Usually the food on a cruise ship is a major highlight. Not the case on this ship, that is gorgeous, has a beautiful spa and well appointed cabins. Apparently the regular restaurant and kitchen crew get Christmas week or December off and Costa sends in the B team and only half of them. The food was bland and unimaginative. The first morning our waiter started bringing random plates of lox, fruit pastries and other unordered items and serving them to us individually with an explanation that our food orders were going to take a long time and we should eat these while we wait. They obviously should have been put in the middle of the table for sharing but weren’t. First clue staff were newbies. Dinner was a disaster. The food took soooo long to come and some at our table waited 30 minutes after others were eating to get their first item. Same for the second night though we specifically asked that all of us get served something at the same time. By the third night a supervisor came to our table after three nights of complaints. She apologized and said the ship was full and they were doing their best. She had to apologize for the waiter insisting to me that the canned vanilla pudding he served was chocolate mouse with no sugar added. I firmly pushed back three times to him that he was incorrect. Turns out it was the “cream” that was meant to accompany the unordered panettone fruitcake that had been served to appease us 20 minutes earlier as we waited for our real dessert orders, a cake that was long gone! We skipped the dining room altogether for a day and a half and only 1 lone solo traveling table-mate ate there. The breakfast buffets were slop.

The cabins and cabin steward Abu were excellent. The drinks and bartenders were also nice. We bought the weeklong use of the spa pass but were disappointed that the hydrotherapy pool was closed for two days. I had a great bamboo massage and facial. The aesthetician Naomi was pushy and tried to talk me into having the same facial the next day. Really? I went ahead and scheduled one for 2 days later rather than engage in her strong arm sales tactics and promptly cancelled the next day which took some doing and tight follow up. Easier than fighter her.