During the recent Christmas my family decided to go on a cruise for a change, we picked the Costa Fortuna as it was relatively cheap and the ports were very good. We should have upped the money we were forking out a little and gone on the Independence of the Seas.

I'll start off with the positives of the boat. The boat was truly beautiful. The art work and all of the designs located throughout the boat were stunning, but they were a little too bright and loud for my taking. Our room attendant Gizel was extremely sweet, but it seemed all she wanted to do was clean the room. She must have come into our room about 4 times a day. Sometimes i wanted to tell her to just calm down. Also, she cleaned the room even when we had placed the do not disturb tag on the door.

Now for the negatives. The ship was very nice and all, but there was nothing to do. I mean nothing. The only thing me and my family did each day was play bingo, we won twice which was good, but that was all we did. Another complaint i have is the language barrier. I realize the Costa Fortuna is an italian ship but i would have thought if it was departing from an American port that they would have put more time to teach there employees english. Most of the announcements over the loud speaker were in a foreign language so it was very annoying. The food was horrible and they only had edible foods at times when you either werent on the boat, or were doing something else. In the main outside area of the buffet, they served burgers and fries and hotdogs, but at ridiculuous times of the day. It was from 2-4 i think, which was when my family was off the boat. So if we werent back on by 4 we would have to go inside the buffet area and eat the pizza that tasted like cardboard. It was terrble. Service wasnt all that great either. My famiy went down to complain to the front desk, i cant remember why, but while we were in line with about 7 other people they let some like 15 year old boy just cut the whole line, and they were serving him for about 15 minutes. Everybody in line was ticked off, and then when that boy left, the man that was standing at the front of the line and had been waiting patienty was heading up to the counter, when the attendees let another person skip the line. The man kept walking and physically moved her to the back of the line. We cheered for him and when he ask the attendee why they let the woman cut the line, he claimed he hadnt seen the line. IT WAS IN FRONT OF HIS FACE. You would have had to have been blind and wearing a blind fold to not have seen the 7 angry people staring at him. Ports were just outrageous. At one port, i believe it was Georgetown, Grand Cayman, the boat had to have tenders take people to shore because there was no pier. I think that all the cruise companys should pitch in and buy that city a pier because it was unreal. What you had to do was head down to the theater and collect a number for a tender boat. My family was lucky and got number 5, so we were only waiting about 35 minutes. Other people were unfortunate enough to get numbers 15, 16, 17, and 18. They were waiting for nearly 3 hours to get off the boat. And we werent staying in port that long so they didnt have time to do anything once they got off the boat. Read more