Costa Concordia:

‘A Vacation Island’

By Marilyn Green

“Costa Concordia will be a very spiritual ship,” Costa Crociere CEO Pier Luigi Foschi told me at Seatrade this year, and Costa Cruise Lines’ newest ship certainly lives up to that image. With each deck named for a different European country, the name Concordia itself invokes peace and harmony in Europe. And the ship’s major innovation, the Samsara spa, accommodations and restaurant, carries the image of the spiritual journey toward oneness with the Divine.
The Concordia, the first of its class and the largest Italian cruise ship ever built, is a wonderful reason to cruise the Mediterranean year-round. Costa calls it a vacation island, rather than a ship, and the passengers agree.
With the same structure of the Carnival Conquest class ships, the Concordia has placed its own seal on the template, as playful art follows the decks and the European nations they are named for. Design elements are taken from European architectural styles up until the 1900s and public areas named after beautiful European cities, so guests can arrange to meet in Paris, London, Dublin, Prague, Vienna, Barcelona, Rome, Stockholm, Milan, Helsinki, Vienna, Lisbon, Athens and Budapest.
The names are carried through as themes: the Tatra Library is done in elegant light wood typical of the Polish city of Zapokane, a famous ski resort in the Tatra mountains. The décor of the Virtual World, packed with video games, was inspired by Denmark’s colorful Lego blocks.
The intimate 105-seat Concordia Club, the ship’s a la carte restaurant, is dedicated to the Netherlands, with each chair looking like a Mondrian and entertainment accompanying the excellent dining by candlelight, along with a lavish wine list and dedicated service. Like the Samsara Restaurant, the menu here was created by Ettore Bocchia, executive chef at the Michelin-starred Grand Hotel in Bellagio. He is particularly famous for his molecular cuisine that brings out the maximum flavor of each ingredient. This involves cooking with liquid nitrogen to produce explosive flavor, and cooking fish in melted sugar, not oil, which diminishes cooking time and leaves succulent, perfectly cooked fish. The sugar doesn’t come in contact with the fish, which is wrapped in leek leaves that give it a delicate flavor.
The main dining rooms, Milano and Roma, are spacious and comfortable, with enormous windows to gaze out at the sea. Leisured diners, more numerous among Europeans than Americans, enjoyed relaxed and lengthy breakfasts and dinners. Most of the guests were in the dining room for dinner, which offered a very impressive succession of seafood, pasta dishes and traditional meats and poultry, accompanied by varied soups and salads and sinful desserts. The people at the table adjoining mine were choosing their desserts first and then fitting their meals to whatever appetite they expected to have left. “You can’t waste these pastries,” one announced very seriously.
The Paris Buffet is next to the Lido for — what else — sidewalk café-type dining and was constantly seeing a great deal of action. The Helsinki cafeteria may be decorated with Scandinavian restraint, but there was nothing restrained about the extensive selections of food available, with very crisp vegetables and salads and hot and cold seafood dishes, along with at least four pasta selections, vegetables and yet more gorgeous desserts.
With pizza available in one form or another from 11 a.m. to 1:30 the next morning, and a huge teatime at 4:30 pm, it’s a miracle that anyone could do justice to the late night treats (but they did). And guests enthused about an eclectic mixture of hot dogs, burgers, lasagna, grilled fish, sophisticated beef dishes and huge breakfasts as they gravitated from one dining area to another.
On most nights, there was no cafeteria or buffet service for dinner, although the children on board had some special dinners there on formal nights. A few opted for room service after a particularly long day on shore, and there were plenty of choices on the in-room menu to please them.
Even those passengers sated on the conventional meals succumbed to the Helsinki Coffee and Chocolate Bar, where approaching guests are lured by the wonderful aroma of the chocolate fountain. The Stockholm Sports Bar, another major gathering place day and night, has enough plasma screens to accommodate sports fans, each following their own teams.
Cited by Costa as the ship’s main innovation, the Samsara wellness center has a different theme from the rest of the ship, drawn from traditions throughout Asia. Judging by the fact that the Samsara staterooms sell out very rapidly and by the enthusiasm of the passengers who had such rooms, the concept is a tremendous success. It will be repeated on the line’s Serena, debuting next year.
With its innovative Samsara wellness center, Costa has not only included a really remarkable 20,500 square foot spa, but has designated 55 staterooms and 12 suites as Samsara accommodations. with fares about 20% above comparable accommodations. The price is more than reasonable, because it includes the treatments, classes and private restaurant. Staterooms are located inside the spa center and have direct access to spa facilities via a private elevator, and the private Samsara restaurant is intimate, magnificent and worth the extra cruise ticket charge alone.
A box of Elemis hair and skincare amenities is placed in each Samsara room for each guest, and the accommodations all have flat screen TVs. Samsara guests are offered a Welcome Ritual, a package of treatments and services included in the price of the cruise, an invitation to the Tea Ceremony, two treatments of their choice, two fitness or meditation lessons, admission to the Relaxation Area with Solarium and UVA rays, unlimited entry into the spa and its spectacular Thalassotherapy Pool and a table reserved at the Ristorante Samsara with its wellness menu supervised by Ettore Bocchia.
Samsara guests can also opt for the Ristorante Milanese or the Ristorante Roma, but they rarely did, since their own restaurant, open for all three meals daily, serves exquisite food with extremely personal service in a private ambience decorated with spectacular kimonos. However, those who expect spartan meals will be surprised to find plenty of rich dishes and desserts, and even the most religious anti-carb devotee will have trouble refusing the superb breadbasket.
