Carnival knows its business, and we were impressed by the large number of young passengers, so the Carnival "anything goes" style is obviously attracting people. But it's not really for us. First the bouquets and thanks - Vista is a lovely ship and our Havana Aft View cabin was beautiful. The entire Havana area is beautiful and we felt privileged to have access to it. The quality of all the food we experienced on Vista was excellent - in Horizons and in the Lido Marketplace. The WiFi was the best we have ever had at sea and by far the best value that we have experienced at sea. The Carnival Hub app is also great. The entertainment was excellent, and Cruise Director Matt is excellent. Despite almost 4,000 passengers we never had to wait in line to leave or re-board the ship, and our embarkation experience in Barcelona was great - maximum 20 minutes from taxi to being on the Vista.

Now the negatives - and I acknowledge that several are simply due to our preferences. We like tablecloths,and we like to have appropriate cuttlery. Formica-topped tables in the MDR are not really for us. No saucer for your coffee cup means you must just rest your spoon on the table top. At breakfast you receive 1 knife and 1 fork and must re-use them through the meal. At dinner they will replace the single knife and fork for the main entree, but you must use the single knife for all purposes including buttering your bread. The Horizons MDR decor is very drab, decorated in brown and olive coloured formica - it seems that the designers watched "Mad Men" and thought that it showed contemporary U.S. decor.

Our worst experience was the laughingly named "Your Time Dining". It is anything but that. Although we prefer to dine later, in order to avoid long queues and long waits we learned to eat at 7 every evening when there was less demand. One evening we waited 90 minutes for a table and the next day they sent some cake to our cabin by way of apology - like you need cake on a cruise ship! Read more