We must say the Air France flight was great, even though we have a change in Paris it all went really well. We arrived at Dubai airport and experienced our first stampede from our European neighbours; they just don't know how to queue. We checked in at the port to get on board and the process was painless enough. Our cases turned up at the Cabin by the time we had eaten.
We can only say that we had so little information on Dubai and how to get around and even where we were would have helped as we weren't sure how far the places of interest were. This was a common theme throughout the Cruise i.e.: if you took one of their excursions that's fine but! Try to get really useful information from them was impossible. We could have done with currency values, Average Taxi costs & whereabouts? Where we were when we docked as the Port map they gave us was worse than useless.
We did take some of their Excursions and we had a nightmare in Mumbai, after negotiating the step up to the Bus which was at least 75cm (a difficult climb for people with Arthritic Knees) bearing in mind most people on the ship were 55-75. To keep jarring their knees climbing on & off some people choose just to stay on the bus and miss the sights. The main problem was that the buses PA system didn't work so we sat at the port gates for 11/2 hours whilst they waited for a new microphone. This turned up but was equally useless so went pressed on obviously we couldn't hear the guide so Mumbai was as much a mystery to us at the end of the excursion as it was at the beginning. The guide didn't even bother to gather us together when we could have heard her she just walked off with just a lucky few who were able to catch a few bits of info. This excursion was meant to be 41/2 hours it ended up being 81/2 we even missed our meal in the main dinning hall due to arriving back late. When we complained to the Tour Desk on the ship they were totally indifferent towards us. However we pursued our complaint by letter to the Tour Manager and we threatened to speak with her manager and in the end we received a credit for the trip. In general we found the Costa officers & management staff Egotistic & Arrogant it is of course very impressive that they speak so many languages but they manage to be arrogant in everyone and don't really listen to their customers, who after all are paying their salaries.