Costa Favolosa, Costa Cruises

We are first cruisers and booked a week before travelling on 17June out of Venice. The ship was spotless and an amazing floating palace we could not fault it. We took advantage of the all inclusive package offered at the time of boarding at 19€ a day each for branded drinks, cocktails and quality coffee it's fantastic value. OK the food portions are small but compensated by the number of courses and the quality was tremendous. Service was consistently amazing, friendly and helpful. There were only handful of Brits on the ship but we were all put together on the same table, not a bad thing but the other guests were also great fun. Entertainment was international in nature but really good especially the ice show. Overall we were really impressed and will definitely go with Costa again, particularly at this value, amazing.

Travelled on 16/12/2011 The Costa Favalosa cruise Jewels of the Emirates to Dubai, Muscat, Fujairah, Abu Dhabi, Khasab, Dubai. I have had several cruises with different cruise liners, so here is the informed information you may require if you are thinking of going on the Favalosa. This is a brand new ship Italian by name and Italian by nature, this ship has excellent cabin space and as you would expect all the fixtures and fittings are brand new. The ships crew are very friendly and helpful as are the rest of the ships team. The entertainment was reasonable but very European based mainly on dancing shows. Cost: On your cabin TV you can keep up to date with your account, do so as you may find that there may be mistakes made. Check your drinks packages as to what you can and cannot have as mistakes may be costly. The food in the day time restaurants as we expected was Italian based but of poor quality and variety. The evening Al a carte menu on paper looks excellent until it arrives when you find that if you expected to put on weight, don’t worry you wont, you can count the slices of meat on two fingers and the vegetables on four fingers you will be lucky if you have more than one potato sliced. We found out the staff who deliver the meals are extremely embarrassed as the head chef should be. The ports visited: (Dubai and Abu Dhabi) were jaw dropping and (Muscat) was also pleasant, (Fujairah) is apparently a good place to visit with the best duty free shop, but your not going there as we found out to our cost we went to another port with no explanation, were there was nothing to see and nothing to do.( Khasab), if you thought Fujairah was bad then it just got worse, no words can describe how cheated we feel about these last two destinations. We established from crew members that the English and Chinese more or less subsidise the Italians who pay around a third less for the same cruise. Getting around the ship was not easy and very few signs posted, you have to try to remember the names of the decks, no signage in or out side of the lifts, trying to get to the evening meal restaurant was a major trek up and down the floors as there is no direct route. On the day of Muster station practise (Boat Drill) we obtained from our cabins the life jackets noted on the cabin door where we should go, the staff on our deck told us to go the opposite way which took us twice as long to get to the muster station. Summary: If you wish to use the ship to get to your destinations only, then this is a nice ship. The dress code for the formal evenings is more casual than formal. They need to change some of their destinations and they need to think about their non Italian customers.