_tacocat_

the biggest "catch" are that the base fare is higher than other lines. that said, it is SOOOOO pleasant to not be nickel/dimed for everything aboard. the other thing is that there's no cruise director telling you what to do every day, so you have to make some of your own fun. the crew is taken care of better than they are on other lines (financially, physically, mentally and emotionally), and that investment in their people is one of the smartest business decisions they could make. the crew really seem to like their jobs, so you don't have a bunch of disengaged crankypantses running the ship. that translates into an overall better guest experience.

now if only they'd extend the closing hours so us west coasters don't have to wake up at the crack of dawn to get someone...

Restaurants do have paper menus, and they started printing “dailies” that can be picked up at the coffee shop on 7 and in the galley coffee shop on 15. The caveat there is that if anything changes in the schedule, your paper version is outdated vs the app that’s updated real-time. They also have TV screens by some elevators and a channel in your cabin that has a list of activities/opening hours and a timeline of what’s going on now. theres no ship card- your room key is a fob on a bracelet. You charge everything to that bracelet and check into events with it too. masks and social distancing aren’t required at this point.

Some of the stations have super weird hours, like tacos and ramen only for breakfast and lunch (but I’ve seen folks say they got dinner ramen, so who knows hahah). As luck would have it, we were ALWAYS hungry in the “in between” (I think 3-5?) where the only thing open was the diner and dash.

the only way mega rockstar works out financially with drinks is if you give yourself alcohol poisoning haha. my husband and i did a back to back in a mega, which cost i think 4x more than a sea terrace cabin. we drank around the clock for 9 nights and probably still didn't break even on booze/spa/other perks. it was nice to be able to get whatever drink you wanted without worrying about bar tab or whatever, but you did still have to watch your account like a hawk. if you got an upgraded liquor in a cocktail, some of the bartenders wanted to charge you for a shot of that booze PLUS the base cocktail, which put you over the $25/drink limit. sometimes, mystery drinks ended up on our tab (presumably the bartended accidentally adding a new sailor's drink to our tab), and their policy is that you can only get as many drinks as registered guests in the suite, so the app showed charges in our wallet. same with bottles of wine- a few times, our included bottles showed up in our wallet too. ultimately everything was wiped off, but it was kind of annoying to watch out for.

eh we've seen quite a few chogs on the pool deck on all 4 voyages so far. it's pretty obnoxious that one person in the group comes down at 6am to leave a flip flop, hat or book on 6 chairs on a sea day, and disappears for hours to hold spots for their groups until like 2pm. i caught on after the first time that happened and didn't worry about moving someone's definitely abandoned, no humans in sight, placeholder stuff. i've never had someone come back to collect it in the time that i used the chair.

they have both now! it's a 3 day rotation - so 3 days old menu, 3 days new menu, then back to old. there's no set "night" for each menu, so it depends on your itinerary & where it falls in the menu rotations. you can ask when test kitchen opens on night 1 what night each menu will be served, or i'm guessing sailor services would know too!

the cruise ship regulations were preempted by the FL government - VV was just trying to be a responsible corporate citizen and work out the best way to get to KW vs. just barreling through with their plans. either way, i believe the proposal was to limit any vessel with a pax capacity (not occupancy) of 1,300+ from entering, which is obviously not the case when there are 4,500+ pax capacity carnival ships docking there now. it looks like scarlet was actually initially scheduled to arrive in KW on january 4, but silver dawn is now slated to be there that day. the pier that they dock at is privately operated, so the operating company can probably do whatever it wants with respect to rejiggering arrivals if a more lucrative one pops up that will offset whatever penalties they'd have to pay to cancel another arrival.

i saw that too, but they have to be on that same january one, which was changed a while back. there are 2 versions of the fire & sunset voyages in the filter. if you check the first one's box, that's the nassau version, and it's only the 1 january 2 voyage. it's gotta be because someone else is using the pier on january 3. https://www.virginvoyages.com/book/voyage-planner/find-a-voyage?cabins=1&currencyCode=USD&fromDate=2022-08-31&sailors=2&selectedPackages=4NBB&toDate=2024-04-30

if you're bidding from an insider/sea view to a plain old sea terrace, you'll probably get it if you bid the minimum or slightly over. that's a numbers thing - there are a ton of regular sea terrace cabins. if you're hoping to get a suite, good luck - chances are slim to none. suites are pretty well booked through the end of next year, and now that there's no more testing and they're tightening their cancel policies, i'm guessing there will be very few suites that cancel last minute. if you want "suite lite" benefits, you might want to look into the splash of romance package. it's $200 for early boarding, daily pressed juices, 1 shake for champagne and 2 3-hour spa passes, among a couple other perks. i've only been in suites so far, but i don't really see the value proposition anymore now that they've gotten so crazy expensive AND they've started excluding suites from most fare savings promotions. have one more voyage booked in a suite in october, then we're moving to an xl sea terrace on the 2nd leg of our back to back and will probably only do normal cabins from here on out.

