ociana
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Posts posted by ociana
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No all aboard time, you can come and go all night!
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On 3/28/2023 at 5:17 AM, TripsYouMustDo said:
Anyone else on Android? Is this really this silly? Or did we not figure out a secret way to enter your date of birth without clicking on the calendar 600-some times?
If you click the year it will show a drop down to select your year, instead of scrolling through the calendar. First time I ever saw that feature in a phone calendar menu it threw me off as well, but I run into everywhere now.
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55 minutes ago, HBCcruiser said:
What was on the "A" menu that you loved?
Everything, except that I just like the scallop.
The top item for me is the blue cheese, but my hubby's favorite is the chocolate dessert. The mushroom mousse, smoked egg yolk and peas, and venison are all excellent as well....so, everything.
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Yes that is the list of dinner places, but there are also the sun deck poke bowl place, the social club, pizza and the galley for your other meals. As others noted, you can brunch at Wake or Razzle Dazzle so you can have those for more than dinner. You will not go hungry on this cruise...bring your stretch pants.
I highly recommend experiencing Test Kitchen the first half of the week (Menu A). It is my spouse and I's favorite meal at sea and we have now had it 7 times and still crave just about every course.
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Our sailings with VV have also been rough ones for the galley ordering process. On our B2B last fall it was a running joke between us that my food was never delivered - just my husband's. I think it was because we sat outside, but we had at least 3 times where nothing showed up for me while my husband got his food. We noticed that during this trip there was one staff person responsible for that "station" who took orders and then there were runners who delivered orders based on table numbers. It clearly did not work very well. Last month, they appear to have changed the process where the person running that station also picked up their own orders for that area. It almost worked. The gap was if you were seated at an area where there was not coverage, especially during off hours, you had to flag someone down for the order AND ask for it to be delivered. I sat at the counter and watched as 4 of my exact order left the station and the cook was waiting for new orders before I was able to flag down a manager and get my food made and delivered.
As for the room, last month's trip on the Valiant was the first time we did not meet our room steward at all. I was confused by it, but really it did not have a negative impact on our voyage. We had our room serviced daily on our sailings without issue, unless we stayed in with the DND red light on until past lunchtime...then we just filled our own water later in the evening and had no issue missing the day of service.
All that said, I continue to be a huge fan and understand there are growing pains as you roll out new things. The galley staff in particular are trying to use an app (that can't keep up with specials and custom items easily) and adapt to any changes that come at the on the fly. I think one huge improvement would be if they made the table numbers be ones attached to the tables and not on items that can be moved around. Keep it easier for staff to memorize where to bring food, so it is one less variable in their head. Then have clear markings at the pass for each spot what area the food is for (like tables 10-25) so servers do have to constantly check the papers.
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4 hours ago, mfs2k said:
My wife and I are thinking about booking the Scarlet lady for a four night cruise from Miami. We have sailed many Carnival cruises, and two Celebrity cruises recently.
i’ve watched numerous reviews of Virgin cruises on YouTube and I’ve read many posts.
My concern about booking this cruise is seating. Personally, I think chairs are very important and in every video I’ve seen, the chairs in lounges, outdoor bars, public spaces and the Galley look like IKEA furniture. They look uncomfortable, hard and made of plastic or aluminum. They look like cheap budget furniture. Maybe Celebrity spoiled me.
The lounge chairs on the pool deck and above the pool deck look uncomfortable and unpadded. These look much more uncomfortable than the lounge chairs I’ve recently experienced on celebrity.
Also, there seems to be very little seating around a very small pool. I’m concerned about a full ship, and being unable to find an outdoor chair on our sea days close to the pool.
There are no more suites available so the Richard something deck is unavailable to us.
is my perception right or am I wrong?Chairs matter.
I have to laugh because my husband is also a picky chair person and he has the same concerns anytime we travel. We have been on for 4 cruises now and I can let you know that he is about 50/50 on the seating. Some he finds comfortable and others he hates with a burning passion. The good news is that the comfy ones are spread throughout the ship enough that, beyond swapping seats with me at dinner sometimes, he was generally able to find something that met his needs.
One important note: The chairs on our balcony sucked, but the hammock is so dang cozy that it negated that problem pretty well.
