_tacocat_

1 hour ago, tbmrt said:

I'm definitely an overplanner so hard for me to relax with all the changes!  Thanks for all your help everyone!

if you generally eat dinner at the same time every night (say 7-7:30), you should be able to get into the shows, as they do some showings early/some late, but usually on different nights.  with respect to daytime activities, it's usually fitness stuff between 7-10am on sea and port days if you're interested, VHS at 10 on sea days. 

other sea day activities like trivia, boy band dance class, arts & crafts friendship bracelet making class, etc. are usually around 11 and 1:30 (likely to draw people away from the pool in the peak of the pool day; however, people leave all their crap on their chairs/daybeds to "reserve" them when they're at these activities, defeating some of the purpose ugh.) early evening activities can start at 5 - if you check out the current/recent past voyages on that link above, you'll get a picture of the general timeframes they're going with these days!

4 hours ago, tbmrt said:

I was surprised to read that the Festival Shows must now be booked onboard rather than just walking up.

 

Some of my shows overlap with some of the Festival Shows so I guess I'll have to pass on the Festival Shows.  I'd feel guilty booking regular shows and Festival Shows that overlap.

 

Would you miss any of the regular shows in order to attend the Festival Shows?

in my experience, they've always required a reservation.  valiant in december (the magnets a capella group in the red room) and scarlet twice in february (tamar broadbent comedy cabaret thing on the first, and on the second, quite possibly the worst comic i've seen in years whose name escapes me).

the only show i'm aware of that doesn't require a reservation has been around the world with the diva.

6 hours ago, sollan said:

What?! 

if you go into your wallet, you can click into each of the transactions if you're curious.  sometimes, they just charge you for a totally wrong item, other times (as i noted in my other comment above), bartenders will charge you for a liquor PLUS the base cocktail vs. a liquor with a couple-buck cocktail upcharge or a cocktail with a couple-buck "premium spirit" upcharge.  if you see anything weird, go back to the bartender, find a bar manager or go to sailor services to resolve.

1 hour ago, bdever said:

Thanks Walter & Jon, do you know if it is listed on the schedule or do I need to check every night by showing up in person?

 

The only thing that would top my interest would be a live salsa band but I suspect I’m out of luck so if I need to show up every night I will be willing. 

It’s listed on the lineup- possibly not till you get on.  Also, depending on what talent is currently on the ship, there may be a Latin music night with the band at on the rocks

It changed at some point last year from separate lunch and afternoon “snack” menus with a break in between to the same menu through.  I want to say it’s noon-4 or 5 now?

8 hours ago, tbmrt said:

Do you need to book Apertivo at Extra Virgin bar?  If so when you book your restaurants or onboard?  Tx

Yes, you book when onboard like other activities, but imo it’s not really worth worrying over.  It’s just the same menu of appetizers as regular dinner there, nothing special about it.

1 hour ago, ardeasnest said:

We are in our 50s, so maybe we are getting old, but I am a personal assistant and my husband tends to a disabled brother and we are really looking forward to having an agent who will take care of us and our schedule for 8 days. I am comiling a list of requests. I'll send some to Sailor Services, but I will also pass them on to my agent so he/she knows what I am expecting. We plan to tip up front and again at the end if the service was excellent. We hope that a tip up front will let our agent know we have certain expectations and a tip at the end will show appreciation for his/her efforts to see they are met, to put it bluntly. It's how we handle all-inclusive resorts, as well.

Tipping has absolutely nothing to do with the service you receive onboard.  You’re paying (I assume) many thousands of dollars to sail mega rockstar, so there is a level of service you’d expect from that anyway.

That said, your agent isn’t able to move mountains- tip or not.  If the restaurants are truly fully booked, they will try their best to get you in at your desired time, but this is indeed not a private yacht.  Same with spa appointments and fitness classes- if there are no treatment rooms available when you want a massage or spin bikes left in a class, they’re not going to kick a normie out so you can get a massage or work out.  Shows are less of a problem, as they don’t actually book “tickets” to full capacity.
 

We also had zero requests acknowledged or fulfilled ahead of time outside of arranging the included transportation.  Any time we asked about something we were told our roadie would deal with it once we were onboard.

My advice is to either book dinner ressos in the app or call sailor services to book them at 60 days out to make sure you’re good in that department.  Once onboard, you can give your list of whatever to your roadie and ask them a zillion questions when you meet them in your suite.  In my experience, sometimes there is great inconsistency between what shoreside sailor services says (sometimes they go way off script and give incorrect info) and what reality is onboard.

