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What happened to Brilliant Lady

Wildcatllamas

By Wildcatllamas,
in Virgin Voyages

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Wildcatllamas

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22 hours ago, Ulsteinvik said:

There are 6 new calls that came this week in Bergens and Alesunds list for Valiant Lady on summer 2024. They start on early July until the end of August, mostly with 10-11 day intervals.

Wondering what is going on, maybe Brilliant will take over the cruises out of Miami and Valiant heads to Northern Europe?

I keep watching for Iceland. But that may be for 2025.

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jon81uk

jon81uk

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1 hour ago, heatherbelle said:

VV seem very slow compared to the other cruise lines in releasing summer 25.  Can anyone see if they are in Greece in August 25.  I was hoping for Santorini August 24, but that cruise got cancelled, due to the new ship not being ready.

Don’t think cancellation for August 24 is not linked to Brilliant not being ready, I think they are just hoping that cruises from Portsmouth sell better than Athens.

 

my guess on what they do for 2025 depends on what sells for 2024, they are still trying to work out what the popular itineraries are.

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Tolkmit

Tolkmit

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18 hours ago, heatherbelle said:

VV seem very slow compared to the other cruise lines in releasing summer 25.  Can anyone see if they are in Greece in August 25.  I was hoping for Santorini August 24, but that cruise got cancelled, due to the new ship not being ready.

 

With the disclaimer that we really don't know until Virgin announces and put things on sale, and it may change even after that:

Virgin currently plans to have Resilient doing cruises out of Athens for all of summer 2025. She'll be doing one week cruises about half the time, and ten/eleven day cruises the other half of the time. I haven't looked into what ports, but educated guess is they will be similar to the ones for next summer. For August, looks like cruises starting the 3rd, 10th, 21st, and 31st. Her summer season there should be starting May 4th, and it looks like she'll start her re-positioning to the Caribbean October 19th; while Valiant takes her spot in Australia for winter of 2025 through spring of 2026.

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aviators99

aviators99

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14 minutes ago, CineGraphic said:

 

They are apparently getting ready to move her to Palermo, to finish the interior.

Wow, so it wasn't even close to being ready in time. They should have let us know sooner that our voyage would be canceled... 

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Tolkmit

Tolkmit

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3 hours ago, aviators99 said:

Wow, so it wasn't even close to being ready in time. They should have let us know sooner that our voyage would be canceled... 

 

We really don't know anything based on that. Realistically, they said they were having delays, staffing issues, and supply chain issues. All of those can be solved pretty quickly if you are willing to spend enough $$$. They most likely reached a point where getting her done even close to on time would have cost so much in overtime, extra workers, and premiums to get needed supplies quickly, that it was cheaper to just cancel and delay. So a debut in April or May doesn't mean they were no where close to getting her out in December. Could just mean they were choosing between paying a bunch extra to get her out a couple weeks late, or pay nothing extra to get her out months late, and since getting her out on time wasn't an option, they decided to pay nothing extra. Since they were taking the bad PR hit of delaying her regardless.

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kwokpot

kwokpot

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1 hour ago, librarylady19 said:

Yes, it does seem like a long time to hold back the ship - unless they are money issues perhaps?

They are substantially altering the ship to be able to traverse the Panama Canal. Although the ship itself is narrow enough the lifeboats are what's causing the problem. On almost all other cruiseships the lifeboats hang above an open deck WITHIN the ship, and when needed there's a mechanism that lowers them out over the edge of the ship. In Virgin's case the lifeboats permanently hang too far  OUTSIDE of the ship itself, making the ship wider than it actually is. What needs to be done now is the deck where the lifeboats will hang hang must be altered so that there's room to accommodate the lifeboats within the ship, and new lifeboats mechanisms must be installed. This could mean a reduction in the number of cabins.

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Tolkmit

Tolkmit

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1 hour ago, librarylady19 said:

Yes, it does seem like a long time to hold back the ship - unless they are money issues perhaps?

 

Delaying Brilliant coming out does likely save them a decent amount of money. However, delaying announcing her debut actually costs them money. Regardless of when she debuts, once they announce that date they can start selling tickets for her, increasing income without increasing costs.

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jon81uk

jon81uk

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37 minutes ago, kwokpot said:

They are substantially altering the ship to be able to traverse the Panama Canal. Although the ship itself is narrow enough the lifeboats are what's causing the problem. On almost all other cruiseships the lifeboats hang above an open deck WITHIN the ship, and when needed there's a mechanism that lowers them out over the edge of the ship. In Virgin's case the lifeboats permanently hang too far  OUTSIDE of the ship itself, making the ship wider than it actually is. What needs to be done now is the deck where the lifeboats will hang hang must be altered so that there's room to accommodate the lifeboats within the ship, and new lifeboats mechanisms must be installed. This could mean a reduction in the number of cabins.


It’s not being altered. The ship has already been built with that difference compared to the other ship. There is a reduction in balcony size on deck 8 on Brilliant Lady (this has been confirmed in new deck plans in travel agent brochures). 

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kwokpot

kwokpot

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14 minutes ago, jon81uk said:


It’s not being altered. The ship has already been built with that difference compared to the other ship. There is a reduction in balcony size on deck 8 on Brilliant Lady (this has been confirmed in new deck plans in travel agent brochures). 

Sorry, I misstated some of the facts and events. 

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