Carnival Vista: The Good, The Meh, and The Ugly (Review)

[talkorpi]

Hi, everyone. I’m on the Vista this week and I’m planning on doing a short review after our cruise. 
 

This trip is a combination of a birthday and graduation present to myself. We honestly weren’t even planning on sailing anytime soon but we got an unbeatable VIFP 24 hour deal for like $40/pp/day for a balcony cabin. After port taxes and gratuities it was less than $1500 for three people for seven days, so why not?!

 

While it has only been two days, the cruise has already had both some real high and real low points. It’s our first time on the Vista and our first post-Covid cruise, so I have lots of details to share. Stay tuned over the next couple of days for a complete rundown of our goods, mehs, and uglies of this week on the Vista!

Edited May 23, 2022 by talkorpi

[Joe817]

Looking forward to your comments! 👍

[jetsfan58]

Remember you could be like the rest of us and waiting on our next Cruise adventure. As a result, let's hope there are not too many low points! You are on a Boat!!!

[sabrecatz]

Great I will be sailing Vista in August...can you update on arrival time in Galeveston I heard there were problems ! Just wondering for flights Thanks!

[Guest BasicSailor]

This will be a review to read 😮

[talkorpi]

18 minutes ago, jetsfan58 said:

Remember you could be like the rest of us and waiting on our next Cruise adventure. As a result, let's hope there are not too many low points! You are on a Boat!!!

Haha, yes, we are still having a great time. More just observations and differences from pre-Covid cruising and things outside carnival’s control like weather (which has been pretty terrible the whole time so far.) I don’t like to dwell on the negative, but I also want to be as thorough and honest as possible!
 

We are still having a blast!

[talkorpi]

6 minutes ago, sabrecatz said:

Great I will be sailing Vista in August...can you update on arrival time in Galeveston I heard there were problems ! Just wondering for flights Thanks!

Our embarkation was delayed by an hour and a half, and it sounds like that’s pretty standard as of late. Honestly, I would just try to get to Galveston as early as possible just to be safe. Once inside the building it was quick. I’ll post how late we arrive back, but the previous cruise before ours got back over two hours late.

[talkorpi]

Bumping because I will be writing this review and posting it in a couple days. We are on our last evening of the cruise right now and will be debarking tomorrow morning. It has been a great week and a much needed break. This cruise has been great with just a few small things here and there. However, I want to not that I didn’t expect so many differences from pre-Covid cruising - there are a LOT of them. Looking forward to sharing my thoughts here soon!

[Amadawn1]

Looking forward to reading your review! I'm wondering how many changes they've made since early April, too. Thank you for sharing.

[mondello]

9 hours ago, Amadawn1 said:

Looking forward to reading your review! I'm wondering how many changes they've made since early April, too. Thank you for sharing.

Valid point. We were on Vista 3/26. Seems they have suspended Tea Time and reduced the hours of the 24 hour Pizza. I know everyone keeps saying staffing issues. I wonder if it's a combination of number of contracts completed since restart and more likely, maybe the younger generation not feeling the value of the endless hours

[talkorpi]

Hello, everyone! Looks like I’m finally getting around to writing up a review for our recent cruise on the Carnival Vista. I’ll start with a little introduction before we get going!

 

I just turned 22 years old and this cruise was kind of like a graduation/birthday present to myself. I hadn’t planned on cruising for a while, but one day, I got an email from Carnival that I thought was a scam advertising insanely low prices on sailings from Galveston.  Turns out they were legitimate prices and it was a VIFP past guest sale type of thing.  The problem is that I am the only one on my family who really loves cruising… hmm. I had planned on sailing with my sister (19 years old) on a 5-day on the Breeze in mid-May, but then I found out about Carnival’s weird age requirements so that wouldn’t work. I was also apprehensive about sailing solo, so I thought it wasn’t going to work. However, right when I had given up hope, my mom told me she got a week of vacation and that we could go ahead and sail on a full seven day on the Vista… SWEET! You really can’t beat having a seven-day sailing on a new-ish ship in a balcony stateroom for only $1400 for three people including taxes and gratuities.

