Welcome to Jane Purday's review of the Costa Cruises, Costa Atlantica. ReviewThatCruise.com is first for Costa Atlantica Reviews & Costa Atlantica ship reviews.
After reading countless negative reviews after we booked our cruise on Costa Atlantica, as first time cruisers we were very dubious about what to expect on board. I have to say, all our fears were completely unfounded! We did a seven night eastern Caribbean cruise to St Thomas, San Juan and Nassau in December 2009 with our two year old daughter and after reading such bad reviews, we were very pleasantly surprised.
Our cabin was very clean, comfortable and much more spacious than expected with ample storage space. Our steward was very friendly and always willing to accommodate any requests we had. The air conditioning was nice and quiet. We opted for a balcony cabin which I would definitely recommend. The only negative comment to make amount the cabin was the room service (or lack of). When we called to order a bottle of wine to be delivered to the cabin, someone was then sent to our room to take the order and then proceeded to go to the bar to collect the wine. A very lengthy procedure when we could have gone to the bar and ordered a bottle of wine with an ice bucket ourselves. All public areas on the ship were very clean and comfortable.
Given that we were travelling with a small child, we chose to eat most meals in the Botticelli self-service buffet and the food was lovely. There were many different foods available with a different cuisine theme every day and the food was freshly cooked. As well as offering a self service counter there was also a fresh cooked pasta station offering a choice of pasta with two or three different sauce options. If we were peckish outside of the serving times then we made use of the self service mexican and burger bars which were open throughout most of the day. We also ate a couple of meals in the Tiziano restaurant which was most enjoyable. During lunch and dinner courses they offered a six course selection menu. The only thing we found limiting about eating in the restaurant at dinner time was that the seating times were 6pm and 8.45pm, the former being too early for us and the latter too later for our daughter. The self service Botticelli restaurant opened at 7.30pm making it the perfect time. We chose to take advantage of the room service breakfast every day, even though it was only a continental breakfast, there was plenty of choice. I had read many reviews stating that the only complementary drink on offer was water. This was not the case and available to us throughout the day was water, tea, coffee, milk and iced tea.
I would not recommend making much use of the excursions offered by the Costa tours office as most of the ports were easily accessible on foot or via taxi. We spent close to three hours in Nassau sitting in a coach in a traffic jam visiting three sites, when we could have walked it in probably close to an hour! San Juan was lovely, definitely worth walking through the town and up to El Morro fort.
I had also read very negative reviews about the staff being very rude and unfriendly. This also proved not to be the case. The catering staff in the restaurants were lovely and very attentive, particularly towards our daughter who loved all the attention! The stewards and house keeping staff were also happy and friendly.
The ONLY negative comment I have to make about the cruise as a whole was the disembarkation procedure. Everyone was given different colour tags to disembark the ship at different times throughout the morning. We were given tags to exit third to last at 9.30am. There was a long line of passengers waiting to exit the ship and then once in the port terminal we waited in a VERY long line for around 45 minutes to leave the terminal. The whole procedure seemed very disorganised.
Overall, a thoroughly enjoyable cruise for us as a family. I would definitely ignore any negative reviews you find on search engines. We would book a cruise with Costa again.
Positives
Friendly staff, clean and comfortable cabin, great dining options and lovely food
Negatives
Disembarkation procedure, lack of child care for under 3\'s
