Even with all the hiccups, we still had a great vacation. We won't ever let something like this stop us from cruising. We love carnival, and we infact are cruising agin in 20 days... just not overly impressed with this specific cruise and the experiences we had
Embarkation
3 out of 5
Let me just start with, we booked this cruise at 7pm the night before embarkation.... so most of this is based off of what happened with our experience with this. We got to port canaveral, walked in to get checked in and our boarding passes wouldn't scan... we were then escorted to guest services, all the way through security and the dogs, to get that sorted out. It took a bit of time but we were on the ship by 2pm
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
3 out of 5
Hit or miss in my opinion... some days it was great others weren't
Onboard Activities
5 out of 5
Entertainment
5 out of 5
Marty the cruise director definitely keeps a lively crowd. He always was interacting with guests and kept us up to date on everything that was going on around the ship
Service and Staff
3 out of 5
Again... our experience with this cruise was based off of just that... our experience.... once on board, rooms were ready, we went to our stateroom to find that someone else was assigned to it... we figured someone was upgraded and the info just wasn't sent down yet... I decided to go check and see if our keys had made it to the room around 430/5pm... keys were in the mailbox and they opened the door... our luggage was already there so thay was also a bonus. Once we got in the room and unpacked we decided to go to the casino, only to fond that our sail and sign cards were invalid. The didn't work, at all....other than for the door....we go to guest services and stand in line for atleast am hour. They sorted out the card mishap and we were on our way back to the casino... we booked under a casino deal and were supposed to have free drinks, obc, and funplay... none of that was available to us. We went to the host desk, and the Hostess argued with me for atleast an hour that I didn't book a casino deal, when I did infant book a casino deal (had pictures of my booking and what promotions we were supposed to have)..... finally she asks if I am maria??? Nope... not my name... another casino host came over and finally got it all straighted out and we thought all was good. This was the first time we have cruised that we couldn't get a single server to get us a drink. We waited and waited and waited...it wasn't the best of times...but again... an extremely last minute booking was probably rhe culprit behind all of the mishaps
Ship Quality
4 out of 5
For the Vista ro have just come out of dry dock, it seemed old and abused. It seems it hasn't been taken care of the way some of the other ships have been.
Cabin / Stateroom
2 out of 5
We absolutely loved the layout of the cabin. There was room to move around and you could actually walk around the entire bed. The problem started when the carpet in the room started to soak out of whay seemed like nowhere. For 3 days our carpet by the closest was soaked, puddle deep... contacted guest services... they put a blower in the room and said it was dry. It was not. Never got dry. We decided at the end to just deal with it and keep it moving
We absolutely love aruba... spent some time at baby beach and had a great lunch at Zeerovers. We rented a car and we're able to take our time and enjoy the islands without being rushed
Well 1 thing I can attest to is if you book less than 3 days prior to the sail away date DHS regulations require the port personnel to do extra checks on you and sometimes that takes an extra 90 minutes to 2 hrs.to get through. So as you said many of the deficiencies experienced may fall back on the late booking timeframe especially if you were getting a last minute cancelation cabin.
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