Our particular cruise was a 7-day run from Galveston to Cozumel, Belize, and Roatan sailing May 21^st to May 28^th. This was my fifth cruise and my mom/sister’s third cruise. We have all been to these ports before and didn’t plan any huge excursions. I’m kind of glad that that’s the case based on what we will hear about later…

 

I’m not planning on breaking this up day by day since this is my first review and I didn’t think I would have enough to write, so instead, I will be breaking this up into “good,” “meh,” and “ugly” sections. The trip was mostly good but we did see a few issues and noticed a lot of post-covid changes. Okay, okay – enough rambling and on with the review!

[talkorpi]

The Good:

 

Amazing CD Kyndall Fire: Kyndall Fire was the best CD we have ever had hands down. She was absolutely hilarious, always out and about with a great attitude, and just lit up every single room she was in. We had some issues on our cruise (yeah, it’s Vista, go figure), and Kyndall handled them so effortlessly and very professionally. She also made great use of her ship-wide announcements and was so personable with the guests. I can’t say enough good things about her. She mentioned that she was hoping to be the inaugural CD on the Jubilee next year out of Galveston. CARNIVAL – MAKE THIS HAPPEN! Kyndall Fire is a GEM and Carnival should take care of her! I never thought I would intentionally seek out a cruise director, but on our next sailing (whenever that may be), I am going to try to get on her ship. The BEST!

 

Crew attitude: I only had one negative interaction with crew the entire cruise (on our first night in the steakhouse, go figure). The rest of the time, the crew were so friendly, eager to help, and just seemed happy to be there. Special shout-out to our dining room staff Summy, Mauro, and Puii for being so accommodating to food allergies and being so friendly with us every night. Also, our cabin steward Jacqueline was also fantastic – great service, very friendly, and never failed to greet us in the hallways. This is probably the most friendly crew I remember on any of my cruises and I was very impressed with almost all of the crew attitudes onboard.

 

Value for money: While we weren’t cruising for free or near-free like so many on CC claim with casino offers, we did get a great deal on this sailing and is why we booked in the first place. The VIFP past guest flash sale offer was bonkers, only like $40/pp/day for a balcony on a seven day at the start of peak season? Count us in! While the cruise had more than a couple hiccups along the way, for paying like $1400 for three people to cruise all week including taxes, fees, and gratuities AND getting close to $250 OBC is a pretty sweet deal. I would be on a ship a lot more often if it was this affordable!

 

Food: I will get into more details later in a separate food section, but the food was pretty good with a few exceptions. We tried to eat at almost every venue on the ship without overindulging, and I think we made it to every single place except for Seafood Shack (we also didn’t eat at the Lido Buffet a single time!). We basically had negative experiences at Guy’s Burgers (NOT WHAT THEY USED TO BE), Guy’s Pig & Anchor, and Bonsai Sushi, while all of our other dining experiences onboard were excellent. Considering how fantastic the food was around the ship minus those three experiences, I would say that the dining aboard Vista was very good.

 

Itinerary: Like I mentioned, we had done this itinerary before except it was out of New Orleans (our first-ever cruise back in 2013 on the Conquest). However, on that cruise we did an excursion in every port while on this trip we did not. That being said, this itinerary really grew on me after this trip! Mahogany Bay in particular had really impressed me and is now my second-favorite port I have visited after Grand Cayman. While we purchased the “Relax on the Beach Package” from Carnival which was technically an excursion, the free beach at the port was great and the excursion gave us a bunch of amenities there for a lower price than had we booked them individually. I’m really fond of Mahogany Beach and will definitely be back at some point. We didn’t get off the ship in Belize, but maybe that will change if they finally finish building Port Coral. Cozumel was Cozumel – been there on every single cruise so didn’t see much new. We were thinking about going to a beach in Cozumel, BUT that wouldn’t have worked because the order of our ports was revered the day before sailing. Sea Day-Cozumel-Belize-Roatan-2 Sea Days became 2 Sea Days-Roatan-Belize-Cozumel-Sea Day. This messed up everyone’s excusions pretty badly, especially in Cozumel. It meant instead of being in Cozumel by ourselves like was previously planned, we were now sharing with FOUR other ships, which meant Mr. Sancho’s and all the other clubs were sold out… OOPS! Oh well. We still had a great day walking around the port and relaxing at Pancho’s Backyard with their awesome margaritas.

