This was my first cruise setting sail from a port within Mainland China. It is understandable that a large number of the passengers came from within Mainland China. My immediate impression on embarkation after passing through passport control is that Costa's staff starting from the point where our passports were collected, vessel's officers along the gangway up to the point where our photos were taken for the Costa Cards for use during the cruise, were less than friendly and welcoming. There was no smile whatsoever on their faces and nothing to suggest from their body language that we as paying passengers were welcome for this cruise. This I found out to be the norm for all vessel's offcers during the entirety of this cruise. My review now continues by bullet-points : 1. As Costa Venezia is less than one year old since it joined the Costa fleet, everything on the boat is very new and modern. Wife and I booked a cabin with balcony and the cabin is roomy and nicely appointed. The room was on deck 9 towards the rear of the boat and is very convenient to get to Deck 10, where a lot of actions and eateries are located. During our cruise, our cabin was looked after by a dedicated cabin steward. He was Star Serondo from the Philippines. He also greeted passengers with a big smile and is industrious. Every morning when wife and I went upstairs to deck 10 to take a quick breakfast, Star would have completed the cabin cleaning within the short time that we went for our breakfast, which was normally 40 min. from the time we left our cabin to the time we returned to our cabin. He comes with my high commendation. 2. One very important feature that I noticed is that a large number of the crew on the boat only speak Mandarin. This is undertandable as a large number of the passengers come from Mainland China and they only speak Mandarin. Unfortunately for someone like me who is not well versed in Mandarin found it hard to communicate with crew members when I need to. In one instance, I was asked if I can speak to them in Mandarin!! Their Mandarin speaking crew appeared to be inexperienced and went about their business by adopting Chinese custom and lacking in Internationally accepted mannerism and etiquette. This is a real disapointment for someone like me who is so adpated to Western culture and mannerism. 3. Tying in with my previous comments, a lot of the announcements made on the boat were made in just one language. Yes, you guessed it, mandarin only. This left me in the dark at most times and in particular, I was worried that I might miss any important announcemnt that is safety related. The only times that the announcement was made in both English and Mandarin was immediately before disembarkation when we arrived back in Shanghai. to remind passengers to go and settle their bills before they disembark!! All in all, the entire cruise was geared towards Mandarin speaking passengers and for those who do not speak Mandarin, best to choose other cruises not setting sail out of China ports. 4. In terms of food, those outlets that serve free food offered little varieties and their taste was poor to average. For me, there are only two categories of food, one being to fill you up when you are hungry and the other is looking for quality in the food that one takes. The food served at these outlets only qualify for the first category that I described. 5. I have also tried out four paid resturants during my cruise and they include Casanova, the Hot Pot place, the Teppenyaki restaurant and the BBQ outlet. The only place that comes close to my second category of food is Casanova. The place is quickly filled up and my best advice is to make a reservation for this restaurant as soon as you settle into your cabin to avoid disappointment. However, whilst the food in Casanova is okay to good, do not expect their service can complement the food. Most of the staff in this restaurant has no knowledge on how food should be served. This place is definitely not a fine dining outlet. For the BBQ outlet, the food served was cold and not sizzling hot as one would have expected from BBQ experience. The only consolation is the food served at the BBQ outlet is relatively cheap. The teppenyaki experience is more to attend a show dinner more than quality of the food. At any rate, the quality of the food is nowhere near the authentic teppenyaki restaurant that I have come across, be it in Japan or outside Japan. Hot Pot place is worthed a visit as the food does not require Chef's cooking and the price is again relatively cheap. The boat also has a steakhouse, a seafood restaurant, Napoli Pizza and noodle house which i did not have a chance to savour. 6. We joined a shore excursion when the boat berthed at Kagoshima. Save for the lunch provided with the excursion, the experience was bad. The guide for our group made us stand in line to wait for all the execurion participants to arrive before she led us to our coach. When we arrived at one of the three designated sight-seeing locations, the guide just pointed to where we were suppose to head and did not actually show us the place. At one location, we had to resort to using Goggle Map to find out where we were supposed to be going. The worst part came at the end of the excursion when we were all asked to leave the coach to move into a supermarket like medicine store. We were made to stay there for over an hour. For those who were not interested to shop in the store was made to stand around and were not allowed to stay on the coach! The attendants in the shop were mainly Chinese and that shop can be mistaken as another shop found in Mainland China if we were not told that that was Japan. Better off saving your money by not joining the excursion and simply disembarked and explore the destination yourselves. 7. I want to complement a lot of the English speaking crew who came form India and the Philipines. They are all very cheerful, helpful, hospitable and ready at all times to make passengers to enjoy the cruise as it should be enjoyed. This contradicted sharply with the Western officers who not only appeared to be unfriendly, but also too arrogant in front of their mainly Chinese pasengers. They seem to have forgotten that all passengers are paying to come on board and we are not refugees!! Read Less

