our Costa Diadema Cruise

Hi bazbov,

Just would like to know about your experience boarding at Barcelona.

 

 

We, like you are Perla Diamante & was in a Suite, having sent luggage on we expected 'Instant Boarding' as suggested by new club rules, but was made to stand in line with all others handing over luggage for 40 minutes, then told we could board.

Getting upstairs' to boarding hall, again we waited in the suite line while others were given boarding ahead of us, one Lady we met at Airport & was a first time Costa cruiser boarded along side us.

 

 

I have complained to Costa about this procedure this is twice at Barcelona this has happened to us.

Thank heaven we had a wonderful cruise and was pleased to see a marked improvement in the menu's.

 

 

Saw Amanda in Savona spoke briefly about your previous problems.

Hello Tenpin.

Once we arrived at the terminal (just before 1pm) we had to show our passports and ticket to somebody stood outside. They gave us boarding ticket 1 and a health questionaire. which we filled in and then went to the check in desk for suite and perla diamente members. They took the health declaration and told us to go to VIP lounge (this was closed) and wait until boarding commenced at about 130-1.45pm. we waited till ticket no 1 was called and then pushed our way past those who were blocking the entrance.

Sorry you had difficulty but we really had no probs at all. Nice to hear you enjoyed the cruise. Hope this helps. Happy Cruising. :)

Bazbov,

 

Thank you very much for your thoughtful and very informative posts. We are cruising with Costa on Diadema for the first time in April. Your review is very reassuring. The "official" review says you need to go local or go loco. I think we will fit in just fine on this ship ;-)

 

KatapultMike

Hello Katapultmike. Thanks for your kind words. I hope you have a wonderful time. :D

Back now, overall it was a great holiday - much better than our first and only previous cruise with Costa in 2010. The Diadema is a lovely ship, the crew are friendly and the itinerary is a good one for sure. So, on to our take on this cruise:

 

Embarkation: We flew to Barcelona for this circular cruise. It's an easy airport transfer; I booked a private taxi in advance for both ways via a website. The terminal building is quite small, we arrived latish so there was no queue for security or registration but we witnessed much longer queues while waiting for our transfer back to the airport on the last day.

 

The ship: Diadema is the largest ship we've been on. It's a well organised ship though, the bars and entertainment venues are good, the theatre is massive and has good seating. Getting on and off never seemed a problem despite the large pax capacity. We had a balcony on deck 8 and loved it for the private open air space it gave us - the Lido up on deck 10/11 was a bit echoy and noisy for us to sit there for long although the sofa-style seating on deck 11 is very nice.

 

Entertainment: The entertainment was very, very good: which must be a challenge given the number of languages on board. There's a noticeable difference in the music that is played compared to a British ship - lots more Spanish and Italian songs in particular. The evening entertainment was more varied than on say a P&O or Thomson ship: an opera singer, two very different acrobatic/juggling/circus style acts, a couple of themed musical shows, etc. The latin dance group in the Orlov bar venue were all excellent dancers. The lounge bar musicians were off a generally high standard as far as we could tell but we didn't spend much time in the piano bar or other smaller venues as the speaker volume in entertainment areas of the ship were higher than we found comfortable (theatre wasn't so bad luckily!).

 

Food: Breakfasts in the buffet, as I had read in advance on these boards, is cold buffet only. It's a proper scrum too as you'd expect from 4000 odd passengers - they do have more than enough seating though, which is better than on the larger P&O ships. The sit-down breakfast in the Fiorentina restaurant offers a menu of cooked breakfasts and the option of the buffet as well - a great compromise if you're not all wanting the same style of food. The service breakfast was rather chaotic, we never ate here in the evening to see if this was a general issue. Evening meals in the Adularia restaurant were very good. Food was of a high standard, although all menus were Italian inspired so not as much variety as we are used to. I enjoyed every meal I had, my vegetarian husband had some rather repetitive food (e.g. spinach-based starter and then a lot of spinach in the main as well) but the standard was generally high.

