rtw68

We purchase when its available. Plan on doing so until we are Platinum after 2019 cruise.

Like the early boarding, right to stateroom, luggage early, priority guest services line, and priority debarkation which we will take advantage of with an earlier flight.

Worth it to us.

If the buffet is closed, how can you get coffee there 24/7?

The food areas are closed but the drink and ice cream machines are still available 24/7. :-)

We will be one day short of platinum on our 2019 14 days cruise so we booked a short 4 day in October. Yeah, we are addicted (and want the benefits for that long cruise!) :-P

We booked the steakhouse for the free wine one cruise, started booking each cruise because that's our cruise kick-off tradition now. :-)

omg.... another Clevelander!!

YES!! Goooo O-H-I-O!! :-)

I know I am addicted because all my friends greet me as follows: "So Richard, how many days?" You don't think that I talk too much about cruising?

Too funny, I have a couple people at work that ask me the same thing. They also cruise so its a shared addiction! :-)

We really love the Magic and Breeze but want to try something different. I found an itinery we want to do on both Sunshine and Conquest. Any suggestions on which to choose? Both cruises 8 day to southern Caribbean.

 

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Definitely Conquest. We were on the Sunshine and while it was a fun cruise, I would not go on that ship again. Too much packed into too small a space. We are going on Conquest in 60 days. Were on Liberty, and loved that ship.

We were on the Vista last April. Although we have never had a bad Carnival cruise, I can honestly say that the Vista was not our favorite ship. Three of the biggest flaws in my opinion is the lack of an Atrium, the casino placement and complete smoke-out that it was (we were there for our muster drill), and some of the smaller venues (show room and comedy venue).

Knowing how small the comedy venue was caused us to get in line an hour early (and there were people there already). It really puts me in mind of the Sunshine (same issues). Again, we enjoyed our cruises on both, but it has left us going back to the smaller ships (Conquest, Ecstasy, and Freedom in the future).

We definitely think its worth it. Been watching for any remaining FTTF's to become available and one did this morning for our April cruise and I snagged it.

God willing we will be Platinum for our 2019 cruise and will not need to purchase FTTF in the future.

Never had an issue with drinks being smaller or weaker with Cheers compared to paying-as-you-go. As others have mentioned, we tip an extra $1, which the bartenders are always pleased to get.

Previous posters have said you can get a water with an alcoholic drink...?!

We had Cheers on the Vista last year and had no issues getting a drink along with a bottle of water at the same time.

Thanks for the review! Looking forward to more, we are taking this cruise (some different ports) in January 2019.

We have purchased Cheers three times and probably won't do it again. For us, even being moderate drinkers while on a cruise, we never "beat" the cost of Cheers compared to just buying whatever/whenever we wanted to.

Vista sounds pretty awful. Just trying to smash so much into a "small" ship and creating a disaster in the process. I love big atriums, that's something I'd miss for sure.

It wasn't horrible, after all, it was a cruise! :-)

We all think that we will stay away from the Vista class moving forward, and stick with the Conquest or Dream class. I really wonder what the future holds with the smaller passenger ratios.

I really appreciate your thorough review. Personally I found the way you broke it down to subject areas both interesting and helpful.

 

Thanks and happy sailing.

Thank you! I was trying to do something a little different, I had a lot of questions before we left. :-)

Thank you for your very balanced and fair review - we'll be on the Vista in the fall and can't wait! Totally agree with you about CD Mike Pack - we had the pleasure of cruising with him about 3 years ago, and he really was one of the best we've ever had!! It's a toss up for us between Matt (who was our CD on the Breeze 2 years ago) and Mike - they're both fantastic!!

We hope to cruise with Matt in the future, he looks like a riot too!

Thanks for the review! My family and i will be sailing on the vista in july!

Enjoy! There are definitely some very good things about Vista, we had a good time, in spite of the things we didn't like!

Thanks for the review.

Your welcome, hope it was helpful!

DEBARKATION - GOOD

Debarkation was typical. Of course they kicked us off the ship (there should be a law against that). Miami has the baggage claim very much like an airport. We normally have a ported take our luggage for us (which gets us through the lines quicker) but did not need to do so this time.

The customs staff looked at our passports quickly and did not even take the customs form (hate filling that stupid thing out).

We were off the ship and awaiting the transportation service right after 10:00AM (we were zone 20).

Thanks for reading along, please let me know if you have any questions at all, I will do my best to answer them!

SHIP MOVEMENT - GOOD

The Vista has a shimmy like the Dream and Breeze have. One thing I don't recall noticing before was several areas of the ship on deck 8 (and I'm sure the other decks) that required a slight ramp going up or down to accommodate the difference in the floor levels of the assembled blocks of the ship. Not sure if Fincantieri had assembly issues? Maybe the other ships have had the same thing.

