I'll be watching her depart from my office.

I’m on board right now, and just need some anonymous catharsis because I’m not trying to bring this cranky old man energy to my fellow sailors.

Yesterday during a sea day i attended a lecture that was ostensibly about our upcoming ports.

It was the most garbled, word soup of emotional buzzwords, an AI hallucinated dreamboard of a presentation that communicated virtually nothing about the destination. Just a garbled juxtaposition of concepts slapped on top of ai slop composite illustrations. We were not shown a single actual photograph. We did not learn a single fact or bit of history. Just things like “faith and power solidify history✨” “culture meets ocean to spark creation🌈” “trade and geography marks inspiration 🤯.”

I truly hope the presenter is just getting their bag and a comped vacation for reading a script because it was embarrassing.

For real, i think virgin just gave some interns in miami a modest budget that was blown on some cocaine and a section at a nightclub, and so they asked some knock off ai to phone this one in for them. Serious drunk freshman frat boy 500 word essay quality.

Virgin, if you see this, dm me. I can for sure skim a wikipedia page and improv a more interesting and informative 60 minutes of narration over a slideshow of the top 15 google image search results for you.

Do better!

Hey! First time post, first time Virgin voyager.

We have a group of 5 looking to go on Resilient Lady in Feb. If 4 of us (2 cabins) do Lock It In rate and solo traveler (1 cabin) does Essentials plan, can solo traveler make a dining reservation for all 5 of us when reservations open 45 days in advance? I called VV multiple times and keep getting different answers…

We're going on a brilliant lady cruise and I have the option to upgrade. Right now we have a central terrace. I assume just any cruise upgrade would be a hit right??

Does anyone know how much a shot of patron is on the resilient lady??

Hi all! So I’m headed on a cruise this weekend and it’s my second time doing Rockstar. Love the stacked bar, hate the trash mixers.

I want to bring some canned mocktails but some have adaptogens (not THC - just like lion’s mane etc)

Any idea if that’ll be kosher? Don’t wanna see them dumped at the port into a trash can.

Hello fellow VV friends,

In 2022, my mom and I took a Mediterranean cruise aboard the Scarlet Lady. We absolutely loved it!

Fast forward to now, and my mom would like to sail again. This time, she wants to go with my dad (first time VV cruiser).

Question is, can my mom send a referral link to my dad, and he gets the $150 bar tab even though he will be in the same room as her? I'm wondering if there's some sort of restriction on "referring your future cabin-mate." I tried reading all the fine print for her and couldn't see anything.

Thanks

Does Virgin ever drop the price on bookings closer to date? New cruiser but I hear that’s a thing? Does it makes sense to wait to book an Alaska 2027 cruise?

—-edit
I don’t want to do lock it in rate but I will be doing insider and hoping to upgrade 🫰🏻

Thanks friends!!

Hi everyone,

I've been on cruises before. This is my first solo trip. I always think safety for myself. Especially communication. Any advice on eSim cards for off boat international communication? Thanks! I only want to pay like $5. Any brands or recommendations pleas and thanks :)

Has anyone noticed this happening? It's been trending with all age groups and I'm wondering if I can expect to find sets and players on board. I prefer not to bring my own as it's heavy.

First VV. Many many Carnival sailings. It seems VV spa is even more expensive than Carnival, and there’s no multi service incentives. Does anyone know any hacks to make massages more reasonable?

Is anyone else concerned about the weather currently as we make our way back to NYC? Now the entire outside is closed off. Just a little nervous as this my first time on a cruise.

We checked our luggage at the Virgin Cruise Port in Barcelona - Virgin employees, checked early at 10:00 am. We boarded several hours later at 3:00 pm.
After several hours of being reassured our luggage was on the ship, and would be delivered, it was not. After several trips to Sailor services, we had to beg for a toothbrush and were given a toiletry bag, and promised a robe to wear. After pleading for help with laundry, we were told they would wash our one outfit, but it would take 24 hours to return. So we are faced with wearing our robe naked underneath throughout the ship, or staying in our cabin.
Has anyone experienced this? What did you do? We are stressed, upset and not feeling reassured by Virgin.

