The decor while not suited to all tastes was fantastic and colourful. most of the staff especially the cabin staff and restaurant staff were very friendly and remembered who you were, the cabins were cleaned twice a day and never disturbed you unless it was important and never when you hung the do not disturb sign on your door, our cabin was clean within an hour of leaving it for dinner etc. The shows every night were fairly good, nothing spectacular but its prob not easy to get performers to come on a cruise ship! The ship did not have too many bad points, the internet though i must mention seemed terribly slow and expensive, a few times i spent 3 euro and the webpage crashed and i got nowhere. The ship being so huge was hard to navigate the first few days, we had a map but some floors you couldnt get all the way along and had to go up then down, this wasnt too bad but some more directions on the ship would have been better. there seemed always to be a line at customer service no matter when you went, and some of the supposed english speaking staff did not really seem to understand what we were saying, but most of them spoke 4-5 languages each so i guess we cant be too fussy when all we speak is english! there seemed to be very limited shopping, especially for womens clothing, it was winter and i couldnt even buy a pair of gloves onboard! Costa Cruises, Costa Concordia overall was a pleasurable experience, had read a few bad reviews but was pleasantly suprised by the overall quality of the cruise,

Costa Concorida, Costa Cruises, is a clean tidy modern ship. Good balcony cabin. Firstly, Thoms Cook booked the ship first with flights to follow and foolishly we did not expect to have to be at Heathrow Airport by 5.30 a.m when other flights were available at around 10.30 a.m. that would have been perfect These were refused and am taking the matter up with Trading Standards. Having arrived some 7 hours before the ship was due to sail we were ushered into a cramped building as though they were organizing a refugee camp. This dreadful welcome got worse as we waited three hours before embarking. The cabin with balcony was excellent. However, that first evening meal in the main dining restaurant was mostly cool to cold. We complained and things did improve but the meals were never very good. We had to sit at the same table with the same people at the same time every night which is not as good as the variable arrangements with other cruises. The kitchen had problems keeping pace. One lunch took 2 hours as each course took over 30 minutes to arrive. Discovered the kitchen is on the deck below and waiters have to use a long escalator to reach the tables. This main restaurant is on two tiers very large noisy, crowded and uncomfortable - lacking in pleasing atmosphere. The buffet bars on the 9th deck served the same limited boring food of poor quality all the time often with far more stations for food and drink closed than open. For an Italian ship the coffee was surprisingly poor and stale. The crew lacked the usual joy in their work which seemed to be because they were very aware of grim faced managers who appeared to put them under the cosh. This was further endorsed with the end of cruise questionnaire which had consequences for crew contract renewals if the passengers did not mark up high enough. Conversely, we were told to mention a crew member by name as this helped contract renewal. Getting around this large ship was made more difficult due to poor less than adequate design of the signs and other aids usually found in other ships. Although some 800 English speaking passengers the entertainment did not cater enough for this group. The shows were also rather short. Some excellent artists did perform but often with sparse presentational support or build up. This was strange seeing as the ship has an excellent theatre with all the latest technology to add drama and excitement. The classical music was performed near to the horrid noise of the gaming machines. The excursions were spoiled by not engaging good quality guides. Some tours involved English and Italian resulting in very little English being spoken. The guides were not very professional in their presentation. The excursions were very expensive as were the drinks on board. Even a simple non-alcoholic fruit cocktail was of poor quality. The cruise ended with two days at sea which is something best avoided as it produces an anti-climax. Disembarking at the end of the cruise was chaotic with hundreds of people not knowing what was going on and exactly where to go. Overall this cruise lacked fineness had many avoidable irritations and would not happily recommend to a friend.

The Costa Concordia is fantastic, we bought the drinks package a week before we went and recommend it - it saved us a lot of money on our drinks.
The food was amazing. The service was excellent. Food was plentifull. It was very clean ship ,every room was spotless
they are forever cleaning. This is a Italian ship not English , so i was not surprised when they spoke Italian ,then other Languages to follow. The shows were good, plenty of good seats.
The only bad point i found , was the ship is so big we kept getting lost. After about 3 days we found our way to the restaurant without any problem. We were fit after all the walking up and down to find where we was going . It was very funny because everybody was in the same boat, we kept passing them by helping each other because they too were lost.

