Favolosa review - 16 days Dubai to Venice....

[pujro]

Embarkation - Absolutely fine, a bit old fashioned compared to some companies, but it did the job. Special mention – the Costa guy behind the desk at Dubai terminal. We were there very early on Friday morning, before the luggage handlers, and he personally took charge of our luggage behind his desk and ensured it was labelled and taken aboard later in our absence.

 

Compulsory Hotel Service Charge - 6 Euro per day per person - no choice!(we complained at the time and subsequently to Costa UK - in our opinion, if it's compulsory it should be in the initial holiday price.)

 

Staff - Overall excellent, friendly, polite, helpful, everything you’d hope for. We do think the “suits” are always a bit more aloof on Italian ships, which we don’t like, but maybe that’s a culture thing.

 

Food - Breakfast(buffet) – we only went once, it was terrible. Maybe this is just Italian taste, but the cooked stuff really was poor.

Buffet Lunch/pm – main buffet area had too little variation in choice and mostly not hot enough. Some of the specials were very good though, Indian, German, Greek, etc. Sandwiches at “tea-time” were always dry and boring, same thing over and over again. Also presenting sandwiches individually on open trays just dries them out quickly, truly awful. Salad good. Panini bar excellent. Fries excellent. However, overall the main buffet choice and quality was the worst we’ve had in ten cruises.

Buffet overall - main opening hours are far too short, closing at 3pm on most days and only extended when excursions were due back late evening. Buffet should be around into the evening as an alternative to fixed dining.

Main dining room – Excellent food, staff, atmosphere, the lot. The two guys who served at our table were great.

Sanitisers were evident but there was no encouragement to use them and most passengers did not.

 

Bar service – overall excellent.

J2 drinks package – we were told beforehand that it included minibar and bottled water in the room, it didn’t! Presumably this is a recent change that nobody bothered to tell us about. Luckily we found out early and stopped using it. We simply picked up drinks and bottled water en route to our room to avoid the charges. Pre-cruise - Getting any official information about J2 is like some kind of secret service mission, nothing on the website, no leaflets, no terms and conditions – ridiculous.

 

Entertainment – special mention to the guy in the piano bar most evenings, Arthur Petersen? He basically kept us sane amongst all the Italian stuff! One thing that should be mentioned, the piano bar entertainment people often didn’t perform the late slot if not many people showed up – very disappointing. Sometimes they just sat around chatting.

DJ in disco, absolutely hopeless, no interaction, just constant “mix” type music. Average crowd in there for the period we were on was under 10 people, that says it all really doesn’t it.

 

Crew Drills – why, oh why do Lines persist with morning drills?! We’re encouraged stay up late, casino, disco, etc., then what do we get, the emergency tones and crew announcements blasted into the cabin at 10am!!

(not just a Costa thing of course)

 

Room – Excellent apart from the awful drawer/cupboard handles, very difficult to open! Another English TV channel would be nice but hey, you can’t have everything.

 

Smoking policy – we knew what it was beforehand so can’t complain as such, but surely it’s time for the industry to get it’s “heads” together and agree on one policy. Incidentally, smoking on Favolosa definitely happens in non smoking areas, and in front of staff.

 

Disembarkation – We followed the instructions to the letter, however having arrived bang on time for the “Orange” time slot, and having waited around for 15 minutes or so, the next announcement was for “Black”, the one due after “Orange”. We go and ask, turns out “Orange” went early, no announcements, nothing. So we rush off fearing the one and only airport transfer coach may have gone without us. I ask a Costa person quayside where to go for the coach and I’m directed to the red building on the right which turns out to be the luggage drop. We look around, no Costa people. Eventually we spot coaches back in the direction we just came from and find the transfer coach.

 

No such thing as a bad cruise but plenty of room for improvement here. We've cruised with Costa before, 6 years ago, much better then. I'm afraid this cruise lies tenth in our ten cruise league table.

[lady peacock]

Hi we have just got our land legs back from the cruise Dubai to Venice Costa Favolosa.

 

We had a fantastic time.

 

We did have problems in the MDR, but a quiet word we did get it sorted.

 

I dont think there was anything else we could have complained about, great ship, met some wonderful people the best table for dinner we have ever had on any cruise, so good two of our table buddies have booked to travel again with us next year.

 

Most of the ports of call we have done before but to be honest the ports wasnt the reason we booked the cruise.

 

The day through the Suez was a day we will never forget.

 

This was our second Costa Cruise, but we had such a good time, we have just booked to go on Costa Atlantica April 2013 Dubai to Singapore.:D