 

Drinks: Not much to say here, the prices are high for a Brit post-sterling slump. They whack a service charge on every drink - we're not used to this, but the base holiday price is so cheap it's kind of expected they'd make up the money somewhere else. Good variety of drinks, the German themed pub was a nice addition to the ship although it rarely seemed busy. The lack of any cider was an annoyance to my husband, have Magners, Koppaberg or Rekordelig not made it to the Med yet?

 

Ports: This is what makes a holiday for me and this cruise had a great itinerary. We did all DIY, the Costa Travel excursions are expensive (Sterling again!) and the ports were all easy to deal with. Palma we just walked around as we've not seem much of it before. At Civitavecchia we took a train to Rome and did our own walking tour of major sights (we've been before). At La Spezia we took the train to Pisa and had great fun seeing the tower and surrounding civic/religious buildings. At Savona we did a little shopping walk around but, by chance, decided to go up the bell tower and it was an absolute delight. Lots of steps and no lift, but they're doing free guided tours for small groups and the place is crammed to the rafters with paintings and historical objects. It also offers nice views from the roof! At Marseilles we took the paid bus in and walked around, then we took the trolley train up to see the Basilica de Notre Dame: stunning views of the city and an impressive church to visit.

Hello The Pauls and welcome back.

Thank you so much for posting your thoughts, i'm really pleased that you had a good time.

The ciders you mentioned have made it to the med but mainly in the British bars and some supermarkets. i prefer cider to beer also but realise that i have to go with whats available when on board. I'm not that much of an alcohol drinker anyway and the non alco cocktails suit me down to the ground.

Once again thanks for your thoughts. Happy Cruising. :)

Hi Bazbov

It is good to see all these happy comments about Costa don't you think.

Boarding the NeoClassica in Mumbai tomorrow. I like some of those non-alcoholic cocktails too. Specially the Pasionfruit Caipirinha.

Back in 17 days and I will have another go at doing a trip blog.

Happy cruising.

Alicat

Hi Bazbov

 

It is good to see all these happy comments about Costa don't you think.

 

 

Boarding the NeoClassica in Mumbai tomorrow. I like some of those non-alcoholic cocktails too. Specially the Pasionfruit Caipirinha.

 

 

Back in 17 days and I will have another go at doing a trip blog.

 

 

Happy cruising.

 

 

Alicat

Hello Alicat.

It is indeed nice to see some positive thoughts about Costa. I think several more future passengers are actually taking the time now to do research beforehand and read review sites and threads in full,rather than just the negative reviews.

We've sailed with several lines and have always found something positive about the cruises (more positives than negatives)

We had a lovely time on the NeoClassica.

I hope you have a wonderful voyage and look forward to hearing about your adventures, :)

I'll try a passionfruit caippirinha when next on board.:D Happy cruising.

Back now, overall it was a great holiday - much better than our first and only previous cruise with Costa in 2010. The Diadema is a lovely ship, the crew are friendly and the itinerary is a good one for sure. So, on to our take on this cruise:

 

Embarkation: We flew to Barcelona for this circular cruise. It's an easy airport transfer; I booked a private taxi in advance for both ways via a website. The terminal building is quite small, we arrived latish so there was no queue for security or registration but we witnessed much longer queues while waiting for our transfer back to the airport on the last day.

 

The ship: Diadema is the largest ship we've been on. It's a well organised ship though, the bars and entertainment venues are good, the theatre is massive and has good seating. Getting on and off never seemed a problem despite the large pax capacity. We had a balcony on deck 8 and loved it for the private open air space it gave us - the Lido up on deck 10/11 was a bit echoy and noisy for us to sit there for long although the sofa-style seating on deck 11 is very nice.

