Gilligan69

I have a cruise upcoming in May, and when my restaurant reservations opened up at the 45min mark, it actually let me make brunch reservations as Wake and Razzle Dazzle, so I did it. I was surprised.

Being honest, the reservation system with the app is extremely easy and personally, I want it. I like to know that I am guaranteed to see what shows we want to see, and at what day and time. I like being able to confidently schedule other things around that. For instance, more than a month out from our cruise we've already scheduled dinners with shows in mind, only to learn they've dumped the show reservation option. To me there is absolutely nothing appealing about having to line up well in advance of a show. For me there is only one solution, and that's to re-instate the reservations, and they can tack on penalties or limitations for people that don't show up for the events they blocked off.

The new policy was instituted only in the past few weeks, which is why your 2 sailings likely didn't have it in place.

This was my concern. I keep hearing people say the change was made due to no shows with the reservation system. And that for longer cruises, such as the one you were on, the waits are not an issue. But I've heard the opposite from people like yourself. I leave for a 7 night VV Med cruise in 34 days and I pray they reverse this policy. I do not want to stand in a single standby line to get entertainment that we previously could lock in with a reservation. The solution to a no show on a reservation is to penalize $ to the cabin, not to penalize the entire potential audience with a required lineup instead. Surely the crew members don't like line management added to their multiple responsibilities?

I see mixed reviews here but as past sailors (and ones upcoming in May), we think this is an epic fail.We saw nothing wrong with the reservation system for these shows last year, it worked splendidly. It also enabled you to have piece of mind you had seats, and allowed you to schedule all of your activities knowing you would make it to a show because you had it reserved already. For instance, scheduling a dinner beforehand knowing that as long as you got there by a certain time , you had guaranteed seats. We have talked to travel agent friends currently sailing, for instance on the Resilient lady, and some shows have lines over an hour beforehand. Who wants that? We do not want to spend our time on ship waiting in lines, especially knowing that the old system never required it. And we can't imagine the ship staff being enthusiastic about having to add line and crowd management to their responsibilities. This pilot needs to go bye bye, and quickly. We have a cruise upcoming in mid-may and we see the "first come first served" notes in our app for all shows.

Here's my experience from last year, where we sailed the Resilient Lady on its 2nd cruise ever (so ship was maybe half capacity). We had paid for a inside cabin with the strategy of upgrading through bid process (or upon check in) to an XL Sea Terrace. Here's the good news -we got the upgrade via the bid. Here's the bad news --the minimum bid required, equaled the same amount of extra $ we would have paid in order to secure that cabin class from the start. And had we bid anything higher, it actually would have been more costly then getting that cabin class at the beginning. So we didn't see the bid process as a good deal at all. Any upgrades did not come at a discount. At least on our cruise.

OK, so the app opened up last night and as prior commenter said, spa only shows menu/pricing. No pre-cruise reservations, so good on that front. My warning on excursions/sailor loot still holds though. If its important to you to have peace of mind with a popular VV excursion(s) lined up prior to cruise sailing, don't plan on using sailor loot.

We are embarking on a Virgin Mediterranean cruise this May as part of the My Next Virgin Voyage program. We had such as good time on our Virgin Greece/Croatia cruise last year, that we took advantage of the program. I'd like to touch on the aforementioned requirement that sailor loot can not be used for things that you book prior to your sailing, such as excursions. The sales staff on ship did not make an effort to tell us this when encouraging us to sign up for the program. Instead, the salespeople hyped up all of the great things that you could use the sailor loot for, such as excursions. Virtually all excursions, at least the most commonly sought after ones, sell out before the boat sets sail. Which means, your sailor loot is pretty much worthless as far as excursions goes. We didn't know this when signing up for the offer. As I write this, we are 2 days away from the app opening up to restaurant bookings and (gasp) the spa listing. If they now also take reservations for spa prior to the cruise, we will be extremely upset, in light of most desired times/services being booked up, such as sea days. It will become just another thing the loot can't actually be used for. Now if its simply a listing and not a reservation opening, then we should be OK. But we are nervous. Perhaps I can update this post in a few days once we see how spa appears on the app. Anyway, the point of my post is that for promotions where sailor loot is offered, be mindful that if you were planning on using for any experiences that would require you to reserve prior to sailing, then don't. Because sailor loot can't be used that way. Makes no sense to me, but comes off as deceptive when you tell sailors you can use it for an activity, all the while knowing that the activity is usually booked up prior to sailing.