KatapultMike

Bananapops21 - sorry I didn't see your question in time. Didn't use the kids club so couldn't have helped in any case.

DancerBob - you may well be right that I am too harsh on my countrymen's sartorial standards. I lived in Europe for most of the 80's, when the contrast was much starker than today, and I may have a permanent chip on my shoulder from that experience.

It's been a long time since I've been on Costa, so I don't know the answer: as you had the early seating at your (presumably) table for 4, did your late appearances merely cause your waiter extra problems in serving you out of order with his other tables or did it create a problem for late seating diners at your table? I'm wondering if you noticed how that was handled?

The former. Waiter handled it was grace and efficiency, but we still needed to clear out for the second seating. They chase everyone out.

Thanks for the tip on the Istanbul layover. We were strongly advised not to travel there last year and we loved it. We felt very safe and want to go back. Did you have to call Turkish Airlines direct to get it?

Sorry, everyone, have not been monitoring this Board for a while! Starting to think about doing it again so thought I would check in.

The Istanbul layover was very, very, easy, really just like traveling in Europe or "anywhere else." The idea came to me because I kept seeing Turkish Airlines pop up with extremely competitive fares from San Francisco to Milan via Istanbul. Turkish seems to be included on all the major US internet travel sites. No need to book direct with Turkish. I ended up booking it through Orbitz, but got a price adjustment when I found it for slightly less on one of the more dodgy travel websites. Turkish is a member of Star Alliance so your frequent flyer miles will transfer to United and other Star Alliance members. Service was great on the plane.

Booked the DoubleTree Sirkeci, which is walking distance to the Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, etc. Booked that online as well, I think through Hotels.com but I don't recall. Great hotel, very reasonable rate compared to California, booked a two room suite. No advance arrangements for transportation, just came out of airport and got a taxi, no problem.

I would definitely repeat Istanbul stopover if Turkish Airlines rates stay so low. As long as people are afraid to go there, I imagine there will be deals there.

I thought it was great being the only Americans on the ship and my turquoise jewelry and southwestern type clothing was a big hit with the Italians!

We enjoyed being pretty much the only Americans aboard as well. Unfortunately, I didn't get any compliments on my jewelry or clothes, but I'm kind of used to that. :(

To those who have told me we were inconsiderate being late for dinner: guilty as charged.

I don't think the late seating would have worked for us though. Starting dinner at 9:30 or whenever it was would mean finishing at 11:00 or 11:30, and my youngest would be slumped over the table by then. There is really no in-between offered for the fixed dinner times, its a choice between too early or too late. I think the ideal solution for us would be the open seating at Corona Blu, and that is what we will ask for next time.

I hope people don't take my review as being anti-Costa. We actually loved it and had a great time. I am just trying to give some info to help others who are in a similar situation to us to make an informed decision.

Ejincali, hi, neighbor! Great to know there is at least one other Northern Californian Costa cruiser.

Alex & Bobbingbob, thanks.

Does anyone know if it is possible to edit a post after putting it up? I wrote out the above in Word fist, and then copied onto this site. For some reason I couldn't get "Preview Post" to work, so I just submitted it. Somewhere in that process, the spacing was thrown off and a lot of the words ran together. Really hard to read now, so thanks to all of those who made the effort! I would like to go back in and correct it, but don't know how to edit the post. Anyone know if this is possible?

It seemsmost of the reviews on this site are from couples, and not very manyAmericans. So I thought I would post ourimpressions and some thoughts in particular regarding kids. Spoiler alert: we loved it! But I can see that Costa might not be foreveryone.

My family(me, my wife and two girls aged 11 and 13) went on a one week cruise on theCosta Diadema sailing form Savona on April 8. Basically a different port every day, with only one sea day. I was trying to expose my kids to as manyplaces as possible within our time constraints. While we succeeded in seeing a lot, we may have overdone it, as we wererushing around the whole week.

