In 2011 we sailed on the Carnival Magic on her second cruise. The ship was marvelous, the service was excellent as crew were continually asking if we needed anything (particularly from the bar), the cabin was nothing special but perfectly adequate for the trip, the food choice in the buffet was brilliant covering a huge range of food from many different countries. All in all it was great experience.

We recently sailed on the Vista expecting great things from her. Oh dear, how disappointed were we? That was our 13th cruise and, unfortunately, the worst of them all. I should also point out at this point, we were only the tip of the iceberg as far as unhappy passengers were concerned. We spoke with many different passengers who had the opinion as us.

Embarkation was smooth and uneventful (we have experienced far worse), finding our Spa cabin was easy. We boarded at around 12:15 pm and by 1:30 we were making our way up to the buffet for food. Here we experienced our first disappointment. The range of food on offer was not a patch on the Magic the amount of serving points was very small given the size of the ship and number of passengers on board. On the Magic it was almost all self-service, but on the Vista it was all served to you. This greatly slowed down the flow and queues of around 30 to 40 passengers were at each of the four serving points. The range of food offered was very limited (same for the entire 12 day cruise) and repeated throughout the serving positions. Read more