Guests can get special couples packages with the Oriental VIP House and Oriental Deluxe House (mini-apartments, where passengers can also order champagne and other delicacies, a wonderful honeymoon or anniversary option).
The spa itself has a Rock Sauna for cleansing the skin and preparing it for treatments, an Aromatic Turkish Bath scented with rosemary, eucalyptus and lavender and a Tepidarium, a transitional spa bath.
The huge heated Thalassotherapy Pool, presided over by giant and colorful Chinese Foo Dogs, has jets of seawater to massage the body. In the Thermal and Treatment Room, clients can have a body treatment using steam and three kinds of clay that leave the skin smoother and helps to restore tone and elasticity. A full menu of Ayurvedic treatments and Ayurvedic teas are offered.
The fitness area is enormous and has a huge array of Techno-gym equipment, weights, cycles and full body aerobics machines.
Classes are held in a glass-walled separate section, which can be closed off completely with surrounding draperies for meditation classes, where privacy and quiet are crucial. Classes are very well taught — stretch and aerobic classes complimentary and others, including yoga, spinning, Pilates mat work and music therapy with a small charge. Samsara guests may reserve two of the classes free of charge; in the case where one person doesn’t choose to take a class, the other can have all four.
The same is true of treatments, with two complimentary ones designated for each person in the Samsara staterooms. The spa menu includes several kinds of massage, facials, body treatments and anti-aging choices, and there are exceptional barbering treatments for men, with shaves and skincare. Treatment rooms are spacious and beautiful; two couples’ rooms have private jacuzzis. Treatment rooms also have their own little gated relaxation areas with panoramic sea views past the sun lounges for those seeking tanning.
However, the most seductive of the quiet areas is the recovery area that many guests would have preferred never to leave. Magnificent canopied beds, whose soft curtains could be drawn around the relaxing guest for privacy, were placed in a cool, dim room that seems to be in a separate world from the rest of the ship.
The private elevator is a key factor in the pleasures of the Samsara community, traversing the three levels through a soothing waterfall to take robed and slippered guests to their treatments without having to emerge into the public areas of the ship.
One hundred eighty degrees from the serenity of the relaxation room is another innovation, the Grand Prix driving simulator, with a design based on cutting edge engineering and IT analysis. The same size and shape as a real Grand Prix car, it uses the same technology as top drivers work with to hone their skills. There are four modes of difficulty, from surviving three minutes racing on a national track without other drivers all the way up to Championship Mode, where you drive a qualifying lap and seven racing laps on an international track in 13 minutes or less. The simulator is available only to passengers 16 and over, with height and weight requirements. Optimistic guests can choose to record their performances.
For more conventional exercise, the Ponte Francia pool deck is actually two decks with two swimming pools with retractable glass roofs, the largest enclosable pool area on any cruise ship. A movie screen on the pool deck has a multilingual audio system; evening movies are offered in packages with drinks (alcoholic or non-alcoholic for around $13 and $11 respectively).
Stateroom colors are warm and attractive, with neutral walls and beds and pillows that drew raves from passengers. Pay-per-view movies, television and music stations are available in the staterooms, along with direct-dial ship-to-shore telephone, Suites and mini-suites of all kinds are striking in décor and have private whirlpool baths. Inside and outside standard cabins are larger than most at 160-184 square feet. Judging by the number of families aboard, many passengers opted for multiple staterooms or suites.
Children’s programs are divided into four groups by age, with the Mini Club for children 3-6, the Maxi Club for 7-11, the Teen Junior Club for those 12-14 and the Teen Club for ages 15-17. Activities from treasure hunts to sports competitions, pool parties and karaoke are provided, and the children, a very mixed linguistic group, seemed undaunted by any communication problems and enthusiastically participated.
For the grown-ups, the three-level 1,287-seat Athens Theatre hosts shows, from Broadway-style extravaganzas to comedy, many related to the destinations the ship sails through. The Barcelona casino has slot machines, many of them with very amusing animations, roulette and blackjack tables. There is dancing to bands in the lounges and on deck as well as a sunken and extremely lively disco and a singalong piano bar that attracted a very enthusiastic crowd every night of our cruise.
Days are filled with exercise classes and games by the pools, arts and crafts sessions, bingo, art auctions, lessons in various languages, trivia contests and health and beauty seminars. Guests also used the card room, the Internet Café and the library liberally.

Tearing themselves away from the ship, guests explored Costa Concordia’s port calls with tours from buses to bicycles, themed for shopping, nature, beaches, history, culture, culinary experiences and arts. Guests leave their passports in check so the ship can clear customs and are provided with a photocopy for shore excursions, a measure that eliminates worries about passport theft, as well.
A very delightful aspect of cruising on the Concordia is that guests can and do embark and disembark in several ports, so there is no “last night” drop in the ship’s energy and disembarkation is easy, perhaps the smoothest and quickest I have seen on any ship of this size.
Costa Concordia sails weeklong cruises from Civitavecchia (Rome), Italy to Savona (Genoa), Italy; Barcelona, Spain; Palma De Mallorca, Balearic Islands; Tunis, Tunisia; Valletta, Malta; and Palermo, Sicily; pricing starts at $899 per person, double.
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