Good points ports of call. Bad points service was bad - cruise staff was not helpful and down right rude. food was mediocre. Entertainment mediocre. Smoking on board was obnoxious - couldn't attend exercise classes because the smoking was so prevalent. They nickel and dimed us to death. Lack of information was pitiful. Would not recommend this cruise, especially to Americans - they definitely cater to the Europeans.

I would never recommend a Costa cruise to anyone I liked.

As a seasoned cruiser we chose the Costa Concordia for a Christmas cruise with the express intention of enjoying the variety offered by a larger ship. It was not our intention to take advantage of shore excursions, on the occasion we intended that the ship be our centre for entertainment. We found that there where some cultural issues with regards the differences between the way our Italian friends managed there environment and space when compared with what we have experienced in the past and we found it to be noisy with lots of shouting and shrieking and an unwillingness to comply with onboard guidance that might have made space management less of a hassle.
I had the misfortune of contracting a very bad case of sickness and diarrhoea on the final morning and after cases had been taken. Ship board hospital staff were attentive caring and the ships hospital was immaculate yet my condition could not be contend and a ambulance was called to take me to the local state run Italian Hospital.
The state run Italian hospital provided a clean very quiet recuperative environment and 6 litres of fluid by IV before I was released three days later to travel home.

THANK GOODNESS FOR INSURANCE

It would be easy to forget in light of my illness, that until that point we had enjoyed the cruise and we raised the standard of the food in the restaurant in our case by insisting that our plates were heated.

But on a final note, I have been put off of cruising on a large ship.

We are a British family of two adults and two children and we have done three previous family cruises, a cruise for our honeymoon alone and my husband used to work for Carnival. We departed on 6th January on Concordia's 11 night Med. Highlights cruise.
The booking process was painless and we chose cruise only an inside cabin because the children sleep later if it is dark, but had I known how much bigger the outside cabins were in real terms I would have paid the extra. After booking we logged onto the Costa website and booked our excursions and also my wine packages.

Tickets for the excursions were delivered the first night on board and the wine vouchers were brought to me in the restaurant by the assistant maitre'd on our first night so I could use them straight away. My husband had also booked (through the Costa Call centre ~ not available through travel agents) the X1 package which has to be paid for at the time of booking ~ It cost £74.63 for the eleven nights of the cruise and could be used at lunch and dinner in both the restaurant and parigi buffet and was excellent value ~ a large beer was £4.89 including service and he was drinking 3 at dinner = £14.67 a night/£161.37 over the cruise just at night! Just to clarify the X1 package allows drinks by the glass with both lunch & dinner in the buffet & in the restaurants ~ as long as you are in the parigi buffet during lunch hours @ 11am - 3pm with a plate and some food you can use the X1 for your drinks!!

I will say though that we had no trouble in taking alcohol on board for consumption during the cruise ~ at Katakolon the duty free is seriously cheap & decent red wine can be picked up for 3Euros a bottle ~ I took 3 bottles on board plus 6ltrs of coke and 12 lagers without any problems. I took a cork screw in my luggage and just asked for a glass at which ever bar I settled in ~ the staff were happy to oblige.

Embarkation at Civitavecchia was fairly painless and we were on the ship within an hour of arriving at the port ~ others who boarded a day later had waits of up to 5hrs by comparison

When we got to our cabin it was arranged as a king bed with a bunk above at each side and ladders at the end. There was very little floor space and a distinct lack of hanging space ~ so little I ended up putting the kids clothes in piles on the shelves.Cabins walls were woefully under insulated so you could quite happily sit and listen to your neighbors discussions with there spouses and we felt like joining in when they argued. Prams left by people who had them in the corridors outside there cabins ~ an added obstacle at night after a few beers.

Bags were delivered to the cabin within half an hour, so by 2pm we were all ready to go and find some lunch in the buffet. This area was particularly crowded but around the pools there were generally tables to be found. Here comes the confusing part ~ around the rear pool you couldn't smoke but the pool and jacuzzis were for adults only, whilst the mid ship pool with the large screen and for children and families had the smoking area? Please could someone explain the logic behind that? In Britain at least, children's areas are generally smoke free as they do not have a choice where to sit, whereas adults who wish to smoke are quite free to get up and move!

