Carnival Vista Bahamas Cruise Review – Day 6: September 6, 2024

It’s the final day of this 6-day Bahamas cruise on the Carnival Vista, and we’re spending the day at sea as we sail back to Port Canaveral. Tomorrow, I would have been boarding the ship for an 8-day cruise with stops in Aruba, Curacao, and Grand Turk, but that cruise has been canceled as the ship will undergo repairs in wet dock to fix issues with her azipods, which I’ve written about.

This cruise was originally set to call on Half Moon Cay, Grand Turk, and Amber Cove, but due to the ship not being able to travel at full speed, the itinerary was modified to Half Moon Cay, Nassau, and Freeport.

Normally, on a sea day, it would be very hard to find space around the pools and outdoor decks; however, due to many people canceling the cruise because of the itinerary change, there’s been plenty of space outdoors to enjoy the hot weather and work on that tan!

My last day reports always feature an overall review of the cruise, which will be coming soon, but before that, just a few notes about the day.

For lunch, I decided to give the Seafood Shack a try. Located up on Deck 10 aft, outside at the pool, they serve up fresh seafood such as shrimp, lobster, crab legs, clams, lobster rolls, fish and chips, and more—all at market price and à la carte—for lunch and dinner.

I ordered six U10 shrimp tossed in a garlic butter sauce for $2.50 each. These colossal sea creatures were delicious. Shrimp lovers can also get some smaller peel-and-eats if you’d rather not go for the big boys.

The Seafood Shack is a great alternative to the greasy Guy’s Burgers or the overstuffed burritos and is an often overlooked spot to grab dinner. With its close proximity to the buffet, you can place your seafood order, pair it with some other items from the buffet, and make a meal out of it all.

For dinner, I headed up to the Italian restaurant, Cucina del Capitano, one last time. I started out with some housemade burrata, which was creamy and delicious.

Next up were the Mussels and Clams. I specifically ordered this again as the first time I ate here, the clams were not actual clams but canned clam strips. Tonight… the clams made an appearance, and as usual, this was a delicious starter with plenty of garlicky flavor.

For the main course tonight, I went with Chicken Parm and a side of spaghetti. The thinly pounded chicken breast is breaded, then topped with sauce and cheese—pretty simple. It wasn’t bad and was a light way to end the cruise after that big shrimp lunch!

No dessert for me, but I won’t lie… I did sneak in an ice cream cone before heading back to my room for the night.

Ok, let’s get to the overall review of the cruise and the Carnival Vista itself.

Embarkation

As I mentioned in the Day 1 report, embarkation was an absolute cluster. The previous sailing arrived late thanks to the azipod issues, and that late arrival was compounded by 14 guests who refused to get off the ship.

In order to clear the ship for the next sailing, the ship must reach a zero count. These 14 individuals, for whatever reason, compounded the delay in boarding even further until they were tracked down and taken off the ship.

I rolled into Port Canaveral just before 1 p.m. and was met with absolute chaos! Boarding had kicked off around 12:45 p.m., but the scene was a mess—crowds of passengers were lined up, snaking around the terminal and spilling back into the parking garage. It was a sea of confusion with no Carnival staff in sight to offer any explanations or updates. Instead, there was just a lone security guard directing people to join the endless line.

I wasn’t on the ship until 2:40 p.m., where long lines for the muster station check-in compounded frustrations. It’s safe to say this was the worst embarkation experience ever.

Stateroom

For this cruise, I booked a standard balcony stateroom, 8336, located on Deck 8 forward. This is your typical Carnival stateroom with two twin beds that can be combined to a full, a pull-out sofa, television, a good amount of storage, and a bathroom with a shower (with a shower curtain). There’s also a small cooler—not a fridge—and an in-room safe for keeping your casino winnings in.

The balcony was deep enough that you didn’t have to sit sideways and came with two chairs and a small table.

While the ship itself is only 8 years old, she is not “device-friendly.” When it comes to power outlets and USB ports, there are only two of each located on the desk. There are no USB ports near the bed, so if you have a lot of devices you need to keep charged, or like to keep your phone near the bed at night, bring a power bank as outlets are in short supply.

As far as noise is concerned, I didn’t hear any of my next-door neighbors through the wall, but you could hear every little sound that occurred out in the hallway. Pro tip: Bluetooth speaker and play white noise at night!

Throughout the entire six days, I did not see my stateroom attendant a single time. There was no introduction on embarkation day, and no check-ins throughout the week. However, there was never an issue with the room being made up in a timely manner, and a towel animal was placed on the bed every day!

Carnival has still not gone back to twice-a-day stateroom service, unlike MSC, and I don’t think they ever will.

Carnival Vista Food

In yesterday’s report, I talked a bit about some of the restaurants on Carnival Vista; all are the standard ones you’ll find on all the ships. There are no additional ones such as Rudi’s Seagrill, Emeril’s Bistro, or Bonsai Teppanyaki, which are on some of the newer ships, including the Excel-class vessels (Mardi Gras, Celebration, Jubilee).

The main dining room menus are standardized across the Carnival fleet, with the exception of the “Fun Italian Style” ships, Firenze and Venezia. The buffet serves your standard breakfast food in the morning with bacon served just every other day due to guests wasting incredible amounts of it. Now, when it’s available, bacon is served to you by a crew member, keeping the greedy-bacon-wasters from eliminating it from the buffet completely.

The buffet serves a rotating menu at lunchtime, and dinner features the same menu you’ll find in the main dining room.