Timing. Our cruise was scheduled around my kid’sspring break from school. This seemedlike a great idea to me. I thought itwould be less crowded than the summer. I’m not sure it was. Our springbreak coincided with Easter week, so there were tons of people everywhere butespecially in the Vatican and other cathedrals in Italy. We were at the Vatican the day before GoodFriday. At our school, if Easter comesparticularly early or late, they will not schedule spring break around it. If you have a situation like that, I wouldsay go for it on spring break. I wouldnot recommend the Vatican during Easter Week. Our kids break was only one week. We flew out of San Francisco on Thursday night and returned a week and ahalf later on Monday afternoon. Kids hadto miss two school days and were actually not happy about that – they areserious students and didn’t want to miss any school, so we tried to minimizeit. It was really a lot ground to coverin that time. If we do it again I thinkwe will try the summer.

Kids on Costa. On our cruise, there were tons of kids, so you will have lots ofcompany. Our girls are 11 and 13, so wewere a little surprised when we were told on check-in that the initialorganizational meeting for the kids club would be at 11:30 p.m.! Italian kids stay out later than theirAmerican peers, and Italian families like to eat late. Our kids never participated in any of theorganized kid’s club events. Aside fromthe somewhat inconvenient hours, we were just too busy.

Ambiance. Hard to explain. The ship wasloud and bling, bling, bling everywhere. Lot of excitement, music, shows, kind of crazy. We actually liked it, but if you are lookingfor peace and quiet it’s hard to find. It was sometimes hard to figure out where things were, how they worked,or what was going on. All of the crewspoke adequate English for their jobs, but not always adequate to givedirections, and there seemed to be a lot of confusion on their part about howthings actually worked. So if you are acontrol freak and expect there to be some resource somewhere that finally anddefinitively spells everything out, I expect you are going to bedisappointed. If you can kick back andgo with the flow, you will have a great time.

Dress. Not nearly as formal as we expected. I had only been on one cruise before, on Norwegian years ago. On that trip, I actually brought two tuxedojackets, one black and one white, for the two gala nights. No need for that on Costa! Diadema had one gala night. I wore a blazer and tie for it and my girls(big and small) wore cocktail length dresses. Most people didn’t bother. Iwould say maybe 10% of the men were sporting a jacket and tie that night, andmaybe another 10% jacket no tie. Weactually packed pretty heavy for the trip as my girls were kind of into theidea of the theme nights (all white, tricolore, black and red). But when we saw how casual everyone else was,they didn’t want to bother to dress up. We could have packed a lot lighter and if we go again we will. The only theme night that had a highpercentage of participation was the White Nights. Most of the people that actually went to theWhite Nights party were wearing white.

You oftenhear in the US that “Europeans are better-dressed than Americans.” There is a lot packed into that statement,not least of which that “Europeans” is a pretty broad term, that includesdiverse populations that are not homogenous. I will leave that aside and address only the Europeans on our cruise(practically everyone on our cruise except us was European.). The second nuance is just what you mean by “betterdressed.” This can be used to meaneither (i) “more formally dressed” or (ii) “more stylishly or fashionably dressed.” I can say that, with respect to the Europeanson our cruise (i) was not true at all. Itused to be that you seldom saw adults in Europe wearing jeans, shorts orsneakers unless they were American tourists. This is absolutely no longer the case. I do not think people were dressed more formally than they would be at,say, a resort in the US. However, withrespect to (ii), dressing more stylishly, it is true. Everyone you saw just looked better than theaverage American in terms of their clothes. They were wearing the same general kinds of clothes, just wearing thembetter. Even families with little kidsmanaged to have everyone clean, matching (where appropriate or desirable!),newish and somehow just together and well turned out, all the time. So I would say, don’t worry about dressing uptoo much, but do try to bring your “A game” in terms of not wearing worn out clothesor mismatched outfits unless you want to stand out as a schlub.

