cantgetin

If you show up before your time, you will line up in time slots--so you will be in the 4:30 slot. If they get all the people with earlier times boarded, they will let you in early. Boarding doesn't start till 1:30. What I would do if I had a 4:30 time is to show up around 3pm. You'll likely wait in line a bit, but not 90 minutes. Do note that you will be standing in line...there won't be seats available. Suggestion--get rid of the "what they do on Royal" mindset. VV is intentionally different about everything. You will be able to get into your room as soon as you board. Your luggage usually arrives within 15-30 minutes of you boarding. The late boarding on VV is due to the late disembarkation--you don't have to be off the ship until 10:30 am on the last day. This means that you can have a nice breakfast or brunch without dragging your luggage to the restaurant, then return to your cabin and get your bags and exit the ship. Of course, if you wish, you can get off as soon as the ship has cleared Customs by taking all your own bags off. While on board, you will be able to go on the app and choose your disembarkation time. Everything is somewhat different than any other cruise line.

You load the Virgin Voyages app onto your phone and make dinner reservations on the app prior to boarding OR your travel agent can make them for you OR you can call Sailor Services shoreside and make reservations, Shows are reserved on the app after boarding the ship. If you don't have your dinner reservations in advance, you can make them after boarding or go to Razzle Dazzle on deck 5 where there are people to help you make reservations. A large number of dinner reservations are held back and not available in advance. In addition, if you don't like the reservations you got in advance, you can usually change them after boarding, Ship Show is a dinner show....so if you see that, you won't need a restaurant reservation for that night.

THe price on board was irrelevant to us as there were never any in stock. Amazon was the same price as Yellow Leaf, but by going thru Amazon, our Prime membership took care of the shipping cost. Interesting to hear that the ship charges more. Still....if you have extra loot....

Totally agree about the chicken sandwich....always seriously dry and over cooked. Worst beverage on the ship--premium tea from Sailor Eats. They do not separate the thermos type containers used for coffee from those used for hot water for tea or broth for soup. The contents of the thermos smell and taste like old coffee. I may be a purist, but no decent restaurant will use a pot that has held coffee for tea water, whether it is a "keep warm" device or a holding device. A couple times I got the tea leaves in one of the cute little brewing pots with the thermos of hot water separate. This sort of works because I can go to The Galley or Grounds Club for "clean" hot water...I often save the little pot and get the water the next day. Once I got the tea already brewed in the thermos--sorry, it went down the drain. I had tons of loot, so the cost was not an issue, but....yuk... Same with ordering soup. They sent the solids and the broth separately, but the broth smelled/tasted of old coffee. I put the solids on a salad and dumped the broth. I have put this in evaluations on each of our cruises.....they obviously don't care.

I've never seen it show up this way....ours has always been "loot," even on those occasions where it was more than I expected.

Bingo is a walk up, as are the others you mentioned including the coffee gameshow (Latte something?). Also book in advance exercise classes. For things that do not require booking ahead, the app allows you to set a reminder...so your phone will notify you of the activity 30 minutes in advance.

All I can say for sure is that he won't be on our next sailing (I asked him during the last cruise) and that he said his schedule can be viewed on his site. If he was ill, that would explain reports that he "wasn't on board" even if reality was that he was on the ship, just not able to perform.

We purchased a Yellow Leaf hammock from Amazon (have prime, saved the postage). We attempted to purchase one on the ship, but on our first two cruises, they were "out of stock" in the sundries shop. They did give us a card with the contact info. As you noted, the hammocks are available in at least 2 sizes (one person and 2 person) in a variety of colors. We are very pleased with the product. Our choice was a one person hammock and an appropriate stand that can be used indoors or outdoors. It is now about a year old and I have washed it once (basically rinsed it off following the instructions included. The one we selected is partially cream colored; I still don't know if it was discoloring naturally, picking up dye from clothing, or whatever and it really doesn't look different after the cleaning but it made me feel better. It is in good shape and works fine. It is a bit larger than the ones on the ship, but that's hard to assess as they sort of spread out as you use them. It comes in a very small package, compressed so that it wouldn't take much suitcase space or weight IF the ship happened to have it in stock. The only downside is that using it in the house is not nearly as nice as having the ocean breezes on the balcony. Using it on the patio in good weather is nicer, but still not as great as the balcony on the ship. We did notice on our last cruise that the one on the balcony was showing evidence of fading and a few worn areas...but it is constantly exposed to sun and sea air. IF I could have gotten one on the ship, I would have as that would have been "free" with the extra loot we had...but as I said, I've never seen them in stock to purchase on the ship. They only had two person size in one color on the during our cruise, and only one of those! The person in the shop was very helpful though.

