Skipper Tim

Revenue not fire protection. Ships built 60 years ago were wired for kettles, irons etc. in every stateroom. Is a modern cruise ship wired to inferior standards? No. Every cabin has its own consumer unit which will trip the individual circuit if excessive power is drawn on it. Forbidding low-power travel kettles is purely about generating revenue from room service.

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.

Thanks CupKayke for your account. My mother and I are setting off tomorrow from the UK, via Madrid, to join the Costa Favolosa from Santos, Brazil to Spain. I started a roll call on CC months ago - needless to say there has not been one taker. I expect we will be in a very tiny minority of native English speakers. Still, if there are any others, we should be seated together for dinner! As you point out, the staff will mostly have English as the second language so we should be fine. Unfortunately we are not in a suite category - quite the opposite, we are booked in to the lowest inside guarantee cabins. They have been allocated and we each have one of the 17 'single' inside cabins. The luxury is having a cabin each. I usually associate booking an inside cabin with an all-inclusive drinks package so that one only spends time in the cabin sleeping, washing and changing. This time we haven't booked a drinks package because the prices didn't look worth it for us. We are primarily wine drinkers and 'C Club' membership appears to give 25 or 50% discount on most of the Italian bottles. Of course, every sailing has slightly different offers and terms so I will reassess this once onboard. The only thing bothering me now is the mandatory Covid tests before we board. I have not had any certain information as to where we can get these (must be within 24 hours of departure - so well after we leave the UK). Any tips on maximising value on board would be much appreciated.

Great to have agreement 🙂 I have spent 44 nights on three MSC ships and am looking forward to 15 nights aboard my first Costa ship, boarding Thursday. I know all cruise lines vary their offering according to geographic region and the time of year - which may explain some of the discrepancies laboured-over in the posts above. We will be starting in Brazil and ending in Spain. Since booking, the on-board currency has changed from $US to Euros and I understand that at least half the crew must be Brazilian for the ship to operate in Brazilian waters. The ship may be in a state of flux. I look forward to updating this thread according my experiences. You can also follow our journey on FaceBook: tmillea1.

Very interesting, thank you drsel. I must say my experiences of MSC are quite different to those of Emma. Native English-speakers aboard my three MSC cruises were in a tiny minority, perhaps 3-5% on the first two transatlantic cruises and nearer 15% on the last European-based cruise. Dinners took ages on all of them! The first sitting is timed at 90 minutes with a 30 mins reset period while the preferred 'un-rushed' but very late second sitting was at least two hours. Water, tea and coffees were never included except self-service in the buffet. Unlike Emma, to me, dinner, at a fixed table of guests, whom one gets to know gradually, is the heart of a cruise. I wish they did it in hotels. An 8-table is my preference. 6 is too small if a couple dine elsewhere for the night it leaves quite a hole, while 10 or more means the table cannot have one conversation. To 'get-in, eat and get-out' is the antithesis of my idea of a cruise. Dinner is the main event. We depart the UK this Tuesday, fly overnight, have a night in Santos then join the Favolosa on Thursday. The only loose end not yet tied up is the mandatory Covid tests Costa still require for South America departures over 15 days and within 24 hours of arrival at the terminal! This is proving problematic. It appears I will have to sort this on the ground in Santos. Anyway, I think the things that Emma did not like about Costa are the things I have already experienced on MSC, other than the buffet closing between meals and the lack of included pizzas. This 'nickel and diming' I am sure is a consequence of the Carnival ownership. I have my rum-runners ready.

I really am none the wiser for this. I am in a similar position to the OP. I am trying to decide between the 'My Drinks' and 'My Drinks Plus' drinks packages, or none at all. Translating to British English I have: beer = lager soda = pop (carbonated, sugary drinks) juice = fruit juice or just fake fruit juice? liqueur? "a very sweet alcoholic drink" such as Amaretto, Cointreau or Baileys, or a 'spirit' such as gin, brandy or whisky? Then "Preferred Club", mmm. Do they mean members of the Costa 'C|Club' or something else? There is no 'Preferred' tier of the C|Club only Blue, Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum tiers. It is about as foggy an answer as could be. The question remains What does the upgraded, 'My Drinks Plus', drinks package get you in the minibar?

I sent my email re. the OBC for the shares 20th March and had the reply the next day.

Thanks again, I managed to sort out my Club issues via email - they had the wrong d.o.b. for me in the Club account. I have been studying the wine list you kindly sent me. I have had to put all the wines available by the glass and all the full bottles of interest into a spreadsheet in order to apply the 25% or 50% Club discounts, add the 15% service charge then convert currencies to £Sterling! It would a appear neither drinks package would be worth it to us and we would be better off buying bottles. Again thanks for your help!

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?

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.

I read that one of the privileges of Costa's spa themed cabins is that they have kettles provided so, by implication, other cabins don't have kettles Yet, no electrical goods except chargers and electric razors are permitted to be brought aboard. A kettle is pretty fundamental to my elderly mother. She will take a travel kettle if a certain hotel does not provide one - over 50 years of overseas travel. For those cabins without a kettle provided, is it possible to rent one or is this just another revenue-generating exercise, i.e. room service charges? She may not go on the cruise if she can't make her own cups of tea. We will be boarding at Santos and have very low-powered folding travel kettles. Will they be confiscated? Any advice? This is a very serious matter I will have to discuss with my mother.

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.

I bought the requisite 100+ CC.L shares, emailed the contract note, name and booking ref. to shareholder@costa.it and I received an email next day to say that the OBC was applied. In our case it was 200 Euros. It could not have been faster or more straightforward!