Jan. 19 12 night cruise on Vista

[rbtan]

Can't seem to do review in review section so will do it here

 Overall an excellent trip with a few niggles.

  The Ship) Vista is really luxurious compared to Riviera our usual ship. Grand Dining room is really nice. Though we think the central dining section is gorgeous we prefer to not dine inside it, as it can get noisy. The glass sculptures in the grand lounge are very nice & took some talented people to make them. The similarities to these locations & Martinis bar on Marina/Riviera are tweaked a bit.Saw the obvious issues about chair hogging. We just moved in when pax were gone & had no issues.We also spent a lot of time on Aqua Terrace due to Concierge accommodations & enjoyed the location very much.

  Entertainment) Vista Lounge is more elegant than Riviera. Some pax have complained there is not enough room between aisles. We did not find any reason for this. Shows were pretty standard. Cancers & singers are quite talented, but it is still small compared to large ships. Then again most large ships don't have the food quality, either. Saw Linda Gentille twice this time. Pleased she remembered us from 2 years back She spoke to me in Mandarin(I'm Chinese) She loves to mingle with guests & is always a riot. The String quartet was down to 2 as two of them missed the boarding.  Martinis is similar to Riviera & has a very good piano player. The show band is really talented & did an excellent job overall.

 Restaurants) GDR has already been mentioned. Ember replaced Jacques on this ship. Though many have disliked this, do remember food costs! Jacques has very high overall food costs & this is a way to balance that fact. This is dining 101 to anyone in the food industry like us. You have to find balance. Overall the food was fine. The Fish & Chips(with Chilean Sea bass, by the way) The rest. is larger than Jacques dut to the fact that the "hallway" to the back of the ship is eliminated. It was amusing to watch pax pile up outside the rest. looking for the now nonexistent hallway. Red Ginger on the other side of the boutiques was our favorite. A few tweaks to the menu were nice additions, such as Soft Shelled Crab were excellent. Polo Grill will not disappoint with the high quality seafood & Steaks. Toscana still is excellent .I prefer the Filet Mignon here as opposed to Polo. Waves Grill is about the same as Riviera/Marina.A nice addition is Aqua dining, which took the place of La Reserves, which has moved to smaller areas in the Tuscana/Polo Privee dining areas. Baristas has a nice bakery which took the place of Connections(now called Link along side Horizons) Baristas does not offer the splendid Illy coffee that was on Riviera. 

 Cutbacks) this is in the food areas. Maine Lobster was supposed to be served in GDR, but has been replaced with Caribbean Lobster( It still states Maine in the ads) Seeing the big Sysco truck shows that some item ares now being outsourced some Pastries are now prepped off ship(no matter what chefs may tell you) French Fries are obviously Sysco fries. We in fact use these in some of our venues. Horizones has too many repetitions of their once fine pastries. The Slogan "Finest Cuisine at Sea" is starting to show a little rust. Still compared to the mass market lines the food is still much better.

 

The port stops)Costa Maya, sorry folks rained out & skipped. Roatan Island Did a beach excursion. Snorkeled & saw true coral reefs. with loads of colorful fish.

Colon,Panama. Very hot!! Did a tour of the new locks on the Canal.Saw a few cruise ships in Gatun Lake waiting to pass through. A good tour.

Santo Tomas Guatemala. This is a food export port. Some tours but they are far out & require long excursions. Port Limon, Costa Rica.Nice port with a lot to take in. Lots of excursions of wildlife. Again we did a city & country tour. Managed to see some baby Sloths in the trees in the park just outside to port. The taxi driver explained about the earthquakes in 1991 that raised a few miles coast line about 2 meters out of the sea. The evidence is still visible. Belize City we did a city tour & saw many of the local landmarks. There are far off tours. Some of which delayed our departure by 2 hours. Since it was a ship based excursion, they have to wait.Next up was to be Cozumel, but due to strong wind it was skipped. I'm finding the more frequent occurrences of Oceania skipping tour disheartening, As I feel they can still do them/ Thirty min. after we skipped Costa Maya the sun was fully out. This seems to be an increasing trend in the past few years. For a score I'd rate a total of about 4 & one half stars.

 

[Harters]

Thanks for this. I have a few weeks to run before our Vista cruise. I was particularly interested on your comments about the culinary side of things as, from what you wrote, I think you are in the hospitality biz. 

[rbtan]

4 hours ago, Harters said:

Thanks for this. I have a few weeks to run before our Vista cruise. I was particularly interested on your comments about the culinary side of things as, from what you wrote, I think you are in the hospitality biz. 

Yes. My spouse & his brother one of the larger catering co. in New England. That being said it's what the client wants that determines their food budget.If it's the Moon & Stars, that's what they'll get. If it's a burger & dog cookout that's what that client gets. It always amuses us when a customer wants a very high-end wedding, but is only willing to pay for a very simple meal & then gets upset when what they want is Prime grade Filet Mignon, but are willing to pay for what would be burgers/dogs & bbq chicken. Really amazing.We saw the Sysco truck off loading at the pier for our trip. Now like us, Sysco is only limited by the cruise lines' budget. You would never see O's level of food on Carnival except perhaps in their most expensive specialty rest. Sorry that my review was rather :scattered". We just arrived home & I decided to do the review. I was annoyed that the review section would not allow me to write it properly. I'll try again.

Edited February 4 by rbtan
additions

[Jim_Iain]

Thanks for the well written review.   Really enjoyed reading it.

[Waltershipman]

3 hours ago, Jim_Iain said:

Thanks for the well written review.   Really enjoyed reading it.

Take a look at the Explora journeys cc board for the post comparing Vista with EJ

[RPen63]

5 hours ago, rbtan said:

Sorry that my review was rather :scattered". We just arrived home & I decided to do the review. I was annoyed that the review section would not allow me to write it properly. I'll try again.

If it helps, I typed my review up in a word processor and then cut and pasted it into the review.  It was reasonably painless, but would be a pain (at least for me) on my phone or iPad.