kremerlorraine

4 hours ago, Skipper Tim said:

The current Costa information I have is there is no need to be tested except for South American departures of over 15 days, e.g. to Europe. Ours is 16 days! It clearly says we will be denied boarding without a negative certificate from a pharmacist, doctor or clinic. This was confirmed by Costa Customer Service, Italy.

 

I have emailed both our hotel for the night before boarding and the port authority about getting a Covid test, neither have replied. Travelling to the other side of the planet with a prospect of being denied boarding is not sitting well with my constitution. 

Don't stress about it, Skipper! I'm sure your hotel will point you in the right direction. There seems to be a chain of pharmacies in Santos called Droga Raia that do the tests. You only need a rapid antigen so you'll have the results within an hour or so. I'm sorry but I don't remember seeing a testing facility in Santos cruise terminal (although there was certainly a big one in Rio).

4 hours ago, Skipper Tim said:

I have managed to sign my mother up for the Club but not myself. I will have to phone them (travelling tomorrow). 

 

Does the My Drinks Plus package cover all wines?

No, just the wines that are available by the glass costing up to 7 or 8 euros. There are some good ones in there.

You can sign up to the Club on arrival by going to the Customer Relations Manager.

14 hours ago, Skipper Tim said:

Many thanks. That wine list is incredible - more wines than many a wine merchant would have! Also good to hear about the live music. Enjoy the rest of your cruise. Tim.

The wine available on the MyDrinks package is very limited and not great quality. Having said that, I'm not too fussy and am happy to drink it! If you are thinking of buying from the wine list, make sure to sign up for Costa Club before the cruise or on the first day on board. It gets you some decent discounts on a selection of bottles.

You don't need a test for a European cruise.

Water, tea, coffee and juice are available in the buffet at breakfast (typically 7-10 am, but sometimes extended to 11). Water and tea/coffee are available at lunchtime (12-2.30 or later on some port days); at snack time (4.30 - 5.30 pm); and at dinner (varies according to destination but usually 7.30 - 9 pm). There may also be a late night snack service.

Cabin service breakfast isn't free - 5 euros per person and continental breakfast only.

There is no free lobster.

You'll need to decide whether you can justify the £500 for MyDrinks. Personally I would go for it, because I like to have "real" coffee, a few cocktails, soft drinks and water and wine with dinner!

14 hours ago, Skipper Tim said:

A fascinating discussion, thanks to all the contributors. I read it because I have sailed on Cunard, Royal Caribbean and MSC, each twice, but I have the Costa Favolosa Brazil-Barcelona repo cruise, mentioned above, coming up in just over two weeks. For reference, I am English but have also lived in Spain, Italy, Greece and Turkey - I am fairly international!

 

I did two classic trans-Atlantics, Southhampton - New York, on the QE2 and QM2. My take-home from those is that Cunard is a US-idea of what a British cruise line should be but I found it shockingly American - and not what I expected at all. I had to use US-English to communicate the simplest things to the staff and the menus were the classic things that Americans expect on a cruise. I felt like a fish out of water. 

 

Which brings me to Royal Caribbean. I knew to expect a US cruise experience and that is what I got in heaps. What I did not expect was the endless hard-sell and up-sell every moment of the day. I spoke to an English lady who said it was her 60th cruise with RCI and asked her how she coped with the endless sales pressure. She replied to say that she was now immune to it - 'desensitised'. How awful! 

 

MSC, I found both amusing and chaotic because of the mix of cultures of the guests. There was not a day that went by without incident due to cultures not understanding each other. I loved MSC's pizzas freshly made all day outside the buffet, just like those I had when I lived in Italy - so I will miss those on Costa. What I didn't like on MSC was, when going to the MDR for breakfast or lunch, being forced to sit with strangers in the order you arrived. If I asked for a table for 2, we were told to stand aside and wait - often for a long time. We preferred the buffet for this reason in the end. 

 

I will be taking my elderly mother on the Costa Favolosa. She has very high standards from her younger days when she worked in a very expensive restaurant. She will like the Italian theme but she won't tolerate tepid food on cold plates. They will be sent back. I fear for this. 

 

Neither of us have enjoyed any of the shows on any of the ships we have been on. We do however enjoy live music of practically any type, so I am hoping there will be some good live music on the Favolosa as an alternative to the show. 

 

We have separate 'inside guarantee' cabins (not yet allocated) therefore I can book a drinks package for myself but I doubt it would be worth it for her. However, nowhere can I find Costa's current drinks prices for wine in order to compare. Nor can I find the minibar prices. 

