Welcome to Hughes's review of the Costa Cruises, Costa Mediterranea. ReviewThatCruise.com is first for Costa Mediterranea Reviews & Costa Mediterranea ship reviews.
The hotel services, entertainment, and dining were excellent. However Costa Cruise Lines needs to better it logistics on disembarkation and embarkation processes. Two of my four shore excursions were cancelled. The Cozumel dive excursion took 1.5 hours to get to the pier and once we arrived they notified us that the excursion was cancelled and they did not try to reschedule with another dive outfit. One couple had over 100 pounds of equipment and had to go back to the ship and then made it back to Cozumel 2.5 hours later.
The ticketing, security and wait for the bus at the terminal in Miami took 2.5 hours for us when we arrived at 3:30pm. People who arrived at 1pm took 3.5-4 hours to get through to the ship. There were too few buses to transport people from the terminal to the ship.
Security in Roatan took 1.5 hours where the queue broke down because many foreigners did not respect the queue and forced their way to the front of the line. Tempers and anger went rampant.
We almost disembarked in Grand Cayman, but due to a tropical storm the port authorities closed the port.
This cruise departed 22 Dec 2006 and returned 30 Dec 2006. Possibly due to the high attendance on all cruise lines there were from 5 to 9 cruise liners per port. Never again will I travel on a cruise during the holidays. I believe Costa Cruise must have the lowest priority for docking or does not compete monetarily so that it can dock at the piers.
When I went to file a formal complaint for the cancelled Cozumel dive, I was amazed at the others who were also filing complaints for their shore excursion too.
The service on board was outstanding, so as long as you never leave the ship you should very happy. Why even try to stop at any port of call with the poor embarkation and debarkation processes that Costa provides. This cruise was not worth the money for the anxiety received. It was not a leisure cruise!
