I'm onboard Carnival Vista this week.
It's day 7 of an 8-day southern Caribbean cruise.
And this video is all about what I love about the Carnival Vista.
And at the very top of that list is the Havana pool area at the back end of the ship.
What they've done with the Havana pool area is create a quiet, un-crowded area of the ship...
Where there are always chairs and loungers available...
And where the swimming pool and the two big Jacuzzis are un-crowded and ready for you.
If you've ever sailed on a mega cruise ship before, you know the pools and Jacuzzis can be very crowded.
And all the loungers by the pool either occupied or chair-hogged.
But not in the Havana pool area on Carnival Vista.
My wife and I were always able to find a place to sit and usually had a Jacuzzi to ourselves.
And there was always room in the pool, even on a sea day at peak times.
Now how is that possible, especially considering there are 4600 passengers onboard Carnival Vista this week?
It's because the Havana pool area is for the exclusive use of a small number of passengers
who have paid a little extra to stay in one of the Havana cabins back at the end of the ship.
And if you like a quiet, relaxing time by the pool... believe me, it is totally worth it...
Even though it is a little more expensive than a regular cabin on the ship.
Of the 4600 passengers onboard, only about 130 of us have access to the Havana pool area at the back of the ship.
Now if you want to be social in the Havana area, the best place for that is the swimming pool.
There's usually several other people in the pool, and you can chat with them and get to know them.
The depth is less than five feet, so you can comfortably stand up in the pool and have a nice chat with your fellow Havana cabin guests.
The Jacuzzis are a better place if you need some alone time, just you and your sweetie.
And then also there's plenty of other places on the Havana deck there, by the pool...
where you can sit in a lounger, or on a day bed, and have time to yourself and relax.
The Havana cabins on deck five have really nice balconies where you can sit out and have some quiet time.
If you're cruising with your sweetie, the ultimate Havana cabin is the Havana Suite.
It's the most expensive cabin on the ship, but I think it's worth it.
My wife and I are staying in one this week.
There's only four on the ship and...
If you want some romance, the Havana Suite is for you.
There is a big shower in the bathroom.
Plenty of room for two people to share.
Very romantic experience in the Havana Suites!
I think my wife's favorite part of our cabin was the swing out on the balcony.
And all the Havana cabins on deck five that have balconies also have this swing.
Now there are also interior cabins on deck five that don't have balconies...
And those interior cabins are the least expensive way to have access to the Havana area.
Of course, there's a lot more to like about the Carnival Vista than just the Havana area and the Havana cabins.
Something that no other cruise ship has is the IMAX theater.
A real IMAX theater with a gigantic screen and it shows current movies.
We saw the movie "American Made" with Tom Cruise...
Actually a day before it was released out to most theaters on land.
And you pay regular movie theater prices, so they're not gouging you there.
I really enjoyed seeing a movie in the big IMAX format last night here on Carnival Vista.
Something else I really enjoyed on this cruise, and it worked really well for me...
Was using Carnival's HUB app on my cell phone to keep in touch with my friends, Liz and Kimble and Kat that are cruising with us this cruise.
It was so easy to just text them using Carnival's HUB app.
That text feature only cost five bucks, and boy, that made it just really easy to coordinate with our friends so we could meet up at certain times and certain places.
And five bucks well spent!
The HUB app is actually free, it's just the texting feature that is five dollars to use.
Another thing I really liked about Carnival Vista was that the photos that the ship's professional photo staff take...
are not actually printed out on paper like they are on most other Carnival ships.
That's a huge waste of paper, because most people don't end up buying very many photos.
On Carnival Vista, those photos are displayed electronically rather than printed out.
You can sort through them and pick out whichever ones you like and they'll print those for you.
Also, one of the best things about any Carnival cruise is all the fun and entertainment onboard.
You can see the water park behind me.
I went down the water slides and had fun.
Clearly, all the kids were having fun on the water slides.
And I enjoyed watching them having fun.
But there's all sorts of other things to do on the ship.
There is lot's of comedy.
That's probably something that Carnival's stronger with than just about any cruise line.
There were four different comedians on the ship this week.
We saw some great comedy shows.
Most cruise ships will have one or two comedians during a week.
Carnival's just really great about comedy, so four comedians is pretty much the standard on any seven day Carnival cruise.
Of course, there's plenty of other things to do onboard Carnival Vista.
And some new attractions that you can't find on the other Carnival ships...
Like the big Sky Ride up at the top.
The ship has a ropes course, like some of the other newer Carnival ships have.
And it seems like there's always something to do.
And if you're looking for that big fun atmosphere, that's the center pool area.
If you want a more quiet atmosphere, you go to the aft pool area, and that's open to the public.
And then the exclusive pool on deck five, open to only about 130 guests, is the Havana pool...
My favorite place onboard the ship.
They're trying out some new elevator technology on Carnival Vista.
The front set of elevators is unlike any I've ever seen before.
You tell it outside of the elevator what floor you want to go to.
It finds the optimum elevator that will give you that ride the quickest and most efficient way...
without a whole bunch of stops.
And when you actually get inside the elevator, there are no buttons to push...
