Notes & comments on our recent cruise. Cruise facts: 12 day cruise on Costa Cruise line leaving from Hamburg, Germany, visiting 8 ports, final port of embarkation, Marseilles, France. Boarded ship in Hamburg. Nice ship, comfortable cabin, Not perfect but OK. Dinner that night in main dining room, a 2 story room that seats 1300 people. Passengers speaking 5 different languages contributed to a rather noisy environment. Our cruises on most if not all other large ships had 2 separate dining rooms. Other observations from the dining room: No water served unless you bought and paid for a bottle of water $3.50. Coffee not served after meal with dessert unless specifically ordered with meal. No cream or real milk for the coffee (anywhere or anytime on the boat). Available milk appeared to be made from powdered milk and was like skim milk in the coffee. Not good! Other comments on the dining room: The menus were OK but not up to expectation or standards used to us on other cruise lines. Same menu for breakfast every morning. Ne menu per table shared by all. Menu selection and food quality OK but not up to our expectation or standards. Breakfast in the dining room was interesting as it was a combination of “sit down & order” and Help yourself buffet. You could sit down and order your eggs or other hot items but if you want fruit, juice, rolls, muffins etc you had to go get it yourself. The Buffet was kind of typical cruise ship style with these notable differences. EVERYTHING you were going to eat or drink had to be self served. No waiters brought coffee or drinks around unless bar orders. You needed to get your food or drinks, find a table (not always easy) and then go back for your food or drinks that you were unable to carry on your first trip. Refills.... Go get it yourself no table service. Food was OK, coffee terrible. Desserts were very disappointing and not at all tempting. I actually lost weight on this trip! There was a Pizzeria on the ship. $4. Per pizza. Also free pizza by the slice in the buffet. I love pizza and tried both. Worse pizza I ever ate and the only pizza I ever ate and did not like! Other than the Pizza we did not try any of the other restaurants that were optional pay venues. One other comment on the buffet. It closes each night around 10 after that the only option for food or drink is room service. Costa advertises 24 hour room service, what they fail to mention is the cost $5.pp even for just coffee. Another thing widely advertised is WI/FI throughout the ship, fail to mention fifty cents per minute. Cruising on a foreign ship and foreign Port. I would not do it again or recommend it. There were probably less than 2 dozen English speaking passengers. It seemed everyone was speaking different languages and people did not speak to others they did not know. Strange feeling being on a large boat with lots of people and no one speaking to each other. In cabin TV service one English speaking channel (BBC News) and one English speaking movies played each day throughout the day. Ship announcements made in 5 languages could be a bit annoying but not a big deal. Entertainment and facilities on the boat were all good, no problems there. Summary: We had a lousy time due mainly to the "major problem" and would never sail with Costa again, even if FREE!   Read Less

I would never go on the MSC "Poesia" again after the Glacier and Mediterranean trip I just experienced. To begin the Australian and New Zealand people were misled when they said it was a 23 day cruise. Only later did we discover it was 3 back to backs. and that is where the trouble began. We had to endure 3 lots of the same theatre entertainment as the acts were not changed. And the activities were exactly the same all the way through. Some of the entertainment in the theatre was the exact same as "Lirica " in 2013. The courtesy of staff had to be questioned. The female staff on the reception desks were rude and ignorant. The tour desk was diabolical. Courtesy to guests was non existent. The organisation of the tours was poor to say the least. On at least 3 tours we did not get the required amount of time in as they were too slow and disorganised to get us off the ship for an hour. This meant our tours were shortened. And it always seemed to be the English speaking people who got off last on trips. When a group of us approached the tour organiser and the guests manager after they had most royally mucked up our Gibraltar tour all they could offer us was a half refund for a 4 hour tour where we saw nothing of what were supposed to. The bar staff on Level 13 were slow and unless you ordered liquor they were not really interested in serving you. We did have a lovely steward on our table in the dining room and this compensated for the poor service upstairs. Guests with diabetes were told by the reception staff to put your needles in your room bin and let the cabin stewards deal with it. REALLY! Three of us had damage done to our cases as they were taken from the bus to the ship and nothing was done to our satisfaction. When anomalies were discovered with charging of bills nothing was done until querying it three times. The rudeness and arrogant attitude of some of the European passengers left a lot to be desired. i did not appreciate being pushed to the back of a lift as i was trying to get off at my level on several occasions by such people. All in all these things spoiled a good trip and if it had not been for the group of us at our eating table the 23 days might have been worse. As an MSC member I am totally disgusted and thoroughly annoyed that this trip was ruined by MSC incompetence. Read Less

First of all, let me start out by saying, i've cruised many times, mostly with celebrity, holland america, and royal carribean. ---- Service: 1. AC not working in the room? No one cares 2. Animation team does not speak english? no one cares 3. You got billed for something you did not order? try to find someone who understands english, oh and even if you did not sign for it, no one cares. 4. you will receive 0 service on this ship, as i hear on most msc ships 5. you go to their "select restaurant" where you have to pay extra for each thing you order, and the fish comes spoiled? guess what, NO ONE CARES ---- Staff : About 5% of the staff speaks english, and this is not an understatement. Cabin stewart - no english. Resception - barely speak english, out of the 8 people in their red suits, only ONE can UNDERSTAND english, venezia her name is i think. I have nothing against any ethnicity, i live in new york, the most versatile city in the world, but wow, the people working on this ship barely have 5 years olds vocabulary, if any at all. ---- Billing Department: Does not speak english AT ALL, except the guest relations manager. I had to call him each time i had to speak to them, because they only speak ITALIAN, disgrace on a cruise line that boasts itself to have the main language english. I was double charged on my cabin, im still resolving this issue with them. ---- Room servce: each item you have to pay for, its NOT INCLUDED, oh, and guess what, if its spoiled, yep, you guessed right, no one cares. My sandwich arrived, moist, with mold on it, yeah, MOLD. I call room service, explain the guy tells me with italian accent "yes, i control, i control" what that means, i still dont know till this day. ---- Food: Each day the buffet is THE SAME, breakfast the same, room service the same. Food quality: Ok, its like you know you LOVE homecooking, wife cooking, mom cooking. This is the same, EXCEPT this is not YOUR homecooking, or yor loved one, its your friends retarded grandma, who takes too much medication, and then tosses everything into one plate. The food is horrible, not only the buffet, but the dinners, they do not look creative at all. It looks like high school served sloppy joes, and i loved sloppy joes. Im sorry, the food rating on quality, look, and taste are 1 on scale of 1 to 100. Just HORRIBLE. ----- SPA: The most rude people i have ever met. I dont mean the staff, that you know does not speak english, the ones that greet you, their great. But the staff at the reception, just outright plain rude if they do not understand you. The manager of the spa is the Maegaera. I can not comment enough of the lack of customer service. The ship staff does not know what it is, and its sad, because treatment is what makes you want to go on a cruise, relax, you do not want these everyday headaches and hasstles. ----- Overall: I would stay away from MSC in the future, not only did they not provide the service promised, its impossible to relax, you have to communicate to waiters in sign language, because in english they know yes, and no. And daily you look forward to being in a new port, because the food is just horrible, no other word for it, no variety, no taste, just no nothing. I give this ship and cruise line a FAIL rating. MSC if you ever read this, you are a FAILURE in the ship world. Read Less