We sailed on the Costa Magica in February 2007 along with two other couples, one of which were first time cruisers. We drove to Fort Lauderdale and spent a couple of nights in Hollywood, FL prior to sailing. Upon arriving at the cruise port, we found the lines for embarkation to be incredibly short, which was a surprise to us, as this was a sold out cruise. We literally were checked in and actually exploring the ship within 10 minutes! Way to go Costa embarkation staff.

We booked an inside stateroom, which was very roomy and nicely decorated. We requested additional mattresses for our bed and they were brought to us immediately. The ship's interior is beautiful. However, most of the public areas are centered on one deck, which made navigating the ship an absolute nightmare with so many people crammed into the same location. Service on board, for the most part, was good. I was somewhat disappointed with the photography on board the ship. I like to purchase the pictures of my husband and I all dressed up, and found this to be an issue for this cruise. First, the photographers were not very creative with the formal poses. We ended up with 7 days of the same poses, just different backgrounds and clothing. It would have been nice to have some variety.

The food on board was very good to excellent depending on your selection. There is always the option of having spaghetti with tomato and basil sauce, which was the best that I have ever had. There is also a large variety of seafood options, which thrilled my husband. We had 6 of us at our dinner table and each night, we ordered all of the desserts, placed them in the center of the table, and made sort of a "dessert sampler" out of them for each person. It was really nice to get to try a small amount of everything. This method seemed to amuse our waiter and by the 3rd night, we no longer had to ask, the waiter simply sat it all up for us. Read more