crowson1825

13 minutes ago, Newbury newbie said:

Yes, the US fit to fly test, taken in the UK, needs to be supervised via video link or actually in person. 

If you are flying only 2 days before the cruise have you considered a Fit to Fly test at the airport on day of departure? A previous post said that he had used this test for both the flight and the cruise as Celebrity says 2 days not a strict 24hrs. We are flying on a Saturday and boarding on the Monday and I have been told this would be OK. We are going to use ExpressTest at Heathrow. If this is not the case please let me know.

We are Celebrity Newbies so could somebody point us in the direction of where we could find out more about 'Blue Chip'. We use the casinos quite a lot on cruises so any free play would be interesting.

We have used suntransfers many times between the airport and the cruiseport. Very reliable and you can book what size car you think you may need (upto a thirty seat bus). Ends up costing no more than a regular taxi and if there are 2 or more people cheaper than the transfers. It is only a 20 minute ride depending on the time of day/traffic.

We cruised on the Magnifica in January this year and thought it was excellent. It is different than the main US based cruise lines. We have used NCL, Carnival, P&O and Costa in the past.

Service was excellent as good if not better than the other cruise lines

The drink package in my opinion is the best value in the industry. Remember it also incudes the gelato bar ad excellent coffee!

Food - this is very subjective,. We enjoy leisurely meals with a lot of variety - MSC's 7 course dinners were very varied and on the whole was very good. Each course is quite small but if you want more you only have to ask. No you do not get lots of steak and lobster.

Entertainment - Because of the number of nationalities on board this can be limited in terms of comedians etc. There were a lot of bars with live music some to our taste some not.

Al in all we felt that value for money MSC can not be beaten. Do we prefer somethings on the other cruise lines of course we do. Every cruise we have been on has had it's pluses and minuses.

We were on the same cruise and we also had a rear facing balcony and had the same issues as you! Docking was extremely noisy! Saying that we had a rear cabin on the NCL Epic last April and the noise was nearly as bad!

We have cruised many times with NCL and are from the UK so perhps I can give you a UK slant on your questions:

Should you book excursions with ncl / via an online agent / at the port

We tend to book excursions direct with the tour operator at each port online before we travel. Part of this is to do with price but also you can tailor more to meet exactly what you want to do.

Service charge : can it be removed? i know members of the party say it can, but online reviews say it can't. Would be nice to know where we stand on this.

NEVER felt the need to remove them always had excellent service - but I understand you now have to fill in a form with your reasons etc and after you return NCL will refund your DSC (no refund onboad anymore).

Dress code : is it really an informal as people say? Again I'm getting mixed

Entirely up to you. You will see people in DJs, business suits and just shirt and trousers in the main dining rooms and specialty restaurants. You don't need a tie but you can if you want to!

I hope this helps.

Just what I needed thank you John!

Thank you all!

Annieban - did you pick up the bus at the terminal (after customs/immigration) and what did you do with your luggage?

Thanks in advance!

We have a late afternoon flight from Miami back to the UK and I have seen some threads that mention the HOHO bus in Miami. As we have done the Everglades tours etc I thought this may be a good option rather than spending the day at the airport. Has anyone done this -

How do you pick up the HOHO bus after getting off the ship?

What happen to your luggage (there will be 3 large cases)?

What is the best way to get the airport afterwards?

Any other information will be gratefully received!

Thanks in advance!

We have cruised several times on the Epic in the Med and have never been charged VAT. I bought cigarettes at the Barcelona duty free at the port every time (cheaper than the ship). I was told by a crew member that as long as there is a Non EU port on the itinerary Duty Free can be purchased.. As all of our cruises on the Epic had a stop in Morocco this seems to add up.

We have also done several cruises on Costa and MSC in the med and have never been charged VAT - but I wonder as these are Italian cruise lines if VAT is already included in the price which is normal within Europe. Here the price you see is the price you pay. On land there is no extra VAT to pay it is included within the price. I did not go into the duty free shop to see if was really duty free - but I did see several non European passengers filling in VAT refund forms for purchases but these may have been bought on land.

