Costa Magica Cruise Review

Page 5
Continued from page 4

ABOVE: The Urbino Theatre is a showroom with seating on decks 3, 4, and 5.

Entertainment

Being entertained probably isn't your top priority if you're on a port-intensive cruise in the Mediterranean: Just seeing Naples, Palma de Mallorca, Valencia, Marseille, and Savona in less than a week should be entertainment enough.

Still, production shows and piano bars--along with the occasional round of karaoke-- are part of the cruising culture, so we'd be remiss if we didn't tell you what to expect on Costa Magica between dinner and bedtime.

Nightly shows: The Urbino Theatre (photo at top of page) is a large showroom with entrances on Decks 3, 4, and 5. Most of the sofa-style seats on the main floor have tables where you can park the umbrella drinks that seem to be popular with Continental cruisers. (We prefer the theatre layout on MSC Poesia, where all seating is theatre-style and drinks aren't served during shows.)

The quality of the shows varied quite a bit during our cruise. On the first night, an outstanding tenor--Antonio Calamorea--brought down the house with a program of Italian popular classics and arias from operas;  on some of the other nights, the shows were standard Broadway-style extravaganzas like those on any large American or British ship. We were impressed by ventriloquist René Luden, whose material needed updating (one joke involved Monica Lewinsky) but who managed to keep up a rapid-fire patter with his ventriloquist's dummies in half a dozen languages.

Bars and lounges: From 6 p.m. until the early hours of the morning, Costa Magica's bars and lounges offer music by singers, pianists, duets, pop combos, and dance bands. There's also a discotheque, the  Disco Grado, for dancers who prefer DJs to live performers.

Animation team: The cruise director and a team of "animators" (mostly in their 20s or early 30s) do their best to get passengers off their feet at outdoor dance parties, karaoke sessions, and other scheduled or impromptu events. Their efforts weren't always successful: One party reminded us of a junior high-school dance with enthusiastic but ineffectual chaperones.

Casino Sicilia: Costa Magica has a large casino that's open for business in the evenings (when the ship is between ports) and on sea days. Passengers can risk their money on slot machines and the usual table games. Bingo in the Grand Bar Salento is another popular activity.

Daytime entertainment: During the day, passengers who don't go ashore can keep busy with darts competitions, cooking demonstrations, "marble bod" and "belly bump" tournaments, trivia quizzes, card games, dance lessons, arts and crafts, and a host of other activities. (We're still wondering what the "Coke Fanta Sprite" game was: maybe a product-placement version of "Paper Rock Scissors?")

Next page: Children's activities

Top photo copyright © Costa Cruises.