Carnival Vista Review
BAKAT
2-5 Cruises • Age 50s
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Sail Date: Jul 2016
Cabin: Ocean Suite
Since this was our third cruise on Carnival, the overall layout and the "Fun Ship" features of previous ships were familiar on the Vista, even though it of course had new elements as well. However, we didn't find these novelties sufficiently attractive for ourselves (which, of course, is a purely subjective view).
The Skyride is unique, but due to extremely long waiting lines due to extremely slow boarding (due to extremely bored personnel), it is about one minute of biking for which you wait at least an hour - do the math. The IMAX is nice and features very current movies (including the premiere of "Suicide Squad" in our case), but you pay 12.95 per ticket. The "Thrill Theater" is a very small multidimensional movie theatre primarily geared towards an audience age 10 and below (even though there was an adult "thrillogy" late at night which we didn't check out), with very short movies adding up to about half an hour (at 5.50 per guest). The "excitement" includes soap bubbles, (very cold!) wind, water sprinklers, and very poor 3D glasses (paper!). The Liquid Lounge is no longer a classic theater, but features in-house productions only for which a larger auditorium is clearly not necessary, so the choice to reduce it to almost club size was a smart one).
The pools are as ridiculously small as on other Carnival ships, but with a passenger number exceeding 4,000 by far, it gets absurd. Essentially, the "Beach" and "Tides" pools are whirl pools with no bubbles. The splash zone for kids ("WaterWorks") is slightly bigger than on other Carnival ships, but the two slides are less attractive (so there were hardly any queues after the first day, which speaks for itself).Unfortunately, the staff was less prepared than on previous ships to enforce the "no deck chair reservation" policy, so most of the times, you saw hundreds of deck shairs with neatly folded towels on them with no-one around for hours. Equally, the staff "supervising" the pools chose to ignore the fact that kids were jumping into it from all sides (despite the fact that - of course - this was not allowed).
Cabin Review
Ocean Suite
Cabin OS
The layout of the Ocean Suite was considerably improved on the Vista, particularly for a family of four (as in our case - we always had Ocean Suites before). There is no separate dressing table any more in the walk-in closet, and the options to stow away stuff seems to have decreased, but there is still ample space (and the three small closets can be adjusted according to your individual needs - one or two rails plus shelves correspondingly). As a (very positive) consequence of these changes, the main room is clearly more spacious, and the same is true for the bathroom. There is a huge flat-screen TV (but with very limited channels as elsewhere on Carnival), so it was hardly ever on. You can no longer connect your own devices to the screen, BTW (as was possible on some older ships).
The prime negative aspect was the fact that the walls to the neighbouring staterooms were not sound-proof, to put it mildly. However, there was absolutely no noise from above or below and non from outside when the door was closed. The latter is important, since due to the new layout of the Vista, there is a public seating area just two decks below the suites which you can watch from above (since deck 5 is wider than deck 7), so if you stand on the railing of your balcony, you don't have the "unlimited ocean view experience" any more that you have on other Carnival ships, since you can now look on (and talk to :-) ...) the people two floors below you.
Port Reviews
Barcelona
Wonderful city with lots to explore. Both embarkation and debarkation went very smoothly.
Sardinia
Nice town, but not too spectacular. Easy to visit on your own (and free shuttles to the entrance of the city from the dock).
Marseille
Very nice town (despite its image), easy to reach with a shuttle bus from the dock. There is a tourist train leaving right at the old port which does the trick of showing you the most important sights with short, but sufficient information - altogether much cheaper than any excursion offered by the cruiseline.
Palma de Mallorca (Majorca)
Nice town, easy to walk around.
9 Helpful Votes
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