Cruise Report Vision 7 Days - December 13 thru 20

[shellunderwater]

This is going to be a day by day report. I will also provide some commentary about some items folks have commented on about the Vision.

 

The itinerary was Tampa, Sea, Roatan, Belize, Costa Maya, Cozumel, Sea, Tampa. 7 great days on a beautiful ship.

 

First, we've now completed our third cruise. We've done Allure Western and Oasis Eastern. Also along this time was our DS, who cruised several years ago on the blue and red line, and DD, who hasn't cruised before. So, going on the Vision was planned to get a new view of cruising, since we'd basically done the big ships. Also, we got our cabin booked at the very beginning of the 3rd and 4th free. I think we got it before price adjustments were made, so we had a great deal at under $50 per person per day before tips but including taxes.

 

For the keen reader, you'll notice we will be 4 people in a cabin... and OV cabin. We were in a G OV with 2 Pullmans, cabin 3022, port forward. I will better address this experience as part of the report later.

 

We don't have experience from many years ago on cruise ships, so I can't compare to the olden days. What we do expect is a good value, good service, good food and a fun time. These are really very subjective, so I know some will disagree with some comments. But, these are our perceptions for you to use in making decisions on your plans.

 

Along the way, I'll be happy to answer any questions I can for anyone.

 

Tampa Arrival/Embarkation:

 

We booked direct flights to and between CMH and TPA on Southwest. Our plane arrived at the gate in CMH, "disgorged" its passengers from the previous flight.... then the ground crew/mechanics opened the covering on the port engine. Something was leaking. At some point, we were told an O ring needed replacement. But, apparently, there was a Southwest mechanic on the flight in the next gate, and he was brought over to fix our plane. They had the part available to fix it. There was about an hour delay getting out of CMH, but since it is direct, we didn't have to worry about connections.

 

The flight was uneventful. Southwest provides WiFi on some planes, along with TV service. Well, none of us could get either one to work with our Android phones. Probably didn't have the right driver. Oh well, two hour direct flight, no big deal.

 

TPA was an easy airport, landed, claimed luggage, caught a taxi to the Hampton Inn Ybor for the night. Fare was $25 fixed. That is some type of fixed fare cabs must follow for much of TPA, I believe. Well, to get 4 of us and all of our luggage to the hotel, I was more than happy.

 

The Hampton is only about 1 - 2 miles from the port. But, it is also in Ybor, which seems to be a historically Cuban part of town. Hampton provides a free shuttle within 3 miles of the hotel. So, we had reservations for dinner at the historic Columbia restaurant.

 

The Columbia is a Cuban restaurant. It is at least two levels, with the second being a mezzanine and a large skylight overhead. I had a great combination platter, DW was a great chicken dish, DS had a chimichurri like steak and DD had a different chicken dish. Is this truly authentic Cuban food? I don't know. I do know everyone else can be quite picky, and they left the dinner stuffed. Everyone enjoyed the meal.

 

The Columbia is about 6 - 8 blocks from the Hampton. Now that we knew how close, we decided to just walk back, given the mild weather. We had a great time enjoying some of the shops along the way. We weren't in a big hurry, but didn't want to be out too late. Not sure why, but there just weren't many people on a Friday night. Maybe the come out later in the night. But, we had a great time, and felt quite safe walking.

 

Hampton was our breakfast. Very usual Hampton breakfast. After, DS and I walked down the street to a coffee shop for a some great coffee before the shuttle.

 

We took a very crowded Hampton Inn shuttle to the port. Again, this was free and made NO stops. Direct to the port. The shuttle dropped us right at the door. Actually right where the people disembarking were at. That was a bit confusing, but the porters were there to quickly take our bags, place a luggage tag on the one bag that didn't have a tag, and we were off to upstairs.

 

Once inside, we completed our health questionnaire and made it to the counter within 5 minutes. Check in was easy and we were sent to the chairs quickly. Once boarding began, we were on the ship with 30 minutes. From arrival at port to being on the ship, it was only about an hour and that includes chair time. There was a bit of a line on the gangway.

 

I don't think the embarkation was any worse than Oasis and Allure. Actually, on Oasis, we got there early, but many others did too, so the chair wait was much longer. No complaints about embarkation.

 

So, I'm going to pause now. I'll cover day one, the cabin and some general impressions in the next installment.

[sharktums]

Thanks for this review. We'll be on this itinerary soon after doing a lot of Allure and Quantum recently we're a bit worried about 'downsizing' but still excited.

