georgiafan

Thanks for posting your review. I am really enjoying it. I was on the same cruise with you on July 1 and agree 1000% about Matt, he really was fantastic. Of course my wife has a huge crush on him and managed to get multiple photos with him over the course of the 8 days.

 

 

 

There were 2 things I personally did not like.

 

1 La Romana tour we took, Altos de Charon and riverboat cruise.

 

Our bus left the port ahead of schedule but on the way to Altos, the tour guide informed us we would only have 30 minutes at that stop, so he rushed us thru there. Once we left there he advised us we would need to wait for the other bus to catch up,to us and asked if we wanted to stop at a cigar factory or go directly to the boat. Most people said cigar factory. We ended up staying there for 30 minutes, then waited another 30 minutes at the boat for the other bus also. So we easily could have spent more time at Altos. I felt this was a scam by the tour operator and I refused to tip them at the end.

 

 

 

2. Maybe it was just to me, but I felt the staff working Guys Burgers was very rude. Had no problems anywhere else.

 

 

 

Otherwise it was a great cruise. Sorry, did not mean to hijack the thread!

You are not highjacking fell free to post as much as you Would like. Sorry to hear about your bad experience at la romana and I don't blame you for not tipping. When you pay for a excursion and don't get your $ worth it's a really bad feeling

It wasn't just you they definitely make you feel like cows at guys with the way they run you through. I asked for something special once and was handed the wrong thing when it was clear what I asked for. The good news is the line moves fast it's just a little deceiving that they have all the options yet hand you the same exact thing. I love the place and 10 times better then a normal cruise burger just didn't like that part either.

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Is the Lip Sync Battle on more than one day? We enjoy watching it on TV. :)

They had the auditions on the first sea day and after a few rounds narrowed it down to 2 people. The last day they move to the main theater and have a big production show with dancers and music and everything. Also during the week the female and male that won would be on shows and stuff promoting it. Here is a video of my cousin in The first round auditioning

1.S kyride

2. Waterslide

3. Flick production show

4. Rock Production show

5. Sky Fitness Outdoors (gym beside sports deck)

6. Sky Billiards (soccer/pool)

7. Mini Golf (9 holes, on 2 decks)

8. Ropes Course

9. Billiards / Corn hole / Foosball / Shuffleboard (outside)

10. Anything hosted by Matt Mitchum or Nono

11. Havana Pool area (after 7pm only)

12. Twister outside

13. Violinist in main lobby

14. Comedy Shows

15. LipSynch Battle

* These are not in any order

* I can email these to anyone if I need to as I have them in word

*updated after I got off the ship

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the Vista. I have done YTD and always seem to have the same wait staff unless we requested a different dining area. Sorry that didn't happen for you.

I do prefer the same waiters like I said but all of the wait staff we had did a very good job so it wasn't a issue. In the past we have requested someone and its not been a problem.

Thanks for your review. I begin reading it before my July 15th 8-day cruise on the Vista. I'm just off the ship and I have to say I love it. It's a gorgeous ship and it does not feel crowded despite the large number of guests. I had heard the praise of Matt the CD and thought, how much of a difference can a CD make... well, now I know. Matt is awesome- he's the life of the ship. My whole group loved him. I second your praise of No No, she was wonderful also. I loved the spaces, loved the extra non-lido lunch options. We enjoyed the Imax theatre. The dining room staff are wonderful. I feel Carnival is putting too much on the cabin stewards and we all miss the twice daily room cleanings. I plan to comment on that to Carnival. The room stewards seem stressed out with the extra workload. I liked the new paid room service options and deliveries were very speedy. We enjoyed the green eggs and ham breakfast. I did purchase the spa pass even though it was not as great as the spa on the breeze, I enjoyed it, but might not purchase again unless I was super stressed like this time. The spa does not handle crowds as well as the rest of the ship, but by later in the week it was pretty empty- early on it was packed. The gym did not seem huge but I was able to get a treadmill in the am on the first sea day, unfortunately I never made it back. The showers in the spa are not as nice as on the breeze. My toddler loved the water works area and I enjoyed it, too. I did not get to try the kaleidoscope, but the lines weren't too bad. Hopefully next time. There is so much to do, we often had to choose between 2 appealing activities at a given time. My group, wide range in ages, loved the dive in movies and the comedians.

 

My group unanimously would sail the Vista again. 8 days was not enough time to fully enjoy it.

I forgot to mention that I am glad you liked nono as well I'm glad to see everyone like her as much as we did.

