We chose this cruise because we happened to be going from Singapore to Rome. The price was outstanding, so despite the generally poor reviews, we tried Costa.

Shazaam!...now we’re big Costa fans! The ship is good, but the crew is amazing. Costa (or at least the Fortuna) clearly has the secret sauce recipe for keeping its crew (apparently) happy and very highly effective.

Here’s some specifics: I’m an early riser, so I see the crew going at it when the guests are generally not watching. Every morning at 0430, they were energetically cleaning some new corner of the ship that I never even thought of...ceilings, corners where no one ever goes, the disco ball, under imovable chairs... And it really looked like a whistle-while-you-work operation, not a begrudging surface wipe-down so they could get back to standing around. This crew was always working hard and behaving upbeat. Read more