bad food, long queueterrible service, bad singer, snobish crews, we had been treated like cattle or a customer service staff said to me " she don't like me" without doing service, at port boarding took 5 hours for off board procedure delay. New guests from Tokyo waited 2hours at port standing without chair, toilet. Slow start of evacuation drill. Guests were waited one hour or more in long queues. 2nd sitting restaurant started 9:30 PM. Many customers waited in long My room was smaller than other room 4.5 square meter with ship shape. One bed was normal single bed, however, the other bed was extra bed smaller and hard cushion. Food was bad. Good food was very few. My wife experienced swelling in her face. We spent very terrible holidays. This ship is new. most of crews were unexperienced. Officers were lazy. I do not recommend this ship. This ship worst ever. Read Less

This cruise offered an amazing itinerary staying in Singapore before sailing to Thailand Vietnam Hong Kong China Taiwan and ending with a stay in Tokyo but it was terrible... the lack of organisation and entertainment... even the TV showed just 3 films which repeated on a loop over the 19 nights. The room was the best thing about trip and was kept clean unlike the rest of the ship. General areas were grubby we saw youngsters using the same cloth to wipe every table -no spray and I never saw a hand rail or door handle being cleaned...Worse than this the ship only had two small swimming pools for 5000 people and these were full to capacity with people standing for hours in the warm water... in the event me and my party had tummy upsets for the last 10 days -it was horrible. The food was very poor even the pasta.. everything tasteless no one asked why we were leaving the food or if everything was ok.. I even had to send an omelette back. The bread was the best thing. Worst was the coffee, I was so shocked as Italians boast best coffee in the world this was like dish water which I assume was linked to them wanting you to buy the coffee. This attitude of making money was reflected across the board including water in the dining room. I have been on a number of cruises where free transport is offered to town etc. Costa did not lay on one item of free transport but worse they withheld the fact that the local port offered free transport to nearest town. Every disembarkation was a mess with Costa giving contrary advice and taking hours. Worst for me was Hong Kong ...this itinerary had already been shortened to accommodate a longer stop in China. The captain decided to stay in port longer but did not tell us so we rushed back only to find a letter in the room saying they were leaving later This was very annoying as we had had to limit what we could see in one of the most interesting stop overs. Finally pre visit Costa had insisted we needed a visa for China even if we were not getting off the boat. We were told we would not be allowed to embark if we did not have the visa. In the event loads of people did not have a visa and we had paid £750 for our party to get visa's which we never needed and never used. Read Less