[crisndeefromde]

great start to your review and looking forward to reading more.

[kftw]

Looking forward to more of your review. We're booked to stay at the Hamilton Inn Ybor before our cruise in April so was good to read of your stay there.

[shellunderwater]

Cabin, Food, Ship, and General Overview

Now that we’re on board, I’m going to discuss some of the broad topics so I don’t clog up each day.

We booked a D1 Oceanview cabin for 4 adults. That’s me, DW, DS and DD. Kids are adult aged. Yep, we did it and we survived. DS and DD both slept in the Pullman beds and didn’t have a complaint about them. DS was actually sleeping in the bed so soundly, the cabin attendant was in there cleaning and it didn’t wake him up. Some will say they shouldn’t have been in there while he was sleeping, but he was feeling some seasickness and was medicated. They have to clean sometime.

 

Here is a picture of the cabin with the Pullman bed down, both fully deployed and folded up. We left the lower beds in the separate configuration to have better access to each bed and the spacious shelf/ledge at the window. It was chummy. Every drawer was filled and no extra space in the closet. But, it worked. We used post-it notes on each drawer and cabinet to mark was where, so we could each find our clothes easily. We also use them to leave notes to each other.

I will admit my bed was not all that comfortable. I should have asked for either a mattress pad or a different mattress. My sleep definitely suffered due to this issue. But, it is my bad for not addressing it. That part isn’t RCL’s fault.

Made (pronounced ma – day) was our cabin attendant and he did a fantastic job taking care of us, especially the kids and their needs. We brought a powerstrip from home and many chargers for phones and tablets. No problem getting it on the ship. Heard others had issues. Shower had the dreaded shower curtain. But, we dealt with it without problem. One weird thing, the peep hole thru the door seemed to let in a whole bunch of light. Well, we solved the problem by putting a post-it note over the hole.

We used room service most days, since we had the late seating. Usually it was 30 – 45 minute wait. Usually we ordered the cheese plate, fruit plate and a pizza. Pizza is really just a personal size pie along the line of Sorrentos. If you are a pizza purist, you won’t like it. But it was ok. We keep an envelope of one dollar bills in the desk for tipping room service, porters, etc. $50 more than covers the whole week, from beginning to end.

Food. This is where I’ll say you need to hold onto your shorts. Some will agree, some will disagree with me. I understand that. I won’t say you are wrong for your opinions if you won’t say mine are wrong either. Opinions are different, that’s all. We found most of the food to be good. Was it amazing 5 star quality? Probably not. We ate in the MDR and WJ for breakfast and lunch. Everyone loved the Tutti salad at lunch. We found the service in the WJ to be good, the lines were reasonable. If there was a line for something I wanted, I either waited or moved onto something else and came back. No issues there.

As to food quality, I will say the WJ is a buffet and the MDR is essentially a large conference. This food wasn’t prepared for us on our order. Some items lend themselves to that type of service more than others. We didn’t find any food to be inedible. I know my DS and DD are a bit more picky than I, and they didn’t care for some items, but not because they were inedible. I like a wide range of foods, but don’t consider myself to be an expert. I ate everything I was served in the MDR, and nearly everything I took in the WJ.

Our dinner servers, Agnelo and Wilson, both from India, made the experience. Wow, what service. Wilson ran his rear off, taking care of everyone. There was a group of three large tables from Portugal sitting in Wilson’s area, and they liked to pick on him in fun. Once, he dropped a metal pot or tray, and they all yelled his name and clapped. By the end of the week, Agnelo was telling us what we didn’t want on our food; my DS doesn’t like gravies, so Agnelo always would ask him, “No gravy with that?”. My daughter wanted lemon for her water and milk after dinner…. Wilson was on it and there was no asking.

As to the Park Café, I’m going to do a comparison to Oasis and Allure when we were on them. Maybe this isn’t fair, since Vision is considerably smaller, but bear with me. We found the Park Café to be disorganized and a rather limited selection. The famous beef and weck were not nearly as good as we’ve had before. We tried the sandwich twice and it just wasn’t that good. The Au Jus was gravy and they poured it over the sandwich. That was a messy thing to try to eat on embarkation.