Dining. Fabulous. I actually thought thefood alone was worth the price of the cruise, like they were throwing in theaccommodation and travel for free. Wewere assigned to the main dining room, Fiorentino, for the early seating fordinner, which was supposed to start at 6:30. Our biggest challenge of the whole cruise was getting there ontime! We basically never were ontime. The first night, it was about 8:00when we were ready for dinner, and they wouldn’t let us in. We went to the Corona Blu for dinner thatnight, which had open seating with the same menu as the main dining room andhad a great meal. We tried that againlater in the cruise but were rebuffed, and told that this option was only openfor those who had been assigned it as their dinner choice every night. Second night we got to the dining room around7:30. We bypassed the Maitre D’ byentering through the upper level and going down the internal staircase to getto our table. After we were seated, theMaitre D’ came back to our table and started yelling at me very animatedly in French. I speak French well enough to know what hewas saying, but not really well enough to go toe-to-toe with him in real time. He was actually justified at being annoyed atus – we were an hour late after all – but I thought the way he went about itwas more than a bit rude. So, Iresponded with my best Gallic shoulder shrug and a casual “D’ac” while Ireturned my attention to my aperitif (vermouth, light on the ice, with a lemontwist, not a wedge – I already had the bartender at the Stella del Sud trained!). This turned out to be the perfect response,as he sort of ran out of steam and stomped off, still in a huff. The rest of the week we struggled to getthere on time, and ate at the Adularia one night, which also had open seating,and at the buffet one night when we were really late. Although we only made it there half the time,the waiter at our assigned table in Fiorentino (Ahri) was great. Very attentive, perfect English, he wouldleave wine and water on the table so we could help ourselves (Piu Gusto drinkspackage is supposed to be by the glass only). He was the only waiter we really talked to much or got to know anythingabout on the whole ship. He was fromJakarta and was very interested that I had been there recently onbusiness. He was also the only person onthe ship that we tipped separately. Ifigured Costa’s 10 Euro per person per day could take care of the rest ofthem. On any given day you would likelyreceive service from literally dozens of people, not necessarily the same fromone day to the next, and I don’t see how you could tip them all individually. In general, the whole ship is run prettyefficiently, but it’s kind of an assembly line operation. You are waited on by tons of people, so it’sunderstandable if the service is not very warm or personal.

Overall, Ithought almost everything we ordered in the main dining room was good quality,with a thoughtful menu, well presented and served hot. There were usually two to four choices forthe main course, two for the other courses or maybe three for desert, alongwith several “always available” items. It was basically all an Italian menu, although varied and tendingtowards Northern Italian and a mix of more original dishes and traditionalones. It was not just spaghetti marinaraall week, have no fear. My wife was alittle disappointed they did not also feature more French or Spanish dishes butoverall we were very satisfied.

My kidsended up loving the formal dining. I wassort of surprised by this since normally they prefer buffets. They would bring a book or an iPad to dinnerand did not mind how long we took. Mywife and I would kick back, have a couple (or more!) glasses of wine and reallyenjoyed the pace, which would be considered very slow by American standards. We had a great table with views out bigwindows on the stern and a couple nights were able to see the sunset fromit. I helped my kids order andencouraged them to order most of the six courses on offer. They would try things and if they liked itthey would eat it. I never pressuredthem to eat anything. This worked great– they tried a lot of things they would not have otherwise, and ended up lovingsome of them. It was successful ingetting them to broaden their palates a little.

Breakfast. The buffet selection was pretty big. As many others have noted, it did not include eggs. But for a “continental” breakfast, there wasa lot on offer. I prefer complex carbsand protein for breakfast so usually selected whole grain bread, cold cuts andcheese. My wife likes fresh fruit forbreakfast and there were always several good choices including fabulous andfresh melon. My kids love pastries andsweets for breakfast and they were in absolute heaven. There was some really good prosciutto, whichI liked to have with the melon. In theUS, and I suppose in Italy as well, this is usually eaten as an appetizer atdinner, but it worked just fine for breakfast. I think even the pickiest eater should be able to find something theyliked here. It’s crowded, but manageableafter you learn your way around. If youabsolutely have to have bacon and eggs, it is only available in the main diningroom. We did this on the one seaday. I had an English Breakfast, whichwas awful. My wife had Eggs Benedict,which she thought was barely edible. Mykids ordered the Belgian Waffles with chocolate sauce and whipped crème, which theypronounced delicious. We didn’t botherwith the cooked breakfast after that.

