I am retired and have so far 121 cruises on 51 different ship.

We flew into Amsterdam and arrived at the cruise terminal at noon. There were about 2000 people, in the venue with 200 seats, and people were still disembarking.When they called to start boarding at 1 p.m. utter chaos started, because the majority of the passengers were Italiens with at least 4 children each. We finally made it on board. The ship is "Costa" but not as overdecorated as the other ships. Cabin 7821 was a standard cabin with a shower, with a larger balcony than usual. First seating for dinner was at 6:45 p.m. a bit late for some. The restaurant was nicely decorated, but the waiters have to many tables compared to other cruise lines, so they are constantly running, still the service takes very long. The food was Italian, and we found it to be quite good. On the 5th day we stopped the maitre D when he passed by and told him our complaints. He had not been to our table before, after that he made it an issue to pour the water into our glasses. Since there were more than 1200 children on board, which could do whatever they wanted, the rules and regulations were not observed at all. e.g.

12 year olds were playing the machines in the casino, 4 year old naked girls were in the mens sauna, the whirlpool reserved for adults was constantly full of children, and all the people in charge or the officers looked the other way. Read more