bob
rated the Costa Concordia as follows:
| Ship Cleanliness |  | | Crew | | | Ship Food |  | |
| Onboard Entertainment | |
| bob said: this was our first cruise and was to celebrate our thirtieth wedding anniversary. embarkation was a bit of a mass brawl as with any time you get mixed in with europeans, germans french italiens, no idea how to queue. room was small but adequate. then the queue for registering your credit card i found very disconcerting. then the first meal to start with it was biased to an italien apetite not hot and very unwelcoming. this was to be the start of a very un apetising 11 days. the food in the restaurant was in the main cold and not what we would eat as our normal diet. the food in the buffet restaurants wasnt much better either i lived off piza and chips for the main part. my wife came down with food poisoning and had to be detained in the ships hospital so that the excursions we had booked were scrapped because she was too weak to go. and to top it all we were billed for medicine and stay in the hospital. the doctor wrote down on the sick note that she had had flu which was clearly a lie as she had been treated for sickness and dehydration. the drinks were extortionately expensive. the bar staff were from the phillipines, and when ever i saw one of them in the toilets not once did i see them wash their hands whether or not they had come from the urinals or out of a cubicle, and then to go outside and see the same guy serving drinks and crisps and nuts to customers was disgusting. you can also get an idea of how bad the food was by seeing the staff bringing in bags full of shopping whenever we docked at a port. several of them told us in confidence that there canteen served disgusting food not fit for consumption. the entertainment as previously stated was for in the main the italien clientele. and to top it off whilst walking around savona we noticed in an holiday shops window the same cruise we were on advertised for 600 euros when we had paid over £1000 pounds. although no doubt thomas robbing cook had had a big wedge of that money. whilst mentioning thomaas cook how can it get away with the seat pitch it uses on its planes it is ridiculous i am 5` 6" tall and my knees where pushing into the chair in front. in short we will never be using the costa concordia again should we consider cruising and in the main we will be avoiding thomas cook where possible also. |
Tony and Debbie
rated the Costa Concordia as follows:
| Ship Cleanliness |  | | Crew |  | | Ship Food | | |
| Onboard Entertainment | |
| Tony and Debbie said: This was our 14th cruise and we could not have been more pleased with this beautiful ship, it was the decor that impressed us first and the ship was kept spotlessly clean by very friendly staff. Now on to the bad points, embarkation was long drawn out then when on the ship during the next few days you had to queue to register your credit card. Later then followed another queue to get your passports back, with a total of 3700 passengers onboard it was like a Disney queue.
The most disappointing aspect of this cruise was the inflexible dining times with the buffets shutting around 2.30 lunch time and no choice of dining options in the evening other than the formal dining in the restaurant. The quality of the buffet food was terrible to say the least, one day they had tripe and another braised oxtail chunks. There was only a choice of pizza if you did not decide to sit down and dine in the restaurant. The evening food was only acceptable but no wow factor as we have had on other cruise ships. The midnight buffet was non existant with only curled up ham sandwiches or an apple to eat, this is the only cruise we came away from where we had lost weight it is described as the fitness ship and now we know why!!
Entertainment was not geared for english speaking guests and the music in all bars sounding the same.
We could not recommend this cruise to any of our friends.
Ports of call non were really suitable for getting off and walking around on your own you would have to take very expensive excursions booked on the ship.
In conclusion a very beautiful ship let down by what appeared to us as being a very cost cutting exercise by the poor choice and quality of food. |
Shelley, Barry, Zack & Aurora
rated the Costa Concordia as follows:
| Ship Cleanliness | | | Crew | | | Ship Food | | |
| Onboard Entertainment |  |
| Shelley, Barry, Zack & Aurora said: We are a British family of two adults and two children ages 42,30,8 & 6 and we have done three previous family cruises, a cruise for our honeymoon alone and my husband used to work for Carnival.
We departed on 6th January on Concordias 11 night Med. Highlights cruise.
The booking process was painless and we chose cruise only an inside cabin because the children sleep later if it is dark, but had I known how much bigger the outside cabins were in real terms I would have paid the extra.
After booking we logged onto the Costa website and booked our excursions and also my wine packages. Tickets for the excursions were delivered the first night on board and the wine vouchers were brought to me in the restaurant by the assistant maitre'd on our first night so I could use them straight away. My husband had also booked (through the Costa Call centre) the X1 package which has to be paid for at the time of booking ~ It cost £74.63 for the eleven nights of the cruise and could be used at lunch and dinner in both the restaurant and parigi buffet and was excellent value ~ a large beer was £4.89 including service and he was drinking 3 at dinner = £14.67 a night/£161.37 over the cruise just at night!
Wine was dear but we bulked up my wine packages by taking on board a minimum of two bottles of wine, 6 cans of lager and 3 ltrs of soft drink at every port (~ sometimes upto 8 bottles wine as happened in rhodes!)without it ever being questioned. We even took wine and lager into bars and asked for glasses as a group of four without it ever being questioned.
Embarkation at Civitavecchia was fairly painless and we were on the ship within an hour of arriving at the port ~ others who boarded a day later (at Savona) had waits of up to 5hrs by comparison!
