Wow..OK here goes. First the positive. I traveled on Costa Pacifica on the July 5th trip in the Western Mediterranean. The ship is beautiful and absolutely spotless. My cabin steward and waiters were incredibly nice and efficient and spoke fluent English. All of the staff with the exception of one gal were amazingly nice and helpful. English was not their first language but we got by. I purchased the X1 card and it was the smartest thing we did. This you have to purchase in advance from your travel agent. It can only be used during lunch and dinner BUT meals are always being served. I really enjoyed the casino. The dealers and pit bosses were really nice and pleasant. We had a outside room at the front of the ship and it was adequate in size...we were comfortable.OK now....with a population of 3000 there were only 30 English speaking passengers on board. The person in charge of us was Deborah. She was NOT pleased when there were complaints by the English speaking passengers. The complaints were numerous and Deborah crossed the line of professionalism and actually told the gal I was traveling with that her daughter was very difficult. Now, her daughter was upset as were all of us because Costa cancelled an excursion because they did not want to hire an English speaking guide for a small group. Then we were put on another excursion that zero english was spoken. When we vehemently complained and said we wanted all of our excursion money returned if we were not going to have English speaking guides we then received those guides. Numerous encounters with Deborah were not pleasant and I would have to say that this seriously impacted our vacation. She was extremely offensive and not with just our group. For the position she held she was ineffective.We knew going in that this is an Italian ship but if Costa is not going to cater to all languages than that should be said upfront. The ports of call were lovely. Not quite sure the reason for going into Savona, Italy other than its cheaper than the dock charges in Monaco. I will say that it really bugged me that we picked up passengers in every port and dropped them off. This was like a moving transport system. I am used to cruises when everyone gets on at a certain port and off at a certain port.The first 2 nights the food was horrible. Than, for some reason, it was good. We could not figure out this one. I will tell you it was HORRIBLE...and then we really enjoyed it.The constant music on the ship was annoying. They had the same soundtrack they kept playing over and over. On this soundtrack included Christmas songs. That was driving us CRAZY. For the ship of "MUSIC" it sucked. The shows were sub par except for one evening that was really good. We could not quite figure this out either.The ship could have really used a third pool. The 2 pools are small and were ALWAYS crammed full. Not appealing at all and I did not once put on a suit to sit in a toilet.I dont know if this is just Costa but at beginning of cruise, because we were non Europeans our passports were conviscated and we did not get them back till end of cruise. That bugged me a bit. They did give us a photo copy.We only had one formal night and Costa did not have the traditonal toga night that they usually have. This was fine just letting you know.All in all...we(4 firends) had a decent time because we viewed the ship as our transportation to get us to the ports. This is NOT a ship for English speakers because truthfully.....COSTA does not care.