My family and I chose the Carnival Vista leaving out of Miami, because is was a new ship and a very big ship. We have been on Carnivals smaller ships and now we wanted to try the bigger ship. Also, we chose this ship because of the itinerary. The Vista went to Caribbean islands that we have never been to and wanted to see them, like Aruba, Curacao, La Romana, Dominican Republic. The only island that we have been before was Grand Turk. My family and I had a lot of fun on the Carnival Vista. There is so much to do and little time to do it all. Our Cruise Director Matt was the absolute best. Matt made the cruise fun. The food was very good also. Guys burgers and BBQ was the best. Guys burgers was located on the lido deck 10 but the BBQ was hard to find. That was located on deck 5 but outside and that is why we couldn't find it, but we asked one of the workers on the ship, and they told us where it was. I have to say, all of the people who work on the Vista are very hard workers. They are always cleaning the ship no matter where you go and they all know the ship inside and out. You can ask anyone of the workers where to find a place and they will tell you. One little problem I had was with the elevators. If I had a quarter for every time I heard someone say "what goes up, must come down", I would be rich right now. The elevators on the Vista are either way crowded that you could not fit in or most of them weren't going where you wanted to go. So most of the time if you were on deck say 5 and wanted to go down, the elevators were all going up. So you either walk down or take an up elevator that stops at every floor to go down.
Our cabin was a bit crammed for 3 people, but we managed. Thank goodness that there was two (2) showers in the cabin and one shower had a bathtub in it also. The bed was comfotable but the small bed my daughter slept in was hard. She could not sleep, so she asked our room steward Roul to please see if he could do something for it and he did. He put a foam mattress underneath the mattress which made it better. If you are looking for the hairdryer, which is usually located in the bathroom, its not. Ours was in the desk draw. Also, if you want to turn on the lights in your cabin, you need to use your room key. there is a slot on the wall by the door that you have to put your room key in to turn the lights on. This was all new to us, so we had to call someone.