When we got to our cabin it was arranged as a king bed with a bunk above at each side and ladders at the end. There was very little floor space and a distinct lack of hanging space ~ so little I ended up putting the kids clothes in piles on the shelves.Cabins walls were woefully under insulated so you could quite happily sit and listen to your neighbors discussions with there spouses and we felt like joining in when they argued. Prams were left by people who had them in the corridors outside their cabins ~ an added obstacle at night after a few beers.
Bags were delivered to the cabin within half an hour, so by 2pm we were all ready to go and find some lunch in the buffet. This area was particularly crowded but around the pools there were generally tables to be found.
Here comes the confusing part ~ around the rear pool you couldn't smoke but the pool and jacuzzis were for adults only, whilst the mid ship pool with the large screen and for children and families had the smoking area? Please could someone explain the logic behind that? In Britain at least, children's areas are generally smoke free as they do not have a choice where to sit, whereas adults who wish to smoke are quite free to get up and move!
Food in the buffet was Ok, better at times than in the restaurants and usually hotter. At no time did we ever see any one probing food to do temperature checks! In the restaurant the waiters double as wine waiters and had very large areas to cover and as such service was painfully slow ~ a full five courses could take 2 hours and the lights get turned on after an hour and three quarters! There were no soup spoons on the ship so both soup and consomme had to be consumed with desert spoons, food was frequently cold upon arrival and served upon cold plates. With main courses the potatoes and veg were merely symbolic 1 potato, a floret of broccoli and a twist of spinach the size of a desert spoon head. Sauces ranged from none existent to bland, to straight from a packet. Pasta was the best thing to eat bar the ice cream.
All of the staff were generally courteous and happy to help ~ but does the mandatory tipping policy take away their need to do that little extra that they would otherwise have done?? Monica our cabin girl was excellent she even emptied the mini bar for us so we could fill it with coke water and beers we had bought ashore.
The pool areas were always well stocked with towels and unoccupied sun beds were fairly easy to find. The pools could range from freezing to bath like day to day ~ make sure you take goggles, the chlorine content was so high it bleached my sons turquoise swim trunks to a pale blue with white patches and my white bikini top went yellow. After getting splashed in face one afternoon it took twenty five minutes for the swelling in my left eye to subside.
Activities were loud, but generally only explained in Italian so we didn't join in. The disco of an evening was avoided by adults and became the sole preserve of the late teens ~ the bar lads were constantly checking passports as so many teens wanted alcohol they weren't old enough to drink. This is the first ship I have been on where a game between 8 people of black jack has been ended by the croupier as they are not allowed to deal after 2am ~ on other ships I have still been playing at 5am. There is nowhere to get a drink after 2am so don't intend to party the nights before your sea days. The theatre offered decent yet homogenised entertaintment stymied by the language barrier ~ there is no way a comedian will work in five languages at a time. Make sure that you do not miss the acrobat/ contortionist/ circus woman ~ scary yet excellent (but very similar to OV's deck show but not at the height or on the open deck)
The Squok club was ok, fairly crowded and not really much structure as such if you called early to pick up your child or dropped them of late you would frequently find fights in full flow ~ it got to the point on the last day that my generally pleasant 6 year old daughter had had enough of being pushed and hit that when an eight year old lad hit her she walked over to her brother and his friend and asked my son to phone me to pick her up ~ when I arrived she walked over to the lad who had bitten her and smacked him straight in the stomach even though she knew I would smack her! Apparently these were not random acts of violence~ fully fledged fights went on at every session when we asked. Beware in the high season there can be up to 800 children in the three kids club rooms and the have no maximum child to staff ratio (where as on our last cruise with 3 -6 year olds it was 1 staff to 8 children!)The trimmings are shoddy even in the kids club area as a friends child can attest ~ he fell caught his head on dado that wasn't correctly joined and ended up with three stitches.
I took a shore excursion to Ephesus alone which was excellent and then as family we did the pyramids and Cairo Museum trip ~ a hell of a lot of money for 30 mins at the pyramids, 30 mins at the sphinx, a nice buffet lunch at the le meridien pyramids(the best food of the cruise bar what we bought ourselves in Greece) and 1 and a half hours in the Cairo museum the rest of the time was given over to shopping! If I had known how how much time was given to Papyrus and gold I would have arranged my own tour.
Disembarkation again was fairly easy but we had arranged our transport into Rome ~ 12.40 Euros by train for the four of us to Rome Termini ~ the taxi driver at the port tried to charge us more to take us to the station. We had had enough of Costa by this point so we disembarked ourselves rather than battle with 200+ others from the theatre to the exit!
The ship was heavily graffittied in the lifts, on tables in public areas and on paintings and art work, in many of the corridors there were generally camped large groups of teens listening to music and smoking. They were replacing trims already (on a ship that's only just 6 months old!) in the buffet and around the pools, (tiles around the pool areas have started to rust )~ she looks like she was put together on the bare minimum of a budget and that is reflected in cheap and shoddy nature of the decor.
All in all a disappointing experience & not one I will repeat. If we hadn't of got to see some amazing places with some great company, this trip would have been a total disaster
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bob from burnley sailed on Costa Concordia with
thomas cook
on a couples holiday.