If you want the Ryanair of sailing - Go with Costa Cruises. We had hoped for a trip of a lifetime but experienced the opposite. Even before we left the UK we were provided wrong information by Costa Cruises & Iglu Cruises regarding the requirement to have a full Chinese visa to visit Shenzhen. Arriving to board the ship in Singapore, we had to wait for over three hours in hot conditions with no water being provided. When we finally reached the check in desk, we had to sign a waiver regarding our visit to Shenzhen, agreeing to stay on board as we did not get a Chinese Visa. On finally getting to our cabin we were surprised how basic it was fitted out allowing that it was a new ship, especially as it did not have a refrigerator, which was necessary to store my medication. Information provided to British passengers was far from lacking which meant hours of queing at the Customer Services Desk, other nationalities seemed to have their own representatives scattered around the ship. The ship was finished to a relatively good standard but felt very cramped and crowded with over 5000 passengers on board. The ship did have two pools which were tiny and not very inviting. Meals during the day was nothing short of a bun fight in the main buffet restaurant, night time was a bit better with allocated dining. Overall the quality of food was OK but the eating habits of many of the passengers was very unsettling. Entertainment throughout was poor quality, shows were extremely short averaging only 30 minutes. Now the queues, you had to queue for literally everything, food, water, hot drinks, ice, Customer Desk, Tours Desk but worst of all the queing to get off the ship was generally uncontrolled and dangerous. Costa Cruises obviously do not adhere to health and safety when it comes to passengers. Even when we reached Tokyo it took over four hours to leave the ship. In summary the cruise was far from relaxing, staff could have been more customer focussed and the information and organisation should have been better. This experience has put us off booking a Costa (Carnival) Cruise again. Read Less

We chose this cruise because of the itinerary and the chaos of embarkation should of forewarned us of what was to come. We pre booked an all inclusive drinks package and this was printed on our cabin card which was already in our cabin. Unfortunately every time we ordered a drink the package did not work so after 2 days and several trips to guest services the card was replaced. I was told "you will have to pay for your drinks tonight but the card will work tomorrow" We were told that it was because we booked it before we went onboard. Although it was printed on the card I had to provide an email which proved I had bought and paid for it. It was also suppose to cover the mini bar in our cabin except there wasn't one. Not even a fridge. Our balcony cabin was standard and disappointing for a brand new ship. As it was built for the chinese market there was only 1 european plug socket in the cabin however there were plenty of usb sockets. The cabin steward was excellent and kept the cabin spotless. We were very disappointed with the standard of food. It was served cold and mostly tasteless. Our waiters were very helpful but they did tell us that there were lots of complaints about the food being cold. The buffet restaurant was best avoided. Watching people carrying off huge trays of fresh fruit to wherever. I think certain passengers must have kept it in their cabin. The queues were huge especially at sea days when they provided an outdoor buffet with a theme. The swimming pools were very small and not adequate for the amount of people onboard. We took 2 trips, both of them in Vietnam. The organisation for getting people off the ship was non existent with queues blocking stairs and exits. On both trips we stopped at places to buy local handcrafts and this wasn't on the itinerary and caused us to be rushed at places that were. We went to the theatre for 1 show and decided not to bother as it was not brilliant and most shows were then shown on the large screen on the lido deck afterwards. The television channels were limited and the only English speaking one was a Chinese news channel although we didnt go on holiday to watch TV. The day in Hong Kong was cut short as we stayed longer in China. Unfortunately it was decided to add an extra couple of hours to our visit but quite a few people had already left the ship when this was announced so they rushed back to find they could have stayed longer. Not good organisation. I questioned both Iglu Cruises and Costa about the need for a Chinese Visa. I was informed that I had to have one to board the ship in Singapore. I then found out that there was a waiver form we could have signed and stayed on the ship. All in all most of the crew were polite, there was a language barrier with the newly recruited Chinese. As the ship is now based in China and wont enter the European market again I dont think Costa are particularly bothered by the poor reviews left by Europeans but I certainly wont use Costa again. I have cruised with Carnival previously, their parent Company and had no complaints. Read Less

