CruisingWalter

It is functional, we've used it to link with shipmates in the past. Not sure why it's not working for you, but if you contact your travel agent, they'll be able to link the reserviations for you.

I'll be honest, it didn't look like much of a room when we were on Scarlet a few weeks ago. Kind of like they threw poker tables into an unused space with really bright lighting. Not nearly as nice in appearance as the main casino.

I honestly could not believe how much they turned the service in The Galley around when we sailed Scarlet a few weeks ago. I was prepared for the worst, like we had it in July 22, but somebody deserves a medal for re-organizing the service in the Galley. Now it's an enjoyable experience. Enjoy the cruise!

I love Rum Old Fashioned too. My rum of choice is Mt. Gay Rum, Black Barrel. We had a chance to visit them on a cruise two years ago, the oldest continuously running distillery, and it was absolutely lovely. Despite the fact that I was served an Old Fashioned with about 4-5 oz of Rum. It was so good, but I was pretty much asleep on the bus ride back to the ship! 😅

For each drink delivered from any bar - No. For each drinks ordered at the bar - No. On the final night of the cruise I give tips directly to the bartenders and servers I feel gave excellent service.

Tapas at The Dock Pizza Place The hammock Old Fashioned at On The Rocks Music Trios at On The Rocks Butter Chicken at Razzle Dazzle Greatly improved service at The Galley (like amazing turnaround from our first cruise) No Photographers Grab And Go Boxes especially the charcuterie box Lick Me Till Ice Scream French Toast Breakfast Burger The Sailors, I feel like I have more and longer conversations with sailors onboard VV than most other cruise lines.

I asked about the loyalty program while onboard the Scarlet Lady two weeks ago. Future Cruise Desk said they are expecting a permanent loyalty program to be announced by the end of this month (April).

To my knowledge, no extra costs that we could tell. It's just a DJ starts playing music and they come around with shots of something I can't remember. We were having dinner in Pink Agave last week when it transitioned to this event. The music got really loud, and the servers came around with a shot of something that looked a little like weak milk, but I'm sure it was a tequila based drink. I'm almost certain it is not every night, I believe it was once, maybe twice on our cruise two weeks ago on Scarlet. It didn't make much sense to us, so we didn't stay around to see what the event entailed and went upstairs to On the Rocks.

According to some of the crew on Scarlet, she is due for at least 2 weeks of maintenance while in Europe, most likely at the end of the Summer season before she returns to Miami. It sounded like it will be a quick dry dock to re-paint and perform the standard 5 year maintenance most ships receive. While she's only been in service with the public a few years, she did launch in 2019 so she will be due next year.

It's possible it's sold out, that does fall in the start of Spring Break season and if you have two ships in CocoCay on that day it could be sold out. But watch for them to potentially open more passes or for people to cancel.

Thank you so much for all the kind words! And YAY! for getting new folks to try out cruising!!

Nobody could ever be a brighter star than Carlos. 🙂 And thank you for the kind words!

It was so awesome to meet you as well!!! That was an awesome cruise, and yes, Carlos looks amazing as his 'alter ego.' You know I follow Carlos on Instagram and I still didn't recognize him at dinner. But like I said, I think that made it even better and more natural. 🙂

Next time! Thanks so much for the kind words and I'm so happy the videos are helpful. We'll be on Valiant Lady for Thanksgiving on November 18th. At least that's our next planned sailing. We might just have to sneak back on Scarlet between now and then. 🙂

It's really good. Not the best, but then it's more about the conversation and the fun. If you book Gunbae for Sail Away, you get a great view of Miami as you sail away.

You are incredibly kind, thank you so much! If we ever get to meet IRL onboard a Ladyship, first drink is on me. 🙂

According to the bartenders we were around 1800. If the cruise is near capacity they won't have the space to allow crew to eat in the restaurants. But this cruise was similar to ours in July. We saw crew enjoying meals throughout the ship. Carlos was not wearing a name badge, but then she never does. The Diva has her own rules. 🙂 I'm actually really glad we didn't connect the dots during dinner. It was just one of those 'cruise moments' where all 5 of us fell into a conversation like we've known each other for years. We really enjoyed the meal with all three of them.

We just discovered that we had dinner with the Diva two nights ago. Of course we didn't know it at the time. We had dinner with three younger folks at Gunbae where they seat you randomly with other guests. We had an amazing conversation all through dinner and we knew he was an entertainer. Even though I follow Carlos' instagram account, and have seen him without the makeup, it didn't click. Of course he never revealed who he really was. Tonight we recognized Carlos' voice immediately during her cabaret show. She was so gracious when we came up for the photo thanking us for a lovely evening at dinner. This is our second cruise with Carlos and she is one of the most lovely human beings I have had the pleasure of breaking bread with. This could very well be one of the most cool things that has ever happened in our nearly 20 years of cruising. 🙂

Apparently Virgin Voyages heard you. I'd MUCH rather spend some time with Richard than JLo. Too bad we're leaving the ship on Friday....

Nope, they paid a premium to participate in a series of TED style talks from an incredible lineup of women leaders from throughout the business landscape. JLo was only supposed to make some brief remarks at sail away.

One thing I'll point out that we noticed yesterday in Cozumel. There was basically an empty schedule onboard during the day. Every other cruise line will have a reduced schedule on port days, but there will still be some trivia, some games and such. Yesterday there was basically nothing scheduled during the day onboard Scarlet. VV really emphasizes sailors going into port, so don't expect much of anything onboard on port days. It's a good day to grab games from the Social Club, hang out by the pool or just chill.

They've had these flags in The Dock on deck 7 since they launched. Now they are in The Galley and actually other places on the ship well. Pop up your "Ahoy" and a server will be with you shortly. 🙂

As an update, the quality of the service has not gone down the entire week. Even when it's slow in the Galley and I might have typically gone to the food stations myself. I actually prefer to sit and wait for the server. They are on top of the game now and have fixed one of the very big issues we had onboard the ship. It's also really exciting to see the WIDE diversity of people onboard this time. Every age, race, color, creed, all mixing together. To put it politely, it was a very 'white' cruise back in July 2022. It's a much more diverse crowd on this journey. And I've met quite a few 'virgins' onboard as well who have been encouraged by the many vlogs out there that show there's more to VV than the marketing. 🙂 Some on their very first cruise and others on their first VV cruise looking for something different than 'everyone else.'

HA! That's awesome! Typically bourbon, some simple syrup or dissolved sugar, a few dashes of bitters. At home I add a few dashes of Aztec Chocolate Bitters. Have an AMAZING journey!

Ok, I've read about the flags be added in The Galley and I really didn't believe they would make any difference in the horrible experience we had back in July of last year. Full Galley, not being able to flag down a waiter, long wait times for food, etc... Well we purposely came up to The Galley today on Scarlet Lady during our Cozumel port stop this morning, prime time for breakfast, The Galley was hopping, not much seating available anywhere. And I was utterly impressed. We were only sitting at our table about 3 minutes, didn't even put the flag up yet and a server was at the table. Within a few minutes of ordering from The Burger Bar, Hot off the Press and Let's Taco About It, all of our food arrived within a few minutes of each other. A complete 180 degree experience from our first time in a busy Galley. One thing that was evident was there were many more servers in the room and they had dedicated servers running the deliveries, waiting at the various food stations. Even folks from Razzle Dazzle were in The Galley this morning delivering the orders. I was not expecting this at all, but someone has really done a good job reorganizing the process in The Galley.