I have searched but I cannot find the answer to this question. We are booked on the Getaway transatlantic (Oct 17) and have the drinks package and SDP as our Free At Sea Promos. Our question is how many meals are included in this promo - I believe that you get 4 meals on a 7 night cruise - is it still 4 on the 14 night cruise?

Thank you all -

Keithjenner do you happen to know what the taxi cost would be from the Hilton to the cruise port?

We are cruising from Copenhagen and flying in from London the evening before so no time for sightseeing. Can anyone give me a recommendation for hotel and approximate cost of taxi from airport to hotel and hotel to cruise ship?

We were on the Epic in January we only ate in the 'specialist' restaurants so I can only comment on those. We never waited past our booking time for our table - in fact once or twice we arrived slightly early and were seated immediately. the only problem we had was sometimes we had so slow the service down.

Thank you both for replying so quickly!

Can anyone help we are booking a B6 Large balcony cabin on the Epic but we would prefer to get one with the bed near the balcony - is this possible and if so how can you tell which rooms are configured this way?

Help would be gratefully appreciated!!!

I would like to reinforce previous answers. We have cruised on NCL, Carnival, P&O and Princess and this April on Costa for the first time. We had seen bad reviews and the prices were significantly less than the above cruise lines - so we went with low expectations but were very, very pleasantly surprised. Thanks to GMT who answered a lot of questions before we went on this forum -

The price of the drinks package is excellent half what we paid on NCL and included excellent coffee and we didn't find an alcoholic drink that we could not have!

The DSC is also significantly less than other cruise lines. The staff do not expect extra tips but we usually tipped a euro or two to the bar waiters and a little bit more to the restaurant wait staff. We found the service was as good if not better than the cruise lines mentioned above.

No evening buffet (we were on Fortuna) may be a drawback for some but we very much enjoyed the food in the main dining room. Breakfast was not as good as the others. On the whole food was verygood.

Entertainment was good - better than Carnival perhaps not as good as NCL.

Cabin was as good as any of the above lines.

As somebody previously said it is different not necessarily worse than the other lines. It is set u for Italian, French and other European customers. Dinners are leisurely affairs of 2 hours not a rushed 45 mins. The food has a distinct Italian leaning.

With what you pay in my opinion Costa is excellent value in the Med!!!

We cruised on Fortuna this spring and I can highly recommend the AI package. We are not big drinkers but I believe the package worked great for us. We used it to get good coffee with breakfast and during the day/evening - espresso, latte, cappuccino etc. Good coffee is available from most bars and the waiters in the breakfast/lunch restaurants were happy to fetch it for us. Also fresh juice (pear was great) much better than the free offering in the restaurants.

The house wines (and water) with dinner were good but with the AI it is only by the glass - but there is nothing to stop you having white with one course and a red with others. You had to stop the waiters filling up the glasses over and over.

We used to have a pre-dinner drink and one or more after dinner. We easily covered the 25 E daily per person cost (which was the cost in April) .

Unlike other cruise lines notably NCL the difference for us was that the 'real' coffee was included!

Cappuccino and espresso are included + other specialist coffees. We took the package on our cruise in April (Fortuna) and found it very worth while. Good coffee and fresh pear juice with breakfast just to start with....

I can understand why it wouldn't work for children though!

Sorry can't help with the kids club - our kids are in their 30's! As for the water we had the drinks package (which we thought was great value) so we had glasses of mineral water brought to the table - but the waiters were so good it would be a good bet that would get some for you.

I agree with previous answers - anytime in either of the MDRs or buffet. I will add that if we found a particularly good wait staff or table (by a window etc) that we particularly liked we would ask at the desk for this table or servers area and usually we got what wanted! Also the menu is usually posted outside the restaurants after lunch so if you happen to walk by you can make a decision to eat there or the buffet or try to get a reservation in the specialist restaurants!

Ordered cappuccinos and fresh juice - pear was incredible in both the buffet and MDR for breakfast. Many waiters particularly outside area around buffet waiting to take orders.

Have a great trip!

Part two

Drinks Package (extra).

