinging to old reviews or stories from years ago about how bad the food was, at least on World America, that really hasn’t been my experience this week.
After dinner, I headed off to that previously mentioned Macallan tasting, and after that it was time to call it a night because there had been more than enough imbibing for one day.
Tomorrow we’re at Ocean Cay, so more from there.
As always, thanks for following along.
MSC World America Day 6 Daily Program
Personal Day-By-Day MSC World America Cruise Review:
