Costa Not Impressed

[JoeyandDavid]

Bad Service is one thing Negligence is another.

Thanks JoanandJoe for making us aware of this story

[Mebert]

Everything is relative. This may or may not be related to bad service. I guess we have to see what the investigation yields. An accident like that could have happened anywhere.

[Dancer]

We just returned from a cruise on Costa Magica. They promote it as cruising Italian style. That is a very accurate advertisement of what they provide. It is not your typical American cruise. Entertainment is very European. Some of the European dishes were excellent, American dishes were as bad as many people said. Or at least that's what others told me. I khad heard that and always ordered European food, which varied from good to excellent.

Rather than contest, that are such a focus on American cruises, they focus on teaching ballroom dance basics during the day. Their primary entertainment focus is the lounges. Magica had 4 lounges with 6 plus hours of music a night. They had a real ballroom, which had 2 groups alternating, playing classic world ballroom music, with a few Italian dance rythyms included. A Latin lounge with 2 groups playing classic world latin dance music. Two piano bars with 2 or 3 people alternating playing classic world music. They had a fifth lounge were the excellent show band played a few nights. Most of the singing was in Italian, but it was mostly the classic dance music from the last 70 years, that we are use to dancing to at ballroom dances in Wisconsin.

The ship was designed to support thier emphasis. They had a large unobstructed dance floor in the ballroom. Ship was designed so they could offset 2 pillars to provide a large pillar free dance floor in the main ballroom. They also put it in the most stable location they could. All the lounges were designed to focus on the entertainers and the dance floor. Again we found that to be unique to Costa.

There were more dancers on the ship, than on our 4 previous American style cruise combined. For us dancers, Costa is awsome and we will definitely cruise Costa again.

Unlike American style cruises were lounge music was limited, lounges normally empty and music lacking in variety. Magica had pretty much non stop music and lounges varied from 1/3 full to packed during the course of the evening.

The ship was fully booked, even though they just recently increased their Carribean capacity by over 100%. They are going for a particular market and finding succes in that market. Most ballroom dancers are also regular cruisers, so there is a signicant market potential in what they are doing.

We found the service excellent and the staff, particularily the Fillipinos very friendly, the best of any of our cruises. Because so many people go to the lounges, they had a lot of wait staff and service in the lounges was better than any other ship we cruised.

Production shows had excellent performers, but the shows were hurt by the designers poor understanding of what music most people like. They included some excellent songs, but also some real duds.

If you want what they provide, Costa is an excellent choice, if you want a typical American cruise experience, forget Costa.