Lunch. We only had lunch on the ship two days, the day we arrived and the seaday. The buffet both days was vast but insanelycrowded. The food was good, especiallythe roast suckling pig, but the mob scene sort of detracted from it.

Drinks. We got the “Piu Gusto” drinks package and I highly recommend it. Everyone in your cabin or traveling togetherhas to get the drinks package if anyone does, and I wasn’t sure if my kidswould get the value from it. I needn’thave worried. Kids enjoyed a steadystream of hot chocolate (including multiple flavor variations from the“chocolate bar”), smoothies and Shirley Temples and other virgin cocktails. They really liked being able to get whateverthey wanted whenever they wanted (I liked that too!). They normally are not allowed to drink sodaor other sugary drinks at home, so this was a treat. One funny thing about the drinks package isthat it included almost anything you could want to drink, but you could onlyget water by the glass, not a bottle. This was inconvenient if you wanted to have water in your cabin. I would basically stop by the nearest bar andget four glasses and carry them back to the cabin. Kind of silly.

Cabin. We booked last minute, and we had no flexibility on dates due to kid’sschool schedule. We got what I was toldwas the very last four person cabin on the ship, and that may have actuallybeen true as I got on a waitlist to upgrade but did not get anopportunity. The ship was very full dueto Easter holiday. The only cabinavailable was an interior one, with one queen bed and two bunk beds to thesides over it. Really cramped for fourpeople! My only prior cruise experiencewas with two people in a suite with a balcony on, if I recall, the top deck ofthe ship, so this was a different experience.

Havingsaid that, the cabin was laid out very well and efficiently with lots of storage. We hardly spent any time in the cabin,literally just sleeping, showering and changing clothes, and my familycooperated and made the best of it. If wedo it again we will upgrade to balcony cabin at a minimum, and maybe a suite. The best part about the cabin we had? I kept reminding myself what a great price wegot!

Shore excursions. We went on shore at every opportunity, and most days stayed as long aswe could. On three days, the days wherewe had more ground to cover, we booked tours through Costa. On two days we toured on our own. I thought the Costa tours were well run,interesting and packed a lot in. I wasaware that we could book tours independently and save some money. I was afraid that if we toured independentlyand were late returning to the ship, we might get left behand. If we were on a bus full of people who wereall late on a Costa-booked cruise, I figured they would have to wait for us orat least put us up and get us to the next port or something. This theory got tested on our day in LaSpezia. It was Good Friday, and we didthe longest, most jam-packed tour available, going to Florence and Pisa (In oneday! This is probably a criminal act,and if not it should be.). Every placewas swarming with tourists, and the bus was quite late getting back. But they waited for us!

Price. Ithought the whole thing was very reasonably priced, and if you spend a fewminutes pricing cruises on websites you will see Costa is consistentlycompetitive or lower than the competition. I felt we got good value for money.

Travel Tips. We flew into Milan via Istanbul on Turkish Airways. I think a lot people, especially Americans,are afraid to go through Istanbul, and many of our friends scrunched up theirnoses when we said we were flying Turkish. I think this is misguided. Althoughthere have been terrorist incidents in Turkey, nowhere is immune from this intoday’s world, and when you factor overall crime rates, I believe you are saferthere than in many American cities. Becauseof this skittishness, Turkish Airlines is offering great fares right now. It is an old school “flag carrier” whichmeans service is far superior to what you will get on an American airline in theback of the plane. I chose the longestlayover in Istanbul offered, 24 hours. We booked a hotel in the Old Town, toured some historic sights, had a greatmeal and overall had a wonderful finale to our vacation. Highly recommend both Turkish Airways and astop in Istanbul.

We hadaccess to airport lounges in Milan and Istanbul through “Priority Pass” whichis offered as a perk through many credit cards in the US (and I assume worldwide). This is a very valuable bonus and made the layoversmuch less stressful. My kids normallyget pretty cranky waiting in airports, but with a clean, comfortable place tosit, wifi, snacks and drinks, they really didn’t care when the plane left! If you don’t otherwise have lounge access youshould look into it.

