Costa Cruises
View company profile →
Cheap and nasty, awful organisation...
Costa has never been a top-class cruise company, but a sense of easy-going fun and Italian good humour have compensated for an atmosphere mostly catering for a less demanding mass audience. Alas, things have gotten much worse in recent years, especially since Carnival took over the company. Cruising with Costa is no longer much fun due to its nasty penny pinching policies, and pushy attempts to extract as much money from gullible customers as possible. Here is just a partial list of the mean and intrusive penny pinching reductions in service on our recent cruise on Costa Diadema to Norway – - they no longer provide salt and pepper on any restaurant table - they no longer provide butter with the dinner rolls in the a la carte restaurant - no printed menus anywhere, your have to struggle with their unreliable QR codes - there are no longer tablecloths in the a la carte restaurants - only flimsy paper serviettes in the buffet restaurant - no tissues provided in the cabin, although one was provided on requests - no toiletries in the cabin, only a small packaged soap - Costa Club receptions no longer feature the usual glass of prosecco - minimalist menu choices in the a la carte restaurant - no free coffee after meals anywhere - no Nescafe available - sugar only provided in a disgusting plastic bottles, not in hygienic packages - tea bags locked away except at breakfast time - no decaf option even at breakfast - all other coffee to be paid for in automatic coffee machines - watery orange and apple juice only at breakfast time - no water in a la carte restaurant In addition to these nasty reductions in service, the organization of the catering services is also unacceptable. In the buffet restaurant, customers are forced to queue in a single endless line (!) for up to half and hour before they get near the serving counters. Service is incredibly slow, as everything is served by hand at every station, no self-service at all anywhere. At every station new plates are used, portions are not self-chosen – so the food waste is incredible, and every meal produces 6-8 dirty plates per customer. Other cruise lines (like Norwegian, Royal Carribean and Holland America we recently sailed on) have long revised their buffet systems to use multiple, freely accessible stations, reducing crowding and queuing time, giving customers random access to different food categories and reducing food waste. Costa alone continues with the ridiculously inefficient practice of forcing people into interminable single queues? Service in the full service restaurants is also terrible. It took us half an hour even to order after sitting down, and the dinner took 2 ½ hours altogether. Is there anything good to say about Costa? Well, yes. The food quality is still quite good for low-class cruise line, especially in comparison with MSC, but the terrible organisation and slow service destroys the experience. The crew are still very hard working, efficient and friendly but the senior management is hopeless, forcing them to work in a system that largely defeats their efforts. Costa is no longer a good choice at any level – avoid this cruise line if you have other options…