 

Entertainment: The entertainment was very, very good: which must be a challenge given the number of languages on board. There's a noticeable difference in the music that is played compared to a British ship - lots more Spanish and Italian songs in particular. The evening entertainment was more varied than on say a P&O or Thomson ship: an opera singer, two very different acrobatic/juggling/circus style acts, a couple of themed musical shows, etc. The latin dance group in the Orlov bar venue were all excellent dancers. The lounge bar musicians were off a generally high standard as far as we could tell but we didn't spend much time in the piano bar or other smaller venues as the speaker volume in entertainment areas of the ship were higher than we found comfortable (theatre wasn't so bad luckily!).

 

Food: Breakfasts in the buffet, as I had read in advance on these boards, is cold buffet only. It's a proper scrum too as you'd expect from 4000 odd passengers - they do have more than enough seating though, which is better than on the larger P&O ships. The sit-down breakfast in the Fiorentina restaurant offers a menu of cooked breakfasts and the option of the buffet as well - a great compromise if you're not all wanting the same style of food. The service breakfast was rather chaotic, we never ate here in the evening to see if this was a general issue. Evening meals in the Adularia restaurant were very good. Food was of a high standard, although all menus were Italian inspired so not as much variety as we are used to. I enjoyed every meal I had, my vegetarian husband had some rather repetitive food (e.g. spinach-based starter and then a lot of spinach in the main as well) but the standard was generally high.

 

Drinks: Not much to say here, the prices are high for a Brit post-sterling slump. They whack a service charge on every drink - we're not used to this, but the base holiday price is so cheap it's kind of expected they'd make up the money somewhere else. Good variety of drinks, the German themed pub was a nice addition to the ship although it rarely seemed busy. The lack of any cider was an annoyance to my husband, have Magners, Koppaberg or Rekordelig not made it to the Med yet?

 

Ports: This is what makes a holiday for me and this cruise had a great itinerary. We did all DIY, the Costa Travel excursions are expensive (Sterling again!) and the ports were all easy to deal with. Palma we just walked around as we've not seem much of it before. At Civitavecchia we took a train to Rome and did our own walking tour of major sights (we've been before). At La Spezia we took the train to Pisa and had great fun seeing the tower and surrounding civic/religious buildings. At Savona we did a little shopping walk around but, by chance, decided to go up the bell tower and it was an absolute delight. Lots of steps and no lift, but they're doing free guided tours for small groups and the place is crammed to the rafters with paintings and historical objects. It also offers nice views from the roof! At Marseilles we took the paid bus in and walked around, then we took the trolley train up to see the Basilica de Notre Dame: stunning views of the city and an impressive church to visit.

Thanks Pauls ... Only 8 days to go and looking forward to it more and more... Im actually excited for it to be that bit "different" :eek:

Another quick ?.. Can you book into club diadema as a "pay" restaurant (or is the decription out cruise critic out of date) as its not shown on the costa "my booking" page

Bazboy, looks like this cruise went off really well (so glad after your recent experiences).

 

Looking forward to the next installment.

 

Please include one negative point so that the Costa Naggers have something to get their teeth into.:D

All those cruise passengers interested in watching a football match at the ninth most scenic stadium in the world, Victoria Stadium in Gibraltar get in touch and check out #ASteppingStoneClub. Thanks

Thanks Pauls ... Only 8 days to go and looking forward to it more and more... Im actually excited for it to be that bit "different" :eek:

Hello ighten ,Now the fun begins, all that packing :). Seriously though, i hope you have a wonderful cruise and look forward to hearing all about it. Happy Cruising. :D

Another quick ?.. Can you book into club diadema as a "pay" restaurant (or is the decription out cruise critic out of date) as its not shown on the costa "my booking" page

Hello ighten. you can pay to use the club restaurant, just see the Maitre' d. On the Diadama it's currently Justine, who is so friendly and helpful. I believe it costs 30 euros per person per visit.

I don't think it's available to book online as it's used mainly for Suite and Perla Diamente passengers. It is more intimate thatn the main restaurant with mainly tables for 2, for larger parties they will push tables together. Food is cooked to order and i believe the quality is better, we certainly enjoyed it.

Not long to go now before your cruise, all that packing :D i hope you have a wonderful time and look forward to hearing about it. Happy cruising. :)