[talkorpi]

The Meh:

 

The Ship Itself: I hate to say that I was a little disappointed by the Vista. Yes, while she is the newest ship we have been on and the decor looks contemporary, we honestly felt like the ship lacked personality and had a bunch of really important features for us missing. Don’t get me wrong, she was still a nice ship and had some cool things like the upgraded SportsSquare, JiJi, and the Havana Bar, but the overall design of the ship was just not good.  Two of the big things we missed were a large atrium and a wraparound promenade deck. Maybe these two things are on the way out with the direction ship design is going, but we really find them important to the ship and both were missing on Vista. The atrium in Vista, while okay for what it is, honestly feels dark, cramped, and didn’t give us any wow factor when boarding (everyone else in my party was expecting a big, 10-story skylight atrium like all our past ships and were really let down when we first boarded). Additionally, the lack of a wraparound promenade deck also bummed us out. Havana blocks off our FAVORITE spot from the Dream class (deck 5 aft promenade overlooking the wake) and the promenade forward of the theater is also now roped off for crew only. Not being able to walk around the entire ship outside on one deck really made the ship feel smaller and took away some of our favorite spots to sit out and look at the ocean – one of our favorite things to do is walk around the promenade looking out, so this was a bummer that it wasn’t possible on this ship. And yeah, I knew about these two things coming into the cruise, but I guess I just didn’t realize just how important they were to me until I got onboard - call me old-fashioned but we missed having these a lot! Also, for a ship being called the VISTA, there really weren’t a lot of windows or places to view the sea… Out of all of the ships I’ve been on (Conquest, Triumph, Breeze, Dream, and Vista), the Vista had the fewest amount of windows in public spaces and had some of the best sea-viewing spaces blocked off. The ship also has NO unique decor aside from the MDR. Literally all public venues were carbon copies from what we had seen from the breeze, from the carpets to the furniture to the fixtures. This was just kinda disappointing and added to the thought that the ship lacked any sort of character. Carnival can design contemporary venues while making them feel unique (see Mardi Gras, Celebration, etc), and it seemed like Carnival just copied everything from the Breeze and tweaked it ever so slightly, making the ship feel less unique. I realize how this is a non-issue to most cruises, but for a nerd like me who once aspired to work in the industry as a naval architect and still has an eye for ship design, I was just a little let down. Finally, I really understand how crazily low the low PAX to Public Space ratio on this class of ship is now. While I later found out that our cruise was over 100% double occupancy booked, all of the venues just felt cramped and small for having such a high passenger compliment. Liquid Lounge, Limelight Lounge, Atrium, and Lido stood out as venues that were just WAY too small. We waited in line for a comedy show for over half an hour and still barely got a seat. We don’t use the hot tubs on the ship but I’m pretty sure there’s only like four of them for the entire ship to use that aren’t restricted access. I understand CCL wants to make money by jamming in more PAX, but this is starting to get a little excessive with the ships feeling more and more crowded due to the ever-dwindiling public space to occupancy ratio.

Playlist Productions: the Playlist Productions shows were much worse than I remembered. Flick was honestly pretty cringy and had really bad choreography and “story,” if you could call it that. The 70’s themed disco show was also very poorly written and included a very not safe for kids scene out of nowhere. The other two shows, Amor Cubano and America Rocks, were MUCH better, with Amor Cubano actually being the best of the four. I will give props to the two female lead vocalists who were incredibly talented and carried the shows. Maybe it was the horrible design of the theater and the terrible sight lines which didn’t help, but we honestly weren’t “wowed” by the shows like we were on previous cruises. So basically, good job from the cast, but Carnival really needs to update these shows, fix the awkward parts, and never build such terribly designed main show lounges again – it really detracts from the experience.