If I had to rate the various restaurants, they would be:

• Main Dining Room (Free) – didn’t experience
• Buffet (Free) – **
• Pizza (Free) – **
• Deli (Free) – didn’t experience
• BlueIguana Burritos and Tacos (Free) – ***
• Seafood Shack (à la carte) – ****
• Cucina del Capitano ($24 per person) – ***
• Ji Ji Asian Kitchen ($24 per person) – ***
• Fahrenheit 555 Steakhouse ($49 per person) – ****

Each daily report features notes from dinner, so be sure to check them out!

Carnival Vista Passengers

With school back in session around the country, even though this was during the Labor Day holiday, there weren’t many families with children onboard. This cruise featured a mix of people in their 40s-70s, mostly from Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and the Carolinas.

There was a big push by the Carnival vacation planners in the days leading up to the cruise to fill the ship up due to the number of cancellations caused by the itinerary change. This resulted in a lot of Florida residents on board as they had a quick drive to the ship—and a great deal for booking at the very last minute!

Side note: no fights, no smell of weed at all.

Carnival Vista Entertainment

Unless you’re on one of Carnival’s Excel-class ships, expect entertainment to be lackluster at best. In fact, I described the first production show as “the worst high school musical” after sitting through less than 10 minutes of it before I walked out. No set design, poor choreography, horrible storylines—just all around bad.

Since I’m not a fan of standup comedy, unless it’s Jerry Seinfeld, I had to rely on my fellow passengers to give me their thoughts on the rotating comedians who were featured in the Punchliner Comedy Club. It was a mixed bag of reviews, with one comedian seeing people walk out throughout his show and being described as “awful,” while comedians later in the week got “he was OK.”

The ship did feature the Deal or No Deal game show along with Love and Marriage to kill time.

Musicians around the ship, who would perform in the atrium and bars, were not bad, but one solo vocalist in the Red Frog Pub was probably the reason it wasn’t busy at night.

Carnival Vista Service

As I pointed out a few times, there seem to be areas understaffed while others are overstaffed. Alchemy Bar, for its size and popularity, is a complete disaster if you’re trying to get a drink and you’re not seated directly at the bar. Two bartenders and one cocktail server/bartender is not enough staff to handle the number of people who visit the bar.

The first night in the steakhouse, service was slow, with it taking 38 minutes to have a simple gin and tonic delivered to the table and only a few crew taking orders and running food. The rest of the times I dined there, service was good, and there were definitely more people working.

Many slower bars had more staff than busier bars, which didn’t make much sense. Bar servers walking around the pools and outside decks were nearly non-existent, and if they were the only way to quench your thirst, you’d die of dehydration.

Revenue-generating crew members such as photographers, the Park West Gallery hustlers, and spa associates were in abundance!

Housekeeping seemed to be everywhere, always cleaning and picking up, which kept the ship looking its best at all times.

Debarkation

Carnival Vista has rolled out the new digital debarkation system through the Carnival Hub app. The day before debarkation, you go into the app and select whether you’re taking your own luggage off the ship or leaving it out at night to be taken off the ship for you and collected in the terminal.

Once that selection is made, you can choose a time for debarking.

I opted to carry my own bags off and selected the 8:40 a.m. debarkation window.

At around 7:15 a.m., an announcement was made that debarkation would begin shortly for platinum, diamond, and priority guests and would be followed by self-debarkation.

At 8:10 a.m., I received notification via the app that I could proceed to the gangway. I gathered my bags, went to the elevator, got into an empty car, and went straight down to Deck 3 where there was no line! I walked off the ship, into the terminal where facial recognition clears you through customs and immigration, and I was in my car at 8:23 a.m.

This was the best debarkation experience EVER! No lines for an elevator, no lines to get off the ship, no lines in the terminal—just the fastest I ever got off a ship before. This was heaven compared to the hell embarkation was.

I was skeptical that Carnival would be able to refine the debarkation experience with their digital debark process and have seen it fail miserably before, but this time it worked. Perhaps due to the size of the ship and it not being a full sailing, but this was perfect!

Overall Rating

This is the second Vista-class ship I have sailed on, the first being the Carnival Horizon exactly one year ago. While the design and layout of the ship are fine, the newer, larger vessels offer more in terms of restaurants, bars, and entertainment—especially BETTER entertainment and more of it.

Technical issues aside, the Vista is very well maintained. Yes, there are a few areas that need some attention thanks to guest abuse, and carpet needs to be replaced in some areas, but unlike other ships in the fleet, you’ll be hard-pressed to find rust or areas in need of major repair—except that pesky azipod!

With service iffy, the embarkation process a nightmare, and entertainment simply awful, it’s hard to give this cruise more than a 3 on a 1 to 5 rating, with 5 being excellent. While the crew members I interacted with were all awesome, there’s some work to do on getting areas adequately staffed.

Carnival Vista is currently based out of Port Canaveral, which is a 2.5-hour drive for me, as opposed to a half hour to Fort Lauderdale and an hour on the train to Miami. Unless there was a compelling reason for me to make the drive up to Orlando, I more than likely wouldn’t go out of my way to book Vista again.

My next confirmed trip is coming up on November 17, 2024, as I board Holland America Line’s Nieuw Amsterdam for a cruise around the Caribbean. The last time I was on that particular ship was during her inaugural season in 2010—a long time ago, so I’m looking forward to seeing what type of shape she’s in now that she’s about halfway through the expected lifetime of a ship.

Holland America Nieuw Amsterdam Western Caribbean Cruise Review – Day 1: December 12, 2010

There may be a trip or two between now and then, so keep following along, and thanks for joining me on this latest journey!

Fun Times for Day 6:

The Fun Times for September 6, 2024 can also be downloaded as a PDF by clicking here.

Personal Day-By-Day Carnival Vista Cruise Review: