This page and another describe the same hull
We have to start there, because it is the most useful fact on this page. The
Costa neoClassica is not a separate ship: she is the Costa Classica of 1991,
renamed in 2014 at the launch of an in-house range. One hull, two names, and
two pages on our site.
That is a fault in our catalogue, logged in the corrections tracker. Two
competing pages on a single ship cannibalise each other in search, and they let
a reader believe the line operated two similar ships when it only ever had
one.
What became of the hull
She no longer sails for Costa. Sold in 2018 to a Bahamian company, operated
under a third name, then renamed a fourth time in May 2022 under the American
brand that has run her since. She came out of dry dock at Grand Bahama in
January 2026 and sails out of West Palm Beach.
Two hundred and twenty-one metres, 654 cabins, 1308 travellers at double
occupancy. Thirty-five years after her launch, she is still working.
The ships Costa still operates
The Costa Serena leaves for South America. The Costa Favolosa covers the fjords and the Caribbean.
The Costa Diadema is the most accessible in the fleet. The Costa Deliziosa has the best ratio of cabins
with a balcony.
What to know about the line
Costa lost half its fleet between 2019 and 2026: from sixteen hulls to
eight. Seven were sold or transferred, one was scrapped. Nine of our seventeen
pages therefore describe a ship that has changed name, flag and company, or
that no longer exists at all.
The house is a hundred and seventy years old. Genoese, founded in olive oil
in 1854, a shipowner since 1924, a carrier of passengers since 1947. It has
belonged to an American group since 2000 and counts among its nine cruise
brands. Three of its ships have been transferred in recent years to the group's
North American brand.
On the Costa Concordia wreck, the facts without the novel. On 13 January
2012, off the island of Giglio, 4252 people aboard, 33 dead including a salvage
diver, the captain sentenced to sixteen years and the company fined after
pleading guilty. The muster drill before sailing, compulsory everywhere today,
follows directly from it.
Where this hull is today
Under a fourth name, and still selling. After leaving Costa in March 2018
she sailed as Grand Classica, then has carried the name
Margaritaville at Sea Paradise since May 2022, out of Florida towards the
Bahamas. Our inventory carries one hundred and forty-one dates under that
name.
One useful caution before sending anyone there: only ten cabins have a
step-out balcony on this ship, which has not changed since she was built. The
current ship's page gives the category detail and the mandatory daily charges
added to the advertised fare.
Arranging this trip from Montreal
The flight is booked separately. Plan a night on site before embarkation,
and keep the return day free: an early disembarkation and a tight connection
sit badly together. Mediterranean ports are often reached non-stop from
Montreal for part of the year; the others need a connection.
The contract of passage provides for Italian law and the courts of Genoa,
exclusively. The carrier is an Italian company; the North American entity is
its sales agent and not the carrier. The Athens Convention, invoked in the
contract, caps liability for personal injury.
Nothing establishes that this line holds a Quebec travel agent's licence.
Your protection comes from the licensed agency: Voyages AquaTerra deposits your
payments in a trust account and your file falls under the Compensation Fund for
Customers of Travel Agents.