We ate at Giovanni’s Table one night. We had Gnocchi, Pappardelle and Steak. Holy cow it was good. So worth the price we paid for that meal. The Gnocchi melted in our mouths. DS was amazed at the gnocchi. He had never had it so tender before. I had lamb which was very good, except it did have gravy on it. I thought that an odd choice. Not bad, just odd. Would have preferred no gravy. I don’t know what was listed on the menu. We would go back to Giovanni’s anytime.

Your experiences with the food on RCL and any ship may be different, and I don’t expect everyone to agree.

Overall: Many people ask the question about Oasis and Allure being too big, too crowded, too this or that. Well, in our humble opinion, there isn’t much difference. There were lines on Vision to get into the MDR before it opened, Park Café had lines, WJ really didn’t have too much of a line when we got there. The shows in the Centrum could be standing room only, not unlike the Royal Promenade. So, where ever many people congregate, expect lines. In our view, neither was any worse. The pool deck situation was depending on what you wanted and when you got there. If you wanted 4 chairs together near the pool and you got there at a busy time, sorry, you’d be out of luck just like on other ships. Getting fewer chairs at non-peak times would be much easier. So, in our minds, this is a wash.

Many people have talked to us about the feel of a small ship being their preference. There definitely is a different feel to a smaller ship. But its hard to quantify for this. We don’t think either is bad, but they feel different.

DW and I don’t drink too much, and we only had two sea days, so we weren’t on deck much, and didn’t use the servers much. It did seem like the deck was marginally more cluttered with cups, plates, bottles, etc. DW didn’t think it was much worse, but I think maybe. Take it for what its worth.

The ship is 16 years old. That’s a lot of passengers. We saw folks cleaning constantly in various places. Some state that ship is filthy and beat up. Well, we didn’t think so unless you go looking for issues. We didn’t inspect the ship, rather vacationed on it. We relaxed, we sat in the hot tubs, we enjoyed. We didn’t have any issues come up that affected the outcome of our vacation and the entire family had a great time.

Let the bashing begin……….. :eek:

Next up: Sail day.

[kftw]

Looking forward to more.

[TexCruise371]

Thanks for the review. We sail on Vision in Feb. :)

[Hailzmick]

Subscribing!!!

This is a great review! Please keep it coming!!! :-)

 

 

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[krayzmelmel]

We were on the same cruise! Enjoyed it as well :-) We went for the convenience of docking out of Tampa because we live in Clearwater. Definitely want to try Allure/Oasis size though.. The biggest RCI ship we've been on is Mariner.

 

 

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[lilobelle]

I just got off the Vision today and agree with your review! We share many of the same experiences and reviews! Wasn't Giovanni's food awesome!?! My review was just posted.

[shellunderwater]

Embarkation Day

 

Upon boarding, we went to the Park Café for food. Well, as stated earlier, that wasn’t working for us, so we went to the Windjammer for lunch. Nice selection of decent food. The line wasn’t bad, and tables were plentiful. We were on the ship pretty early, so we guess we beat the crowds.

 

After lunch, it was still rather chilly outside, so it really wasn’t sitting by the pool weather. We decided to head downstairs to our deck and wait for the cabins. On Deck 3 Port Forward, the doors were open at 1:15. We dropped luggage at the cabin and did some exploring of the ship with the family.

 

We ended up at the Spa for their drawing, but weren’t on the winning side. Then it was time for the muster drill. This is out on deck, on the lifeboat deck on deck 5. It was quick and painless. After, we headed to the cabin for luggage check. We found out we had to make our first trip to the naughty room for one bag. Upon opening, they found nothing, thanked us for allowing them to look inside, and sent us on our way. Sail away was great, we were on the rail on 10 with our fellow passengers. It’s a bit different in Tampa compared to Fort Lauderdale, since Tampa is actually a 2+ hour trip to get out into open sea. What was nice, is you have cell signal all that time. It takes about 2 hours to get under the Skyway bridge, and you only clear the bridge by about 10 feet.

 

Off to the Centrum for some great pre-dinner entertainment. This was a nice feature of the Vision, and we took in many shows there.

 

Next, was over to the MDR for our seat at table 118 with Agnelo and Wilson for dinner. I’m proud to report escargot was on the menu and available at least some of the nights. Yummy.

 

Embarkation Day ended fairly early, since we were all tired from a full day and were up pretty early at the hotel.

Edited December 28, 2014 by shellunderwater
fixed line spacing

[JamesEM]

Thanks for your review, looking forward to more reports.

[FluffsMom]

Thanks for sharing. We board the Vision in 13 days. We're getting excited!

 

 

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