Views from inside and outside our Havana Cabana stateroom
A towel elephant
Lunch at the Pig & Anchor Smokehouse / Brewhouse
From noon until 2:30 PM a BBQ lunch is available in the Pig & Anchor Smokehouse / Brewhouse. There is no extra charge at lunch time.
As you can see from the above menu they offer items such as BBQ Pork, BBQ Chicken, Smoked Beef and Smoked Andquille Sausage.
They also offer standard BBQ sides such as Mac N Cheese, Cole Slaw, Potato Salad, Collard Greens, and BBQ Baked Beans.
Dinner is available here in the evening for a small upcharge, but the offerings are also more upscale such as Baby Back Ribs for
$8 or $12, Prime Rib for $10 or $18, and Cedar Plank Salmon for $8. There is entertainment during lunch and for much of the evening
after 5 PM which is usually either country music or blues.
Brewery Tour
Craft beers are brewed right on the ship! They always have four of their own brewed beers on tap. Three of them are served at the
bar directly from the beer tanks in the bar via tubes under the floor. A fourth one that they brew is placed into beer kegs and
put on tap at the bar along with other beers that are not brewed on the ship. Some, but not all, of the beers brewed on the ship
are also available on tap at other bars on the ship, even the bar in the crew area that is not open to passengers! At present the
only ships of all the cruise lines that serve North America that have the ability to brew beer right on board in the Carnival Vista
(2017), the Carnival Horizon (this ship, 2018), and the Carnival Panorama (going into service in 2019). All three ships are of the
new Vista class and are pretty much identical except that they may have different interior decorations.
Listening to the brewery tour lecture waiting for our pours. The ship brewed craft beers on tap today were:
Toasted Amber, Farmhouse Ale, West Coast IPA, and Smoked Porter. Our favorites were the Toasted Amber and West Coast IPA.
Left: Diagram of the brewing process. Right 3 Frames: The see-through tanks were the beer is brewed on the ship. A fresh batch of beer
is started every day at about 4pm. It takes about 7 hours to complete the process. Each batch is enough for a few weeks on the ship.
On the left are the tanks where the final brewing is completed. The tanks on the right hold the finished product.
Or, if you are looking in from the locked glass door, the sides would be reversed.
At the end of our brewery tour we got to be the first tour group to sample a new seasonal craft brew that he had just finished brewing.
He didn't have a name for it yet but the temporary working name he gave it was "Big Apple" since our cruise destination is New York City.
It had a taste of apple spice.
Our certificates showing that we completed the brewery tour.
We can show them in the bar and get one free glass of beer.
All the ingredients for brewing the beer is stored on board the ship except the water. The Brewmaster said it was lucky
that each of the Carnival ships that has on board brewing capability (Vista, Horizon and Panorama) all make ALL of their own onboard
water from the sea through desalination. The water is treated to have a specific and consistent blend of minerals and pH. This
makes it possible for every batch of craft beer to be consistent. If they were like the older ships and "bunkered" the water
from each port they visited, the water would have inconsistent properties and no two batches of even the same beer would taste
the same.
Shelli in the candy store buying some chocolates.
Ji Ji Asian Restaurant
This restaurant serves food from China and all over Asia. For just $15 per person each of us got to order one appetizer, one main dish, one side dish, and one desert.
They were all served family style, one giant bowl of each item ordered from which we served ourselves. Thus we each got to try everything that was ordered.
The food was delicious and plentiful! It was way too much to eat it all. I think we left more than we ate.
This is a Spanish bottle of wine that we had purchased and brought on board. Corkage was $15.
Considering the high mark-up of bottles sold on the ship, I think this corkage fee is a bargain.
The wine was good. As good or better than most of the wines I've had on the Carnival wine list.
Comedy in the Limelight Lounge. They ask those under 18 years old and those easily offended to leave. They forgot to ask for those easily bored to also leave. I've been to 18+ Comedy shows on Carnival before and they tend
to be filled with potty "humor". I don't find that offensive. I find it boring. I'm not sure why they ask those under 18 to leave. The humor actually seemed more oriented to grade school kids than adults. I tend to find
the comedy acts that are geared to all ages are funnier. I think it requires more talent to create humor that doesn't rely on getting cheap laughs by using dirty words and referring to bodily functions.