I first chose this cruise for the ports it was stopping at, what a mistake, the embarkation at Singapore should have told me what was to come ... how can it take 4 hours to board a ship ! .. the room was good, a good size with a shower room and bath room ? .. that’s the end of good I’m afraid. From the 3 film loop the tv was set on, a girl can only have so much of x men (7 times) to the 2 pea size “swimming pools”, 5200 guests on board, max capacity per pool 38 .. hahaha . The food was very poor, repetitive and cold, the fixed service charge per head outrageous as they still charge service on everything bought on the ship. And hygiene was sorely missing, they even removed the hand sanitiser from the front of one of the restaurants at one point.. no butter for a few days, no orange for a week .. staff who seemed poorly trained and uninterested. Worst entertainment I have ever experienced. They just didn’t seem bothered with the brits on board Sorry Costa , not for me ever again Read Less

Looked inviting good price and places we had not been before To start with the best parts throughly enjoyed the cruise ship,and decor outstanding,crew,staff excellent food very good and overall 6/10 1/ But as we arrived on the morning at 9 am and had a taxi to the ship for 9.30 and then discovered we couldn’t board until 8pm what nonsense then they gave us lottery tickets to board in order which would have taken for ever eventually it was a free for all and boarded 4 pm however didn’t do the safety drill that night and a day later they informed us of the drill time and was away on a trip so never did it contrary to Sea going Legislation 2/ At dinner time was then informed of the need to buy water at the dinner table which is a No No when you could bathe in it up in the Buffett. 3/ the cleanness in the upstairs dining area is compromised by hundreds of people filling up unclean water bottles and flasks because of the no water policy in the dining room it’s a disaster waiting to happen. 4/ I have the need to use the disabled toilet but 70% of them did not work or the doors were turned off 5/ on the night of the Buffett only one ordinary toilet was working with all those hundreds of people on that deck 3 times I waited outside the locked sit down toilet only to find they had been locked due to blockages 6/ we were charged €20 a day service charge which we were told could not be removed but none of the crew gets any of this amount it goes directly as profits and decided this wasn’t fair so gave payments to persons accordingly 7/ we had our passports confiscated on day one and didn’t have them until the morning we left the ship in Kula Lampur,we should have been given them the night before and signed a release form so we wouldn’t have to worry about missing our flight 8/ None of the discounts available on board were accounted for in the inroom TV screens and when I was told about the 25% discount on a bottle of Prosecco which wasn’t on my bill you said it did not apply to this particular cruise what a con and you still owe me €3.25 for this discount 9/ At the theatre shows which were fabulous to get a good seat you had to be there 20 minutes early and were then subjected to continuous advertising which after a while became intolerable 10/ No English on any of the TV channels but plenty of other languages available 11/ Chaos when we docked on deck One/Two because of amateur persons performing the landing exercise 12/ would have like a Italian Pizza on deck 13 but every time we went there it was just dry Foccacia bread with no sauce or taste. 13/ And sadly always felt like a second class citizen over the Chinese persons on board 14/ And most of all it was a disaster for Costa Cruises in public relations as hundreds of people I spoke to would never book with Costa Cruises again Read Less

This was our 50th wedding anniversary and wanted to see Dubrovnik, the excursion was 49eu pp and was advertised for 4 hrs duration was only 3 hrs and at night only saw the main street in the old town. Excursions were expensive one was 145eupp for 10hrs, and was just walking everywhere. Did have a nice lunch though. On arrival we were welcomed into a huge shed with 4/5000people all arriving at the same time, what a joke, it took 3hrs to load all the passengers. Why did we all arrive at the same time? ever heard of allocating times for arrivals. Also there was no water during this waiting period. The service from wait staff initially was appalling, the Indian and the Chinese were not well cordinated, didnt seem to know their duties, felt sorry for them. The restaurants decore were what you would expect from a brand new ship, very elegant, also the food was good, but always cold! this pattern ran thru all food outlets in the ship. Some of the behavior of a lot of the passengers left a lot to be desired, at the buffet piled their plates with food like it was the last supper. There was a masked gala advertised on their original website which never happened, just a few staff wearing masks. We expected a formal dinner dance like other cruise ships have. The nightly entertainment was not as expected and in some cases was amateur. Read Less

