Experienced HAL cruisers thoughts regarding Costa

[YXU AC*SE]

Hiya. Slightly off-topic for this board but please allow the indulgence. As you can see by my cruise history in my footer, we've been pretty much HAL loyalists, and don't have a lot of experience 'playing the field.'

 

HAL's itins in SE Asia are pretty limited, and we have found a very very interesting one with Costa in terms of ports covered, and price point! We're youngish (early 40s), and appreciate the laid back elegance that HAL's product represents.

 

May someone elucidate as to the big differences in overall cruise experience between HAL and Costa. Will this be more like Carnival with Italian accents? I am expecting demos to skew younger and be more (western) European as to North American, but beyond that I am not sure what to expect. Thanks in advance,

 

Scott.

[CtheW0rld]

have a look at this thread:

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1070976&highlight=costa

 

from some of the responses, though, i don't think they've cruised with costa.

 

i put some photos up of costa allegra, which would likely be the ship doing the se asia itinerary. click here to see them.

[user8]

I have sailed HAL thirteen times and Costa once and I don't really care to sail Costa again. Our single Costa cruise was selected just because of the itinerary.

 

The Costa ship we were on was larger than most or all of the HAL ships but it was not nearly as well cared for. Frequently we encountered water on the floors in the cafeteria where we ate lunch. Once, I counted six people stumble over one of those "wet floor" signs without notice from any of the crew. My feet got wet when we ate ouside from water left from washing down the deck. Service was definitely not up to HAL's standards.

 

The main dining room looked out at the sides of the lifeboats. And, all announcements were made in several languages.

 

The one good thing about Costa was it caused me to appreciate HAL.

[Pettifogger]

We were on the Costa Allegra for 32 days a couple of years ago and hated to get off at the end. The only thing wrong with it was that it wasn't Holland America.

[bln030]

Wir waren an der Costa Allegra für 32 Tage ein paar Jahren und gehasst to get off at the end. Das einzige, was nicht in Ordnung war, dass es sich nicht um Holland America. [/ Quote]

 

Hello

I believe in costa ye shall be very disappointed.

costa allegra boat is a 2 star and very old.

ESSN is the worst dry-meat-fish-geniesbar very dry, the pasta dishes.

The service is not very good-very arrogant to non Italeni.

necessarily per traveling tips. ca 12dollar person per day.

very noisy at the pool, etc.,

We have already gone 5 times with costa, at the beginning of our cruise fever.

years since we only drive ships with amerikanschen da right price for almost everything.

RCLL makes travel even asia times approach looks at oceanic cruises also makes very good offers there.

ask for more I'm glad you zuverfügung.

lg frank from berlin

[mountainmare]

We love HAL and have sailed on Celebrity and Costa.

We took the Costa Concordia to Greece Turkey Egypt last feb--mainly because they were the only "mainstream" line doing the itinerary when we wanted to go.

We generally view the cruise ship simply as a floating hotel when we do a port intensive cruise, so we went with no high expectations.

We are comfortable when we travel to Europe--we do not expect Disney/American Europe where everyone speaks English and everything is just like home so we assumed that cruising on Costa would be a true European experience.

We loved the cruise--the ship was beautiful, since we generally will greet people in their language (not very well but we try) we did not feel that we were treated as dumb Americans. I'm a type-A person from the Northeast---so adapt to the Italian view of lines (they don't exist) very well.

We had a drink card that included all soda/sparkling water/ wine /beer (and maybe other stuff at lunch and dinner --the X1 card, it was great.

I thought the food was good, but it was not your typical cruise ship menue.

On our cruise on Costa, in our location on Costa we had less smoking than on our recent Oosterdam cruise--again, this is the luck of the draw--this is what we found on our sailings in our cabin location.

All this being said we traveled with people who love Celebrity and just could not get over the fact that Costa is different. They were not happy.

 

If you go with an open mind--knowing that you are not on HAL--and you are not on a line that caters to Americans and American tastes you will be fine. We will sail Costa again for the right itinerary. We will not sail Celebrity again--nothing wrong with them but after two tries on two different sizes of ships they are just not a good fit for us.

[YXU AC*SE]

If you go with an open mind--knowing that you are not on HAL--and you are not on a line that caters to Americans and American tastes you will be fine.

 

 

Thanks -- this was quite helpful! :-) As stated, we were more for the itinerary versus the amenities of the ship, and we made out quite well on the Norwegian Wind on a similar sailing. And if we come back with a better appreciation for HAL so be it!

 

Scott.

[jtl513]

We haven't been on Costa, but a friend was very unhappy with the food compared to HAL. She was also annoyed that the frequent announcements were repeated, in Italian and in English, and it was sometimes very hard to understand the English! :)

 

Since you say you are mainly interested in it for the ports offered, I'd say go, but don't have very high expectations! :)

[travelmatron]

We've sailed on Costa twice, both times sailing out of Italy. I liked the announcements being in 5 languages; English being the last. When I'm in Europe I don't want to surround myself with American things. My parents joined us on our last Costa cruise. It was NOT good for them, all the languages confused them, and they were a bit offended that the Italians didn't speak English. I don't know if that was an age thing, or a mind set for them.

The food on one cruise was good, on the other, no so much. We had large dinner tables on both cruises, and our table companions each time were among our all time favorites. They do assign tables by languages spoken. The English language tours we took were just fine.

I'm not sure if this will make sense, but to us, I think we had to work a little harder on the Costa cruises. We paid attention a little more to the announcements because we were waiting to see if it applied to us. The Italian concept of lines is a bit fuzzy, so sometimes you have to hold your own; like shopping a great sale. We needed to be a more proactive in getting port information because speakers were tired by the time they got to English. We paid more attention to what language we were using trying to match our versions "good morning" to the people we were greeting. It's NOT HAL, but IS something else that you can enjoy if you want to.

[HoneyGV]

Hiya. Slightly off-topic for this board but please allow the indulgence. As you can see by my cruise history in my footer, we've been pretty much HAL loyalists, and don't have a lot of experience 'playing the field.'

 

HAL's itins in SE Asia are pretty limited, and we have found a very very interesting one with Costa in terms of ports covered, and price point! We're youngish (early 40s), and appreciate the laid back elegance that HAL's product represents.

 

May someone elucidate as to the big differences in overall cruise experience between HAL and Costa. Will this be more like Carnival with Italian accents? I am expecting demos to skew younger and be more (western) European as to North American, but beyond that I am not sure what to expect. Thanks in advance,

 

Scott.

 

We were on the Costa Romantica about 10 years ago and loved it. If things are now the way it was then I would sail her again. I've sailed several lines and out of all of them, including HAL, which I love DEARLY and have said almost exclusively for the last 5 or 6 years several times...I would say the crew and staff on Costa were the most friendly of ALL lines.

We had a suite and the service was wonderful. The Italian food was not the same as you would get at the Olive Garden or any other chain Italian restaurant, but it was pretty good.

I remember our cabin was pretty far away from the muster station and it was close to the bridge so we were able to see the Captain quite often. I mentioned to him one day how far our cabin was from the muster station and he jokingly told us not to worry, if we had to use the lifeboats we could use HIS and he'd make sure he'd come to get us. After thinking about that for awhile, I thought that that didn't sound so good since he'd probably be the last one off the ship!

We did have a wonderful time on that Costa cruise and if it hasn't gone downhill, would love to sail with them again.