You can confirm his schedule on line. I just went to his tictoc and it says that he is currently performing on Valiant....but it was posted here the he wasn't on board last week. I don't know what to think....he was definitely there in November.

For all practical purposes, Valiant and Scarlet are identical. I honestly don't know what to tell you. By reports in the boards, Carlos is no longer the Diva on Valiant--that's a loss to all sailors. It has been a few months, but the woman who was "the flare" was lovely....kind, intelligent, and fun. The woman who was The Artist must know someone in management.

REminds me of my daughter's graduation luncheon, prepared by a well known chef in our town who also had a son graduating. Daughter looked at the cake and announced to the table that it was going to be terrible. Someone asked how she knew, and she repeated our cruise mantra that the better it looked, the worse it would taste. The entire table agreed that the only edible part of that cake was the fresh strawberry garnish on each piece.

Definitely. You can also ask for it to be "well done" if you'd like it a little more crispy.

Sorry, the new dinner menu eliminated the best dish on that menu--the Secret Steak--as well as two very good chicken dishes. The current fried chicken was nasty when I tried it--dry and over cooked. I've read a lot of positives for the new dinner menu, but with the elimination of three of our favorites, we really didn't care for it. I agree that the sweet endings are better. Unfortunately, the new menu took RD from our "go to" dinner place to "oh, is that tonight?" It is getting increasingly hard to get excited about dinner, but maybe that reflects too many nights on board. THe Wake is "Is it going to be good this cruise? Gunbae is "One and done" for each sailing We don't care for Test Kitchen. A menu is good, B is a no go for us Extra Virgin and Pink Agave are both good. Each of us prefers one over the other, but a different one. Our dinner plan most nights is that we have made advance reservations, but we check The Galley dinner special and cancel the restaurant if The Galley is more appealing. The atmosphere is not great, but the food quality of that special is generally excellent. Food at Ship Show was MUCH improved on our last sailing.

Maybe. I'm 69. I don't love much of the entertainment, but I find plenty to do around the ship. We tend to do 14 night cruises or longer, so have active FB groups that tend to make our own entertainment as well as the fact that the ship adds additional activities for longer cruises. THe shows were fine...once...but unless a particular entertainer is a stand out, they don't change. If you ever have Carlos as the Diva, go to every show.

We've seen tremendous variation in quality in The Wake among our cruises. The steaks have improved somewhat. THe service on our second cruise was so slow and bad that we canceled our other reservations there. On the next cruise, service was quite decent. No, not as good as most upscale steak houses on other cruise lines, but quite decent recently. Fingers crossed for our next cruise. And yes to the tip about ordering something with a charge if you get room service (sailor eats). No delivery charge if you order any item with a cost.

Great review. Thanks. I will tell you that we've done 3 VV cruises now and have found major differences due to cast and crew as well as some activities offered.

Great review, thanks. I'm not a foodie, but largely agree with your ultimate analysis even though I didn't understand many of the details. Best steak on board used to be the "Secret Steak" at Razzle....and they took it off the menu.

You just met the "no single use plastics" policy on VV. I bring my own mug with plastic straw for tea. Those paper things are just nasty.

There is no spa or thermal suite package on VV. I'm not impressed with the thermal suite. I've seen it in need of a "pick up" as guests seem to not know where to put used towels, etc....but not "dirty." Supposedly the point of the 3 hour time schedules is to prevent overcrowding, but it doesn't seem to be working. Or they book it full and then some MRS show up.