Bottom Line. If you want a high energy, fun-packed experience that covers maximumground in a limited time in a part of the world rich in history, Costa Diadema,should be on your list. You should thinktwice before going to Rome Easter Week, however. If you want to kick back and relax on springbreak, I suggest you might want to look into Club Med in Mexico! For us, I think we will do it again, likelyEastern Mediterranean next time, but will probably go in summer, book a biggercabin and not try to do everything in one week.

Thanks, Micm, this is really helpful. My wife was very keen to get the details on the dress codes / suggestions. I enjoyed contemplating all the ways I can get my money's worth out of the Piu Gusto package :cool:

Costa reintroduced the evening buffet in December 2015, first ship was Diadema then rolled out fleet wideby June 2016.

 

Check theis link out (Costa UK), look at the Self Service Restaurants:

 

http://www.costacruises.co.uk/gb/restaurants-cuisine/index.html

Thanks for the link, G.M.T., I had not been on the U.K. site before.

ighten,

Thanks so much for the info! With buffets running approximately 12 hours a day, even my kids on a bad day are not going to have much to complain about.

Please don't go to any more trouble on our behalf. You need to attend to the serious business of making that drinks package pay off!

Enjoy!

KatapultMike

ighten,

Thank you so much for your thoughtful review and great photos. I am enjoying it very much!

We are going on the Diadema in four weeks departing from Savona, so very interested to hear about your experiences. Maybe you could help me understand the dinner options? I am pretty sure that I read someplace online that the ship had recently added an informal evening buffet option. Don't find any mention of it on the Costa website, and the official Cruise Critic review says no buffet after the afternoon tea. Have you seen any evidence of the evening buffet? I am travelling with kids so might be a good option sometimes. They are 11 and 13 so should be ready to try some new things but you never know.

Thanks, and keep up the good work on the blog! We are hanging on your every word out here in California!

KatapultMike

I spoke to Costa USA today. They told me that I needed to go through my travel agent in order to upgrade cabin, and that they did not have access to any cabins that the travel agents did not have access to. Nothing available at this time. I mentioned that there are a lot of better cabins available at the port before mine (we are getting on at Savona, and there a lots of good cabins available for Civitavecchio embarkation). I asked if these would be released for Savona embarkation at some point. He said there was no way to tell.

He told me that the cabins are allocated to different countries or regions and there was no way to tell in the US what was available in other countries. He said the moment of truth was when you were boarding. Any cabins not booked by the regions they were allocated to would be available then at dockside. I am thinking that maybe I should show up early on departure day if I have not been able to upgrade prior.

Has anyone ever paid the difference and gotten upgraded at the dock upon departure?

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

Thanks, tenpin, I will try calling Costa directly.

I would appreciate hearing from anyone who successfully moved up to a different category on the same sailing after booking, and the costs involved. I understand that people often get free upgrades, but that depends on the luck of the draw and you don't know what you've got until you get there. I would be willing to pay for the next category up in order to have the certainty, just don't want to overpay.

Thanks everyone,

KatapultMike

Ahoy Cruisers,

I have just booked Costa Diadema for Western Med in April with my wife and two kids. First time on Costa. I feel cabin was a great price, but was hoping for a better category cabin. We are in an inside premium and there were no balcony cabins left that accommodate four. Apparently four in a cabin really limits your options.

I would like to upgrade to a balcony premium or possibly a mini suite. I am willing to pay extra, but of course do not want to pay more than I have to. Can anyone advise as to the best / most economical way to get a better cabin? I reserved online with cruise specialist website that also has agents on the phone, then did the final booking through an agent from the webiste. She said there was absolutely nothing available now, but she could put me on a waitlist for a better cabin. Is it better to go through the agent, or to call Costa directly, or both? It seems to me that communications from Costa to agents in the US might not be very direct or clear, so I might do better dealing directly with Costa.

Can anyone advise?

KatapultMike