This was exceptionally good value 25E per day. We are not big drinkers but as it includes specialist coffees, fresh fruit juice we made use of it at breakfast and lunch as well as at dinner and in the bars. Apart from the one time we used the specialist restaurant where we bought a nicer bottle of wine we drank the house wines in the MDR and found them Ok.

There is an extensive list of drinks including cocktails but be beware it only includes draft beer, house wine and glasses of water (NOT bottles)!

Entertainment

We found going to the show before dinner a bit unusual but we soon got used to it. The dance and singing troupe did three shows during the weeks cruise and were among the best we had seen on a cruise ship. The rest of the shows were not to our taste (mime, juggler, magician) they were obviously enjoyed by the large amount of children on the ship. I must stress that language was not a problem!! There were plenty of venues with live music around the ship to suit everyone. Unlike some P&O cruises we have taken we were very pleased that you could find a seat whenever you wanted! As we expected the casino was smaller than we are used to with few table games and slots but it certainly did not cramp our enjoyment – please note the casino is NON smoking.

Excursions

We didn’t take any organised excursions so I cannot comment on them. We walked around Valletta as we know Malta very well disembarkation/embarkation was very simple and if you are able to manage steps you were in the center of Valletta within 15 mins.

Again in Cagliari we walked around the pretty old town. Please note there is a free mandatory shuttle bus to the port entrance but this was well organised and no problems apart from some of the passengers inability to wait their turn in boarding. This was not the same in Civitavecchia the port bus (again mandatory) was mobbed and the lines were very long. Savona was easy five minutes to the old part of town. We did not disembark in Marseille as the weather was poor.

Overall after reading some bad reviews about Costa and the Fortuna we went with an open mind and found that we had a great time. Service was superb, food in the main dining room was excellent. In my opinion there are no bad cruises just some better than others – we have found that P&O isn’t our favourite. Somethings on NCL and Carnival are better namely the Casino and buffet. However we really enjoyed our first cruise on Costa – you have to understand that this is tailored predominantly to an Italian/French and somethings are different than an US based cruiseline.

We will definitely cruise with them again!

We had a quarantee premium balcony so we only knew 48hrs before our cruise what cabin we had - we got lucky!

I don't know for certain about buying the extra package on board as we bought ours before boarding. There were tables set out in the mainbar with the wine and other packages so I would guess you can.

Any other questions let me know!

I will try to highlight the differences between Costa and the normal lines we use – Carnival and NCL. I do not have much time so I will split the review into sections. Food first......

Boarded the Fortuna on a Sunday morning in Barcelona. There were very few people boarding as this itinerary boards passengers in Savona, Civitavecchia, Marseille as well and so we were on board by 12:15.

We purchased a Premium Balcony but were delighted to find we had been upgraded to a suite! I understand that others who have been upgraded did not get the suite benefits but we did! Butler, Wine fruit, free visit to the specialist restaurant!

Dining

Lunch buffet on the first day was great but I believe the NCL buffet has the edge. Please be aware unlike Carnival NCL etc breakfast and lunch times vary depending on the docking time that day.

There is no buffet open at dinner time – a pizza restaurant opens in the evening (9.30). Dinner sittings were 6.15pm or 9pm – there is no open seating etc. Most tables sit between 4 and 10 there is a limited supply of tables for two but I understand Costa try to sit people with same nationality/language together.

Breakfast was OK but the times were quite limiting usually the MDR breakfast finished by 9am and the buffet closed at 930 some days! On the whole Carnival and NCL have an edge here in both food and availability. We ordered room service most mornings which was always on time.

Lunch buffet was good - but I do not believe it is as good as NCLs lunch buffet. However the MDR lunch is superb, different menu everyday with four courses if you wanted!

We opted for the 9:00PM sitting for dinner and managed to get a table for two. This in my opinion is where Costa beats Carnival and NCL – service great and the food was excellent! Not large plates of food but 5 courses of great food. There are not many choices per course but we never had a problem finding something we really liked.

Dislikes – Only one really – the coffee in the restaurants was not good. However as we had the ‘extra’ package we ordered specialty coffees which was superb!