This was our 24 th cruise and our second with Costa. The frist being many years ago and it was our second cruise ever. I've never written a review for the other cruises, but I felt compelled to do so this time , wishing to help inform other travelers about my expencience. Hard earned money and vacation time should not be wasted ,the selection of cruising with Costa , well I would advise people to do their homework before selecting Costa. I wittiness many things on this cruise that I have never seen before and perhaps what most stood out was the attitude of most of the crew and senior officers. Of course there were some members of the crew that did a great job, but they were the minority. Arrogance, bad attitude, lack of respect and un Professionalism was the norm.
it's hard to pinpoint why this type of culture exits onboard, but perhaps one factor is now that gratuities are mandatory in the form of a per person amount daily, called a hotel service charge and no longer can it be removed from your account. ( gratuities always existed in some form,) what is different , you no longer can , as many passengers prefer to give their gratuities in an envelope directly to the people who served them during the cruise and I am sure that not all have given what was expected, therefore cruise company's are developing other ways to guarantee the crew members receive the amount requested.) I understand their predicament, but this has led to an unbelievable attitude on board. It seems that most of the crew have developed an attitude, we don't have to earn our gratuities , so if I'm arrogant, rude ,tell people to get out of my way, run them over ,throw things around and could not careless about any form of customer service, it doesn't matter, I will still receive my money anyway.
Our room was the worst I ever seen, 5-6 feet of a soaken wet carpet in front of the bathroom for the entire cruise. Despite maintenance coming serval times it was never fixed, they gave extras towels to put on the floor and a fruit basket with their apologizes wow