_tacocat_

Agree- we had already eaten so just split one main and got 2 desserts, but talk about starters that do not cater to the masses!!!

Haha you missed absolutely nothing with the wine. The last time we were RS on scarlet it was worse than airport lounge wine, so we dumped both the red and white. Our RS agent comped us a full bottle of moet instead!

haha yep indeed and can confirm that room only has the hammock, 2 metal chairs and a champagne table. speaking from experience, those sling chairs are NOT meant for longevity while being used on a daily basis!

Nope, I’ve been a rockstar a bunch, and if you can’t book something, they won’t make room for you. It could be that they either added space or a group decided to cancel. Same with dinner reservations- even as mega rockstar couldn’t get a prime reservation when we wanted to change some things around.

where do you find that info?

he's been on VV quite a bit! he's a blues guitarist and has been one of the rotating non-house-band musicians since 2021. other guest artists have been free label band (a funk band that basically functioned as the house band in Dec 2021 but is now on pretty regularly as guests) and ries brothers (a jam band-ish duo/sometimes trio). these artists mostly play evenings at on the rocks but sometimes play at the manor one night.

ah yeah i forgot about this! the layout of the social club is SO different on valiant. there are also 2 shuffleboard tables on valiant, but they are inside the social club, parallel to the bar instead of in the "hallway" part like on scarlet. there is booth style seating in the hallway. i thought this layout was MUCH better vs. scarlet's.

i've been on scarlet 7x and valiant once. valiant definitely skewed an older demographic, and i'm guessing it's because it was a longer/more expensive cruise. i'll be on next week and will have another data point. there are a few different shows on valiant - miss behave (full-audience participation game show type thing - that's the best description i have hahah), ship show (dinner-theater variety show with rotating acts) and festival stage (guest artist - it was a REALLY cool acapella group on ours). Duel Reality, untitled danceshow party thing, and NSA are on both, although NSA is supposedly getting cancelled after this month/next depending on the ship. scarlet also has ships in the night, which is the closest thing to a production stage show.

this depends on the sailing (and i think the pax load) - on 4 night cruises it'll be 1 or 2, 5 nights will have at least 2, and 8 nights it was at least 4.

crossing my fingers. i would basically live on VV if they sailed out of LA/LB/SD. and would fully take advantage of whatever CA resident/last minute offers they had.

yeah it's still showing this on the website if you go to book it as a new voyage:

maybe they're relaunching their music cruises? they had initially planned a few that had diplo, sofi tukker and some other artists playing at bimini.

Finally my turn to have a question 😄 Has anyone been on a recent 8-night Eastern Caribbean on Valiant? I was on 12/3 and our port times were all pretty early, with an absolute joke of an all-aboard time of 3:30pm in San Juan (not weather related, it was changed in advance). I'm going to be on this itinerary again next week, and our itinerary shows 10pm. Has anyone's voyage actually stayed that late? They're still selling late afternoon/evening shore things, so it looks like we might actually stick to our published itinerary.

100% this. the problem with our US-centric addiction to tipping is that if people keep trying to tip crew all over the place, i fear that VV will start doing tips (hope not though!) maybe a controversial statement here, but tipping is SO dumb. it's gotten out of hand lately with the ipads too - suggesting a 25% min tip for pouring a cup of coffee or bagging my takeout food? yeah ok. just raise the freaking menu prices and pay your employees vs. putting the burden on the general public. for all of the people i know that make 6 figures bartending in major cities, there are many many many more living paycheck to paycheck - if that!

Keep checking back - people cancel things pretty regularly as they get through the voyage and realize they've already overprogrammed themselves! If you really really want to do something (like if your gf wants to go to the food event), show up anyway and ask the crew checking people in if there are any last minute cancels or no shows. this works especially well for the morning fitness classes after people decide they don't want to spin after a long night of partying! there have always been no shows in those classes when i've been on.

Valiant docks in Old San Juan. We were there in December and there were 2 or 3 other ships at that port

that guy is an absolute clown and has to make his "edgy" (aka complainy) commentary to get stupid youtube clicks/ad dollars. it was perfectly fine. coincidentally, i was on scarlet the same week in 2021 and that had been scarlet's highest capacity sailing to-date (1,700 or 1,800). that was fine too! the only major issues i ran into personally with so many people were when room service totally broke (not sure if a ticket printing issue or something else, but we were told the ship eats kitchen had to stop making food for like an hour during peak breakfast times), the galley taking forever for some things, and the turds that would send one person down to clip towels to 10 chairs before 8am and not show up until like 2.

I’ll be in one next week and will post a pic if I remember!

you can also sub out courses (or skip them entirely). for the a menu, my husband and i usually do the veg menu, skip one of the courses (i forget which one), and get the filet for our main hah.

it depends, and people have gotten caught off-guard by the restrictions and blamed virgin for "running a scam" (aka these people never read the terms/conditions of the offer or any promotion!) if you sail in a sea terrace or above, yes, the onboard offer is absolutely worth it. i believe it's combinable with everything except for an access key (usually free or heavily discounted voyages). if you have a TA that you use, i believe VV can either assign it to them or you can contact your TA within a week of booking so they can handle whatever for you. if you do lock-it-in/guaranty bookings or sail at the ltd view sea terrace category or below, you can't use it. echo the current promotion being the best - in addition to the $600 bar tab i have on my january valiant cruise, i also have $1k in sailor loot from the red hot booking bonus (their pre-loyalty program offer) + the onboard offer.

not sure how much weight to put on either of these, but i've heard two potential things for brilliant. the first thing i heard a few months ago was potentially nordics. that'd be pretty neat and a culinarily low-risk way to see the sights without having to eat salted fish for a week (i used to work for a swedish company and all the americans dreaded being called over to HQ due to the food and the fact that it'd always either be the time of year when the sun was up 24 hours/day or it was 24 hours of darkness!) i recently heard that they configured brilliant a teeeeeny bit differently than the first 3 by pulling life boats in slightly. this makes it small enough to fit thru the old panama canal (cheaper than passing thru the new one), so perhaps a panama crossing and west coast? i'd guess this one is much less likely than the nordics.

this actually comes in handy if you're doing a compound trip! i'm from CA and spent a couple nights in miami before our 12/18 voyage, and then trekked up to NJ to visit family for christmas. i sent laundry away on the 3rd morning - i had dirty clothes from travel and miami and the first couple nights of the cruise - and had it back by the afternoon of day 4. it was delightful to pack clean laundry to take home vs. having to do it all when we got back this week!

if you're referring to the glam station motivation thing that shows up on the itinerary a couple nights, it's a station on 7 where you can get face jewels/glitter before heading out to your nightlife activities. it's free, but it's first come first serve and can have a lengthy wait at times.

4 actually- A, B, Veg A and Veg B! Don't sleep on the veg items, those have been some of my favorites. From the old menu, the tomato gazpacho/sorbet + the mandarin sorbet were awesome and the vegan olive oil "caviar" with the peas was super cool. From the new menu, the pumpkin barley risotto was delish too.

on scarlet, it's a voyage-agnostic rotation. so 3 days of a, 3 days of b, then back to a. it depends where your voyage falls during that rotation. on valiant, it's menu a for the first half of each voyage, then menu b for the second half. so 3 or 4 nights of a, then 3 or 4 of b.