I just returned from the 7 day western Carib cruise, and am conflicted about making a positive recommendation of the cruise. I truly enjoyed the ship and the crew members, but my biggest complaint regards embarkation/debarkation of passengers. As my sister in law remarked..."It would have been a GREAT cruise if you didn't have to get on or off the vessel."

embarkation - Miami - an absolute disaster/debacle. I do not honestly know if that was the fault of Costa or the Port of Miami. There is a lot of construction at the port. The ship was docked at a location with no terminal...we had to be bused from a terminal (which had no ship moored alongside), to the Mediterranea, which was at the other end of the port. That was the worst organized thing I have ever encountered. We started with standing in line for over an hour (we arrived around 1:00 pm to check in). Once we were in the final feet of checking in, an alarm went off and a prerecorded message told us to evacuate the building. After standing in line for soooo long, and being so close to the counter, we decided to hold our ground. Luckily it was a false alarm, but that just added to the confusion, in a hot un-airconditioned building. Once checked in, we were told to wait for the calling of our bus number. Well, that never happened, since everything went to heck in a hand basket after the false alarm. People continued to amass at security, with no one going through. Finally there was a trickle of passengers allowed through, but then we found ourselves stuck in another line in a stairwell waiting to get out. The wait at security and in the stairwell was over an hour, since there were not enough buses to get passengers to the ship...There were two operating buses that carried about 50 passengers each, and each trip would take about 30 minutes roundtrip...not very efficient to load a fully booked ship. They finally located a third bus, but by then, things were far too backed up. All told, it took us over 3 hours to get on board, and the ship remained in port for at least an extra 2 hours...could have been longer, but I don't remember. I do know we did not depart at 7:00 pm. The next day we all received a letter of apology from the captain (on behalf of the Port of Miami), and notification of free bar service for about a four hour period. Nice gesture, but...

Cozumel - The last "tender" was advertised to depart at 6:30 pm. Tenders were not from the ship, but seem to be contracted from the locals. All ships used local tenders. We arrived at the tender location at 6:00 pm, and the tender did not show up until 6:25 ...obviously the "last" one. I learned that folks had been in line since 5:45 with no tenders in sight. The pier was filled with passengers wanting to get back, and it was obvious that the tender could not accommodate everyone. We were herded on, and I will admit to being concerned about the stability of the vessel, because I do not think that anyone on the vessel was counting the number of passengers. Once we were alongside the ship, I decided we were finally safe and couldn't turn over, but it was still a testy situation. The brow between the ship and the tender, was from the tender's second deck, and the opening to the ship was less than 5 feet high. They did put some cushioning on the entry, but it was not the best situation. Read more