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9 hours ago, _tacocat_ said:
i thought it was worth it. it's a really small group, so you have ample time to ask any question you could possibly think of. without giving too much away, you get to see behind the scenes of one of the entertainment venues (how the stages/rigs work, what backstage looks like), the galleys, food storage, water treatment, engine control room, laundry, bridge, and i think a couple other places but can't remember off the top of my head. depending on the ship you either end up in a crew bar or sip and get drinks at the end - we had 3 people and were given 3 bottles of bubbly to share. the 3rd person left so my husband and i just chilled at sip for a while. you also get a different souvenir depending on ship. valiant has been a special hat, and i believe scarlet is a cup or glass.
Seconding tacocat's review, I found this to be completely worth it. I took the tour on Scarlet in December and we did get a hat at the end and just a glass of bubbly. The crew bar would have been pretty cool, but that was not part of our tour. Weirdly, my favorite stop was seeing how the recycling and waste breakdown worked. They have their own speed composter on board! If you love understanding how things work, then you will completely adore this tour. Ours ran 4 and a half hours, with about 45 minutes of that just in Sip with our guide answering all kinds of questions about crew services and how they find new shore excursion partners.
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7 hours ago, jon81uk said:
The food is prepared on the ship and just reheated, they don’t have full kitchen at the Beach Club.
The first time we were at Bimini, in Nov 2021, we saw them roasting the whole pig at the beach food area in the morning headed into service. We arrived later during our Dec 2022 visit, so we missed seeing if that was still the case. We will be there again at the end of Feb, so I will try to remember to look. Truly, that pork was the star of the show for us. I am hopeful it is cooked that way.
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Saw the show in Oct 2022 on Valiant.
My main food complaint was that it was too dark to see what I was eating clearly. It did turn into a game for us though! I was late to arrive because I was still at trivia so my hubby ordered for us. When they brought the food, they didn't say what it was so he made me guess what I was eating through the whole meal. None of the food was memorable, but it wasn't inedible either.
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21 hours ago, Wildcatllamas said:
I have already experimented with the very same idea using my old band. It looks pretty sharp. I will try to take a picture and post it.
We sailed with someone who did this exact thing and I plan to for next cruise. It looked great!
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On 1/30/2023 at 1:09 AM, Lustate said:
I think it might also come down to who you get "back of house" clearing the costs. Like most of the VV charges its done manually by someone in the office. They might look at status / cabin and just go "grounds club $9 today, clear that", or they might open the bill and go "booze, leave it on". It does state coffee, and generally its viewed as a hand made drink, so i think booze, cans of stuff and packs of coffee beans etc might be pushing it a little.I can confirm, added booze shots do not come off of the bill. Neither does coffee purchased through places other than the grounds clubs (restaurant dessert drink menus, ship eats). I thought I was being clever ordering it through ship eats to cover the delivery fee and then have the cost removed, but instead it just resulted in lukewarm coffee that I had to pay for.
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Ship: Scarlet Lady
Cabin#: 14038Z
Deck #: 14
Cabin Category: Central Sea Terrace
Sleeps: 3
Cabin Location: Aft
Terrace/Window/Obstruction: None
Noise Issues?: When balcony door is open, can hear music and voices from the Deck 16 aft bar if you go to bed early while that area is partying.
Wind Issues?: None
Connecting Cabin? Where Does it Connect?: No
Hammock: Yes
Metal/Glass Terrace: Glass
Advantages/Problems: Door to hallway has to slam to shut all the way.
Would You Book Again?: Yes probably
Comments: The 3 person configuration includes a bed that drops from the ceiling and then splits the lower bed into two. The ceiling bed was an uncomfortable mattress and that person chose to sleep in the hammock most of the time (note that the outside noise was light enough where it was easy to sleep out there).
Ship: Scarlet Lady
Cabin#: 14046Z
Deck #: 14
Cabin Category: Central Sea Terrace
Sleeps: 4 (we had 2)
Cabin Location: Aft
Terrace/Window/Obstruction: None
Noise Issues?: When balcony door is open, can hear music and voices from the Deck 16 aft bar if you go to bed early while that area is partying.
Wind Issues?: None
Connecting Cabin? Where Does it Connect?: No
Hammock: Yes
Metal/Glass Terrace: Glass
Advantages/Problems: Door to hallway has to slam to shut all the way.
Would You Book Again?: Yes, probably
Comments: Overall good room location. TV port is very hard to access and is nowhere near an accessible outlet, so setting up a fire stick is not feasible.
