Rogueperson

I had a late night last night.  After the concert, I went back to the room.  The in-room movies are cool.   There are a handful of movies on my watchlist that are here but I am currently unable to stream.  I may have mentioned I saw Ferrari.

Last night, it was the new Hunger Games movie, Ballad of songbirds and Snake.  Did not realize it was a long 2 hour 37 minute movie.  So i ended up going to sleep after 4am.  Fortunately, we did not lose an hour this night.

Good morning from.

We are about 540 miles from Bermuda now.  

Last night we saw Nadeen, a stage hypnotist.  My wife was on of the ones on stage.  I got video 🤫.

we saw a band in the Manor called Dustin and the Hustle

One thing I notice now in Virgin is that they don’t have a dance club venue every night like other cruises I’ve been on.  I have mix feelings because on the one hand, it keeps it fresh and energetic and less wasted space.  On the other hand, if you wanna go party the night away, you may not have a venue.  Or was it held elsewhere besides the Manor because I was at the Manor until 1:30am with this band.

Dinner was at the Wake.  My wife is not impressed but thats because her allergies prevent her from enjoying much of the menu.  We’ve been here for brunch earlier and now dinner. Due to the lack of choice for her, we won’t be coming back to this one.

Menu

Bread

Garlic butter

We got a 1/2 dozen oysters

Hamachi Crudo.  This was good.

Bone Marrow.  Delicious.

Filet.  Perfectly cooked and delicious.

Wife got the Salmon.  She was not impressed.  It was overcooked.

side of twice baked potato and asparagus

Dessert menu

Lemon Cheesecake.  This was wonderful.

Apple Tatin This was ok.

Day 4 was a pretty sedate day for me.  As i said, getting drunk and sleeping way early threw me off.  I actually went back to bed at 9:00 and slept for a couple more hours before getting Poke.

I also ended yo trying the Pizza.  

Menu.

This is pretty fly for a white pie with truffle oil added to it.

Yeah, I took a bite.  Remember about my cruise superlatives?  Best Cruise Pizza hands down.  No contenders come close.  This is a REALLY good pizza.

I ended up hitting food coma and hanging in my room.  Watched the Movie Ferrari that was on my list.

My wife texted me from the Divia Cabaret.  It was fun.

Drag Queens are fun.

2 hours ago, scaught said:

Ive been on 2 VV cruises and somehow either never found this place (1st cruise) or didn't find it when it was open (poor planning on 2nd cruise). #3 this July - will i get to eat there?

Deck 16.  This morning, I was wandering all over the Galley going “where is the Poke, I KNOW I saw it on boarding day and now I can’t find it.”. I had to do a google search to realize its at the Sun Cafe and only opened 12:00-5:00.  Also they have this spicy caramel popcorn thats amazing.

There is another plus in Virgin.  There is not all the sales pitches from staff standing around.  

Even the schedule is straight and to the point without advertisements and such.

Its quite refreshing.

Oh, I neglected to post the Glances here.

Monday

Tuesday

And Today’s

2 hours ago, FionaMG said:

Oh my, Rogue, you're going to be in a total food coma long before you reach this side of the pond! 😂

It all looks amazing! 😋

I’m in food coma now…

2 hours ago, laurieal said:

I was offered to book the Chef’s Table at 50% off on Anthem in 2022 and I jumped on the opportunity. I had an amazing meal with amazing company. 
 

I’m not doing it this time, but I’d be interested in doing it again in the future, especially if it’s on sale. 
 

All the food pictures you have posted from Virgin make me thing I could justify the higher price of the cruise if I’m going to be eating that well the whole time. 

No if.  This is the general food quality on Virgin.  

Also, you’re going to hate this.  I only paid 1850 for this trip for 2 for an interior.  It included gratuities plus i got a total of 800 bar tab plus another 50 Sailer loot from my TA.  If you book far enough in advanced, you might get a good deal.  They also gave you a 10% discount if you paid 180 days before sailing.  I didn’t get a chance to take that offer because 6 months was me just coming back from Greenland last year and had a bill for that month.

2 hours ago, ZsaZsa2019 said:

 

Do you know which menu you are getting when you book Test Kitchen?  I'd be disappointed in the egg and blue cheese, for example.  That brings me to another question about dining..........Do ALL restaurants require a reservation that you make prior to sailing?  Or are some walk ups? 

