On a recent cruise on the Golden in the Med we saw Festival ships in several ports including in Venice. They look like older versions of Celebrity or Princess ships. We have never been on them but just seeing them in the ports they looked clean and in good shape. One thing I heard from someone on our cruise was that if you only speak English and you are sailing on one of the Italian or Greece ships in the Med you might find yourself lost because I guess if the large majority of the people on the ship speak Spanish, Italian, German, etc., sometimes they only do the announcements in those languages. I know we were on the Costa Atlantica and there the announcements were often done in 3 or 4 languages but English was always included.
I will be back to check on this thread as I would be interested in seeing what people who have been on European based cruise lines think of the experience.