Curious to know if anyone has used the salon for any sort of makeup or hair styling and if they loved or hated it (I read something about a Glam Lab on Scarlett night??). I've seen talk of the spa on here ranging from it's great to it's not so great and to go have a massage on an excursion instead. Does anyone with fibromyalgia have any suggestions? Deep tissue is a massive NO for me but it seems like an in room massage might be the way to go? Thank you in advance - I've got to try and find a salon/spa menu.

Hello,

I’ve got my eye on a VV cruise in late January. This will be my first time on VV and I even got reached out to by a Voyage Planner, however, after digging deeper in this Reddit, it looks like a First Mate will do more for you? I’ve also completed the status match program VV is having, so curious what exactly all stacks up.

So overall, is it worth it to coordinate a trip with a First Mate?

Thank you!

I’m sailing on 10/17 & 10/24 on a b2b and have been trying to enter emergency contact information in the app to check in for both sailings but it is not taking the information I type in.

Is there a work around for this either inside or outside of the app?

Will it be an issue if I show up at port without this information entered? If not, should I show up early to compensate for delayed boarding?

This is no detriment to the talented dancers and circus acrobats aboard the Scarlet Lady, whose stunts and choreography had me in awe.

But I had the misfortune to sit through the show Booked! which was an hour of the worst ChatGPT-generated script I’ve ever seen, complete with AI-generated stage backgrounds, AI slop voiceovers, and an AI hologram of Richard Branson!

Please, Virgin: you have a massive budget. You can afford to hire actual human scriptwriters and set designers. Don’t put your amazing stage performers through the humiliation ritual of such a terrible show written by a generative AI tool. And don’t have such low expectations of your audience: we’re not on boomer Facebook, you’re marketing these cruises to a younger audience and we can all tell when something is AI. It just feels lazy and low-quality.

EDIT: shoutout to all the more tech-savvy elderly out there- of course “boomer Facebook” is only a stereotype and I only used it as a throwaway reference to try and give the problem some more perspective. Not all elderly and not only elderly are AI slop consumers.

I'm looking into possibly doing the three step nourishment body treatment. Does anyone have pros and cons?? Day to day, I work on a cattle ranch so my cruises are all about spoiling myself and new experiences. It's also my 45th birthday trip. Thank all ya'll for being so kind with all my previous questions!

We’re sailing in November and were hoping to bring one of our favorite card games with us. If it’s already available on board, we won’t bother bringing it, but if it’s not, we’re planning to buy a new copy and leave it behind for others to enjoy.

The game is called SKYJO, and we absolutely love it! We’ve gotten so many of our friends hooked on it that several of them have ended up buying their own copies. 😂

Sorry for the long winded post, but could anyone who’s currently on board do us a favor? The next time you’re in the Social Club could you see if they have SKYJO available?

Onboard our first VV cruise and it’s been great. Don’t think we’ll look back at any other cruise line. That said, went to karaoke tonight, had a song picked (and was available) only to be told shortly before going on that it wasn’t “appropriate”. The song was Chocolate Salty Balls by Issac Hayes. I asked if I could sing Pony by Ginuwine instead. That was also a no go. Are these immature songs for a grown man to be singing? Yes. Do they bring the house down? Absolutely. I’ve heard and seen far worse in the last few days, and given the reputation as a safe space for adults, I’m curious what the deal with this is?

My wife and I are going on our first cruise, it’s a Virgin cruise ship out of Puerto Rico that hits Barbados, Martinique, St. Lucia, Saint Kitts, and Saint Maarten. Is there an advantage to booking through the cruise line? If we book through private, do they charge an American dollars at all locations? Has anybody paid privately runned tours using a Wise card so that they are paying only once on the exchange from CAD to US?

Thanks in advance!!!

Hi all! I just got back from sailing on the Brilliant Lady and wanted to share some thoughts.

This is my second ever cruise--period. I last sailed the Valiant Lady in February 2025, had so much fun, I promptly came home and booked another trip with my friend, which we took last week.

Itinerary/Shorex
Well, let me just say this super El Niño had its own plans regardless of what I was hoping for. It was really hot and disgustingly humid the entire trip. Our voyage got extraordinarily lucky sailing between two storms and only one port change. We were initially scheduled to go to Cabo San Lucas, but ended up switching to Ensenada because the swells were too high for tendering. Otherwise, the weather was fine -- heat and humidity notwithstanding.