You can ask.  I know for a fact that my next Test Kitchen has a different menu.  They say they change it up every 3 days.

I am fairly positive you can walk up and depending on how busy, you’d have to wait.  However, I made reservations when they popped 60 days ago.  I think some are more popular than others.

2 hours ago, jaxcruisinguy said:

It’s disappointing to see they’re still doing the mushroom, egg etc menu in the test kitchen. I’m surprised they haven’t made a 3rd/4th menu yet. 

Yeah, I heard the menu hasn’t changed in a couple years.  Considering this cruise line only started in 2021.  Our table mates, one got the vegan menu, which is not advertised.  The Tangerine sherbet is on that menu.  My wife got it because of her allergy restrictions 

3 hours ago, laurieal said:

Food is still looking good! Is everything included or are they specialty restaurants?

 

The Test Kitchen seems right up my alley. I think I would have loved the mushroom and scallops dishes. 

All food included!!  EVERYTHING I’ve had here, I would put as specialty restaurant quality food or at the very least top end MDR.  

If you liked Test Kitchen idea.  Book a spot with Chef’s Table.  If you’ve never done that, its amazing.  Its in the same vein as Test Kitchen.  Its a six course meal and runs about 105/person including gratuity.  This price does include wine pairing.  A different one for each course.

Here’s a sample menu but i don’t believe its changed.  It hadn’t as of last October when we were on Jewel.  This menu was the last time we did it on Adventure in 2022.  We’ve had the same menu mostly since 2017.  We asked on Jewel if the menu changed and when it hadn’t, we skipped it for the first time since 2012.

Poke too!!!

This is solid.  The only issue is that its not exactly customizable like i’m used to.

Ramen!!!  On a cruise!!!

Verdict.  Not the worst Ramen I’ve had and totally passable.  Still, its on a cruise and that makes it incredible.

I have two gripes so far and its mostly ship design.  

1.  I have a love/hate feeling for the Manor.  70s party and club venue.  This place is awesome!!!  so much room!!!  This reminds me of how the Freedom Class ships on Royal Caribbean had their nightclub on 4.  It was the Raven on Indy and I loved that.  It was similar to this.  But they tore it down for more revenue space 🤨.  As a venue for performances.  Hate.  So much wasted space as there are only limited views in most of the area and even less seats.

2.  Major flaw in my opinion.  Unless you have access to Richard’s rooftop, there are no public spaces that look out over the front of the ship.  As I’m up this early on a cruise for the first time ever, I thought i could actually catch a sunrise.  Nope.  No access.

Okay, I lied, i caught a sunrise in Panama in 2015.

Are you kidding me?!?!?!  I had this entire thing posted and it disappeared!!!!  Here I go again.

Can I say I LOVE LOVE LOVE Test Kitchen.

This is easily equivalent to Chef’s Table on Royal Caribbean without the wine pairing.  I have to say the wine pairing at Chef’s table is far superior as they give a presentation of the wines and the pairing and the pairings actually does work.

Here, the wine pairing is an additional 40 and was not memorable.  I probably will not do the wine pairing at my next visit.

Menu.  Simple as can be.

Mushroom.  This was like a mousse or pate.  Decadent.  The little mushrooms you can barely see were marinated.

with bread.

Egg

This should have been label peas, not Egg.  It was still good but I felt the peas had way more of an impact than the egg.

Scallops.  This was amazing.  Buttery and delicious, melt in your mouth.

Venison.  This was yummy too.  It normally comes medium, but i got it medium rare.

Potato side

Heres where they made a serious error.  My wife is gluten free. See the sauce on top?  Thats thicken with flour.  She took one bite and noticed it.  They missed it.  Fortunately she was able to mitigate the effect.  Not good.

Blue Cheese.  I thought this was dessert but it is not.  Excellent dish.

Chocolate. This is the only wine pairing that had an impact on the meal.  The rest were forgettable but this pairing hit hard. 

This was my wife’s dessert as she’s gluten free.  It was an orange sherbet or cream.  It was yummy too.

When i made this reservation, it was the only one i made before 6.  All my other reservations were after 8 or closer to 9.  The rep said that Test Kitchen maybe light and I would be hungry later quicker and this timing would allow me to get additional food before most of the Galley closed.  I also did not know that the diner is open 24/7 and the burger place opened late.  After the third course, I was still hungry but the remaining courses filled me up sufficiently.  That and the wine pairing knocked me out for the night.  I’m a lightweight so this was way more than enough to take me out.