I went with another 3rd party excursion in Curacao and it was a very good deal 60$ for around 2 hours SUP and that included transportation. I did this before closer to home and this one was much tougher then it was the first time I did it. The guides said it was peak wind season so having to stay close to the mango trees at first made it tricky. Unlike the people in Aruba the guides was all very helpful even when one person in our group was struggling to figure it out. They also took lots of pictures and shared them on there Facebook page for free. We also stopped and gave everyone water and a snack and let everyone rest while she told us about the area. I would definitely recommend this for anyone that's looking to do something adventurous and for 60$ its a great deal. I did the easy course and it was the right decision as they also offer a harder one. The way back it was more just paddling straight so it got to be easier. We had someone that just wanted to come along and stay on the shore and it was 12$.

After that ended we did some looking at shops around town and bought some souvenirs. The straw market stuff had the same exact souvenirs as Aruba and they had some more high end shops as well. I ended up getting some of fancy gel pillows at the Bamboo store they haven't arrived yet, but are suppose to be here next week. If you have never been to Curacao its a nice well developed place so lots of things to see and do.

http://supcuracao.com/ they are also on facebook at SUP curacao

Some people will say the liquid lounge is the worst thing about the Vista to me its something different and that is the ship being under staffed. I am not sure exactly how many staff is on the ship I believe a t-shirt said 1,200 range. If that's close then 200 - 400 more staff members need to be hired and divided up between cabin stewards, bartenders and wait staff.

Once in the red frog bar when leaving a port they had one bartender and pretty much always the bartenders would be playing catch up. As I mentioned early another thing that slows the bartenders down is having to scan and run the card when you get a free coke. I know why they are doing that, but if they remove that step along it might be enough to not need to hire anymore bartenders. The cabin steward for my mom was cleaning 32 rooms. They go around the first day and ask if you want your room cleaned and morning or night and my answer was both. The next day he only cleaned it in the morning which could have been a honest mistake with my southern accent and my guy from the Philippians. So I just left a few notes the next day and saying I wanted it cleaned both times and he did it without a problem. The wait staff for having so many tables did a great job just like the bartenders would always be playing catch up. If your looking to make small talk with any of the staff its something that none of them have time to do. It's problems like this that's very frustrating because its a very easy problem to fix

This clearly isn't a problem of the staff and its carnival fault for cutting back and trying to save $. They desperately need to add more staff and it would go a long way.

Thanks for your review. I begin reading it before my July 15th 8-day cruise on the Vista. I'm just off the ship and I have to say I love it. It's a gorgeous ship and it does not feel crowded despite the large number of guests. I had heard the praise of Matt the CD and thought, how much of a difference can a CD make... well, now I know. Matt is awesome- he's the life of the ship. My whole group loved him. I second your praise of No No, she was wonderful also. I loved the spaces, loved the extra non-lido lunch options. We enjoyed the Imax theatre. The dining room staff are wonderful. I feel Carnival is putting too much on the cabin stewards and we all miss the twice daily room cleanings. I plan to comment on that to Carnival. The room stewards seem stressed out with the extra workload. I liked the new paid room service options and deliveries were very speedy. We enjoyed the green eggs and ham breakfast. I did purchase the spa pass even though it was not as great as the spa on the breeze, I enjoyed it, but might not purchase again unless I was super stressed like this time. The spa does not handle crowds as well as the rest of the ship, but by later in the week it was pretty empty- early on it was packed. The gym did not seem huge but I was able to get a treadmill in the am on the first sea day, unfortunately I never made it back. The showers in the spa are not as nice as on the breeze. My toddler loved the water works area and I enjoyed it, too. I did not get to try the kaleidoscope, but the lines weren't too bad. Hopefully next time. There is so much to do, we often had to choose between 2 appealing activities at a given time. My group, wide range in ages, loved the dive in movies and the comedians.

 

My group unanimously would sail the Vista again. 8 days was not enough time to fully enjoy it.

I agree with everything you said between the CD, options for breakfast / lunch and activities on the ship even with 8 days still wasn't really time to adequately do everything. I never use the spa so its good to hear feedback on that. There is no doubt having a CD makes a huge difference they was always stuff to at night and during the day.

Thank you for the awesome review!

Yes I went Stand Up paddling boarding at SUP curacao I will try and get that up before I leave work if not you can check them out on facebook or they have a website. It was a good deal only 60$ including travel

Thank you for the awesome review!

Thank you for your great review!

Thanks for the nice words and I feel special that its over 11,000 views for my first ever review

I forgot to bring my computer home from work so I'll finish up this review tomorrow and get caught up on comments as I don't have much left to say.

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Great review! I was also on this cruise and just wanted to add a couple of my own thoughts.

 

I had a great cruise and it is indeed a great ship! Just several bullet points

 

• 
   
  
• There are two new menus;The Deli at the buffet area and Port day Breakfast at the Dining Room. I have made separate post about this in this forum.
   
