we recently cruised the costa magica, baltic seas.we have have cruised 5 other times. this was our worst cruise ever. We are American and were warned that it is primarily Italians, let's say 90% Italians. Of 3,000 passengers, perhaps 100 spoke English as their primary language. We probably spoke to 6 people our entire cruise. The Italians on board were the focus of the ship, they were always in large groups, so much so that it made it difficult to even get food at times. They were rude, stepped on you, walked in front of you, didn't seem to care about anybody else but themselves. We were shocked the moment the ship left dock, no announcements, no bonvoyage send off, they just left! We went to dinner that night, table for 8, only 2 other people at our table, an older couple from the US. The table was always set for 8 and nobody else ever came to dinner, very strange. The food was TERRIBLE. The entrees were very strange, never tasted good. The rolls were hard as rocks, we ordered fish several times, it was so bad we couldn't even eat it. We NEVER had a good meal. Please don't go for the food if you are American, you will be disappointed. Even the breakfast buffet was bad, lunch was another problem, all they seemed to want to serve was pizza, if you didn't eat in the main dinning room at night your only other option was pizza, once again. Unless you opted to pay more and go to another dinning room, which I'm sure wasn't good. My husband and I both got some type of food poisoning. I was sick for two days then my husband was ill one day. Certainly took a toll on the trip. The shows were poor, lots of foreign language, totally boring. The cruise ship director was basically nonexistent. Other cruises they have been present and directed the activities of the ship. We only saw the man at the evening shows, he wasn't even entertaining then. Dinner was very late, 7:30, that was early sitting, shows were at 10:00. During the whole cruise we were told very little about anything, few announcements, if there were any about half were never made in English, we just guessed as to what was happening. Good part of the cruise: ports were very interesting, we enjoyed all of them, but basically saw them on our own except St. Petersburg. Our Stockholm trip was cancelled because the ship got in too late. Good thing we had Rick Steve Books so we could do it on our own. Our room was an inside room, bottom floor, we loved it. It was very quiet, and very well kept up, one of the better rooms we have had. The ship is very new so things are in good shape. The room service was very good, everything we wanted was supplied. Tip, don't drink the water or use the ice that is brought in every day, we probably got sick from it. Water is very expensive to buy on the ship about $3 a bottle in the room. We went to Helsinki and finally got a gallon for about $1 and used it the rest of the cruise. TV is terrible, only about one station in English and it was boring. Getting off the ship was ridiculous, they made us wait 2 hours and told us we could be taken into Copenhagen. We waited tried to get on the bus and then were told we couldn't take any luggage. What do you think we were going to do with it? We finally took a taxi, went to Copenhagen to the train depot, rented a locker there, stored the luggage, saw Copenhagen, went back, got the luggage and took the train to the airport. Very easy to get to the airport by train. Skip Costa's expensive transport. Bottom line, this cruise is not for first time cruisers, nor for inexperienced travelers. We looked at the cruise as a floating hotel with bad food. We saw what we wanted to see. We will cruise again, but never Costa.