When Virgin Voyages (VV) came out many of us were interested in giving them a try. This was more out of curiosity rather than a desire to depart from RCL…after all we were just reaching their highest loyalty level. So, when I stumbled on a casino match offer with Virgin, we jumped on it! Now VV made a point that this wasn’t a status match, but if we had status with a casino, they would offer us a free cruise. So…that really isn’t a status match?
Anyway 5 nights on the Valiant Lady sounded awesome. VV has three ships sailing right now with a fourth one on the way. Oops another error. VV doesn’t have ships….they have boats and they are referred to as the “Ladies”; Scarlet, Valiant, Resilient and in 2025, Brilliant. Also, they do not have guests or passengers, everyone is a “Sailor”. Its a very quirky little cruise line!
Almost everything is a little different on VV. It starts with the fact that there are no children. Tips, WiFi and soft drinks are included and there is no buffet (per se) or main dining room. You don’t have a key card, instead you have a string that goes around you wrist and falls off all the time. The sensor on the string is your door key and charge card. There really isn’t a main theater and the ship is very “social” with lots of small gathering areas. The ship is very “chopped up”, so it feels larger than it is. It takes a while to find your way around the ship and I am not sure if we found everything. Also, signs and directions to venues were terrible. Good luck finding a restroom … on the first day. Drink packages have been replaced with “Bar Tabs” and on board credit is “Sailor Loot”. This does let you share drinks instead of getting two drink packages, so it works out pretty well.
The ship is very couple oriented with lots of strange workout areas. The pools and hot tubs were surprising small and we didn’t see anyone use the boxing ring anytime……yes, there was a boxing ring. Fitness classes were included.
The food choices were excellent and divided between specialty restaurants, a “galley”, the Social Club, the Pizza Place and “Lick Me until Ice Cream” counter. The specialty restaurants were all included. Reservations were recommended and in some cases difficult to get. The galley was similar to a grouping of food trucks are also was very good, There was also a “Ship Show” which included dinner. The dinner here was not outstanding ….but the show was. There were also take-away boxes with salads, sandwiches and cheese as well as sushi! This was a difficult cruise to control your eating on, since the food was all new and unique. It is very well done.
Since this was a cruise funded by the casino and our drinks were free in the casino, we spent a good deal of time there. Typically, they have a 7 percent surcharge for charging casino expenditures directly to your on board account….which is ridiculous. This was waived for us, but there were other issues with the casino. The point system was the same as for RCL but you were required to get double the points to trigger immediate offers. We set a limit of a $500 loss and found that our return was dismal. Also, I didn’t hear any of the slot players who were seeing reasonable returns. Now there is no way of telling how the return on the machines is set, but my guess is that it is well below the 90% we anticipate on RCL. Also, during the 5 days, we saw that by far, the majority of the casino players had been invited. There was a casino get together on the first evening and these are the people we saw in the casino most of the time. I have the feeling that VV will need to make the casino more liberal and will need to keep working to get “Sailors” commuted to gambling.
The shows and entertainment were unique, somewhat unusual and OK. The pop-up shows that they put on during “Red” night were exceptionally good.
The highlight for us was when one of the staff originally from RCL recognized us. Alex, was on the Cruise director’s staff on Brilliance of the Seas. We had gotten to know him during a 15 day cruise. He was from Russia and was really glad he had made the jump over to VV. Each crew member had a private room, free internet, and were well compensated even though there was no tipping.
Overall it was a very good experience, except for putting on a few pounds. The Beach Club at Bimini, Bahama’s is excellent, but overall there wasn’t much to do. There was a definite homosexual overtone on the ship and for us the tattoo parlor was just a stupid idea. On the other side, Reva loved having a hammock on the Balcony. As for the cabins, there were quite nice but there is not much space to store anything. Drawers were replaced with baskets. The bed was actually a futon that could be made into a couch but the room stewards typically didn’t do that. So the rooms looked kind of odd and a little cheap. Definitely good for a short cruise on a relatively new ship, but I don’t expect this lady to age well.
Bottom line; would we do it again?, if we had to pay full price for it? HELL YES! ABSOLUTELY! Its a nice change, but I would want to combine it with an additional cruise on RCL or Celebrity. It is definitely worth the price and experience. However, getting rid of those few extra pounds has been an issue!