  
• The theater is indeed TERRIBLE and just so you know, if you are on the upper deck, there is NO SEAT that you can find that doesn't require you to look through the glass barriers/railings. It's annoying and forces one to wait in line to get a seat on the main floor.
   
  
• Serenity Area: My only problem with this space is the way it is constructed the sea breeze doesn't get there so sunning there gets real HOT! This is the 2nd time I've been on the ship, and it was that way both trips. Others have remarked the same too.
   
  
• My only other complaint has to do with the Fitness Area. I am a seasoned cruiser and have been on many other cruiselines, but this is the ONLY SHIP where passengers have to compete with employees for gym space. As I have previously said this is my second time on the ship, and on both trips when I went to use the gym in the afternoons I had to WAIT for employees to finish using the weights and machines. That should NEVER be the case!
   
  

Thanks for adding your thoughts I didn't use the gym or serenity so I couldn't really speak on them. I know someone with us was complaining about the gym not being open longer.

Yea I walked up to the 2nd deck for like 10 second and was like this is awful and walked back down to never try it again

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I love the open spaces/chairs on deck 5, used them a lot. During the day it's quiet and you have a lovely view. Not wasted space at all.

I thought they could have cut back on the amount of chairs they had around deck 5 and added something else. For me personally they wasn't a reason to ever go outside in deck 5 other then to eat guys BBQ. In general I thought they was to many chairs and stuff that was out of the sun (counting upper decks) to each is its own though.

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We did anytime dinning and we ended up meeting at 7 on most nights. We have 6 adults in our party and we all enjoy getting dressed up in nice clothes talking about the day we had. This is one of the highlights for me as well as the others in my group. I have a few photos that aren't right now so I'll go ahead and post this and post them later.

Check in / Wait

The only time that we had a wait was on the first formal night and it wasn't all that long so no issues here.

Service

I prefer the traditional way where you have the same waiter/ waitress and get to know them during the week. That way they have things waiting on the table for you when you sit down. Overall the service was very quick whenever we would ask for something special. Since I always get the coke card a lot of times on ships it is hard to get a refill. This time it was pretty easy as they had cans on the work station close by. Sometimes they would have a jug of water on the table where you could refill your own. I am not sure why this wasn't every night as I would prefer this way since the servers are over worked.

Another traditional thing that we prefer is just bringing the soup / appetizer one at time. Then after everyone gets done bringing the next round out. A lot of times they would just bring 2 or 3 out at the same time and then you wouldn't even have room on the table for all of them. So a few times what we would do is just request to bring them out one at a time and they would do this without a problem.

Friendly

Despite having a new waiter every night everyone was friendly so a 10 out of 10 here. Even though they knew they wouldn't get any extra tips so worlds better then the bartender on the ship.

Ordering Seconds

If we ever requested seconds of something or ordered 2 entries this was done without a problem. Since we live in Georgia we don't ever get Lobster so its a treat for us. The waiter had thought ahead had several extra lobster ready and even pushed us to eat the last one when we was all full.

Dress Code

I know this is a touchy subject and I wasn't a fan of the more relaxed dress code. Matt said the only reason they still do the 2nd formal night is $ made off pictures. All the men in our table had on khakis and collared shirts and the ladies dresses. So looking over and seeing pretty much anything goes at the tables beside us I didn't like even on formal night. I know this is how the world and cruising is going so I guess I will have to adjust. I wonder if the traditional dinning would have lead to more people dressing up ?

Food Quality

Most people are have been on Carnival should be familiar with the quality of food. This was my first Carnival cruise since 2010 so the quality of food was better then I expected. I never had a problem coming up with something to order and I am a very picky eater. I posted more about the desserts in a earlier post. I think I gave the quality of food a 9 of 10 for MDR in my carnival review.

Question about the Serenity area. Are there changing rooms with showers and saunas in the Serenity area

 

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I didn't really use the Serenity area so someone else can prob answer this better then I can. I didn't see any changing rooms I am sure there is a bathroom close by. I didn't see any showers or saunas

Can I find out who will be on Vista in November if Matt is on a break as CD?

You can check out the link below

https://johnhealdsblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/ED.CD-Schedule-5.3.pdf

While the different options on the ship for live music was the best I had seen. The quality of singers in the main production shows both male and female was maybe the worst I had seen a cruise. I went to all the shows in the theater except the Latin one. I don't expect to see anyone with a amazing voice, but the ones here in my opinion just wasn't any good or at best average cruise ship singers. During the 80's rock show they tried to sing a Stephen Tyler song and it was painful to listen to. The shows are still worth going to and I give them credit for doing everything live. The 80's party on pool deck was another show where the band sounded good and the singers just wasn't up to par.

Thank you for your review! We're sailing the Vista on Sept 9, so unfortunately we will miss out on Matt. I just assumed that all playlist shows were the same fleet wide but your comment about the Latin show makes me believe that's not true. On the Magic in May we had Flick, 88 Keys, America Rocks, and County Road.

