Costa Cruises, Costa Allegra Review

Overall Rating

I think that it is very apt that I start by saying that someone I spoke to commented and said that if you have not been on a cruise before then the Costa Allegra was ok, but if you have then it is sadly falling short of the mark.
The first thing I noticed is the draconian attitude towards smokers or non smokers, as it appears that they are of the belief that signs indicating that it is ok to smoke on one particular side of a bar is ok whilst it is not on the other, maybe someone should have told the smoke that so that it stayed on that side of the room and did not waft across to the non smoking side or for that matter get sucked into the air conditioning and be circulate throughout the entire ship, have these people not heard of passive smoking.

The on board entertainment was very average with the a couple of different performers performing what appeared to be a very limited repertoire and I am sure that I heard the same performer sing the same songs in a varied order most days I am not saying that they could not sing or that the songs were not popular but there are just so many times you can listen to them.
Even on the pool deck the only time there was any music was when the cruise activities staff tried to entertain the passengers with some fun and games but these events were sporadic and again once they had finished there was nothing .some piped music on deck may have been nice and refreshing.
Even though some of the activities were fun and I am sure a lot of people enjoyed the dance lessons, either participating or watching there did not appear to be a great deal else or if there was there was a large time gap between them. Don't get me wrong they provided some jigsaw puzzles for people to do which would have been even better withal the pieces or they had some crafting activities like making bead jewellery or t shirt painting however these seemed somewhat limited to the 20 or so people.

The food was average, with some dishes being very good and others sort of so, so. The consistency of quality was also dubious as some of the steaks where cooked well and delicious, others were tough and unpalatable but just which you got was a bit of a gamble.
And unfortunately this seemed to flow through to the drinks, and whilst I don't mind staff free pouring it does get a bit hit and miss with consistency, this was highlighted with a Mai Tai that I had one afternoon and it was very well made whereas a couple of days later I ordered another and it was that tart that I could taste nothing but lemon juice.

The staff in general where however a credit to themselves and worked tirelessly to ensure that everything went as smoothly as possible, even if it did take 2 days before we got hot water in our cabin.

In closing I will use a comment that I heard " If you can imagine a ladder for cruises, at the moment you are on the bottom rung".