wuestion about costa fortuna

[bdbj2512]

i am considering a cruise with costa on the fortuna? can anyone tell me if there is a big difference between the italian ship and a regular bahama registered ship and crew? do they only speak italian? also is there a lot of smoking on this ship?? thank you

[Goldryder]

Costa ships captains and officers are a mix of nationalities...Italian, British, Norwegian...just as all other cruise lines around the world. They speak English and several other languages fluently. The deckstaff - waiters and cabin stewards are from the Far East, trained in Costa owned schools and universities and they too speak 5-6 languages fluently with English as their first language.

 

The smoking on board is no worse than any other line...

 

Is it possible to smoke onboard?

 

In the Theatres, Restaurants, Buffet Restaurant (indoor), corridors, halls, lifts and in the stairwells smoking is strictly forbidden.

There are reserved smoking areas in the lounges.

Pipes and cigars may only be smoked in designated areas.

For fire and safety reasons please remember to put cigarettes in the ashtrays provided and never throw cigarettes overboard

 

Not sure why people automatically assume that an European cruise line will be any different to NCL, HAL etc in regards to languages spoken and smoking.....HAL's ships are registered in Holland, yet I rarely see a mention on the HAL board about whether or not their crews are Dutch.

[gozitan]

On board Costa Pacifica in June and there was a lot of smoking on this ship even in the non-smoking areas.

[bdbj2512]

thank you for the responses.i dont automatically assume anything. our friend went on a msc cruise and had a horrible time. nobody spoke anything but italian and the smoking was so heavy they could not breathe. so i was asking because of a past experience not because of some bias.

[travelmatron]

We sailed on the Fortuna out of Genoa. All announcements are in 5 languages. In order they are: Italian, French, German, Spanish, and English. In Europe, English speaking passengers are definitely a minority, perhaps being around 10-15%. On both Fortuna and Classica we, as Americans, were assigned a dining table with other English speakers. Our waiters were quite fluent in English, and language was not a problem anywhere on the ship.

[CGinMTL]

It depends were the cruise is. Trips in the US have less smoke then the med. We have been on the Fortuna is Jan 2009 and are booked for Feb 2010.

[daduvfour]

My wife and four daughters and I just returned from a Costa Fortuna Eastern Med cruise. We were fortunate enough to be able to do it spur of the moment, and had virtually no choice in cruise line or itinerary. I had never heard of Costa until our travel agent said "here's your trip - you leave in 9 days".

 

One of the reviews we read said to make sure that we got to know the English Representative on the cruise. We did just that! Andreas was relatively new, and was still learning things, but was very helpful to us throughout the week. He certainly helped make the cruise better for our family.

 

There were about 3200 passengers on board, and Andreas said that about 150 were English. Of those 150, approximately half were English and the other half had a native language that was not one of the five official languages spoken on board and were thus designated "English" as it was their second language.

 

However, in spite of the fact that we heard very little English being spoken amongst the passengers, the crew were very well versed in many languages, including English. It was not an issue among the staff.

 

Since we live in Ontario, smoking is essentially banned from public places. It seems unusual for us to be inside where people are smoking, so we did find that there was more smoking going on in the ship than we felt comfortable with.

 

A little anecdote - smoking in restaurants is now very foreign to me now that it has been banned here for years. We stopped in a "Bob Evans" in Michigan two years ago, and the greeter asked me "do you have a seating preference?" I had no idea he was referring to smoking or non-smoking, so I said "I prefer to sit at the head of the table...."

 

Enjoy your cruise!