I agree with nearly all the comments made in the reviews regarding the 1st leg. We felt like 2nd class citizens. Most staff were under trained but about half were smiling and friendly. Only watchable TV in English was News and documentaries on China's CGTN network. Entertainment was quite poor with the best act being a comedy magician on the night before disembarkation. No milk or fridge in our cabin. We could only use our balcony when at sea since there was always cleaning, painting & maintenance being done while in port and the balconies on deck 2 were used as a through way for staff so the extra cost for the balcony was not good value. Why does a brand new ship need painting? Mandatory €10 per person per day (including disembarkation day) for "Service Charge" plus another service charge on any drinks and food purchased. Mixing cultures and too many languages really doesn't work for me. Every announcement was repeated in about 5 languages and the behaviour of some passengers in the buffet restaurant beggars belief with pushing and piling plates to overflowing with one type of food and thus quickly depleting amount left for other people. We've sailed with a fair number of cruise lines and therefore we have something to judge Costa against. One gets the impression that Costa's aim was to relieve passengers of as much money as possible. This was the worst cruise we have been on and no way will be sail with Costa again. Read Less

Cabin was still brand new and vey nice, only down side no fridge. Food was not up to standard and buffet food very poorly presented. Company policy dictates that water is not to be provided with lunch or dinner, passengers MUST purchase bottled water. Skim milk was not available at all. A large number of passengers very rude pushing and shoving, taking more food than they could possibly eat (you would think they had never seen food before) this made the cruise experience very unpleasent and would NEVER recommend a Costa cruise to anyone if this is normal behavior on their cruises. Shore excursions very expensive, best to do your own thing by hiring a local taxi. There is a €10.00 per day per person gratuity fee that all passengers must pay, when passengers starting complaining that they would rather pay the gratuity directly to the staff that were looking after them it was suddenly changed to a hotel service charge (we were lead to believe that the staff never actually receive any of this so called gratuity). Activities on board very limited mostly dance classes. Evening entrainment very boring with the exception of the Tenor who quite frankly was too good for the ship. Overall a very disappointing experience. First and last Costa cruise. NEVER AGAIN. Read Less

I totally agree with everything others on this site have written about the ship Costa Venezia - it was a terrible cruise. The food was poor - we were on the ship 53 days and only had salmon twice, it was low budget food every day. Always long lines everywhere. The embarkation in Trieste took 5 hours stranding in lines without water or food. And it continued with queue the whole cruise from the buffet to the pool area, sun beds, theater, excursions. Always kaos with poorly trained staff and a very bad logistics from Costa so butter, wine, glass, beer etc was missing for serveral days. There was something totally wrong on the ship - the staff was NOT smiling and we did not have the feeling off beeing on a vacation. The information onbord was NOT existing - we got No information about the port/city we were going to visit. We couldn't follow the sailing route for 3 weeks on the tvscreen - it went black and we didn't get any other information instead. We had to stay in lines 1,5 hour 3 times during the cruise to get a stamp in our pasport from the customs officers there were on board. Again totally kaos. The exit in Tokyo was dealyed 3 hours and we had to stand up becaused there were not seats enough. We missed a night i Hong Kong becaused the captain had a formel reception with the president of Asia Costa Cruises and the directory of the cruise terminal in Shenzhen, China. They did not care about the passengers, the only want the ship sailed to China where it is going to sail in the further as a casino ship for the chinese People. Never Costa Cruises again Read Less

