Oh goodness - where to begin. The ship was called the Costa Magica - but it SHOULD have been named the Costa MagiCANT. They just can't do anything - full stop. Let's go through this 'magical' experience one issue at a time.

SHIP:

The ship is old, dated, dirty, and in need of a serious overhaul. And when I say serious, I mean SERIOUS. The decor is like something out of my grandmother's sitting room in the early 80's. Common area carpets were dirty and worn as was most of the seating in the common areas. Don't even get me started on the poolside areas. Deck chairs have seen better days. Most of the deck chairs were covered in soot. Yes - that's right - soot. No matter where you were on the ship, soot would get on to the deck chairs - especially those on the upper decks. They were covered in the stuff. So of course you needed more than one towel to make sure you didn't get soot on yourself when you sat on the deck chair. Now, most cruise lines don't have enough deck chairs for the amount of guests on the ship. That's always an issue even for the best lines in the world - so you can imagine what it was like for a cruise line of Costa standard - (read - no standard at all). Something Costa needs to work on is not allowing people to just put towels on deck chairs at 08:00 and then not return to the deck chair until 15:00. That really needs to be policed better. The decks were always full of rubbish (if I could post photos here I would). One of the toilet areas had a faecal smear on it which we reported on day 2 of the cruise. On day 11 - it was still there. We took photos to prove it. Just disgusting. Read more