Just back from a week on the Costa Diadema. Would suggest to everyone to go with another company as Costa made us feel like a burden on numerous occasions throughout the week. English was the fifth language on board after Italian, Spanish, French and German. The schedule, procedures etc. were chaotic and confusing for us and every query we made to a member of staff was met with eye-rolling and annoyance. The desk staff at reception on level 3 are particularly unhelpful and plain rude. With a few exceptions (in particular a very nice and helpful waitress named Leabel) we found the vast majority of the staff on board to be unconcerned with looking after guests and it seems that upselling, blowing off queries and complaints and doing the bare minimum for guests is the order of the day on board this ship. This was our first cruise with Costa and will definitely be our last. There is a serious attitude problem which usually starts with the senior staff and filters down and we feel this is certainly the case here.
Initial cruise cost us 900 euro for the week for 2 which was very good value. Our extras bill at the end was 1580. So almost 2500 in total for 2 people for the week. We feel that for that we deserve better and can certainly get much better elsewhere.
Aside from the attitude of staff which was by far our main gripe there were not many other redeeming factors for us. The buffet food was good but always cold. The sit down restauants which were included in the initial price were very nice but the food was not as good as the buffet which shouldn't be the case and again food was always cold. We upgraded, to the higher restaurant package (which we feel is Costa's aim anyway) and those restuarants were excellent, especially the Teppanyaki.
Simple and clean, no problem with cabin and we were very happy with it.