Your Galley review posted while I was typing my response to your boarding. We've had favorite and less favorite items fromThe Galley, but everyone has his/her own preferences. My embarkation "go to" is the turkey/swiss panini and a chicken caesar salad. We opt to come in, sit, and order. On our first cruise the beverages we like were not readily available--our server went elsewhere to get them for us! At this point, I have 43 nights on board....and still haven't tried everything. But I'm with you--the ramen isn't great. The bento boxes vary, but not overwhelming in many cases. Still, there are some good things available that way and I like having the option. Ordering in The Galley is a bit confusing now. Many people didn't understand the "sit down and raise a flag" system, so they are now using a dual system to allow you to get your food however you choose. I don't know how long your cruise is, but we have often had nightly specials in The Galley that were excellent. These were in addition to the lunch specials. One night they had Beef Wellington--we canceled our Gunbae reservation and ate at The Galley. It was amazing. Overall, I find The Galley OK but not great. I can get better salads and sandwiches at Panera Bread on shore. But I don't go away hungry from The Galley and both the lunch and dinner specials can be exceptional. Another thought for lunch--Razzle Dazzle (not on Bimini day) and The Wake are great. On Bimini day, we were told that the Razzle crew goes ashore and does the food there. What we know is that we had a totally different crew than normal--people we'd never seen before--and they didn't know what they were doing. Both the food prep and the serving was a mess. But RD normally has a great brunch.

VV has always had a policy of not allowing people into the terminal until 1pm. The late boarding is the trade off for allowing a late, more comfortable disembarkation and often avoiding the mess at the terminal--most other lines are thru their process before VV people are supposed to arrive. What are you supposed to do? We asked for a late check out at our hotel and it was available until 12 at no additional charge. Alternatively, you can go to the terminal and check in luggage, then take the shuttle to Bayside. There is also a small cafe near the terminal in MIA In Barcelona, there were several options when VV was able to use the WTC terminal. Now that they are at the big terminal, the options are luggage check in and a shuttle out of the port area...or just show up at 1. Another big advantage to VV is that we have always had access to our room immediately after boarding and our luggage has arrived about 15 minutes after we did. We have always had Sailing Club priority boarding on each of our VV cruises.

3 years ago was the end of covid and VV was just getting up to speed....and their ads were all geared to young people and wild times. I think VV was surprised to see the audience they were attracting, In 2022, the median age was 43. This was supposedly for all 2022 sailings. I saw some numbers posted in mid 2023 claiming the median age was 48, but it didn't say what time period this covered. We learned that the median on our most recent 2023 cruise hit exactly in this range, but that was a 14 night cruise. My observation is that shorter cruises and holiday cruises tend to attract a younger crowd. For the future...no one knows what the impact of higher prices will be other than initially decreased bookings. People cruising now booked 30 days to 18 months ago, most at least 6 months ago. They aren't going to see an effect until summer, most likely. The "First Mate" I use is currently on the reward sailing for the top 100 agents and reported that at a meeting with the CEO, he apologized for the fare increases and talked at some length about plans, hopes and dreams for the line My guess is that the current fares may not hold. Some are far above Celebrity, Princess, or NCL with the most "inclusive" package added to those base fares. For example, Princess Premium is the closest thing to the basic VV fare, but I can often find cruises with similar dates, lengths, and itineraries cost less with Princess Premium. No, it isn't an "apples to apples" comparison, but it is the best I can do. VV will try to find their sweet spot in the market. At this point, some, but not all sailings are cruising full or nearly so.....meaning that they still need to work on occupancy!

Ballpark 90 minutes. It can take longer if you choose to hang around over coffee or alcohol after dinner, but we've never felt the need to hang with the group after the ice cream. Our favorite dish is the marinated beef....I don't remember the name correctly--kawli or something similar. In fairness, I'm not a spicy food person.....I order the chicken with sauce on the side, making it a little bland, but with the sauce, it is too much for me. The pancake is good. We skip the initial appetizers. Our first time, the server asked if we wanted to order off the menu or she could bring a selection of the "favorites." We went with the favs and it was WAY too much food. Now we stick to ordering a few dishes. It isn't as good as Korean BBQ places we've eaten in Asia, but not bad either.

Tortola accepted USD. I normally have a limited amount of local currency and use my travel credit card for anything large as it has no exchange fee. DO figure out whether it is better to purchase in USD or local currency if making more than a minimal purchase.

I seriously doubt that any agency has prices below the posted prices other than incorporating those discounts like MNVV. Any site I've ever seen that claimed to do so either had failed to update their website or had the same prices as everyone else.