rebeccac

There are a couple of other ways (besides the app to book dining) before you arrive. You can call in to Virgin and they may be able to help you or if you booked through a TA, they can also help you. Some of the restaurants that I find harder to get into at the last minute are Extra Virgin and The Wake. Neither are my personal favorites, but many others love them.

While I am not saying that they are wrong about this necessarily, but VV Insider is not always the most reliable source.

That has never been my experience on any cruise line including NCL. Usually, you must be back on board 1/2 hr. before departure. In tender ports, the important time is whenever the last tender happens which can vary somewhat depending on the port, but even there I have never seen it 2 hrs. before departure.

I second the Flavors of San Juan, they were amazing!

Virgin doesn't require a passport for the closed loop sailings from Miami either.

Gunbae probably does take 2 hours most of the time, but there are many of the meals at the sit down restaurants that take that amount of time or even longer. As far as the drinking game goes, you are not required to actually drink. I get them to fill my shot glass with water. I have also been known to "fail" at the game rather early on, so that I am out quickly. Most of the time the game does not take more than 10 minutes or so.

Actually, if you go to the FAQs for both Royal and Celebrity, they do have the 6 month language in there. It is pretty standard language for all cruise lines. It is put in there as a CYA since there are certain countries around the world that do have that requirement. That being said, it is rarely a requirement from most of the Caribbean countries you will likely visit from Miami. I am honestly not sure if the cruise line "requirement" or the individual country requirements are the ones to follow.

For me, while I do like VV and they do a lot of things I really like, the three things that keep it from being the only cruise line I will sail are the lack of interesting itineraries, the ridiculously small pool and the uncomfortable mattresses in the regular cabins.

I had that exact same thing happen to me in Miami. The lady outside the terminal refused to give me my band, but would give my husband one. The people inside the terminal gave it to me right away.

There are no tables in any dining venue that will accomodate 22 people (at least not that I can think of). However, they most likely can put you on several tables near each other. The time you want to eat will make a huge difference in whether or not this can be easily accomplished. If you are an official group cruise, you (or your TA) should be able to contact the groups department to have them help you out. It is possible that you can't do anything in advance (each cruise line handles this differently) and at this point it is likely that it is too late to do anything in advance even if you could have at one point.

One thing to note about the port at Fort Lauderdale is that you will likely be required to show ID at the entrance to the port not just at check in. We have had this happen whether taking our own car or taking an Uber/Lyft.

At least until Sun Princess where in the three level dining room, one level will be fixed dining, one level will be anytime with reservations and the remaining level will be anytime without reservations.

While I do like spicy, I was more referring to flavor being bland. I have a hard time imagining the food getting more bland. The last NCL cruise we did, we only did specialty dining for dinner and I will be really sad if that has gone downhill as well.

Our first NCL sailing was in 2018 (our most recent in 2021) and I have never liked the included food. For my tastes, it is too bland and not adventurous enough.

You can google "Virgin Voyages bar menu" and you will find several people who have posted the menus with prices. One thing to bear in mind is that the prices you see are the actual prices, there is no gratuity added on top.

It really depends on the local laws. Not sure what the particulars are in Spain, but in the US, they are required to totally zero out the ship between cruises, so you have no choice but to do the u-turn. Hopefully, someone can tell you specifically about the procedure in Spain.

We are 0 for 2 as far as actually getting into GSC. Maybe someday, we'll make it in. 🙂

We were on the Sirena over the holidays and really enjoyed it. Most of the food was quite good (there are always going to be some things that don't appeal to some individuals, myself included). We didn't have any particular problems, but the service in general felt very good to us. The excursions were admittedly a mixed bag, but we also booked fairly late, so there may have been some good ones that were no longer available. We were in an Oceanview cabin, so the storage was fairly limited. We even had to lift the bed up a bit to be able to slide our full sized luggage underneath due to the lip on the bottom of the bedframe. The bathroom was very small, but certainly workable. Personally, I would have no problems going back on the Sirena.

Whatever it is, it offers only very minor improvement.

You can also find a lot of TAs by searching on TikTok or YouTube. Watch their content and if you like them, you can try them out.

Usually, the one category upgrade is factored into the pricing, so likely what your TA sent you is the correct upgraded price. That being said, it doesn't hurt to ask your TA just to confirm.

Then you're lucky because earlier this month on Valiant, I only got a comforter.

You do not have to bring towels from home. If there are no beach towels in your stateroom (I've had it both ways), then just do as suggested and grab one from the pool. Unlike some other lines, you are not required to check out towels.

What they put on the bed is not an actual mattress topper. I asked for this also and I lifted up the bottom sheet to see what had been done. It was just another comforter placed between the mattress and the bottom sheet. It did help a tad, but they are still very uncomfortable IMHO.

Do a google search for "Princess bar menus" and you will be able to see the offerings. I know there are several non-alcoholic cocktails as I have tried many of them, but I can't remember which one was my favorite.