 

Entertainment: The non-Playlist Productions entertainment was also just kinda meh – a mix of great and terrible averaged out to be just… average. The biggest point here comes with the comedy onboard. There were four comedians aboard our cruise, and while two of them were the funniest comedians we have ever had on a ship, the other two were also the least funny. Johnny Cardinale and Sid Davis were both HILARIOUS – we went to all of their shows and were laughing nearly nonstop. However, Jeff Scheen and Kirk Smith were TERRIBLE. They were not funny at all – mainly just made fun of audience members the entire time they were on stages with extremely vulgar and not funny “jokes.” Kirk Smith’s show in particular was the worst – not one of us laughed a single time in his entire show. Truly a crazy dichotomy between the pairs of comedians. Comedy host Amin was also great, but goodness gracious I still can’t comprehend how big of a contrast it was in the Punchliner lineup… Good live musicians all around the ship, too, with the exceptions of the violin trio, who were just okay. The Fun Squad were great - the Carnival 50th birthday trivia was a fun little surprise for cruise nerds like me and they put on tons of great events, trivias, and games. Events hosted by Kyndall Fire were also great, like the Love and Marriage Show, Q&A, etc.
 

[talkorpi]

The Ugly:

 

Guest Behavior: I wouldn’t be the first on here to note that the rock bottom rates to get people cruising again has attracted some… erm… new cruisers. There were SO many blue cards (we eventually just started joking about “blue card moments,” haha) and you could tell. Guests not understanding how a cruise works the first time makes sense, but there was some really obnoxious behavior among some of our fellow passengers. Before we even got on the ship we noticed this, as the group in front of us at embarkation didn’t have any boarding passes (they didn’t even know what boarding passes were) and the group behind us hadn’t COVID tested and forgot their vaccine cards… Here are some exampled of what we experienced throughout the week while onboard:

Packs of unsupervised children roaming the decks after dark bothering passengers, vaping and smoking all over the ship in non-designated smoking areas, people standing in large clumps in the middle of the promenade creating a bottleneck during meal/show/busy times, loud/drunk passengers screaming in the stateroom hallways well past midnight, groups of people literally just sitting on the stairs blocking them for passengers, children playing with the designated emergency phones in hallways, passengers being extremely rude and demanding to the crew over totally pointless things like not having their room cleaned in the 5 minutes it took them to go up to lido and get a drink, etc.

Debarkation was also a mess. Nobody waited for their zone or muster station so it was a total disaster. CD Kyndall Fire had to come over the ship PA system like four times and tell people to wait for their zone but of course nobody did. We didn’t have as bad of a debark delay as the previous cruise, but there just seemed to be a lack of cruise ettiquite from the moment we boarded to the minute we stepped off the ship.

 

Weather: Good lord the weather was awful, at least at the beginning. Huge storm the first night and basically the entire first sea day (from like 9:30AM to 9:30PM) which meant LOTS of rocking, lots of cancellations, lots of crowded indoor activities, and lots of seasickness! I know this isn’t Carnival’s fault and huge props to the Vista crew for truly making the best of a bad situation, but damn that weather was not a fun way to start the cruise. The weather was also terrible in between Belize in Cozumel, with Beaufort Force 8 seas and winds (!!!). There were so many seasick people onboard… I later found out it was because there was a front moving through the gulf that created a squall line. I don’t get seasick, but my sister did and wasn’t having the best time at the beginning. I feel bad for all of the blue card new passengers who had to go through that on their first cruise!

