We've sailed with Costa before and loved the wonderful food and the relaxed atmosphere. We've sailed on the Atlantica before and had a wonderful experience. This time was to be much different.

We drove from our home to Ft Lauderdale and arrived around 4:30pm - the ship was scheduled to leave at 9pm. We'd made advance reservations at Park N Fly right near the port - receiving a nice discount for booking in advance. Once we arrived at the port the confusion and disorder started.

We had not received luggage tags in advance of our trip via email or snail mail but were told by Costa that it was a simple task to get them at the port. I questioned this, but didn't push the issue. Luckily we arrived when the porters weren't busy because it took them two tries before they got the right name and cabin number on the tags. It was just by accident we noticed the cabin number was incorrect the first time or who knows when we would have gotten our luggage. Read more