Ship: Valiant Lady
Cabin#: 14030Z
Deck #: 14
Cabin Category: Central Sea Terrace
Sleeps: 4 (we had 2)
Cabin Location: Aft
Terrace/Window/Obstruction: None
Noise Issues?: You can hear loud scratching of chairs from the galley above, especially annoying when they are presumably cleaning the floor in the wee hours of the morning and when you are trying to sleep in while the galley is hopping late morning.
Wind Issues?: None
Connecting Cabin? Where Does it Connect?: No
Hammock: Yes
Metal/Glass Terrace: Glass
Advantages/Problems: Great location to aft elevators that are less busy than the others, easy to grab coffee in the morning and head back to your room.
Would You Book Again?: Yes
Comments: We were in this room for 3 weeks straight (B2B with one leg as the transatlantic) and had no issues with storage during our voyage. TV is close enough to an outlet and the port is accessible so you can use a firestick for streaming. We did have really bad weather at one point and the room was rocking hard and is at a point where it shudders as (I presume) the stabilizers kick in.
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Hi @scubagal44 My hubby and I will be on board as well! Look for my bright purple hair and say hello. We can chat about cats, life on the west coast and the joy of delicious food-related travel. 🙂 We leave in a few hours to fly to London for a few days before we head to Barcelona...chancing it with a same day flight that departs extremely early in the morning.
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Yes, you can buy bottles at a few of the bars on board to take to your room. I bought mine at the Dock House bar. Not sure what the full selection is, but they have them because they stock the rockstar rooms with them.
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Interesting - no invite here but am looking forward to getting signed up for the program!
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On 8/23/2022 at 4:53 PM, gf42 said:
I tried emailing you and received no response. Provide your email and I’ll give u my info
Hi there - I am guessing it landed in SPAM and I cleared it out. try again at ociana at gmail and use the word cruise in the subject line so I dont miss it! I will watch for it.
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I actually booked a secure luggage locker in town for this purpose with the assumption that this was not an option. Maybe go that route?
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2 hours ago, scaught said:
We did ask one of our favorite bartenders on board what the price would be for a bottle of mezcal if we wanted to have it in our room. The price he gave us was basically the price of a shot *16 or whatever it would work out to be (no deals to be had really).
We went the route of buying bottles at the start of our cruise so that we could mix our own drinks in our cabin (with sugar free flavor drops and club soda bottles we brought back from Sip). I expect we will do the same on our B2B, since is is convenient and great when you want a cocktail but don't want to leave your balcony.
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@miamijewel Did you find any great stops during your visit to Olbia? We are headed there on VV in October and I found your post when looking for the same information.
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5 hours ago, _tacocat_ said:
For inclement weather, the whole thing gets moved to the Dock House, and it is definitely a different vibe. There's not a ton of space down there, a bottleneck to get to the 1 bar, and hot as hell and sweaty. We ended up leaving after like 5 minutes and heading over to late night drag queen bingo on the voyage we just got off of.
They added drag queen bingo?!?! YASSSSSS On our cruise last year they had bingo but it was hosted by the gamer and another guy and it was just so so. I used to love going to drag queen bingo hosted by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, so this is right up my alley.
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Never thought I would say this, but I hope to save any luck I have stored up for a future contest and that I don't win this one. With the credits from our Resilient Lady B2B being cancelled, we are now on 5 cruises in the next 12 months and I cannot squeeze another one in.
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1 hour ago, Massman said:
Dominican Daze; 12/09/22 - 12/14/22 https://virg.in/ocmk
@Massman If you want to link ours together, email me at ociana at gmail and I will give you the booking number and last name since we are on the same one.
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Here are mine to add, last minute but worth it in case someone wants to book in the next few days.
Dubai Delights to Singapore Sights https://virg.in/ogXR 11/5 - 11/20/2023
Western Caribbean Charm https://virg.in/46fp 2/19 - 2/25/2023
Dominican Daze https://virg.in/ofUg 12/9 - 12/14/22
You can also email me at - ociana at gmail - for my booking code and last name to associate an existing booking for any of these.
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Deep Blue Extras extended thru 2023
in Virgin Voyages
Posted
When we have gone to board with our deep blue extras perk we simply bypass the timed line entirely. Enter to the left of the line and say "sailing club" because that is what they reference it as. Once upstairs, use the entrance on the right for the special check in kiosks. You should see someone with a clipboard and wristbands that they give you. After checking in, you do not get a group number to wait with the others. Simply wave your wristband and walk right onto the ship.
Other than being misdirected to the downstairs line once and having to wait with them to go upstairs, we have practically walked right onto the ship each of our 4 cruises with this perk.