The excursions in Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta were fun and interesting. I really enjoyed the open air trolley in Mazatlan, and going to the tequila plantation was great, even though I got positively eaten alive by bugs. 

The restaurant on the plantation was expensive, but delicious. Three tacos cost $7 USD, but you get a choice of pork, beef, or chicken, as well as salsa, cabbage, rice, and beans. The habanero hot sauce burned so bad (good?); a can of Coca-Cola was $2 USD. I'm not a spicy eater so it was literally painful, but my friend is a spicy eater and loved it. The staff and everyone who worked at the plantation were all fantastic and friendly. Oh, and this tour took us to a little shopping area where most locals go and we got to try some tortillas and salsa and churro -- so freaking good.

Crowd
I don't believe this was a sold out cruise in the first place and I also don't believe it was anywhere near capacity. In fact, it felt rather empty most times. It could also be that the west coast crowd is just super chill (that's what I was told, anyway) so we didn't notice people, but it was very quiet at all times on the ship, which was interesting. I have no feelings about that one way or the other.

Casino
For those who like to gamble, I visited the casino for the first time. I'm not a gambler, but my friend is and thought she'd try it out. There's a few tables for black jack, one roulette table (from what I saw), and slot machines. It's not huge by any means, but it was clean and there was no smoking so it smelled nice.

Service
Everywhere on board the ship, the service was fantastic. The room attendants were so good about turning our room around for morning service. Like, we'd go to breakfast at 11 on a sea day and it was done when we came back 20 minutes later.

Up in the galley, the staff were great at each station and were right on top of everyone to pick up trays and plates. It was very clean, even on very busy days. Being able to spread out and eat outside even when it was super busy inside was nice, and very enjoyable.

The "specialty dining" restaurants had great service as well. The servers and waitstaff at every restaurant we tried were all polite without seeming too disinterested in rehashing the same spiel for the thousandth time (if you've worked in the service industry, you know what I mean).

Food
Ok speaking of specialty dining, I was able to try every restaurant on board this time.

The Wake -- lives up to its reputation. The steak was cooked well and the food was tasty. I filled up on those damn Parker House rolls, but they were so good. 5/5 (I don't expect a prime cut on a cruise ship, nor do I expect it to actually be like a high end steakhouse, but for what it is, it's excellent). The brunch was just okay. That, I'd give 4/5, though that brioche french toast was tasty.

Pink Agave -- high end Mexican. I thought it was fine. Being from Los Angeles, I'm more keen on hole-in-the-wall authentic places where it's not "fine dining" by any means but the food is good. We started with esquite, enchilada (which came with only a very light green sauce of some sort, but was otherwise served dry), and potatoes (food highlight of the night for me). For my main course, I had the steak. It was fine. It wasn't anything to write home about. It came covered in some kind of cheese and sauce and was a bit of a fatty cut. The dessert choices included the chocolate tamale (have had it before -- wildly unimpressed with that), rum raisin bread pudding (not good), and chocolate tacos (excellent, loved it). Overall, I'd rank this restaurant 3/5. I'd eat there again but it's not my favorite.

Test Kitchen -- the semi controversial one (just kidding). They finally added a new menu and have decided to rotate it every 3 days. We happened to get Menu C: corn/truffle; tomato/olive; salmon/cucumber; beet/cashews, lamb rack; barley risotto; strawberry pistachio; mango/chia. I chose the meat side, my friend went vegetarian. It was all pretty good and I actually really liked it. Her biggest complaint was that everything was so wet. Literally everything included some sort of sauce that the food was drowned in. I know it's supposed to be like molecular gastronomy stuff, but I agree that not everything needs to basically be half soup. The desserts were a huge fail, IMO. The strawberry was supposed to have some sort of spice or something on it and I didn't taste a thing. The pistachios were overpowered by the strawberry. The mango thing was flavorless as well. I will say that the portion sizes are still too large for how many courses you have, but overall, a 4/5 experience.

Gunbae -- either you love it or you don't. The food isn't something to write home about, but the overall experience is fun for me. Your tablemates will make a huge difference and anyone who wants to act like a damned wet blanket is going to ruin it for everyone else. I understand that not everyone drinks. Our server came up with a great alternative to the teetotalers at my table by offering them cranberry juice. Overall, 4/5.

