This was our third Carnival Cruise in the past 5 years, all of which left from Galveston. This was our first cruise more than 5 nights. We chose this cruise because it fit a very specific time table in June of 2019. We're from Texas and have visited Galveston before but not this time. I'd recommend spending some time in Galveston if it's your first time, there's plenty of history, food, and fun nightlife places to enjoy. We had pre-booked parking at EZ Cruise Parking, ($80) and we had no problem embarking within our window. My wife and I were very happy about our room. It was an interior room but had a "walkway" view at the very front of the ship on the Lido deck, so we did have a window which had a great forward view. We went to the show on the first night which was a kind of preview of the shows for the rest of the cruise and we were hooked. We saw every show and they were all very good. The Cloud 9 Spa and exercise rooms were fantastic, especially the "Thermal Rooms" packages which we purchased for the entire cruise. We went almost every day, enjoying the mineral tub, eucalyptus steam rooms and saunas. The food was very good, but not as good as I expected. I just thought the other cruises we'd been on the food was better, especially the breakfasts, and specialty dining rooms. We only went to the dining room once for breakfast and it wasn't good, so we stuck with the buffet the rest of the cruise and it was a bit plain. The dining rooms were much better at night, our favorite meals of the cruise were in the "Dine Anytime" or Horizons Dining room. We did spend extra on the steakhouse and the "Captains Italian" restaurant, both were disappointing base on what we had done before. Guy Fieri's Burger Joint was fantastic, and so was the Pizzeria. The IMAX was an interesting feature and we took advantage of a showing of "Dark Phoenix", it was a very enjoyable experience. We spent a lot of time on the Serenity Deck (21+) and we highly recommend the salad bar there, the hot tubs up there were just the right temperature too.

We only did one excursion, in Belize we did the "jungle buggy, zip line, cave tubing and lunch" excursion and it was worth it. We saw many reviews complaining about bus times, wait times, etc. and we didn't mind it at all. In fact our guide was so good the bus trip to the excursion went by without much notice. (FYI, go to the bathroom before you get on any bus or tender) In Roatan, Honduras, we hung out at the "free" beach for most of the day and it was great, especially for those of us who can't do more than one day at a time on a beach. Plenty of good drinks and places to relax, I'd recommend renting a clam shell shade for the day. Matt the Cruise Director was the best / funniest we've seen. The ship is huge, I wish I would have had more time to explore it all. We would definitely recommend the Carnival Vista and I'd like to visit Belize again, I'm a bit done with Cozumel, lol. Finally, getting off the ship was a nightmare, all kinds of issues with the computers at Customs. The kick you out of your room at 8:45, we didn't get to head to the gangway until after noon, then stood in line at customs for an hour and a half. I know it wasn't Carnival's fault, but they didn't or weren't willing to make things easier for us.