I had watched a video on Youtube that someone had posted showing the flex in the hallway on one of the decks. I didn't wait to watch that, however :-P

The seas were not too bad during our cruise, so I'm sure it handles differently in rougher seas.

CRUISE DIRECTOR - EXCELLENT, NO.. FANTASTIC!

A cruise director has never made or broken our cruise. We were kind of disappointed that Matt was not going to be on our cruise. Never had heard of Mike Pack before and we didn't expect anything good or bad.

I have to say that he was, without a doubt, the best cruise director on any of our cruises. That guy was EVERYWHERE! In the Lido at breakfast, on deck 0 during port days, during show times. He truly cares about everyone having a good time and it showed. Very funny and talented guy as well. The love and marriage show was a riot.

Mike will be the cruise director of the Horizon and it is greatly deserved. I sure hope we will cruise with him in the future!

HUB APP - GOOD

First experience with the hub app. Will definitely use it again. Purchased the Internet package for both work and personal use ($136 for the premium for eight days). Only one device can be connected at a time. The last sea day, however, both DW and I were connected at the same time for the better part of the day.

Were able to keep in touch with our kids/grandkids during the week using the Facebook messenger video call. Worked ok, but it is satellite internet (which is fully of latency and delays).

The fun times and folio access were great. Prevented me from having to go to the kiosks or guest services to check on things. They also have the chat feature but we really didn't use that (costs $5.00 per person for the entire cruise).

One thing I didn't receive was the final bill (I normally go to the kiosk to get a print-out). I did some screen shots for our records including the Internet charge so I could get reimbursed.

PHOTOS - GOOD

Gone are the days of sifting through hundreds of photos to find your own. The Vista has iPads in the photo area that you use to find your photos. It is not perfect, as I had some pictures on my folio that did not look anything like me/us at all!

The hub app is a perfect way to purchase the photos. Once you buy them, they download a full resolution picture to your device. I always scanned our pictures from past cruises or purchased them on a USB, so it was nice to have them available immediately.

The technology will hopefully get better over time, but it worked pretty well during our cruise. One thing we didn't do was have a lot of pictures taken this cruise. I think we purchase three (including the embarkation photo).

SKYRIDE - EXCELLENT

Since we didn't have a lot going on at the ports, we decided to get on the Skyride when it opened at noon in La Romana. We were number five and six (myself and my father-in-law) in line and found it to be a blast!

They have four total cars (two per side) and before opening the workers test out each one.

I did a Go-Pro of the ride that I'm hoping to get on YouTube in the near future. They have you put on a harness (that was interesting) and they buckle you from the back to the bike (probably to discourage idiots and potential jumpers), and then you also use a seat belt. We watched some people go full speed through it and others go very slowly. We opted to take a slow ride to enjoy it!

I can see if you are afraid of heights you could freeze up (we did see someone do that, and the worker had to come with the second car and push them along).

We did not take advantage of the other Sports Square activities (rope course, putt-putt golf, etc).

POOL/LOUNGING AREAS - GOOD/FAIR

The areas are small, like on many other ships. We found out best opportunities to get loungers were during port days, and very early in the morning. The chair hogs started very early! During one sea day, we did get loungers early, and ate breakfast there so we could keep our spots

The pools are salt water, and were refreshing in the heat. We stayed out of the pools on busy days, though. With the deck areas, there were always spots to sit.

Serenity area was always busy, we did spend a little time there during a port day, but the bar didn't open up until after everyone started coming back on board.

SHOW VENUES - POOR

My opinions of the venues are separate of the comedians and shows, which were very good. Flick and America Rocks were fantastic.

The Limelight Lounge (comedy venue) is very small and poorly laid-out for a ship that large. They also have large poles throughout the venue and can block the view of many of the people. The chairs are so tight and it is difficult to sit in the front part of the lounge. We sat further back along the counter with bar stools and that was the best way to see as well. There was always a long line waiting to get into the adult shows, so we planned accordingly and arrived about 40 minutes prior to show-time. That lounge holds 375 people, but they generally tried to jam over 425-450 in there!

The Liquid Lounge is a very strange concept. We experienced it on the Sunshine and the Vista. The venue size between the two ships was basically the same (which was shocking due to the increase in passengers). They also had large poles blocking the view of many people. Again, we arrived early (about 30-40 minutes) and waited in line to enter. They do integrate the audience with the shows so one positive is you get close and personal to the singers and dancers. We sat in the upper sections on Deck 5 (the show room is only on Decks 4 and 5) for the Hasbro Game Show and the seating design is horrible up there. We had difficulty seeing the action because of the people in front of us and the glass panels. Again, the key is they mashed down the venues to fit more people on the ship.