Carnival, like all cruise lines, has a seemingly never ending list of stateroom categories. You start with the basic inside stateroom and go up to the mega suites. Somewhere near the top but not quite there are the Vista suites.
This review focuses on the left hand suite (left if you are looking towards the front of the boat). I have no idea what they call that in ship terms.
When you open the door to a Vista suite you enter a hallway that is about 12 feet long. When you look forward on your left is a work area, mirrors, mini bar, glassware storage, and a love seat. Nothing is really visible on your right until you walk down the hall a little ways. At the end of the hall is a den area consisting of the aforementioned love seat, a coffee table, storage cabinet, counter, and tube TV. The den also has a number of floor to ceiling windows.
Taking a right out of the den you get another small hallway. On your left is your door to the balcony, on your left is a door to another room, and straight ahead is the bedroom. Again on your left are more floor to ceiling windows.
Taking a right out of the hallway puts you in the dressing room? It’s a room with a big mirror, a bench, and that’s about it. It’s really an odd room. This room has three doors. The one on your left goes to the been room (yes there are two doors right next to each other that go to the bedroom. They are only separated by a wall). Straight ahead is the bathroom and then there is the one you walked through.
In the bathroom you will find a decent sized Jacuzzi tub, your standard cruise ship toilet, and a dual sink mirror vanity area. The bathroom is nice but it’s not amazing. The tub is ok but the Jacuzzi doesn’t have any jets on your back. It’s also not deep enough to be a Jacuzzi tub. If you don’t angle the jets down water could possibly shoot out of the tub.
The bedroom is decent sized. It has a dual closet, decent sized LCD TV with a counter and chest of drawers below it, two night stands, more windows on your left, a large mirror behind the bed and what is supposed to be a king sized bet. First of all it’s not a king sized bed. Its two smaller beds strapped together. If you lay in the middle you can feel the crease.
The balcony is huge. From the door it goes about 15 feet to your left and about that to your right before it curls around the side of the ship. There are two full deck chairs, two normal chairs, and two small tables outside and it doesn’t feel at all cramped. One feature of this balcony that is great and awful at the same time is its roof. The back of the Spirit Class ships are slanted. This means that when you lean on your balcony you easily see down into the balcony on the decks below you. This also means people can easily see down into yours. This also means that the privacy dividers between you and the stateroom next to you are not good. The good thing about this exposure is the fact that you can sun bathe on your balcony for a few hours a day.
The biggest drawback of the exposed balcony is not the lack of privacy. The biggest drawback occurs when you have an inconsiderate JERK above you. I’d like to use stronger language but this is a family blog. I’m talking about the people who were in stateroom 7298 on the Carnival Miracle during its cruise out of Ft. Lauderdale
Why were the people in 7298 jerks? Not once, but twice they decided to shake out sandy clothes over the side of their balcony. Now, if you made it through the first grade, or fell out of a tree if you didn’t go to school (more likely in this case), you know what happens to things when gravity takes over. They go down. The first time my wife called out in disbelief and looked up in time to see the person quickly go back into their room. The second time my wife had just put on sun screen, had a drink on her table, and laid back to relax for a few minutes. The sand stuck to her like glue. She got it in her hair, mouth, drink and blanket. This time my wife really went off and caught the person before they could run away. They said sorry and ran back inside. How selfish and inconsiderate do you have to be? Wouldn’t your bath tub be a much better place to shake out a blanket?
There was a third / fourth event but we were not outside when they happened. Based on our experience with the sand we feel strongly that the same party was involved. Someone tossed out their ash tray on two different occasions. Not only did this cover our chairs with ash but on one occasion a hot ember landed out our chair and partly melted it (the chairs are plastic). My wife sat down on two different occasions and ended up with black ash on her clothes but that pales to the idea of a fire starting on our ship because someone has the IQ of a slug. Stupid isn’t a strong enough term for what that person is. If you relate this story to a chimp, the chimp would shake its head, find the person, and slap them in the face for being so dumb.
If you don’t have ignorant, inconsiderate, pigs above you these are some of the best staterooms you can find. They are not perfect but they are very nice. The price is high but when you consider you also get VIP check in and put in one of the first groups off the boat it’s not bad at all.
Keep checking back. I’ll be posting an in depth video of the stateroom soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment