Carnival Vista 8 day review with menus. June 2nd - June 10th.

We just returned from the Carnival Vista 8 day southern Caribbean. Over the next several days I hope to put our thoughts, opinions and suggestions together for you.

As a teaser I will tell you overall we had an excellent cruise.

As another teaser I will tell you that this review will contain the good, the bad and the ugly about the Vista.

I did save all of the menus off the Carnival App and I will be sharing these as part of the review.

For now, it’s unpacking, laundry and since they didn’t allow me to take the chef through customs..cooking dinner.

Awesome, looking forward to it!! I'll be on her July 22

Looking forward to it! Especially the menus....cannot find up to date ones anywhere! We’re cruising Vista July 14.

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Sadly no one came to pick up our plates after dinner tonight and we werenot offered a dessert menu. Our house does seem a whole lot bigger and our toilets also seem quieter.

I guess it would be a good idea to introduce ourselves soyou know what perspective we are coming from. My name is Justin, I am in my early 40’s and I work in corporate IT fora hotel chain. My wife Jessica (age undisclosed)also works for a hotel chain in guest relations. We live in Orlando, FL. We both have degrees in hospitality management. We consider ourselves foodies, and we are passionate about customer service. We love vacationing and spending time in the theme parks. This was our 10th Carnival cruise and have also been on Princess, RC andDisney.

We have two daughters ages 11 and 13 (send help). They have developed our love of food and eat or will try almost anything. They travel very well and this is their 4th cruise.

We were on the same cruise

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I have a policy to never drive or fly into a cruise the day of, or at least try to be very close to the port the night before. We drove half way to Miami from Orlando and stayed over night in Port St. Lucie. We made a quick stop for dinner at a Cracker Barrel. One of the benefits of working for a major hotel chain is employee rate. We were able to score a $39 rate at a nice all suite hotel.

We enjoyed the free breakfast the next morning and headed for the port. Once arriving near the port area, the traffic was backed up well into the tunnel. We waited and waited without making much progress through the tunnel at all. It took us an hour and a half to get from the tunnel to the luggage drop off area of the ship (about a mile).

It turns out (as we were told the story later) that a little boy left a backpack unattended in the Vista luggage drop off area. This caused most of the area in front of the ship to be completely blocked off. Bomb squad and other officials were called in. There was no access to the parking garage for the Vista at berth "d". We finally ended up looping around and parking in berth "c" garage. This meant we had to haul our luggage from garage "c" to the Vista berth. It wasn't Carnival's fault but it wasn't a great way to start the vacation.

From the time we arrived at the porter station to the time we were on the ship was about 10 minutes. I'm not a fan of the new staggered arrival time (we always like to arrive early) but it does make for a smooth embarkation.

I usually get chills when I step on the ship for the first time. Months of anticipation, research and build up to that first moment on the ship. This time, there were no chills. My first impression was that the atrium area is underwhelming. The digital funnel is neat to look at but it doesn't blow you away. Wife and kids also seemed underwhelmed. The kids were excited about them announcing our family name until I reminded them that they only do that on the Disney ships.

The players. A selfie as taken by my daughter, just off the ship in Curacao.

We were on the same cruise

 

 

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Nice! Hoping you had as good of a cruise as we did.

Sadly no one came to pick up our plates after dinner tonight and we werenot offered a dessert menu. Our house does seem a whole lot bigger and our toilets also seem quieter.

 

I guess it would be a good idea to introduce ourselves soyou know what perspective we are coming from. My name is Justin, I am in my early 40’s and I work in corporate IT fora hotel chain. My wife Jessica (age undisclosed)also works for a hotel chain in guest relations. We live in Orlando, FL. We both have degrees in hospitality management. We consider ourselves foodies, and we are passionate about customer service. We love vacationing and spending time in the theme parks. This was our 10th Carnival cruise and have also been on Princess, RC andDisney.

 

 

We have two daughters ages 11 and 13 (send help). They have developed our love of food and eat or will try almost anything. They travel very well and this is their 4th cruise.

I am hooked - I also work for a hotel chain (on-boarding new hotels), as does my best friend & cruise companion (she's with rentals for a timeshare group), and we're also in our 40s, theme park addicts, and based in Orlando. :) Looking forward to your review!

I work in corporate IT for a hotel chain.

You have my commiserations (hotels.) ;)

You're off to a good start and count me in as one looking forward to the good, the bad and the ugly.

Since we arrived on board just after 1:30 we decided to drop our stuff off at the room. We had 2 options based on our budget. Do a single room with a balcony, or choose 2 connecting interior cabins. We chose the connecting interior cabins. We would realize more and more as the week went on that this was a very good choice. We were on deck 8 forward.

The interior cabins are standard fare. This is our first time staying in an interior since our very first cruise. I hadn't noticed how much smaller the closet space is for an interior. We were able to make it work, but it would have been difficult to handle the closet space if there were 4 of us in a single cabin.

I noticed all LED lighting in the cabin (this stops the clicking sound you normally hear when turning on the cabin or bathroom lights). The AC also actually worked very well in the cabin. This is the first time in several cruises that I was able to say this. Some public areas have a different story, more on this later.

Went upstairs to the Lido for lunch. I feel like Carnival always had a very good selection of food on the buffet and today was no different. However, one of my favorite foods on Carnival is their Caesar salad. This was always offered on the lunch buffet, but sadly no more. There is also no option for Caesar dressing. :-( The food was generally fresh throughout the week. I found there was often a challenge with the fried food. It wasn't always crispy.

The wife and kids decided to try the Blue Iguana tacos, which were very good with a nice selection of toppings. We would eat Tacos and Burritos here several times during the week and all was very good. If you order tacos the tortilla is freshly made via a tortilla maker, and they are delicious.