 

Staffing Issues: Yeah, this one is hard to ignore. Carnival should not have activated their entire fleet if they didn’t have the crew to fully staff it. I know the government is taking its sweet time with the visas, but Carnival bears some responsibility here. The staff was working so hard and was so friendly, but they are working WAY too much and need help. Service was slow pretty much everywhere due to a lack of crew members, with it being most obvious in the Steakhouse and at various bars around the ship.

 

Open Times for Venues: I’m not sure if this is due to staff shortages or what, but the open times of the venues on the ship (mainly restaurants) were very strange. For example, every day, the deli didn’t open until 2:30 and seafood shack was only open from like 4-8 PM. This was especially apparent on port days. We stayed on the ship in Belize (as did many people), and there was literally NOTHING to do until mid afternoon. No activities scheduled until 1 PM (a trivia, the first non-trivia activity was at like 3:00 PM). Skyride and the ropes course didn’t open until 2:30. We aren’t pool people so considering that the pool was the only thing open until the mid afternoon was just weird. I know carnival probably wants people to go into the ports, but we have been to Belize before and didn’t have an excursion planned so we decided to stay onboard… wish there had been more to do than sit by the pool.

[talkorpi]

FOOD:

 

The MDR Food was excellent quality bar or on two bad dishes across the three of us, but I can tell the offerings themselves have really gotten more basic since a few years ago… I wouldn’t call fried mozzarella sticks and BBQ pulled pork sliders particularly inventive or interesting items for what has always been a nicer venue in the MDR. Certainly not seeing the inventive and elevated appetizers, mains, or desserts of years past anymore – maybe I’m remembering wrong, but I just don’t remember the MDR food being so basic. Still, while basic, almost everything we ate there was amazing except for a few dishes – almost perfectly consistent high quality breakfasts and dinners there. We loved Seaday Brunch and the Elegant Night food in particular, and the Beef Tenderloin served on one of the Cruise Casual evenings was probably the best thing I ate on the ship (even better than my Steakhouse steak!)

 

JiJi Asian Kitchen was AMAZING, as was the new Deli menu, the Steakhouse (our first time trying it), Pizzeria del Capitano, Blue Iguana Cantina, and the Red Frog Pub. I was particularly pleasantly surprised by JiJi – I knew it had high reviews, but even my mom who doesn’t like Asian food said it was very good. The service here was also fantastic – probably our best dining experience of the week.

 

While the food overall was quite good, there were three notable exceptions: our lunches at Guys’s Burgers, Pig & Anchor, and Bonsai Sushi were all mediocre to bad huge letdowns. The Guy’s Burgers are very different that what we remembered from previous cruises and were a huge step down in quality. Our Guy’s Barbecue was also not very good, with lots of texture and temperature issues. Bonsai sushi was bad. Horribly slow service, no drinks or soy sauce offered, ramen was over cooked, and it was very overpriced for the quality of the items we received.

 

Overall, the food onboard was very good, and the three bad meals/experiences we had were far outweighed by the excellent quality of the MDR food, the paid speciality dining, and some of the other free venues.

[talkorpi]

Miscellaneous Observations and Changes:

 

Skyride: I just don’t even want to talk about this, but I guess I will bring this up to warn you. There was a huge staff inconsistency with Skyride, at least on our cruise. Before sailing, I was really excited to try Skyride and saw all over Carnival’s website and other sites that the weight limit is 275 pounds. I weigh 252 pounds, so I’m like, “ok, I’m fine!“ Well, when I get onboard the weight limit now said 250 pounds so I was a little irritated. Even though I’m just two pounds over their suggested limit, I wouldn’t get to ride, and I was denied entry (they weigh you before getting on). Oh well, whatever. Well, fast forward to a port day when I went up there and saw a bunch of people who were definitely much heavier than I am riding Skyride. Apparently the staff member for one of the bikes was checking weight and the other one wasn’t. What the heck?! If Carnival is going to make rules like this and change them, they need to be consistent with their requirements both across all of their website and onboard. I’m still really mad that I never got to ride when some people who were definitely out of the previously advertised 275 pound weight limit that I had fit in slipped through the line unenforced. This didn’t ruin my vacation or anything but I really rubbed me the wrong way and I left disappointed – if the limit is there for safety reasons, it should be consistently enforced.

