Background We are in our 40's and this was our 5th cruise, but first with Costa. We live in Hong Kong and were seeking to escape Chinese New Year, however we failed in this endeavor as it followed us, along with what felt like half the citizens of China, onto the boat....We did not have very high expectations based on previous reviews, but this was worse than we expected. However, the ports of call were terrific - pity about the rest. As we live in HK we had no flights nor hotels etc and cannot comment on this aspect.

Embarkation Short queues but refused to allow us back into Hong Kong after embarkation. Apparently because there were "a lot of PRC residents coming on the cruise and they are not allowed back into HK". This was of course incredibly irritating because we arrived at the ship around 2pm for a 7pm sailing, expecting to be able to eat lunch, check out the cabin and then go back ashore for a spot of shopping and sightseeing. However this was not allowed - either shop (with all our hand luggage) before you board or not at all!

Our cruise tickets did not even specify the address on them - which meant that we could not direct our taxi to the port and, given that there are over 20 ports/docks/marinas in Hong Kong were lucky even to get close (we had to walk the final km). Quite ridiculous. Read more