The America Rocks and Flick are the two signature shows so they are on several ships. I don't know for sure the process just know not all the shows will be the same. I will go back and make a list of all the main shows and post them over the weekend.

Fabulous review! I really enjoyed revisiting my girl Vista through your eyes, especially the stuff that I totally forgot about!! :D Please don't let this be your last review! ;)

Thanks for the nice words I really enjoyed your review as well as it was right before I sailed out. Hopefully I'll be able to go on another cruise this fall and I'll be able to post another one. I just don't like how aggravating it is to post pics.

This is a great Vista review. We are on November 4th...almost under 100 days, but who's counting:) Wondered if you know who the Alchemy bartenders were. It's always our favorite watering hole and we have had some fun times with the alchemists! Best martini's ever! I have learned how to make the Basil Drop every bit as good as them but I can't get the Cucumber Sunrise! That one is soooo good!

Thanks for the nice words sadly for you Matt will be on vacation during that time so you will miss out on him. I am not a drinker so I never spent any time at the Alchemy Bar. They always seem to be a crowd at it though.

The mini golf is 9 holes on 2 different floors I thought it was more challenging then others I had seen on ship.

Here is a few videos from the whiteout party while I have over 2 hours of video most of it is not generic enough to share. Let me know if the videos don't work

Thx allot for the response and the detailed info. Just booked for Sep 3rd on the Vista. What were the show options nightly?

 

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I cheated I already had the info typed up and saved on my computer so i just copied and pasted it.

I can go back and get a full list of shows I know they had 4 production shows with flick and 80's rock being the 2 best ones. I skipped the one that was a Latin show. You also had a welcome aboard show the first night and a lip synch battle the 2nd night. Also you had love & marriage game show, white out party and Motown (ocean longue) and I am missing some more

Snacks are not free in Red Frog Pub. Jiji's and Cucina are free at lunch as you do say, but there is a cost for dinner. Just clarifying a bit!

I prob should have just erased the red frog pub as the only free thing they have is the fried peas or whatever they are called.

I tried to go back and edit to clarify before my 10 minutes to do so ran out. Yea those 2 are free for lunch only.

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Thanks for the review. Nice work.

How was the nightly entertainment/show options. Also are the alternative food options like Guys free?

thx in advance.

The options for free food was amazing and one of the highlights of the ship I never ate at the lido for lunch. I only had it twice for breakfast once when i was rushed for time and wanted a omelet and the other on the last day. I could easily go back on another 8 day cruise and not get to try everything that I wanted to for lunch.

Breakfast

Blue Iguana Cantina (Mexican)

Lido Buffet

Main Dining Room

Breakfast Grill (made to order in lido)

Seaday Brunch

Room Service

Lunch

Blue Iguana Cantina (Mexican)

Guys Burger Joint (poolside)

Guy's Pig & Anchor BBQ (sea days only)

Lido Buffet

Fresh Creations (salad)

The Carnival Deli

The Captains Pasta Bar

Jiji Asian Kitchen (Mongolian wok) lunch only

Cucina del Capitano (Italian) lunch only

Chef's Choice

Salad Bar

Pizzeria Del Capitano (24/7)

Main Dinning Room

Dessert / Snacks

Taste Bar (sample of paid resturants)

Red Frog Pub (fried peas only

Swirls (lido deck 24/7)

Sweet Spot

*Fresh Churned ice cream for a few hours during lunch with 2 cool/different flavors each day

Means its a Must try

Agree about La Romana. Plus, Carnival makes it very difficult for people to do non-Carnival-sponsored excursions there the way they have it set up. I feel bad for the tour operators, and that's part of what makes it so expensive to do tours there. I don't really care to go back.

Yea none of our group care to go back to that port it seems the other places In DR are better then la romana. The beaches are nice, but it was going to cost 100$ to do them while grand Turk was free and Aruba was like 20$. So unless your a beach nut it's hard to justify spending that much on a 3rd beach stop. Like I mentioned in the other post I didn't feel comfortable going out on my own after i started doing research and talking to others that have stopped here.

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Did the trolley have any stops where you could get off and then on again later? Did it go to the beach at Bayahibe?

The trolley we did was just a city tour I believe it's a 30+ min drive to the beaches. I'm sure there is a way to get there just will be pricey. I have a friend who owns land on the island so she warned me about booking 3rd party excursions mostly bc people there are always running late. Also on the tour we took they had police that followed us so I didn't want to venture to far off on my own.

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The wood carvings look very nice!

Yea they wood carvings was a cool I bought a smaller one of parrots and my cousin got the flamingo with a price of 10-20$. The good things is they break down so they will easily fit into your luggage if your flying

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