First Cruise: Detailed review and photos of our Carnival Vista March 17-24, 2019 trip

[Ideb]

Some sights and photo opportunities on the walk to the beach.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ideb]

The beach was already pretty packed when we got there that morning. We found a single empty lounger on the front row close to the water to set our stuff on so we could keep an eye on it. All three of us got in the water. The water was still pretty cold to me. I'm not really a beach person and I don't think the water ever really is warm enough for me but I played for a little while and took some pictures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We around some and walked down the dock and took some photos/

 

 

 

 

I sat in the lounger a while and watched the boys play in the water and took my beach feet pic 🙂 The sand here really stuck to you. 

[Ideb]

I know it's been a while since I've been able to add to my trip review. I am now the mother of a high school graduate as my oldest son Alex graduated on Sunday. With all the end of the year activities for me as a teacher and my boys in school I've put this on the back burner, but since I'm almost to the end I hope to finish it soon.

[Ideb]

After spending some time at the beach in Roatan, we walked back toward the ship. We had to stop once we were back on the sidewalk and sit on a bench and get the sand off our feet. Then we walked back through the nature trail.

 

 

We didn't encounter any wildlife other than some flying bugs that we walked through. They were several trees growing over the trail.

 

[Ideb]

We went back to the room and cleaned up then went up to the buffet for a late lunch. 

 

 

I tried several things but none of it was very good. The fish was okay but the empanada was so hard and dry I couldn't eat it. Nothing very tasty but since it was late in the afternoon, we knew we'd be eating in the mdr later.

 

I carried my stainless steel cup from the room for the first time of the trip and filled it up with unsweet tea. I usually just got a small glass from the beverage stations so I didn't have to bother with carrying a glass around.

 

We also took some pictures of Roatan from the buffet area windows.

 

 

 

 

 

[Ideb]

More photos taken from the ship while in Roatan

 

[Ideb]

We hung around the ship and the room until it was time to go to the early comedy show in the Limelight Lounge. Both my boys enjoyed all the different stand up comics. I liked one or two of them. There are signs saying "no photography" so no pictures of any of them.

 

After the comedy show we went to the Liquid Lounge for the evening show.  This night there was another enjoyable musical called Studio VIP.

 

 

 

 

[Ideb]

After the show we used the Hub app to get a table in the main dining room. Our table was ready immediately which was usually the case.  Here are the menus from that night.

 

 

 

 

Edited May 21, 2019 by Ideb

[tja273]

On 4/15/2019 at 3:21 PM, Ideb said:

After walking around inside Mega for a while, we decided to get a taxi and go back to the port. We shopped some more there and bought some shirts and souvenirs then went to Three Amigos restaurant for a bite to eat. We weren't really hungry but just wanted to get something to snack on and drink before getting back on the ship and have a little taste of true Mexican food.

 

 

 

I remember that guy! "Would you like to ride my ass?!?!?"

[Ideb]

13 minutes ago, tja273 said:

 

I remember that guy! "Would you like to ride my ass?!?!?"

Haha, we had watched a Youtube video about the port before we went on the cruise and it showed this guy. He has several funny sayings about his ass so my boys recognized this and reminded me about it as soon as we saw him.

[Ideb]

Here's some pictures to go with the menus above.

 

My favorite bread

 

Honey roasted ham appetizer

 

Austin's multiple shrimp cocktail

 

Alex's mixed green salad

 

Austin's flat iron steak that came with a baked potato

 

Austin's double order of fries

 

Chicken Milanese: I forgot to take a picture until after I cut into it. It was just a breaded chicken breast filet with some sort of white sauce that reminded me of alfredo. It was so good. It was huge but I couldn't stop eating it. It was probably my favorite dish of the whole week.

 

Alex's chicken nugget meal from kid's menu

 

I had the buttered popcorn dessert. It was good.

 

The boys both had cheesecake. They said it was very good and normally I would have ordered it too, but I was too full. This was a great meal.

 

[Ideb]

After dinner we went up on the Lido deck and played putt-putt golf and the boys played some other games while I walked several laps around the track on that deck.

 

 

 

 

 

[Ideb]

When we got back to our room there was a frog on the bed and Fun times for the next day. It was kind of sad that our port days were done so there was not a destination listed at the top of the Fun times-just information about ship activities the next day.

 

[Ideb]

The next morning I knew Alex would want to sleep late since we didn't have to get off the ship. I saw there was a craft session in the Ocean Plaza on deck 5 so I asked Austin if he wanted to go down to the Family Harbor room and get some breakfast then go to the craft session afterwards. We ate then went up to the deck 5 and they had a breakfast buffet in the Ocean Plaza also. I had forgotten about that or we could have just eaten there, but we did get some juice and fruit to munch on.

 

Here's some of the breakfast items on the buffet in the Family Harbor lounge on deck 2 that morning.

 

 

 

[Ideb]

I thought I'd post a screen shot of the weather on the  Hub app that morning.

 

 

 

We took the stairs from deck 2 to deck 5. Here's a dreamscape we passed on the way to the Ocean Plaza.

 

 

 

[Ideb]

The craft session was run by a very tall young woman with a heavy accent. I think she said she was from Croatia. She said on the ship her co-workers called her "Shorty". She was super tall and thin. She passed around instruction sheets to each table. We were going to make a bracelet. She talked about it a little and invited everyone to start coming up a section of the room at a time to get some beads that were on the table next to her.