Corkage depends on who actually waits on you- we didn’t get charged the first 3 or 4 times, and got charged the next time.  Pro tip, pour yourself a very large glass on your way in- no corkage haha.  My husband and I have done that a couple times on the way into the wake and extra virgin (basically split a bottle in 2 glasses)

6 hours ago, fndecker said:

Funny, I had this same conversation on a FB post this week. I am also used to the bed by the closet, but we are bringing my daughter next time and have adjoining rooms, so we may try the room that has the bed by the balcony.

 

I'm questioning the wisdom of having our room adjoin my 19y/o daughter and her BF. I like my privacy. I am debating on opening the divider between the rooms or leaving it locked. Guess we will figure it out then.

The rooms don’t actually adjoin- just the balcony part of you opt to have it removed.  Also, there’s a 50/50 chance your beds/bathrooms will be on opposite walls depending where in the floor plan you fall 😊 

if you're expecting to have 100 point wines with dinner every night, you'll be disappointed.  i wouldn't call their selection so-so, but it's also not like you'd find at a steakhouse/nice restaurant on land.

that said, the wake has a "magnum trolley" program that has a lot of good wines - i think they were around $20-30/glass for things like caymus and i'm blanking on what else on the cart haha.  they have a decent wine program at the wake and test kitchen, and extra virgin offers taste and glass pourings. we ended up DIYing our own italian wine tasting at the bar at EV with some snacks one evening by splitting 4-5 "taster" pours.

there are somms at the wake, test kitchen, and i can't remember which other restaurant (i don't think it was EV) that can help you out.  francois was on scarlet at the wake, then moved to test kitchen, then moved to valiant at the wake.  he was our best friend when we sailed as mega rockstars because we'd hit him up every day at the wake for our 2 bottles of wine.  we did mega smack in the middle of supply chain issues, so the wine list did not reflect reality, and they had things that were off menu.  the somms were happy to go hunting in the store room for whatever we asked for (and brought us some interesting off menu wines!) and we usually got it the next day.

the only one i blatantly noticed was espresso martinis.  from sip they were like $10-11, but at grounds club and some other bars, they were like $14, but i believe the grounds club ones had some extra liquors in them that the sip ones didn't.

as others have said, if you're going off-menu, it's kind of like the wild west.  some bar tenders charge you for whatever base liquor and do whatever "cocktail" upcharge.  we've also had bar tenders that try to charge for a full pour of an upgraded liquor in addition to the menu cocktail price.  this ironically only actually mattered when we sailed as megas because our cocktails started hitting our account as over $25 (so not wiped).  a quick chat with one of the bar leaders and our roadie made those disappear and not happen again.

18 hours ago, cantgetin said:

Good wishes on getting the DBE extended.....it has already been extended twice, so who knows?

i just find it odd that we're <2 weeks away from May 1 and still not a peep.  my (based on absolutely no fact haha) guess is they'll extend till the end of June but make some tweaks to the benefits - maybe $200 bar tab instead of the daily coffee credit?  no social event?  guess we'll (hopefully!) find out soon!

7 hours ago, tbmrt said:

Where would you suggest we sit for best view?

middle of the seats are good- both with respect to height of the row and position within the row.  i've also seen it from up on 7 - great view from behind the seats, but the worst time if you're on the sides of the balcony because the lights blind you the whole time.

if you think you'll want to leave early or have issues that require you to get up and frequently go to the bathroom, just go to the 7th deck entrance.  if you're on 6, you're not supposed to get up in the middle of the show for your/the performers' safety (yet, every time i've been to this show, a group of people thinks this rule does not apply to them, and how dare they be told to sit down after being given advance warning that this was a no-early-exit show.  this is somehow always also the same group that ignores the no flash photography rule and has their stupid iphone flash blinding the cast....)

5 hours ago, jon81uk said:

I’ve never made it, but I think it’s just walk-in no need to book at all. It counts as an activity not as a dinner reservation though

it was walk-in, but since at least last fall it's been a ticketed (free) event.  i guess it got to be kind of a free for all with long waits/too many people.

they also used to have a slightly different app menu for that event, but now it's literally just the apps/charcuterie that are on the normal menu.  it's a great opportunity to try that food if you don't want to sit down for a full meal or are on a short trip.

we went once, sat down and saw that the menu was different than the one that we had seen that had slightly different items than the normal menu, and promptly got up and got back to enjoying our day outside haha.

