We had great food, great entertainment. We were more than happy with our cabin, and our dinner waiter. However, the thing that spoilt this cruise was lack of water. They wanted us to pay for every drop we drank. I found some waiters downright rude, if you asked for a glass of water the reply was "card". If we did not want to hand over our card, they did not even bring tap water. The other issue was tea and coffee. There is none available except for between 4 and 5pm. And if you do not speak Italian you would not even know about this one hour. Even on the English daily bulletin, it is written in Italian. The man looking after this station, was rude and unhelpful. It took us 3 days to discover afternoon tea hour. When we were shown the daily bulletin, and I said that it was in Italian, he told me that it was in English in the English version. this turned out not to be the case. He said "its up to you to read it, its not toilet paper you know". The soda fountains were never open, the whole time we were on the ship. All I wanted available was a glass of water, and it spoilt the whole experience.

I approached the matre de about the water situation, he was apologetic at least, and he told me that Costa made a decision to not serve water with the meals, and instead forced customers to purchase bottled water.

Service on board was mixed. Some of the staff need to get another job, they are totally unsuited to customer service. Then we were lucky enough to have a wonderful waiter (Renaldo) for evening meals, and an efficient polite cabin boy, (Dino). Read more