Our Friends & Family Cruise on Vista June 16-24

[carnivaladdix120]

Hello fellow cruise addicts!

We just returned from a funfilled 8 day southern Caribbean cruise on the beautiful Vista and I wanted to shareour experience on the ship and ports. I’ve found of wealth of knowledge and informationfrom other awesome reviews here and although mine won’t be as spectaculr asothers, I’m hoping to provide a little insight from our perspective.

A few things before the cruise - We decided to prepay for thesocial media packages as well as excursions. I get the social media package tokeep in touch with my kids as well as our employees while on the ship. The onlyexcursion we purchased was the Ultimate Adventure with Lunch in La Romana. Afew other excursions we were interested in ended up either being sold out ornot enough spaces left for all of us to book. This was purely our fault as “some”in our group couldn’t make up their mind soon enough 😉We also made reservations for the steakhouse. We tried to reserve for Father’sDay, but it was booked and after several emails back and forth selectingalternate days and times, we finally were able to snag the 3rd nightof the cruise at 5:30. This day we were in Grand Turk until 1:30 so it workedout really well for us.

A little background info on our group of cruisers. We had agroup of 10 altogether which made for some fun times and occasionally nerve rackingtimes as well (lol hard keeping up with everyone) My name is Michelle (42) andmy husband is Thomas (34) and this sailing we chose to leave our 4 children(ages 20, 14, 12 and 10) behind and enjoy a kid-free (our kids at least)cruise. We actually take quite a few kid-free cruises a year and save 1 eachyear for them LOL Hubby is a big casino addict (in a good way) and he alwaysgets a BB (bounce back) offer at the end of each cruise, so we take advantageof them ALL! We have only sailed Carnival and this was my 17thcruise and hubby’s 19th. Our first cruise together was in 2009 andwe’ve been hooked ever since. The others in our group were my dad (2ndcruise), mother-in-law (probably her 30th cruise, she’s sailed withvarious lines), brother-in-law and his spouse (1st cruise), my bestfriend of 26 years and her spouse (3rd cruise) as well as anotherfriend and her spouse (1st cruise).

[carnivaladdix120]

Embarkation Day

My friends and theirspouses flew in from ATL the morning of the cruise and actually got on the shipbefore us and they didn’t even have FTTF! The rest of us live in Palm Beach (50mins north of Miami) so we had a party bus pick us up from my house and rodetogether to the port. A slight mishap with misplaced keys caused us to leavefor the port later than planned which almost sent me over the edge, but theywere found and we were on our way. We arrived at the port at about 12pm, gaveour luggage to the porter, got into the priority line (thank God because the regularline was LONG!). I turned platinum this cruise, hubby was already platinum and ourparents and BIL bought FTTF so we all got on the ship in about 15 minutes. Notbad for Miami!

Side note: I have read SO many reviews on Vista that Ialready knew what to expect of the atrium, but when we walked on, I was notreally disappointed, but definitely miss the high atrium and glass elevators. Whenreading how others were underwhelmed, I thought they were crazy until I experiencedit myself. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still beautiful! The funnel is awesome andI do like the brightness of the atrium. But something was missing and I didn’t realizewhat it was until day 3. You can’t see the ocean from many parts of the shipinside! Everything is enclosed. Like others said, it did feel more like a hotelthan a ship.

Anyway, we went right to our cabin to drop off our bags and metour room steward, Gloria, who was very nice! We always opt for evening only cabinservice as we tend to sleep in and really only need fresh towels. We then foundmy friends and let them put their luggage in our cabin since theirs wasn’t readyyet. They had already eaten, so we left them and went to get our first meal! Hubbyalways gets a burger from Guys and I always get the burrito bowl from BlueIguana. We then met up in the Market Place to find seats and eat. I don’t knowif this is normal, but it was unusually HOT in there! I was already sweaty fromthe FL heat but goodness, I was burning up in there! It was hard to enjoy my foodbecause I was trying so hard to cool off LOL But the food was great either way.After eating, we went to explore a bit since this was all of our first time onVista.

[siestakeys04]

Great start thanks for the review.

[carnivaladdix120]

I can say this is the first ship that I felt completely loston! LOL Seriously I felt like a first time cruiser all over again! I think itmay have been day 2 that I finally realized that Vista basically split thePromenade deck into 2 decks, 4 and 5. Our cabin was on deck 3 near the shore excursiondeck which I was worried about with noise and stuff, but it ended up being theperfect location for us! We took the stairs often since the casino was on deck4 and all the great areas were either on 4 or 5. Plus the Liquid Lounge wasvery close by so I was able to get in line early for a few shows. I did getlost quite a bit the first few days, walking all over the place trying to find ourdining room which was all the way in the back of the ship and we had to enter ondeck 3, BUT we had to take deck 4 all the way back first and then go down onedeck. This is not really unusual but deck 4 appeared to end at the casino whenin fact it did go all the way back. I think there weren’t enough signs aroundlike on older ships to really find where things were so we used the deck layout near the elevators quite often lol Maybe it was just me though or thecocktails that turned me around, who knows lol

Speaking of cocktails, none of us purchased the Cheers or Sodapackage. We’ve never purchased it mainly because I think the price isridiculous and hubby always gets the DOU card from the casino so I just getdrinks on his card while we play. My husband is really the life of the party inthe casino. He gets to know all of the dealers, most of which he already knewfrom other ships and the hosts and pit bosses LOVE him! It’s crazy! He has this crazy sayingthat gets everyone going and by the 2nd or 3rd day,everyone in the casino, players and staff, yell it out whenever they see him. Outof all of our sailings, this one had the most people who yelled it out, even inthe comedy club! It was hilarious!! So if there are any casino players on herewho have heard a man yell out “Who you wit!!”, it’s my crazy husband LOL

Back to day 1 lol After exploring a bit, it was time formuster which we were stationed in the Liquid Lounge. It went by pretty quick. Theyhad a LONG list of people to call who hadn’t checked it and then Matt came onthe intercom calling out even more names. I really don’t get why people can’tjust go to their station, check in and get it over with. We didn’t have tostand outside in the sweltering south FL heat, we had comfy seats, what morecould you ask for? Oh well, that’s neither here nor there. So, after muster, wewent to our cabin to give my friends their luggage to take to their cabins. Ourluggage hadn’t arrived yet, so we went up for the sail away and relaxed. Thisship has LOTS of awesome seating all around the ship. Seriously, they did agreat job in making sure there were plenty of places to relax and enjoy the sunor shade. Deck 5 goes all the way around the entire ship and had so many differenttypes of relaxing places to sit and chat or lounge, it was awesome! Rightoutside the Ocean Plaza, there were these clamshell type beds (without tops) thatI found so relaxing and breezy that they quickly became my favorite spot, evenmore so than Serenity.

We went to Alchemy for the martini tasting which is somethingI do on every cruise and always enjoy! I love the bar staff all over the ship, especiallyAlchemy. I love the concoctions they come up with. We all enjoyed the minimartinis and each received the little martini glass charm for playing andreally had a great time. Afterwards, we went to the casino and played blackjack and my friends played slots for a while. Around 8pm, we went to dinner inthe MDR. We always opt for YTD and it usually works for hubby and I, but Ithink next time we have a group, we’ll opt for 8:15 set time because it washard keeping track of everyone and deciding what time to meet up for dinnerevery night. But we did have great service and everyone enjoyed their food aswell. I’m sorry, I did not take pics of the menus or food, although I do havepics of our food from the steakhouse that I’ll share later.

[riclop]

Thanks for the report.