 

Unfortunately, the table fell as soon as the first group went up to get beads. Everyone who was up there started picking up beads and Austin and I went up to help. When all of them were back in the containers, I grabbed a few of each and went back to my table to work on my bracelet. It looked like something a teen girl would wear by the color of the beads, although I did like the seashell and starfish pieces and figured I could reuse them with some other beads later at home.

 

[Ideb]

We left the Ocean Plaza and went past the dreamscape again which had changed.

 

 

[Ideb]

We went to listen to Suess-a-Polooza in the Liquid lounge. This was a q and a session with Joey the cruise director and one of the other entertainment people. I can't remember her name. She was an American girl and seemed really outgoing. We saw her at several activities and she always did a great job.  The Suess parade was after this, but we didn't hang out and watch. We went back to the room to see if Alex was ready to get up and do something with us.

[Ideb]

We waited on him to get up, shower and get ready, then we headed to the Lido deck. It was lunch time which was good because Alex doesn't eat breakfast and Austin and I had eaten breakfast then ran around the ship quite a lot so we were ready to eat again.  I wanted to try Pasta Bella. We went up to deck 11 and there was already a pretty long line. It took about 10-15 minutes to get to the front and we were seated at the first table as you walked through the door. This was a tall table with bar stools and seated several people. There was already of group at the other end of the table.

 

 

The server brought us some garlic bread. It would have been good if it had been warm but it was cold.

 

 

I didn't take any pictures of the boy's meals. Austin won't eat sauce on pasta so he asked for penne plain with just butter on it. The waiter asked if he wanted the butter sauce. We had to make sure that it wasn't an actual sauce but just butter which is what it was once his dish arrived. Alex got spaghetti with meat sauce.

 

I got fettucine alfredo with chicken, peppers and broccoli. 

 

Edited May 21, 2019 by Ideb

[Ideb]

After lunch we walked around the ship. We decided to go find the "secret deck" we kept hearing about. We wondered how employees get to that hot tub at the front of the ship but it's off limits of course.

 

We went to the very front of the ship on deck 8 I believe. I really can't remember but several of the cabin floors had doors going out to the front of the ship and once outside there were stairs going up or down to the other floors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was super windy and although there are some chairs out there, I doubt they are used very often.

 

Looking down the side of the ship.

 

 

There were some large patches of seaweed floating by.

 

[Ideb]

After that we decided to go up and see how long the line was for the skyride. I wanted to ride it again before the trip was over. 

There was a sign saying it was closed due to the high wind.

 

 

So we walked up to the gym in the spa area and used the machines a few minutes.

 

Then we went back to our room to get ready for the afternoon tea which started at 3:00 pm.

We saw this guy along the way. He was on one of the cabin steward's carts in the hallway.

 

[Ideb]

Here is the page for the afternoon tea on the Hub app.

 

 

It was held on the 4th or upper floor of the dining room. The tables were set especially for the tea with the napkins folded in a cute way. I took a picture of one of the large unused tables.

 

After we were seated a waiter came by with the specialty (upcharge) tea. We told him we just wanted regular so they brought us some lipton tea bags. There weren't very many different choices of food at the tea. The only things that weren't sweet were cucumber sandwiches and salmon. I took one of each. Also, I took some strawberries and clotted cream and some sort of shortbread cookie with frosting inside. I tasted everything but none of it was that great. We just wanted the experience of going to a tea and I'm glad we went. We all enjoyed it.

 

 

 

The dining room below us on the third floor and the tables outside the area where the tea was held was set up for the second elegant night which would be later that evening.

 

[Ideb]

After we left tea time, we walked around deck 5. We spent a lot of time exploring the ship and taking pictures.

 

The dreamscape as we walked by:

 

Back to where we first ate on embarkation day. Guy's barbeque was closed this time of the day as we walked around.

 

 

Outside Bonsai Sushi 

 

Looking down at the lifeboats and water below

 

Outside Cherry On Top

 

 

Outside seating for the steakhouse

 

Outside the Red Frog Pub

 

 

Looking down the outside of deck 5.

 

 

[Ideb]

We found a large lounger and just sat and enjoyed being outside for a while before going back in. We back in near the Ocean Plaza and walked past Bonsai Sushi which was closed so I took some photos of the restaurant and menu.

 

 

We walked past the dreamscape which had changed again.

Then we went downstairs to the Fun Shops and looked around. I took a few pictures of some carnival items that interested me for some reason at the time.

 

 

When Austin was younger he was into cruise ships and I had bought him a toy ship similar to this online. 

Edited May 21, 2019 by Ideb

[Ideb]

Well, I just realized that my previous menus and food pics may be out of sequence by a day. I have used my google photos as a guide to help my memory of what we had each day. When we were on the ship I noticed that my pictures weren't uploading in sequence. I was the only one of the three of us who had the cell phone plan and left my cellular data on and I was the only one who had trouble with the time staying correct on my phone and photos uploading in sequence so I think that's reason they are off. 

 

Anyway, since Friday was formal night and there was white tablecloths on the table and the menu looked different, I think these are the correct pictures from that night:

 

 

I remember our waiter brought us a HUGE basket of bread which I thought was a waste since there was no way we would eat it. 

 

Austin said he wanted 5 shrimp cocktail and he got them and ate them. He had those and his filet steak but no sides or dessert.

 

My app was stuffed mushrooms

 

My shrimp dish

 

Austin's filet 

 

I didn't get a picture of Alex's food but it was either a hamburger or chicken nuggets.

 

Grand Marnier souffle