 

Changes: I noticed that there was no more afternoon tea. There was also no hairy chest contest on our cruise - not sure if this was just our sailing or if it has been removed entirely. Pretty iconic for Carnival so I would be surprised if this was a permanent removal.  We also didn't have an ice carving show on our cruise, but I beleive this was due to weather and not due to permanent programming changes (it showed up on the app in the beginning of the cruise but disappeared later and was due to happen during our sea day with bad weather). Also, Guy's Burgers are very different than what they used to be and we found them to be a lot worse. I'm sure there were other changes that I can't remember right now but maybe if someone asked questions I would be able to remember.

Edited May 31, 2022 by talkorpi

[talkorpi]

And that's it! Ultimately, it was a great and relaxing week but I did want to be as honest as possible and give a thorough review.  I feel like the changes Carnival has made aren't really for me, but oh well. The sailing was still a blast and we will probably cruise with Carnival again if the rates stay low.

 

Feel free to ask any questions - I'll try to answer, but I can't make any promises! Until then, see y'all in a couple years when it's time for our next adventure 🙂 

[Ilovesailaway]

Thanks for taking the time to share your review and congrats on graduation.

[talkorpi]

OH - I also forgot to mention the "propulsion issues." I mentioned this in another thread but figured I should say it here as well.

 

For most of our cruise, it seemed like we were going VERY slowly and our cruising speed was like 16 knots. However, when sailing in between Belize and Cozumel on the very stormy night, the ship map said we were going up to 21 knots that evening, so I was very surprised! We were also traveling about 19-20 knots most of the time on our last sea day returning to Galveston.

 

Our departure from Galveston was delayed by about two hours due to the Vista arriving two hours late from the previous cruise, but we had a VERY long day in Roatan (8AM - 7:30PM). We also had an 8AM-4PM day in Belize and a 7AM-3:30 PM day in Cozumel. The Cozumel stop was kind of short and we were the first ship to leave, but we did end up getting back to Galveston on time and we were already aboard anyways so it didn't really matter to us.

 

At Q&A, I asked Cruise Director Kyndall Fire about the issues and she told me that there were technicians onboard. Carnival had been waiting on the part to fix the engine, and they had loaded it while we were in Cozumel. I hope this means the issue will be fixed in the near future, but for us, it seemed like the issues encountered on the past few cruises weren't as apparent!

 

Hope this clears up some of the gossip/rumors we have been hearing about the Vista's engines!

[sabrecatz]

Thanks for taking the time to write this honest review!

I cruised twice last year when capacity was reduced  with a few hiccups along the way , I noticed line ups for Deli etc at that time so am a little nervous for my cruise in August.  Just wondering how the disembarkation was in Galeveston and what time you were allowed off ship ? Thanks again and congratulations on your Graduation 🎓!

[talkorpi]

31 minutes ago, sabrecatz said:

Thanks for taking the time to write this honest review!

I cruised twice last year when capacity was reduced  with a few hiccups along the way , I noticed line ups for Deli etc at that time so am a little nervous for my cruise in August.  Just wondering how the disembarkation was in Galeveston and what time you were allowed off ship ? Thanks again and congratulations on your Graduation 🎓!

 

Thank you!

 

Lines for the deli were always pretty long, unfortunately. The deli was only open from 2:30 to like 10:00 PM... which stunk because we always ate dinner at MDR and 2:30 was way too late for lunch for us.

 

Disembark was kind of a mess - nobody waited for their muster station / zone tags and at one point I think they just stopped enforcing it because over half of the passengers were just going to the gangway whenever they wanted.  We started on time but it felt very slow and disorganized - we were zone 10 and got off the ship at probably 10:30 AM.

 

Have fun on your cruise!

[princess76021]

Thank you for doing this! 

 

Hopefully they'll get it together by October!

 

Hugs