2 hours ago, tjohnston87 said:

The trick is finding that one bartender. Ive never had a problem with NCL. This will be my first upcoming valiant lady cruise with VV. SO this post scares the ***** out of me. 

check out on the rocks.  the bartenders with black aprons that have silver grommets are the "mixologists" onboard, and one of them usually calls OTR their home bar on the ship.  they're pretty talented and most are award/competition-winning mixologists that have actual land-side upscale bar/cocktail lounge experience.  i can't remember if manny is on scarlet or valiant, but we've had him a few times.  the last time, it was like a race to have the most ridiculous cocktails on the last night because we had so much bar tab leftover.  we got creative with him to come up with some tasty beverages.

a lot of the bartenders i've run into at OTR are able to make whatever - i've seen a few of them with guests that don't love anything on the menu, and they just ask what kind of liquor and what attributes they want (fruity, tart, sweet, refreshing, whatever) and do a kind of dealer's choice within those parameters.

otherwise, if you want a cocktail and are particular about how it's made (i.e., not having a sicky sweet abomination with pineapple juice, grenadine and a float of myers's masquerading as a "mai tai" 🤮), you can pull up a recipe on your phone or just dictate it to them.  we've gone totally off book with some of the bartenders based on what they have at their particular bar -- chartreuse swizzles and other offbeat things, and they get another drink to put in their repertoire!

20 hours ago, CruisingWalter said:

 

One thing I'll point out that we noticed yesterday in Cozumel. There was basically an empty schedule onboard during the day. Every other cruise line will have a reduced schedule on port days, but there will still be some trivia, some games and such. Yesterday there was basically nothing scheduled during the day onboard Scarlet. VV really emphasizes sailors going into port, so don't expect much of anything onboard on port days. It's a good day to grab games from the Social Club, hang out by the pool or just chill. 

how full is your sailing this week?  we had some things to do onboard during port days in december on valiant when we had 2,300, but same itinerary in january with 800 pax and there was literally nothing organized to do onboard during port days

1 hour ago, DaCruiseBug said:

Every cruise line offers this kind of food on their private island. Including RCL, NCL, and Disney.

 

It's not a Carnival thing. It's common sense.

VV set out to be different.  hot dogs/hamburgers/garbage food like that are just another (US-centric!) cruise line thing.

1 minute ago, cantgetin said:

The way the system is now, there is no reason for me to ever book without a MNVV...either because I bought it on board or because I had my agent get one for me.  She usually posts when she is going to be cruising so clients can contact her in advance to have one purchased for them.  There's no downside to anyone.

lol it's like bed bath and beyond... always have to have that coupon haha.  but hope that they don't go the same way 😕

17 hours ago, cdn_tbird said:

Unfortunately the agents up here in Canada don't really offer much in the way of "extras", the best you can hope for is maybe $50 in OBC.

i've never actually used a TA before, so pardon my ignorance here, but a lot of TAs buy the "my next virgin voyage" offers ($300 deposit gets you a $300 discount and $600 of onboard credit, in addition to whatever promos are going on when you actually book the voyage).  they're transferrable and they're allowed to get up to 10 at a time now, so they buy them to use as sweeteners for their clients' bookings.

11 hours ago, cantgetin said:

From what crew has told me, they now have limited hours when they are allowed to eat in guest areas, usually late in the evening. 

this is correct - i did the behind the scenes tour when valiant had 2,300 guests onboard, and they had big signs everywhere backstage dictating when crew wasn't to be in the dining areas or fitness center.  during that voyage, it seemed like they had a very small window to use guest facilities, and i believe it was only on port days once most guests were expected to have gotten off the ship.

17 hours ago, DaCruiseBug said:

Because when you're at a pool party most people aren't looking for curry chicken. Most people want finger food.

if i wanted crappy american BBQ food, i'd either take carnival or stay at home haha

There’s a second veg menu to go with menu b.  Tomatoes with basil and Bloody Mary caviar, pumpkin barley risotto and I forget what else, but we’ve subbed in those 2 items into our menu b lineup!

4 hours ago, CineGraphic said:

I believe they are attracting more 1st-time cruisers than the other lines.

i was a second-time cruiser when i sailed on VV in 2021!  i took 1 really terrible NCL cruise like 10 years before that and was absolutely turned off by the whole experience.  less than a year and a half later, i've been on 11 virgin sailings so far and will never set foot on a "mainstream" ship.

1 hour ago, singleflyer said:

 

Interesting.  I imagine if they arrive in Miami early they have to shut down the casino and also start adding tax to the drinks.  

yep, and they shut all the shops because those can't operate in port.  word to the wise, if you're trying to burn a lot of sailor loot, don't leave it till the last night!

yep, just make sure you have your wifi calling enabled before you leave port (for at&t at least, i had to activate it on cellular for it to work).  i also didn't have much luck with wifi calling unless i was connected to the premium internet package.