Just a display showing you what floor you're going to go to.
One of my favorite places on just about any Carnival cruise ship...
Guy's Burger Joint!
Oh, what a great burger there!
Certainly the best burger you can get at sea, on a cruise ship.
And for me, it's my favorite hamburger in the world, land or sea.
So, I have just totally loved the Carnival Vista this week.
My favorite Carnival cruise ship, and I'm sure I will return...
Especially when they reposition the ship to Galveston.
That's a great place to cruise out of.
But of course, there were a few things that I didn't like.
Rooms for improvement here on Carnival Vista.
And I thought I'd just mention a few... especially in case anybody from Carnival is watching!
Here's some things you could work on!
The first thing I was disappointed in was the speed of the Internet service onboard.
I've been on Royal Caribbean's newest ships, where they have fantastic Internet service...
Using a series of low earth orbit satellites from the O3B networks.
That works really well.
Unfortunately, whatever service Carnival Vista's using...
At least in the southern Caribbean, just doesn't work well at all.
It was some of the most frustrating Internet use I've had on a cruise ship.
I would have expected, on a brand new ship, that it would be more advanced in terms of Internet speeds.
Not so, I'm sorry to say.
There's also a problem in the buffet restaurant on Lido deck in the early morning hours when they first open for breakfast.
They open at 7 o'clock, and there's a big demand there right at opening time from the early risers for breakfast.
And they just don't open up fast enough, and with full capacity.
They open at kind of a 1/4 capacity in the buffet at first, at seven.
And then 7:30, they open up a little more.
And then by later on in the morning they open it all the way up.
And it's just not enough first thing in the morning at seven o'clock.
And then on a day when the ship has an early port call...
Like for us, it was the day we visited La Romana very early in the morning.
We had a 8:15 meeting time for our shore excursion.
Which meant we had to eat breakfast as soon as possible.
And there was a lot of other people that had early shore excursions too, apparently!
Because they were all trying to eat as early as possible.
And the buffet restaurant was only open to a small portion of its capacity at that hour.
And it was just a total zoo. So, that was a mess.
Now, while I did really love the Havana Suite that my wife and I stayed in...
There were a few little quirks about it... Things that maybe they could have designed better.
First and foremost was the way the couch sticks out in the living room section and creates a little choke point there by the desk.
If I'm sitting at the desk, it was impossible for my wife to get by.
A couple of other little problems in the Havana suite that we stayed in...
You know... I knew this was going to be this way going in... And it was a little bit of a problem.
There's no privacy out on the balcony. You have people walking by the walkway that's out between your balcony and the edge of the ship.
And you can very easily hear all the conversations going on on the balconies of the other people around you.
I don't know if there's any way around that, but that was a little bit of a downside.
If that would be a big problem for you, stay in one of the Havana cabins up on deck six rather than the ones down on deck five.
Probably the biggest problem for me was the music that was played late at night in the Havana bar area.
There's a Cuban band that plays music back there just about every night.
Not every night, but almost every night.
And they play up until about 12:30 in the morning.
And the bass from that band could be easily heard in our cabin.
And the closer your cabin is to the Havana bar, the more you're going to hear that.
So, pick your cabin accordingly, if you're staying in a Havana cabin.
For me, as a photographer, it was a little bit of a problem out on the balcony that there's a gigantic piece of glass between me and the ocean.
I really couldn't shoot any photos of anything interesting, like sunrises or sunsets, through that glass.
So, anytime I wanted to take a photo or shoot a video like that, I had to go up on to one of the upper decks
rather than being able to shoot it from my balcony.
A weird design choice that they made in the bathroom of the Havana suites...
Is that they placed the electrical outlet for an electric shaver on the left side of the bathroom...
And the shaving mirror way over on the right side of the bathroom.
And they placed the roll of toilet paper in a very awkward spot.
It's behind you, where you can't easily reach it. That wasn't a good move.
But don't get the wrong idea! I certainly loved our Havana suite...
And they've really come a long way since the Fantasy class and the Spirit class and the use of all that orange in the cabins.
The cabins are so nicely decorated now, especially the Havana cabins.
So, that's my report from Carnival Vista.
I really enjoyed my cruise.
I highly recommend this ship.
If you've never cruised with Carnival before, this would be the ship to try... it's their best.
And also, look for the Carnival Horizon, a sister ship, in 2018.
Although there is one little thing about Carnival Horizon you should know if you're going to stay in a Havana cabin.
And that is that there are going to be more cabins on the ship that are Havana cabins.
So, that's good news because they're more available...
But it's bad news because it means there will be a few more people with access to the Havana pool area.
So, it may be a tiny bit more crowded.
But it's still going to be very uncrowded, I'm sure, because it will be a limited number of people back there.
I'm Jim Zim. Thanks for watching!
And I hope to see you on a cruise ship someday.
I did run in to two of my YouTube channel subscribers on this cruise.
So, that was kind of fun!
They recognized me and introduced themselves, and we had a nice chat.
Maybe me and you sometime, on some other cruise ship!
That was fun!
Aw, you have such nice style!