Costa Smeralda Cruise Reviews - Reviews

I would not recommend Costa Cruise line. Our room balcony was nice and our dinner service was great. John was wonderful. But Costa is very cheap. Even water and coffe are not included. They try and upsale you even at dinner. You get very basic food. If you are an American, stick with an American cruise line. There are not enough seats for everyone in Buffet. The lines are very long and the management staff do not help if you have a complaint. And the tours in Sardina and Genoa are not worth the money. Also watch your bill, they charge you fir items after you leave.

This was the first time we cruised with Costa. We loved the itinerary and the ports. The balcony room was nice and we had smooth seas. Everything was laid out differently than the ships departing from the U.S. which made it harder to find the buffet and common spaces. Our main problems were with the excursions. The descriptions did not provide accurate information, especially about the the difficulty level. We had our 90 year old mother with us, and she had to skip parts of excursions, or get a cab back to the ship in two ports.

We did not check the review of this cruise BEFORE booking. We should avoid this big ship with a crowd. We feel more comfortable with smaller ships and with more adult Americans fellow cruisers. We could have enjoyed the outdoor areas of this beautiful ship more IF there were less smokers were there. There should have specific designated smoking areas on the ship as Celebrity cruise lines do.

Really be careful on what you’re booking in advance because they’ll still try to upsell you and charge you for extra stuff later down the line there’s a hotels service charge every single day and room service is really bad. Bring your own water if you can because they charge really expensive for water on board and they do not offer any free water

I really enjoyed the places of port. Ship was nice. Difficult for Americans.

Costa did a wonderful job and all aspects were very well done. It was enjoyable to have such a large mix of nationalities, and everyone was having a good time.

overall the ship was clean and comfortable. However main language is Italian. A Lot of the staff does speak English or Spanish so communication is possible. It takes some getting use to but very workable. It was a nice trip. However if you are expecting the same type of cruise experience as Carnival or Royal Caribbean this cruise line is NOT for you.

Guys if you don’t care about food and don’t mind Italians acting like they own the ship then please go ahead and book with Costa. Other than that even their laundry service ruined our clothes.

The cruise is really a pleasing experience. The staff inside the cruise was helpful but the reception was always crowded and they might need some more staff in there. The only bad part was the disembarkation which was not organized well. Hope this can be addressed soon.

In the Dining Room, food was not tasty at all. In the buffet restaurant, we had to line up for everything, tea, coffee, water. The type of bread has not changed anywhere for the 7 days, the buffet had different pastas daily which are all the same taste.

Very poor experience with staff and cruise excursion team.

If you only speak English you will not understand alot of things that's going on in the ship because most was only in Italian. We cruise every year for the last ten years and there was nothing on that ship that was free. They will nickel and dime you for everything, even water!!! I'm so use to having some free ice cream, pizza or hamburgers but there was nothing free. Maybe I'm a little spoiled. When you get off the ship it was really hard to communicate with people. Don't get me wrong the ship was nice and the ports were great, but I felt kind of alone on the ship because there was not alot of English speaking people. I'm sure alot of people speak English, but we were for sure the MINORITY even though I am a minority. You couldn't enjoy comedy shows, activities by the pool was in Italian, everything we couldn't understand. Our servers could speak in English and were great and most are either from the Philippines or India, but it was different to not talk to anyone that whole week pretty much and believe me we tried to talk to people like in the elevator and they did not understand us Americans. We shared this with other English speaking cruisers on the ship and they all felt the same frustration. I will next time make sure if I cruise in that area that it's primary language for the cruise and activities are in English. I won't cruise again on Costa. I will find a cruise like that speaks English so we can understand what's going on. We plan on going on a family cruise in two years to Greece and in that area. If you know of a cruise line that is more English friendly and won't make us pay for water or normal juice or nickel and dime us for everything please let me know. One more thing the food was not great either. It was okay but it didn't WOW me. I had some pizza and I thought "Little Caesars" pizza is better than this. Anyways that's my review. Please advise me if there are any cruises to Greece in 2024 that hopefully won't give this experience. I'm taking my whole family of 10 and I don't want them to experience what my wife and I just experienced. Please let me know.

This ship and especially the crew exceeded all my expectations! It was si organized from start to finish. It took almost NO time to embark or disembark. The food was fabulous as we're the helpfulness of the crew! I would go on this cruise again and again if I could!

Being our first cruise ever we enjoyed it very much. If it is like that every time of the year we want to do more of it. We did not take any of their tours available just because we like to enjoy what there is todo and see in our own time and we did just that!!

This is the BEST way to travel through Europe. Congrats to Costa Cruise on such a great ship and staff.

A super variety of port yours ; excellent rooms and staff = good food : we felt it was worth it in every wsyn

Would 150% not recommend or go on another costa cruise. This was a new ship and was supposed to be to great destinations that were a total let down if you booked excursions with the cruise line. Entertainment, food, and excursions were less than mediocre at best. Sad this was a dark cloud following us on our anniversary cruise. Should have went with another cruise line.

The meals were disapointing cafeteria food. They looked good but were consistently bland

good experience, price was food, food tast good , very convenient if you travel with kids you can drop kids off from 8am till midnight unlimited time, clean , new ship , our room was great with amazing views

Excellent Cruise... Excellent service and excellent on board experience.