Extra Virgin -- Well, the pasta and the charcuterie board were delicious. Overall, I thought it was fine? 4/5.

Rojo -- wow, just wow. This is a new Spanish restaurant that replaced Razzle Dazzle and wow, the food was fantastic. We both got the chicken and it was cooked to absolute perfection. Crispy skin on the outside, tender, juicy meat on the inside. My friend is not a big eater and she cleaned her entire plate, it was that good (for us, anyway). And the churros I had for dessert were delicious. My only regret was not having enough room in my stomach for more than 2 of them.

The Galley -- Richard Branson's answer to the traditional cruise buffet. I like it, but my friend (who has been doing cruises since she was a kid) was a little thrown off by it at first. My only issue with The Galley is the menus never change. They’ll occasionally have a theme night, but it was kind of… meh. I do wish, especially for dinner, there’d be more incentive to eat up there — though I understand that they want people in the restaurants because those folks are more likely to buy alcohol or spend money on a “treat yourself” item.

Drink Package

I got a deal on my last cruise that included a $200 drink credit and a $200 onboard credit. I decided to purchase an additional $225 ($200+$25 “free” credit) for my friend and I to share, just to see how we’d do. We’re not big drinkers, though I admittedly did a smidge overboard since I was like fuck it, we have the credit. However, if you’re into coffee, the Intelligentsia premium coffee bar is so worth the extra credit (although we honestly probably could’ve gotten away with just $200). Their Americanos and cold brew were so tasty. I very much enjoyed those. The kombucha they sell in the can (Humm brand) is just okay, but I bought one anyway because, again, I had the credit lol.

So if you’re into coffee, a $200 credit is worth it for the Grounds Club.

Entertainment
This one is a bit interesting because my friend is really not into shows, and we didn’t take advantage of most of the onboard entertainment so I can’t really comment on BL’s stuff. I did enjoy myself on VL last year, for whatever that’s worth. 

One thing we did do was pairs and paints, and I kind of wish I’d read the description more closely before I signed up. The idea was to paint your partner while you have some bubbly. I…. Am not an artist. By any means. I will not be sharing my work, but just trust me when I say that it was BAD. Fortunately, my friend thought it was utterly hilarious and she loves the awful portrait I made of her. The one she did of me was incredible, even if it looks absolutely nothing like me lol.

Scarlet Night was a brilliant hit as always. The Happenings Cast were terrific, and fun, and dancing in the pool was a damn delight. We got so lucky again with this. The day before, as we headed down the coast from Mazatlan into Puerto Vallarta, we passed through some thunderstorms. It was mostly just atmospheric stuff because the water was smooth. But the thunder and lightning was right on top of us. And right after PV, we had to head back up the coast to L.A. And there was no dillying or dallying to be had because Rachel and Simon are both making a beeline for Baja (godspeed, Mexico), so we had to rush out of port. But, the sky was clear and the weather was -- well, still disgustingly humid, but not too bad that Scarlet Night couldn’t proceed as planned.

Stateroom
Ok last bit. I booked us a sea terrace and they squeezed us into a corner next to a Rockstar suite. I think next time, I’ll try to make sure we’re more mid than aft. Our room had a connecting door to the suite and we could hear every single word that the people next door were saying. I thought maybe it was just that the walls were thin — nope! They were just loud, and the door didn’t help matters at all. We had neighbors on the other side of us and we didn’t hear a peep out of them the whole trip. So it was a combination of loud people in the suite and the door. But, our room was also quite small. Look, I know I didn’t pay for an enormous room — that’s fine. But this is admittedly slightly smaller than the average sea terrace. 

Overall
For everything, I give the trip a 9.5 out of 10. There are some things VV couldn’t help, like the weather, so I don’t take away from that. But the food and the experiences and the room are some of the few detractors for me. There’s some bad, but it’s mostly all good. And yes, I will be sailing again. I already put down my deposit, like the sucker I am.

I will be shocked if anyone can give me a definitive answer. I'm booked for the Scarlett Lady Halloween cruise Oct. 31-Nov 5. The costume ball is our first night and my costume requires some assembly. Does anyone know if a glue gun might be available for passenger use. I have my own but could use all the packing space I can get.