Good Morning from

We are about 170 miles South south east of Bermuda.  I have no idea how fast we are moving.

Day 3 was probably the first day I am finally getting my bearings.  I have no idea how people do their first cruise at less than 5 nights.  Even on day 3, I was still fumbling as you can see.

So what happened today.  It was a pretty full day.

After Lunch there was a cabin crawl meeting supposedly but our meeting place was crowded with some event so i missed it.  So instead we ended up doing the Spill the Beans coffee cupping class.  This is essentially like a wine tasting class except with coffee.  I’m lost with wine but do it for my wife.  Coffee on the other hand, I love and thought this would be awesome.  For 30/person, my impression is that it was not worth it *for me* or my wife.  I can’t speak for everyone here and can’t say the class by itself is not worth it.  

I didn’t get a photo of the whole table and I should have.  Anyways.  There four coffees that were brewed.  The three you see here is all the same and there were four sets.

So the first step was to smell the dry beans.  The barista tried to impart the nuances of the scent of each coffee, but all i got was…yup, you guessed it, coffee.  Only one of the four I was able to deduce a floral scent.

Next step was to smell the brewed coffee.  Yup, you guessed it.  Still smelled coffee.

Next was tasting it.  Yup, coffee.  Can I tell they were different.  Absolutely.  Can I describe how they were different.  Nope.  The only thing I got here was’. Yep, I like it.  Or nope, No likey.  (quoting wife here).

And that was pretty much it.  Not real worth 30 bucks.  But we each got a a 12 oz bag of coffee each and they were worth 16 bucks/pop so it mitigated the cost.  Intellegensia coffee retails at around this price i saw, maybe a dollar less.  Still more expensive than my local roasters Mayorga which i love.

Afterwards, I went to a comedy show in the Manor.

This is Jack Gleadow.

He was humorous but okay.  Nothing really special unfortunately.

I’m going to post dinner in another thread to try and not make 1 giant post and break it up.

59 minutes ago, Swells1 said:

Ooh!! I can help!

i didnt get the sauce thingie i think.

Okay.  I thought i was going to hate this as I do not like wearing tags like this.

But for those of you who have not been on Virgin and are reviewing through this, this is your sea pass card.  Everything is done through this.  Its not that hard to release and take off for when you are sleeping or showering but you don’t have to.  Its waterproof.  This is growing on me and it doesn’t bother me.  Also important if you have a list of allergies, the staff can just scan and get it easily as oppose to you listing it out over and over.

3 hours ago, laurieal said:

I will absolutely not fight you on the 70s party thing. The 70s is not my favourite decade (90s party when?) and I’m not much of a party person. Looks like you had acrobats in your party, so that’s an instant win for me!

 

Food is still looking good!

 

Last I checked it looked like you were heading straight for the Carnival Pride. Everything ok over there? 😉 

No.  We’re nowhere close to Pride.  I looked for her because the Carnival Pride is where my wife and got married on so she has a special place in our heart.

Oh look!  The Virgin app has a texting function.  I got a text from Sailor Services.  My wife IS eligible and she gets DBE.  Woot!!!

Hmmm.  Slight hiccup.  Apparently because I didn’t know that i had to do it for wife too, She did not get the Deep Blue Extras.  Just Blue Extras.  Not a big deal but annoyed because it’s not intuitive.  They told me the premium wifi charge will drop off and when it didn’t, had I taken it on faith, i may have been on the hook for it.

Thats my one issue is that things aren’t intuitive and can make things a little leas smooth.  The ship design doesn’t flow intuitively and I end up in a dead end more

often than not.

I’m told that Virgin is good at doing things like they said but its hard for me to take things on faith and they seem to operate seemingly well on that faith.  Just a personal issue here and my observations.

At least i get to keep this status while my wife has to cruise a couple more times to get the Deep Blue Extras status.  Thats a win i guess.

Well, I found the most impressive bathroom on any cruise ship so far.

1 hour ago, Sherry84 said:

It's Alejandro, love him!

Alejandro hosted the 70s show.  It was on fire!!!

1 hour ago, Sherry84 said:

Small world, had lunch there the other day, round the corner from my office 🙂 

There’s brunch place across the street we were looking for but it was slammed.  Good thing too as we were running behind and found this place.