Four names in thirty-five years, and she is still sailing
The Costa Classica no longer sails for Costa. Out of an Italian yard in
1991, 221 metres, 654 cabins, 1308 travellers at double occupancy, she has
carried four successive names and she is still sailing today, thirty-five years
after her launch.
The chain is easy to follow. Costa Classica from 1991 to 2014. Then Costa
neoClassica from 2014 to 2018, after a renaming tied to the launch of an
in-house range. Then sold in 2018 to a Bahamian company, which operated her
under a third name. Then renamed a fourth time in May 2022 under the American
brand that has run her since.
What that means for our site
We have two separate pages for this single hull: this one, under her
original name, and another under the name she carried from 2014 to 2018. That
is a fault in our catalogue, not a maritime reality, and it is logged in the
corrections tracker.
The ship herself is doing well. She came out of dry dock at Grand Bahama in
January 2026 and sails out of West Palm Beach to the Bahamas. This page sells
nothing: it says where the hull is and under what name.
The ships Costa still operates
The Costa Smeralda and the Costa Toscana run on liquefied natural gas. The Costa Pacifica and the Costa Fascinosa share the
fleet's most common class.
The line, and what happened to it
Sixteen ships in 2019, eight today. Half the fleet left in six years: sold to
American, Chinese or British companies, transferred to other brands of the same
group, or cut up in a Turkish demolition yard. Of our seventeen Costa pages,
nine describe a ship the line no longer operates.
Costa was born in Genoa in 1854, in the olive oil trade. It has run ships
since 1924 and carried passengers since 1947. An American group took half of it
in 1997 and all of it in 2000. It is today one of the nine cruise brands in
that group, and its position there has weakened.
The wreck of 13 January 2012 off the island of Giglio killed 33 of the 4252
people aboard, including a diver killed during the salvage. The captain was
sentenced to sixteen years. It is from that wreck that the muster drill before
sailing comes, on every cruise ship in the world.
Where this hull is today
She still sails. Sold by Costa in March 2018, she carried the name Grand
Classica, then has been Margaritaville at Sea Paradise since May 2022. She
leaves Port of Palm Beach, Florida, for two to five nights towards the Bahamas,
Key West and Cozumel, and our inventory carries one hundred and forty-one dates
under her present name.
It is the same 1991 hull, the same atrium, the same timber decks. What
changed is the flag, the home port and the way she is sold. A traveller with a
good
memory of this ship can therefore board her again; they simply have to look for
her under today's name.
Leaving from Quebec
Air travel is booked separately. From Montreal, Rome, Barcelona and Athens
are reached non-stop for part of the year; Savona, Genoa, Kiel, Hamburg and the
Caribbean ports need a connection. A hotel night before embarkation is not a
luxury, it is the margin that absorbs a delayed bag.
On recourse, the situation deserves saying clearly. The carrier is Italian,
the contract provides for Italian law, and the competent courts are those of
Genoa, to the exclusion of all others. The contract also invokes the Athens
Convention, which caps liability for personal injury. This is not particular to
this line: most European cruise operators have equivalent clauses.
Nothing establishes a Quebec licence in the line's name. Voyages AquaTerra
holds that licence: trust account, Compensation Fund for Customers of Travel
Agents, and one file for flight, cruise, hotel and insurance.
