Very good trip overall but still disappointed with Carnival Vista

Item: Carnival Vista
Rating: 3.9
Author: mthoma26

Carnival Vista Cruise Review to Caribbean - Southern

mthoma26

Contributor Level: Deck Hand

Cruises: 7+ cruises

Review: 1

Helpful Votes: 6

Overall rating:

3.9 out of 5

Verified Review

8 Night Southern Caribbean (Miami Roundtrip)

Sail date: June 30, 2018

Ship: Carnival Vista

Cabin type: Balcony

Cabin number: 2322

Traveled as: Family (young children)

Reviewed: 6 years ago

Review summary

We had an extremely good vacation and if it were not for the issue we had with Carnival it would have been even better. One major suggestion is to always double and triple, heck even quadruple check that any special request you need (bed rail as an example) be on your reservation be it with your agent and even calling the company directly as more than not it does not happen as it happened in our case. I called carnival directly to make sure a bed rail request was placed and it never happened hence putting my child's safety at risk of potentially falling off of the bed or couch. We had to come up with out own ingenious way to make sure he was safe as the answer by the staff was to place a table beside the couch (even more dangerous!!), then their second suggestion was to place my 3 yr old in a crib!! The way they handle my formal complaint was sub-par and unacceptable and they basically called us liars saying we never called Carnival to request it. The supervisor even went so far to say that in his 10 yrs with Carnival he has never heard of a bed rail!! All they saw was people trying to get money from them when that was never asked for at any time, we wanted the bed rail pure and simple, we never once asked for any sort of compensation!! So beware as the "customer is always right" does not exist for Carnival guest services or corporate head office for that matter!!

Embarkation

5 out of 5

Fast and easy, no fuss

Ship experiences

Food and Dining

5 out of 5

Food quality was very good, wish they could have had more variety in the dining room.

Onboard Activities

4 out of 5

For kids and teenagers major improvement when it comes to activities. Waterworks, skyride, skycourse and clubhouse were awesome!!

Entertainment

3 out of 5

Service and Staff

3 out of 5

Cabin Steward and wait staff were excellent. The staff at guest services were poorly trained and some downright rude and arrogant!! Thank goodness we finally had a competent, polite supervisor help us with our formal complaint against Carnival!! The first supervisor we had was, to put it in simple terms, a bully!!

Ship Quality

2 out of 5

Cleanliness was superb, my rating is purely based on the ship design as these new 2.0 ships are not well thought out at all. The Marketplace on the Lido deck was cramped, almost claustrophobic feel and the buffet layout was awful as you constantly were waiting in extremely long lines. Carnival needs to take the buffet layout on Celebrity as an example of how it should be done!! The theater (Liquid Lounge) was absolutely awful!! No matter where we sat (second floor) we never once got a good view. Very cramped as well and this was due, in my opinion, to Carnival adding IMAX to these new ships. IMAX requires an enormous amount of space so they need to cut somewhere else.

Cabin / Stateroom

4 out of 5