We are avid Carnival cruisers….platinum status. However, this does NOT make us all knowing when it comes to Carnival! Quite the opposite in fact. So much changes so often that there is always something new to learn. We traveled recently on the Carnival Horizon to the ABC Islands. The Horizon is one of Carnival’s Vista class ships. Currently her itineraries consist of the Caribbean and a Transatlantic option.
I will try to cover all the bases here with what we learned, saw, liked and disliked about this cruise.
The first thing is the Havana section of the ship. We took a late offered upgrade from our standard balcony cabin on deck 6 to a Havana extended balcony cabin for an extra $1,200. We weren’t sure if it would be worth it, but we decided it was worth trying. The Havana area of the ship consists of a private pool with bar and two hot tubs. Anyone staying in Havana cabins and accessing this area must be 12 years or older. There is also a Havana Pool Bar that is open during the day, and it transforms into a Latin inspired dance club at night. I did not think it was worth the extra cost to have access to this private pool….BUT we did use it all week. We sailed over Thanksgiving, and there were loads of kids. It was nice to have a quieter pool space. The workers on this deck took good care of us. A couple times a day they would pass around cups of frozen fruit, which was a great treat in the heat of the day. Because the area is relatively small, it was easy to get to know the workers and have a chat. We really enjoy getting to know cruise members when we travel. Our extended aft balcony was very nice, very roomy, but most ships have a slanted rear. Meaning the lower decks are farther out than the upper decks. If you are on any of the lower aft decks 6, 7 and 8, the people above you can look down on you while you are on your balcony. This doesn’t offer you much privacy at all. It also means your deck has no covering from inclement weather, so if it rains you cannot use it. If you are on deck 9 you are directly below the deck 10 Lido deck which can get noisy above during the day. But this does mean you have a fully covered, private balcony area. If that’s important to you, this is where you would need to be.
The Atrium lobby on the Horizon left a lot to be desired. We love the vast atriums of many of the other ships which are wide open from deck 3 all the way to the top of the ship with full glass elevators going up and down. The lobby area on the Horizon only went up about 2 decks and was fully covered thereafter. It was very claustrophobic compared to other lobbies. We did not like it at all. We look at the Atrium as the ‘hub’ of the ship, and this lobby was definitely lacking.
We also are not used to ships that have an aft dining room and a mid-ship dining room. This causes you to not be able to walk end to end on deck 3 of this ship. The galley is between the two large dining rooms. So, if you need to get from the back of the ship to the front, or vice versa, you need to go up or down a deck to be able to do that.
The Horizon also has the new ‘smart elevators’. I know I’ve written about them before, specifically in my post about MSC. Smart elevators are only as smart as the people using them!! Carnival did have many TVs around elevator areas explaining how the elevators work, but quite frankly people were not paying attention or hanging around long enough to get full details for proper operation of the elevators. So, we had a lot of the same problems we had on MSC, full cars arriving when you should be able to get right on. Then you have to put your deck number in again and wait for another. It was NOT as bad as MSC but it still happened.
Lastly, the shops were individual, small and separated by walls. Other Carnival ships have longer, open floorplans for their shops. It’s not a deal breaker for us one way or another, as we don’t shop much on ships anymore. But I did prefer the more open feeling of the other floorplans.
We had an awesome cruise on the Carnival Horizon, but I would not choose this ship or another Vista class ship again, unless the itinerary was a must have.
Just Cruisin' 