 

Hoping there are contributors to help us before our first Costa cruise. I should be able to add my own lines to this thread after it. 

club_en.pdf

This is the current wine list from the Fortuna, which we are on now (transatlantic Buenos Aires to Tarragona). Hope this has uploaded OK. We were on Favolosa for a week in February. There is plenty of live music from 6pm onwards (in the atrium, grand bar, wine bar and the bar at the back of the ship).

14 hours ago, Beezo said:

***PURE SPECULATION**

 

If I were to make a guess...I'd say Deliziosa.  This would give Carnival a total of six Spirit-class vessels, replacing a lot of the itinerary and homeport coverage previously held with the Fantasy-class vessels.

 

Elation is currently in dry dock - but I believe at her age she now needs to be in dry dock a minimum of every two years.

 

 

I hope not. Deliziosa is the only Panamax ship left so Costa would be unable to offer a "classic" RTW cruise going through the Panama Canal. 

We are on the Favolosa now. Yesterday evening as we were leaving Montevideo we were surprised to see (and hear!) the Fortuna sailing past as she should have been on her way north. Our restaurant supervisor said that she had a technical problem and was returning to Montevideo to get it fixed. I checked Vesselfinder this morning and, sure enough, she has been docked in Montevideo since last night. Must keep an eye on that...

14 hours ago, gerryuk said:

Are there any perks to booking a future cruise with Costa, whilst onboard one of their ships? I know some lines give obc. loyalty points and the like if you book a future cruise onboard, what about Costa? 

In my recent experience, it's just a 5% discount on the cabin price (not on any drinks package). Its combinable with any Costa Club discounts you may have.

On 1/16/2023 at 10:39 PM, the penguins said:

Scheduled Journey time: 2 hours 25 minutes.

Address of Bus Station is : Harbour Parade.

Distance from Cruise Terminal: 1 mile.

Taxi from Bus Station to Cruise Terminal: 7 minutes 

Taxi cost: £5.

 

On 1/20/2023 at 12:26 AM, phoenix_dream said:

They said it was GC regulations.  Is there proof otherwise that Celebrity was lying to us and was just cutting back?  If so please share.

We had the same experience in GC in early January on a Costa ship, so it's not a(nother) Celebrity cutback...

On 1/2/2023 at 5:54 PM, CupKayke said:

We will be sailing on Costa Fortuna in March.  Interesting. 

Us, too, from 18 March to 14 April. There are no cruises on her for sale after 14 April, so it may be her last-ever sailing for Costa. Could be an interesting wind-down experience!

Don't stress too much. We were unable to print out our boarding documentation and tickets for a cruise in October, so we just turned up at the cruise terminal with our confirmation document and they did it for us. They also hand-wrote the luggage tags on the spot.

On 11/10/2022 at 4:37 PM, the wandering two said:

Thanks for the reply. 

When I didn't get an automated confirmation of email, like I do from P&O,   I contacted customer relations in order to confirm the OBC email & they replied in a couple of hours. Maybe contact them next week. 

Can't think of what else to do other than resend the original request? 

I resent it marked "Urgent" and got a response the next day asking for an updated share certificate. Sent that back and got the OBC confirmation the same day. Sometimes just a little nudge does the trick...!

I've noticed that the Serena is back - you can book sailings in the Caribbean (from Pointe a Pitre) from December 2023, with a transatlantic back to Europe in March 2024.

It used to take about a week, but we've been waiting two and a half weeks for a response on a cruise departing on 2 December. From a French Costa fans Facebook site that I follow, I get the impression that quite a lot of people have rushed to buy shares as they are so cheap now, so maybe they are having to deal with a lot more requests than usual. Anyway, this has reminded me to chase them up!

On 10/6/2022 at 11:19 AM, Aeroplex said:

You cruised 5 times with Costa this year haha?^^

What can I say?! We like them and as long as we have Platinum/Gold status they will be our first choice. But the lack of variation in the itineraries is becoming a problem.

It sometimes appears as an option to book in advance on MyCosta, but not for all cruises. On our recent cruise on the Fascinosa unlimited Internet access for 13 days cost 190 euros. Social packages (eg including WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram etc) were something like 90 euros. For a week the price for full unlimited access is 100 euros and for social media it's 50 euros. Per minute is 30 cents. There were no discounts on board on any of our last five cruises this year.

A nice surprise on the Fascinosa yesterday - the Library was reopened! I don't know if it will be the same on the other ships (or indeed whether the newer ones even have a library) but we have always made full use of them, for borrowing books and for sitting somewhere quiet.