Should be, barring any weird weather conditions/storms. They started going there in June of this year and have only rejiggered one sailing in January, and they were told it was due to another ship already docking there (guessing it's one of the residential/condo ships that uses the same dock)

there are two pools on 15 - the main one is oblong with wading depth ends and a 5' deep middle. you can either take a dip, or sit on the stairs/ledge/wading area to just cool off a bit/drink/read/whatever. behind the bar (towards the gym/galley), there's a round pool with a kind of plus sign configuration of seats in the middle. it has a button in the middle of the plus sign to turn the jets on. there are 2 hot tubs by that pool, 2 on 16 towards the aft, and 2 on richard's rooftop for rockstars that maybe fit 4-6 people each? i've been on with 1,800 (richard's bday), 1,600-1,700 (last december), 1,200 (july) and 800 (june). i've never had an issue getting into the pools or hot tubs, although chairs can get scarce during the middle of sea days.

you bid on a seahorse statue (it initially started at $250 i think, but sounds like they start at $50 now), and if you win, you decorate it with the artist. on another day, you participate in a sea horse race, where they set up a board and place all the seahorses at the start of the "track" and roll dice to see how many spaces each horse moves. first horse at the finish wins $

Not OP, but I've done the grog walk twice before. Absolutely worth it - you get 4 drinks (+ potentially extras if there are leftovers that someone has to drink), get to mingle with other guests and happenings cast members and get to see a bunch of restaurants/bars on the ship in a short period of time. I'd definitely recommend doing it on night 1 if you can get in - it gives a nice little kick-off overture of your trip!

Got an email last night that they're unveiling a new loyalty program - Virgin Voyages Sailing Club. It officially starts 2023, but they're offering some perks starting this year. Saw a TPG article this morning saying that there will be a bunch of perks for sailings the rest of this year (unsure if it's all club members sailing or if they need to be new bookings) - one free shake for champs, anytime boarding, premium wifi, cocktail parties and free laundry. VV supposedly launching a loyalty microsite today. My husband and I both got invites to the "club within a club" - Club 485c, which apparently only has 100 spots. No further details at this point. Anyone else get that email last night?

i think the benefit of using a TA is that they sit on the phone instead of you hahah

They still go to Key West - they've gone since June, and I was on in July and went to Key West. There is one voyage that I'm aware of that has moved to Nassau (January 2-6, 2023), and that is apparently due to there already being a ship scheduled in port that day. Wondering if that's the residential ship that comes to KW every now & then. Otherwise, it's still all Key West.

Not sure WHY they don’t call these a different category or reserve the for operational upgrades/lock it in cabins. I’d be super pissed if I thought I had a standard room and ended up with a metal balcony and/or no hammock!!!

all of your bags get xrayed on the way back on the ship, so likely not able to sneak booze/beer onboard. That said, they have a lot of beers at the draught house, and I thought they were pretty reasonably priced (obviously not retail 6-pack pricing, but better than a bar in NY or LA for example). the sit-down restaurants aren't takeaway, and they don't have the capability to "box" anything up. room service never took more than 30 mins for us. the galley kind of has takeaway, in that you can take your plates/bowls/whatever and no one will stop you, but then you're stuck with dirty dishes in your room until your steward eventually comes to tidy up. there are grab & go breakfast and lunch items from the fridges at dock house, pizza place and the galley during the morning/afternoon, but nothing at night. pizza place can be boxed up to take away.

seems like only rockstar rooms are getting bracelets/tags in advance now (and even then, not all of them - no real pattern there). i booked a suite ~3 weeks ahead of the voyage and still got my stuff before 🤷‍♀️ the porters have blank luggage tags, and they'll write your room number on them, so just make sure you know your room number! bags will either beat you to your room or get there shortly after you (probably while you're getting a post-embarkation snack - the galley, pizza place, dock house and i think sun club poke bowl place and social club hot dog/snacks place are all open)

haha yeah that's me too. SUPER creative with my usernames, and a big fan of palindromes. that song is an earworm... good luck getting it out of your head tonight 😜

it really is luck of the draw and capacity constrained. we've been invited twice - the first, one of the happenings cast members tapped me on the shoulder and asked if i was doing anything. i said nope and they led me to the meeting point. the other time, we were talking to a happenings cast member and they told us to meet at a specific point at a specific time. it seems like each cast member has a limited amount of slots, and it's up to them how they give them out. that said, your chances are probably higher if you interact with the happenings cast a bunch (and in a meaningful way by hanging out and chatting with them throughout the voyage, not just "hey can i come to your secret party?").

Yep, they have 2-3 "Holiday Matchmakers" onboard that have access to the whole booking system, so they can show you exactly what cabins/suites are available + the pricing. We've booked onboard 3x and have found it super easy. If you do an open booking, you need to call sailor services to complete the booking, which has frankly been a royal pain in the ass lately.

yep they are magnetic! we brought tiny hooks for bathing suits last time and they were a great addition!

drinks up to $25 are included, unlimited. i don't think there are any cocktails that come close to that limit, but higher end spirits and wines certainly surpass that limit. some bars are set up to give half pours for half the price of a standard pour - i think it's the casino bar and one other - but i don't think all the bars' POS systems are set up with those buttons. you can upgrade your standard cocktail with better liquor, but the bartenders will be able to tell you what it costs before they put the drink in. for wines, you get 2 bottles per cabin up to $90/bottle each day. you can get these at meals, bars or grab them from bars or restaurants to-go. if you like champagne, moet is $95/bottle (so not included), but $21 per glass (included - go figure!). i think you actually get a 20 or 25% discount on things above your limits - sometimes a drink or bottle of wine would end up on our tab and it showed a discounted amount. your roadie will make sure accounting zero's out drinks on your bill before debarkation, so don't panic if you see drinks pop up in your wallet. premium coffees and teas, smoothies and fresh pressed juices are also included with mega, and you should be able to use it for the drink pairings at test kitchen (but double check on that because there seems to be some confusion there). you can't use your mega benefits for afternoon tea at sip on sea days, the grog walk, shot for shot or any of the other chargeable events that include alcohol. there were a little loosey goosey at first and let megas basically buy rounds for others for free, but now they limit the number of drinks you can get at once to the number of registered guests in your suite - so most of the time 2 drinks at a time. there's no time minimum between drink rounds though.