Casablanca, Morocco Port Reviews

I had visited Morocco six times prior to this port stop in Casablanca. I sailed with Costa and chose one of their tours of the city because I knew it would be hot. Choosing a tour is your best option if you're unfair with Morocco. Tourists often get scared away but aggressive sellers and taxi drivers. My advice would be not to engage with them. Say 'no', laugh it off and keep walking. You don't owe them an excuse. The port itself is a bit far from the city centre. I wouldn't walk it in the heat. If you didn't want to take a tour, you could always negotiate with a local taxi driver to give you a tour of the city. I've done this many times in other Moroccan cities but not Casablanca. I've paid drivers between $40 USD and $60 USD for five hours. Pay in local currency or euros.

Although it was a great experience to say we visited Africa, I would never willingly visit Morocco again. The city poor and scary.

Visited: Feb 03, 2018

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I read several reviews prior to going on this trip. They mentioned that the port was filthy and oil covered - totally untrue. Yes it was an industrial port and not near as pretty as most ports but I took an old pair of shoes to throw away after getting them all dirty - totally unnecessary. Of course I chose this port with a romantic picture of the movie in my mind and it was definitely not like that. Rick’s Cafe was great though - the food was delicious and extremely reasonable. We did not buy an excursion, we simply walked around. Easy to find the Mosque and Cafe and the Medina. We did hear about others having a bad/scary shopping experience. We did not we stayed in the center of things. Not as romantic as I pictured lol but I enjoyed myself very much.

Highlights Tour- we had an exceptional guide. Great contrasts.

Visited: Sep 20, 2016

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So this was one of the big disappointments of the trip. We booked this cruise partially because of Casablanca and when we arrived on ship we were told that the weather was too bad to go to Casablanca and we would go to Tangier instead. Well, Tangier is not that far from Casablanca and the weather was fine that day so we are not really sure what the reason was for not going to Casablanca. We were VERY disappointed. Tangier was OK, but it wasn't where we booked the tour to go to. If the weather was bad, we would have understood, but it wasn't. We had to believe there was another reason that we were not told why we didn't go to Casablanca.

Visited: Dec 13, 2018

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I had feeling like we came with starship Enterprise to some crappy planet. All local excursion guides are ferengi. They don't have any useful information and their only goal is to get you to a few stores to another ferengis who has deal with them to share money you spend there. We had Casablanca, our friends had a Marrakesh excursion. We paid 65eur per person and they paid 150eur/person. The best expiriance had two couples who avoid the ship excursions and arange local taxi to be with them all day for 80eur total so it was 20eur per person. No ferengi crap.

Worst port we've ever got off at. Sh1t hole. If you want to leave the ship here, I'd recommend doing so on a proper trip. The place is dirty and intimidating. The first thing to happen, if you should leave the ship on your own, is you being swamped by over zealous taxi drivers trying to get you into their grotty cabs. When we went, they actually started (pointlessly) fighting each other for our custom.

Nice 8 hour excusion of the old part of Casablanca.

Visited: Jan 24, 2019

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As other reviews noted, this is a less desirable port. We were very uncomfortable from the beginning of our arrival. Several relentless taxi drivers tried to bargain a taxi tour at our free shuttle entrance. The Princess shuttle took us to the city center. After the few minutes drive on the shuttle through the area, several passengers decided to return directly to the ship and did not get off. We were again advanced by several solicitors. Our group of four walked to Rick’s Cafe. We didn’t feel safe, but our GPS showed we were only a 10-15 min walk. The earlier taxi experience didn’t make us feel better about hailing a taxi, so we walked. Lunch was very good at Rick’s Cafe and they did a fabulous job making a mock restaurant from the Hollywood movie scene of Casablanca. We took a red taxi from the restaurant to the city center Princess shuttle (their only offer) and were told by a local to offer €5. We paid €10 since there were four of us. We made it safe and were glad to pay it. Other shipmates enjoyed their Princess shore excursions, so definitely consider these versus on your own.

The Hassan II Mosque was absolutely amazing, but rushed. The very brief walk through the market (fish and vegetables) was interesting, but again rushed. We were hustled into an argon oil shop for a presentation holding us "captive" for some time. Then moved to one shop and repeatedly told before entering prices were fixed, no negotiation. I felt set up at these two places and totally not the experience I had hoped for. Others on our cruise toured Rabat and had a wonderful day. I plan to visit Morocco again, but will skip Casablanca at least on this sponsored tour. This stop not worth the many long hours in port.