On 6/16/2022 at 6:57 PM, BVILady said:

That surprises me, last time I checked there hadn't really been a lot of availability on Deliziosa for the 2023 World Cruise and have not been aware of any segments either. I am sorry to hear your cruise was cancelled, hoping to do this one at a later date to cruise the Amazon and northern part of Brazil. I think HAL has a cruise to the Amazon but at a more expensive rate. So where is Magica going then, all her scheduled cruises had been already cancelled.

Your instinct was right - we've been told today that there is no availability on the 2023 WC. But they have offered two sectors on the 2024 WC, which we are interested in doing - probably Santiago de Chile - Sydney - Singapore. 

Still waiting for more information from our personal consultant (in the French market). We are on the Pacifica in the Caribbean until 15 January, so wouldn't be able to join from the beginning anyway. I'm not hopeful that they will find us a balcony cabin. They have sold segments of the world cruise in the past, but usually last minute. I'll check out HAL. The only other Amazon cruises I've found are with Regent Seven Seas and Seabourn - not what I'd call affordable!

We've just had the cancellation e-mail for our 50-day Luminosa cruise from Buenos Aires next February. They are offering two "segments" of the world cruise on Deliziosa instead, but the consultant I contacted today doesn't have any information as to what those segments are. Really disappointed to lose the opportunity to cruise the Amazon (at least at a reasonable price!)

Maybe you'll have more luck downloading it than I did, but there is a press release dated 14 February in the Costa Press Center section on the website. I've read the French version, which says that, due to the ongoing relaxation of health regulations generally Costa foresees being able to offer passengers the ability to leave the ship on their own "this summer" and will be working towards doing that progressively from "the spring".

So no firm dates, but you might be lucky at Easter. You can always book the excursions now and as long as you cancel at least three days before the sailing date you will not have to take them.

22 hours ago, Wansbrough said:

If you do get to go, I have a favour to ask. Our waiters took a group selfie on their phones on the last night and I kick myself for not asking them to send me a copy, this also happened in Bella Bar too so I was wondering if you get onboard you could track them down and pass on an email address?

Rather than post email addresses here, if you subscribe to my blog i can use the address you register with to pass on mine to you?

I did ask one of the Ukrainian croupiers on Twitter but despite saying he would hasn't done so as of yet.

Happy to do that. I have subscribed to your blog - it's the kremerl@..... address

16 hours ago, Wansbrough said:

I have only just put two and two together and associated you with the comment on my blog. ☺️

I really hope you get to go in February as is an amazing ship and crew.

 

We beleive the cancellation is down to crew infections, normally they are tested every 3 days but this week it was 2 days on the trot and I suspect there has been some sort of outbreak among crew. Deck 6 is an isolation zone for crew that have come into contact with a positive case with the positives straight off the ship. We saw plenty of crew on their balcony during the last two days and even one poor guy in a hazmat suit mask and gloves waiting out by the terminal waiting to go to his isolation hotel.

You never get the full picture for any cruise line and its a case of putting together what you see and know to work it out. Crew are under strict instructions not to divulge any sensitive information but once I received your comment I asked a few reliable members who were able to let me know things without actually telling me.

 

 

I'm fairly confident we'll be going and am looking forward to the ship. We've never been on such a new ship before. Thanks again for all your insights. Got any more Costas planned?

14 minutes ago, greg2014 said:

It has been confirmed: two next cruises on Costa Firenze from/to Dubai have been cancelled. Costa is planning to restart operations on 5th Feb.

Wansbrough's blog said the captain announced cruises would restart on 4/2 and that is what Costa UK told me yesterday. That's what I'm hoping as we are booked on the 4/2, but we could juggle hotel bookings and also do 5/2. Awaiting a formal e-mail. A lady on the French Costa fans Facebook page who was due to be on the 28/1 sailing posted her cancellation e-mail from Costa. In addition to the usual refund/voucher/new date offer, they were also given a free one-week Med cruise.

Thanks for the info on your blog - I tried to reply there but it said I was being too quick! 

That's harsh on the people embarking today, not to mention those in transit. I phoned Costa UK, who said that the ship will resume sailing on 4/2, which is our departure date. Fingers crossed.... Plans B and C are being drawn up, however.

Wansbrough- some French passengers are saying that they have just been notified that their cruise departing tomorrow is cancelled. Possibly also the one the week after. Could you possibly find out for me? Lorraine