Food in the buffet was Ok, better at times than in the restaurants and usually hotter. At no time did we ever see any one probing food to do temperature checks! In the restaurant the waiters double as wine waiters and had very large areas to cover and as such service was painfully slow ~ a full five courses could take 2 hours and the lights get turned on after an hour and three quarters! There were no soup spoons on the ship so both soup and consomme had to be consumed with desert spoons, food was frequently cold upon arrival and served upon cold plates. With main courses the potatoes and veg were merely symbolic 1 potato, floret of broccoli and a twist of spinach the size of a desert spoon head. Sauces ranged from none existent to bland, to straight from a packet. Pasta was the best thing to eat bar the ice cream.

All of the staff were generally courteous and happy to help ~ but does the mandatory tipping policy take away their need to do that little extra that they would otherwise have done?? Monica our cabin girl was excellent she even emptied the mini bar for us so we could fill it with coke ,wine, water and beers we had bought ashore.

The pool areas were always well stocked with towels and unoccupied sun beds were fairly easy to find. The pools could range from freezing to bath like day to day ~ make sure you take goggles, the chlorine content was so high it bleached my sons turquoise swim trunks to a pale blue with white patches and my white bikini top went yellow. After getting splashed in face one afternoon it took twenty five minutes for the swelling in my left eye to subside.

Activities were loud, but generally only explained in Italian so we didn't join in. The disco of an evening was avoided by adults and became the sole preserve of the late teens ~ the bar lads were constantly checking passports as so many teens wanted alcohol they weren't old enough to drink. (Big up to the bar manger there, he does a great job!)

This is the first ship I have been on where a game between 8 people of black jack has been ended by the croupier as they are not allowed to deal after 2am ~ on other ships I have still been playing at 5am. There is nowhere to get a drink after 2am so don't intend to party the nights before your sea days.

The Squok club was ok, fairly crowded and not really much structure as such if you called early to pick up your child or dropped them of late you would frequently find fights in full flow ~ it got to the point on the last day that my generally pleasant young daughter had had enough of being pushed and hit that when an young lad hit her she walked over to her brother and his friend and asked my son to phone me to pick her up ~ when I arrived she walked over to the lad who had bitten her and smacked him straight in the stomach even though she knew I would smack her! Apparently these were not random acts of violence~ fully fledged fights went on at every session when we asked. Beware in the high season there can be up to 800 children in the three kids club rooms and the have no maximum child to staff ratio (where as on our last cruise with 3 -6 year olds it was 1 staff to 8 children!)The trimmings are shoddy even in the kids club area as a friends child can attest ~ he fell caught his head on dado that wasn't correctly joined and ended up with three stitches ~ and that was in the mini club room!!

I took a shore excursion to Ephesus alone which was excellent and then as family we did the pyramids and Cairo Museum trip ~ a hell of a lot of money for 30 mins at the pyramids, 30 mins at the sphinx, a nice buffet lunch at the le meridien pyramids (the best food of the cruise bar what we bought ourselves in Greece) and 1 and a half hours in the Cairo museum, the rest of the time was given over to shopping! If I had known how how much time was given to Papyrus and gold I would have arranged my own tour.

Disembarkation again was fairly easy but we had arranged our transport into Rome ~ 12.40 Euros by train for the four of us to Rome Termini ~ the taxi driver at the port tried to charge us more to take us to the station (15Euro) ~ the station is the other side of the castle tower on the dockside 800m max. We had had enough of Costa by this point so we disembarked ourselves rather than battle with 200+ others from the theatre to the exit!

The ship was heavily graffittied in the lifts, on tables in public areas and on paintings and art work, in many of the corridors there were generally camped large groups of teens listening to music & smoking. They were replacing trims already (on a ship that's only just 6 months old!) in the buffet and around the pools, tiles around the pool areas have started to rust ~ she looks like she was put together on the bare minimum of a budget and that is reflected in cheap and shoddy nature of the decor.

All in all a disappointing experience & not one I will repeat. If we hadn't of got to see some amazing places with some great company, this trip would have been a total disaster