Maiden cruise - I think not. Ship was wonderful and the roof that opens onto the Lido Deck wonderful. Animation crew fantastic and they appeared to be the only ones on board the ship that seemed to welcome us English speaking passengers. They and the friends we made on the ship made the cruise bearable. 19 days of having people push and shove to get food, not waiting patiently in line, taking excessive amounts of food. The pushing and shoving was also apparent in the shore excursions. A lot of people cancel tours as we did to do our own thing. You would think that this was Costas first cruise as it was badly organized. No English programmers on tv - if you were Chinese you had the best choice. We had 3 movies on a loop for 19 days - how pathetic. Did I mention that we had Chinese film crew and actors on board blocking off access to different parts of the ship so they could do promotional film for the ship in Chinese. Did not know that this cruise was last for Europeans as the ship has been leased to the Chinese and will be based out of Shanghai. They seemed to forget about us already on this cruise and focusing on the Chinese market instead. Painting and maintenance constantly going on around us - had to prop open cabin door to get ride of paint fumes. No library - started up informal book swap. Cold food - meat you could not eat as it was tough. Sweets were fantastic - a highlight of any meal. Poor performance Costa - if you are looking for more new customers this is not the way to get them. You need to focus on the passengers you have onboard not future ones. Read Less

My wife and I chose this cruise for the destinations in the Middle East, and the fact that it was a new ship. Discovered after the absolutely shambolic 3.5hr embarkation in Trieste that the ship had already sailed from Mon to Fri that week ! Most of the crew were from other ships in the Costa line, but obviously the training was missed ! To be fair to the staff they tried - but cold food in the restaurants, and the fact that they clearly had never had to deal with the volume of passengers, many of whom were not used to cruising, having no cultural queuing skills at all, or were not interested in dressing in their finest, save 'trackie bottoms' put my wife especially, in a depressed cruising mood ! The muster was a complete disaster, and was called by many we spoke to [including a retired Norwegian cruise captain] as illegal. The getting off and on the ship for excursions was another complete shambles. The whole crew seemed not to have a clue, which ended up with passengers 'joining the queue [if that was what it was] by using the lifts to jump 20/25 mins of the rest of us waiting politely. The ship was built for the Chinese market, and that was where it was going, on a one way trip. We didn't know it was going to be filled with loads of Chinese nationals, who with no disrespect, did not have an idea about western eating etiquette. Several times we had to leave our dining table, especially in the buffet on Deck 10, as people spitting, coughing, and eating in a different style, causing my wife to feel unwell. The entertainment was of poor/average quality, and films were non existent, save for the endless looping of 3 after 2 weeks ! We asked the bar staff for Gordons Gin on night one - they didn't know what we meant ! Enough said ! Overall - great ship, great destinations - shame about the crew and many other rude passengers. We queued for many a long hour for customer services, to be told that there was nothing they could do about it. We will not be going on another Costa ship. Read Less

We chose this cruise to escape the late winter early spring weather and on price and the ships itinerary. The beginning, after being picked up at our Venice hotel we were dropped at Venice airport to wait around for two hours without any information before being herded on to a fleet of buses for a 90 minute journey to Trieste. This is where the confused disorderly nightmare got worse we where dumped with thousands of other passengers in a massive car park with no queuing system in place no queue marshals no Costa staff to organize fair queuing, it just became a very unpleasant fight to retain a place in the queue with many people just pushing in. It took us three and a half hours of queuing to check in without being offered a drink or toilets being available, we were lucky that it was not raining nor hot and sunny, otherwise the experience could have been much worse. When we did manage to board the ship the chaos continued, we were instructed to go to our muster stations at least 4 times only for the exercise to be repeatedly cancelled, eventually we tried to attend the evacuation procedure, however the stair wells were blocked with other passengers on each occasion and this made it impossible for many passengers to get to the correct muster stations. like many other passengers we missed the emergency drill completely. The Cabin, ours was internal with a big comfortable bed otherwise the cabin was small and lacked storage, one small wardrobe with 8 coat hangers , the shower was good plenty of hot water. Dining, Poor quality food mainly cold, plenty of Queuing. Entertainment, Second rate. Shore Excursions,poor and a total rip off. Service, our cabin steward was excellent (Berco), some of the bar staff were very good. Read Less