I will start with the good things. The cabin is more than adequate. It has plenty of drawers to put your belongings. Plenty of space to hang your clothes but you should bring your own hangars because theirs are too fat and you can't get as many things in the closet as you would like. The cabin is immaculate as is the rest of the ship. The shower very good with plenty of hot water.. The use of a shower curtain enables one to move about easier and pick up the soap you always drop. Plenty of shampoo but the bars of soap are tiny and used up quickly. Air conditioning is very quiet and very much adjustable. Balcony very comfortable. The colors excellent in the room.
Now the bad stuff. First it took over a hour to check on to their counter before entering the ship.. Finally on the ship they had someone come and escort you to your room, ( nice touch). All looked good at first then it fell apart.
Everyone was italian.. No one understood English w/o we saying it over and over again and then they didn't understand altho we got plenty of smiles and shaking of the head yes! We had a noise as if someone were hammering in our room. I called the first nite and they said someone would fix it.. nope, not the entire trip was it fixed. We complained and they send a crew up to fix it.. they all heard it but no one fixed it or told us what they could or couldn't do. We wanted to change cabins and they said no other cabin, all were taken.. LIE.. we later spoke to someone who said they had about 5 left.. The cabin staff were good and kept the room fine. The lunch rooms... restaurants i should say.. our waiter had about 25 people to serve and it was impossible.. so salads were forgotten, soup forgotten, many things left not done.. He couldn't do it all even with his helper. You would see him running back and forth. Our food was terrible. There wasn't anything on the menu that i liked except the pastas and chicken. It was totally italian which I knew it would be. My husband is italian and he agreed the food was not up to par. The bad thing is if we skipped the dining room there was no other place to eat. The buffet restaurant had strict hours and was closed. As a matter of fact the food in the buffet was always the same, salads and salads and a meat. If you wanted tea or iced tea you were out of luck.. first off the glasses were the little cups that you rinse your mouth with ! Finally my husband took a glass from a drink he had and used that one. Oh, they push drinks all over the place and they are not cheap. I love icecream.. Icecream is not free. You pay $l for a scoop or I think $4.95 for a sundae.. I did it once and not again.. They didn't fill the glass or cone.. Forget about it. I'm a big dessert lover.. I didn't even bother with their cakes and cookies. Room service for breakfast is continental. Decaf coffee is Sanka and the water comes cold. You cannot order anything but juice, cereal or continental.. No eggs of any sort. Sandwiches for later in the day come club style but with a pat or either tuna or chicken salad. Portions all over the ship are very small and by the time you get another helping its time to leave the dinning room. No coffee was on the deck nor juice or tea. Only at certain times so you had no place for a cup of coffee, especially at nite unless you pay in their coffee shop. There are so many negative things we swore never to go back on this liner. We were a group of 400.. 200 or so from our condo complex. We all agreed this was a waste of time and money except we had each other and enjoyed that. Our ports of call were Costa Maya, Puerto Limon, Cristobal, Santa Marta, Curacao and Samana. Costa Maya wasn't bad.. just a place for the people to sell their wares. Puerto Limon and cristobal were very bad. You don't want to get out and walk around.. not safe at all.. We heard of a man getting his camera ripped off his neck and of 2 women walking and getting mugged. The only good place is Curacao and we arrived on a SUNDAY when everything was closed. Now what kind of poor planning on the cruiseline was that I ask you. We got off the ship, big deal but everything was closed and we wanted to buy jewelry and things.. So we were all very very disappointed in the entire trip.. I will say my husband wrote this stuff down and the purser called him into the office. He gave his list of complaints and they only said we are an european liner and that's the way we do things.. I said but you want americans to sail with you and we want more luxury and things a little more american like coffee, butter for bread? Simple things which they don't give you.. oh, everyone waited for lobster nite and when it arrived were so excited.. forget it. Lobsters were totally dried out. They did have some buffets late at nite which i never made so i can't comment on it but i did make one. Nice looking, many things out, great fresh breads which we wanted but noooooooo butter anywhere.. They just don't use it with bread, the european they said. No coffee, milk, tea. Nothing to drink with the cakes and fruits. I guess you can tell I was very fed up with that cruise and so were the other people we went with. Oh, the entertainment was very very good. Except by the 4th nite we were tired of the same acts over and over again.. The tenor was Superb!!