Costa Cruises

Thank you all for your advice. It looks like Costa might be off the radar, replaced by MSC for something to look at.

Glo - I have rarely seen such tact as the way you describe Costa!

I have cruised on Costa but it was a long time ago,. Back then the food was sub par but remember that was a long time ago. I would try them again if I found an Itinerary that I liked. As for MSC, I have cruised on two of their ships (Divina & Poecia) and they were quite elegant. No big water parks or rock climbing walls, etc... on those ships. I would certainly go again on their new ship which is geared to the American clientele. I also did a Lunch & Tour of the Lirica and thought that she, too, was elegant.

MSC appears to offer a generally higher end cruise than Costa does. At least the reviews appear to indicate this and Berlitz rates MSC number three, (Below Cunard #1 and Celebrity #2) in food, drink and service out of the eleven largest majors.

You might be ahead if you are multilingual as a guest on either one of these lines. MSC makes announcements in five languages, English, French, German Italian and Spanish, the announcements however are few and far between after the cruise gets underway. MSC provides no lecturers because of this and production shows are mostly visual not verbal. On Costa's Mediterranean and European cruises English is the least spoken as most passengers are Italian, Spanish, French and German. On the Caribbean a large percentage of guests speak Spanish since Costa really caters to Latin Americans. Lots of children on Costa and lots of partying. They say if you want quiet on Costa, bring earplugs, good ones.

It is my understanding that MSC is building three vessels for North America. Sounds to me like those cruises will be adjusted to reflect North American tastes more. Costa has to be the most smoker friendly line of all the majors today, as I mentioned, they are the only one who allow balcony smoking today. MSC prohibits balcony smoking but does cater to cigar smokers and has exclusive cigar lounges.

That "European" atmosphere is one of the selling points for me. Not that I think it is better or worse, just different and something to try.

Costa is set up for Europeans and is not up to American standards from what I have read in reviews. MSC gets different reviews for European ships and American ships. I do recall that MSC had "Kids travel free" so the ship would be wall to wall rug rats.

Whoops, this comment was about MSC.

My sister is going on a tour in January to Dubai, and a Costa cruise is part of the package. She is looking forward to it because she hasn't cruises since she resigned from her position as 1st Purser on the VeraCruz back in the early 80s.

All I know about them is that my coworker likes them a lot after he and his wife have sailed on them several times. And they have very good reviews.

I was looking at MSC, but couldn't get the website to work yesterday.

They do look good enough to do some more research into them.

Any experience on them?