A Christmas cruise with MSC: My week searching for Santa and the perfect cup of tea
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Self-confessed Scrooge Marc Shoffman discovers how festive a Christmas cruise can be. 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.
![[MSC World Europa’s chocolate shop featured a life-sized sweet Santa]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/30/09/IMG20241222191502.jpg)
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.
![[Santa stepped aboard World Europa on Christmas Day to make sure all children got a present]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/30/10/IMG_20241230_100301.jpg)
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.
![[Say cheese: A midnight buffet on Christmas Day kept us full throughout the festive season]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/30/10/IMG20241225003041.jpg)
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.
![[The 11 deck-high Venom slide is a highlight on World Europa]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/30/10/IMG20241227103814.jpg)