New on the Vista (I think) is the "sweet spot". Everyday they feature 2 flavors of a homemade hard ice cream. These are delicious. Our favorites were the coffee and the coconut but all were very good.

What was different for us this cruise (not sure if it is fleet wide) is the other dessert selections on Lido are cut from a whole cake by staff members. They no longer offer plates of small desserts. You can ask for as many pieces of cake or dessert as you want. They also always have chocolate chip cookies and sugar cookies. There is also always the standby 24 hour soft serve machines. I may have had ice cream after breakfast a few mornings. Don't judge I'm on vacation!

You have my commiserations (hotels.) ;)

 

You're off to a good start and count me in as one looking forward to the good, the bad and the ugly.

Thanks. Haha. It's a tough 24 hour a day business, but I love hotels..it's in my blood.

I am hooked - I also work for a hotel chain (on-boarding new hotels), as does my best friend & cruise companion (she's with rentals for a timeshare group), and we're also in our 40s, theme park addicts, and based in Orlando. :) Looking forward to your review!

Awesome, love hanging out with other hotel people.. It's always hard coming home from vacation, but not so bad when you come home to Orlando :-)

We were also on this cruise. I'm sad that you were underwhelmed by the atrium. I am a huge fan of the 10 deck high atriums on the Fantasy and Conquest class ships and while the Vista doesn't have this, I liked the Dreamscape. My daughter loved it, especially on the days that there were images of fish swimming around.

Looking forward to reading your perspective on our trip! We had a blast.

I subscribed! Can't wait to read all of your review.

The fresh made ice cream was great along with the 3 layer cakes. The normal cakes on a plate always seem to taste weird . I also thought the atrium was underwhelming but they made it that way to accommodate the movie theaters.

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After lunch we headed up to Lido to scout on some spots for the sail away. We decided on some nice seats on deck 11 that face the action. There are comfy seats on both sides of deck 11 that face the lido deck action. One thing to note here is that one side of deck 11 where these comfy chairs are is considered a smoking section. We are non-smokers and were disappointed that one entire side of the desk was dedicated to smokers (don't hate me smokers), but it is what it is.

Shortly after scouting our locations it was time for the muster drill. It should be noted that all muster stations are now inside and you are not required to bring your lifejackets. We were in the Liquid Lounge deck 5 (much, much more on Liquid Lounge later). It was impossible to hear the announcements during the drill. This would become a theme during the cruise. Public announcements were very muffled. Not sure if this is a speaker or microphone problem but it seemed to be the worst out on deck.

We did a quick stop in our cabin after muster and discovered we had received all of our luggage. We decided to wait until after sail away to unpack.

Up to Lido for sail away and we have our first introduction to Matt, the cruise director. I know this has been said before but by leaps and bounds Matt is the best cruise director we have had on any cruise..ever. He is charismatic, funny, quick witted, great with adults, great with kids. It seems he has also rubbed off on several of the other entertainment staff. My girls adored Cheeky Charlie, who runs the comedy.

Sail away was the usual party fun time, but amped up because of Matt's interaction. Very well done.

After sail away, we headed up to unpack and get ready for dinner.

We were also on this cruise. I'm sad that you were underwhelmed by the atrium. I am a huge fan of the 10 deck high atriums on the Fantasy and Conquest class ships and while the Vista doesn't have this, I liked the Dreamscape. My daughter loved it, especially on the days that there were images of fish swimming around.

 

Looking forward to reading your perspective on our trip! We had a blast.

We had a blast too. Realistically, did the atrium take away from the trip at all, no. Fantasy and Destiny were our first ships so the grand atrium holds a special place in my heart. I did think that the atrium areas got more crowded on the Vista then the other ships with the larger atriums. I did also miss the glass elevators.

We had a blast too. Realistically, did the atrium take away from the trip at all, no. Fantasy and Destiny were our first ships so the grand atrium holds a special place in my heart. I did think that the atrium areas got more crowded on the Vista then the other ships with the larger atriums. I did also miss the glass elevators.

I love the glass elevators too. We didn't spend a lot of time in the atrium but it always seemed crowded/busy. Actually, the atrium bar was probably the only bar we never ordered a drink at during the whole cruise.

Loving your review!:D

Thank you for taking the time to share!

Thanks for sharing.

After unpacking an showering for dinner (I was able to shower without hitting the wall or shower curtain once... Victory! it's almost like a game of Operation) we headed to deck 5 to check in for our anytime dining. This is the first time we have done anytime dining, not by choice it was all that was available. I like having the same server every night. You have to wait in line to check in, we got there at about 8PM and the line spanned about 1/4 of the way down deck 5. Deck 5 by Pixels and Java Blue was one of those hot areas of the ship, it never seemed like it was cool. This area of the ship is also very crowded especially during meal checkin. We waited about 10 minutes to checkin. Once checked in we were sent to deck 4 and were seated right away. I noticed larger parties waited longer to be seated, this seemed to happen most nights of the cruise.

We were seated and greeted by our servers. Service was very disjointed and not great. I asked for an ice tea twice and never received it. I thought maybe this was just first night jitters (more on this later). Service aside, the food was fantastic. Hot food was hot (not warm). Everything we had was on point and perfectly seasoned. All of the sauces served with menu items were particularly good all week. My wife was a little disappoint with the brisket, which was more like a pot roast. She said it was very good but needed additional gravy.

First night menu is below.

4:50 AM will come early tomorrow. I'll be back tomorrow night for more. I guess I have to go to my "job" tomorrow, seems like they only want to give you a paycheck when you show up.

Looking forward to the rest of your review. I loved the Vista.

WE go on this one in July; subscribing!

We were on this cruise too. Also deck 8 forward in a balcony!

Now we are continuing our vacation with a mouse ;)

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