Costa Deliziosa

Costa Deliziosa is the smallest ship Costa still runs and the one it trusts with the longest voyages. Fincantieri delivered her at Marghera on January 31, 2010, on a hull that is a hybrid: broadly the Vista-class platform that Holland America and Carnival also used, with elements of the earlier Spirit class, built as a pair with Costa Luminosa, which is now Carnival Luminosa and no longer in this fleet. At 92,720 gross tons and 2,260 guests at double occupancy she carries barely two-fifths of what Costa Toscana does, on a hull that is only forty metres shorter.

That gives her the best space-per-guest figure in the fleet, and it is the whole reason she does what she does. She is driven by two ABB azipods rather than shafts and rudders, which makes her unusually maneuverable, and she has 934 crew to 2,260 guests, a ratio nothing else at Costa comes close to.

The 2020 voyage

She is the ship most cruise passengers know by reputation without knowing her name. She left Venice in January 2020 on a 111-night world cruise, and by March the world had closed. Port after port refused her. She kept sailing, with passengers aboard and no confirmed cases, while the rest of the industry tied up; she was eventually allowed to land Spanish and French passengers at Barcelona on April 20, and reached Genoa on April 22, 2020 as the last-but-one cruise ship at sea to put its passengers ashore.

It is worth knowing because Costa did not retire the itinerary afterward. She is still the world-cruise ship, and the voyage she sells now is a longer version of the one that got stranded.

Where she actually sails

Her calendar splits cleanly into two things: an Adriatic summer and a world cruise.

Venice, April through October. She is the fleet’s Adriatic ship, and Venice is her busiest port by a wide margin. The product is a seven-night Eastern Mediterranean week, with a fourteen-night version that is close to as common: Bari, Kotor, Dubrovnik, Split, Zadar, Corfu, Argostoli, Santorini and Mykonos in various combinations. Trieste and Piraeus serve as secondary turnarounds, and a few weeks start at Bari or Savona.

One practical note: the itineraries are named “Marghera | Venice,” and that is literal. Cruise ships of her size no longer transit the Giudecca Canal, so the Venice call and turnaround happen at the industrial terminal at Marghera on the mainland, with a transfer into the city. It is still Venice; it is not the approach past San Marco that the photographs show.

The world cruise, November through March. This is the other half of her year and it is what she is for. The full circumnavigation runs between 134 and 140 nights depending on where you join it (Barcelona at 134, Marseille at 136, Savona at 138, Civitavecchia at 140) heading east through Asia and the Pacific and home across the Atlantic. The port list from the database reads like the itinerary it is: Sydney, Tokyo, Kobe, Busan, Keelung, Hong Kong, Colombo, Cairns, Rabaul, Suva, Honolulu, Hilo, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Cape Town, Walvis Bay, Durban.

She also sells it in pieces, which is the more realistic option for most people. There are ninety-seven- to hundred-night segments from San Francisco back to the Mediterranean, a forty-seven-night Hong Kong to Marseille leg, a twenty-nine-night Hong Kong to Cape Town leg, a seventeen-night Cape Town to Barcelona run, and a sixty-four-night Marseille to Sydney. Two world cruises fall inside the current window, departing in late 2026 and again in late 2027.

Who she suits

Two quite different people, which is unusual for one ship.

For the Adriatic weeks, she suits anyone who wants the Eastern Mediterranean on a ship small enough to be pleasant. Kotor, Dubrovnik and the Greek islands are better ports on a 2,260-guest ship than on a 5,000-guest one, and the fourteen-night version is a properly thorough look at the region rather than a sampler.

For the world cruise, she suits people with a season to spare and a tolerance for a plain ship. Costa’s world cruise is priced well below Cunard’s or Holland America’s equivalent, and the space ratio means a hundred and thirty nights aboard is not the endurance test it would be on a Concordia-class hull.

She does not suit anyone who wants a new ship or a lot to do. She is from 2010, her entertainment is modest, and there is no water park, no ropes course and no specialty-dining empire. On a world cruise that is arguably the point; on a seven-night holiday with teenagers it is not.

She is also the wrong ship for anyone who wants Venice from the water. And, as everywhere on this line, the world cruise in particular carries a heavily Italian and German passenger list with everything announced in several languages, on a voyage this long, that is a hundred and thirty nights of it.