Carnival Vista Review

4.5 / 5.0
1,043 reviews

Huge Dissapointment

Review for the Southern Caribbean Cruise on Carnival Vista
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Snap-k23
6-10 Cruises • Age 60s

Rating by category

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Additional details

Sail Date: Jul 2017
Cabin: Balcony
Traveled with children

We chose this cruise for the itinerary and the seemingly amazing ship amenities for families. We had 9 in our family group - grandparents, children, grand children - 14, 11, 7. The children and teen directors were horrible. They made no effort to engage the kids, simply shoved a list of "activities" to the parents and that's it. The teens tried to participate in a couple of activities, but they were pretty much left to their own entertainment with little staff engagement.The youngest - who has had extensive experience in day care/school settings had no interest in participating after meeting the director. So disappointing to their parents since they recalled fondly their cruise experiences as kids and teens on NCL cruise ships with much less to offer in the way of ship "bells and whistles". Moving on - We've sailed 6 NCL, 1 RCL, 1 Avalon River cruise and are booked on 3 Celebrity cruises. This was the worst experience ever. Boarding was a chaotic nightmare. Cattle call.

Once aboard we headed to get something to eat - not happening - those that had boarded ahead of us (we had a 12-12:30 board time) had had their lunch, but because they couldn't access their room they were perched in every seat available in the eating venue. The venue isn't designed to hold a full ship of people at one time. We finally were able to get to some food at 2:30 after the rooms opened up at 1:30. The Carnival layout for buffet service is not easy to navigate. You spend a lot of time weaving in and out to see what is available. Not a fan. We used Horizons for breakfast most days just to skip the buffet hassle.

Our balcony room 8331 was clean and had plenty of space for 2. One daughter shared the same size room with their 2 children - snug, and the other daughter had an inside cabin on 9th deck that was smaller and had a lot less storage space for the 3 of them. Our room steward was attentive and introduced himself and greeted us when he saw us in the hall.

Cabin Review

Balcony

Cabin 8D

Nice room, adequate storage for two people - comparable bathroom to other cruise lines - NCL, RCL. Small balcony - adequate site lines.

Port Reviews

St. Maarten

It's really hot/humid in St Maarten in July. This was an unplanned stop at a port that isn't busy this time of year. Many shops were closed for off-season. We walked the town, but the heat was oppressive.

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