My brother-in-law want to try out “one of the big ones” so while on the Carnival Sunshine, we booked a cruise on Vista back in November 2016. BLUF: It was a pretty enjoyable experience.

Things got off to a rocky start with the embarkation process in Miami. We arrived just before our 11am scheduled boarding time only to have to wait in line for almost 45 minutes due to some kind of “computer problem” with the tablets on board the ship. I don’t think we ever really got the fully story but it definitely delayed my first Guy’s burger. With priority boarding, my wife & I were able to finally get on board and drop off our carry-on bag in our cabin. Picking up our Sail-n-Sign card in the mailbox outside of our cabin was an unexpected change to the boarding process. I don’t know if that was just a “Miami thing” or if we can expect that on future cruises. It did speed things up but . . . I’m not sure that I like the change. I guess as long as nothing happens to those cards until we open the envelope, it’s okay. I hate to think of trying to get a new card if someone tampered/stole the card before we got there.

At this point I have to mention that we boarded on the third deck at the forward bank of elevators and got off at the sixth deck. Walking down the corridor to our extended aft balcony, we both felt like we were in one of those cartoons were there’s a never-ending row of doors & lights the further you traveled: you couldn’t see the end of the ship for what seemed like forever. My wife was thinking – “Oh no. We are going to do SO much walking on this cruise!” Read more