jon81uk

As long as you are wearing clothes you will be fine. Most people do put a little effort in for the full service restaurants but many are in chino style shorts.

On the subject of the OP, We Fancy has now appeared in the line up on Valiant Lady for tomorrow night. It’s another dance party in the Manor, probably similar to Heartbeat. It’s definitely not a “formal night” but I think going for an OTT nightclub outfit is encouraged. We Fancy The Manor 10:45 PM - 2:15 AM "We Fancy" is a party created to celebrate all the best feelings: confidence, freedom, that indefinable spark of joy you get after receiving a sincere compliment from a stranger. We invite you to dress in your very fanciest attire and join in a night of collective exuberance. Be prepared for surprises — and a countdown moment not to be missed.

It was only August 2021 you could. They changed after those first UK cruises. Would be nice if they changed it so the wish list still works as it’s been over two years.

There are several large Digital Touch screens near the mid and fore lifts. you can heart/favourite things once onboard, unfortunately I think the change to only being able to book shows onboard means the shortlist function was lost before boarding too.

they do actually seem to be having issues selling the suites. TAs are apparently able to hold blocks of rooms, and a handful of them grab suites to sell to their clients. all of my recent voyages have shown "sold out" of suites for months, yet a week or 2 before the sailing, magically every single seriously suite, most of the brilliants, and even both posh and fab suites have become available. Yeah I guess they are going to need to do something about the holds at some point because it isn’t good if they are being held stopping others from booking them.

I don’t think they have any issue selling the suites, so no need to offer a promotion. There isn’t that many suites on the shops so they book up quickly anyway. Whereas they have a lot of sea terrace rooms.

Yep apparently Virgin has the highest rebooking rate of any cruise line. So I agree, they are trying to keep their existing customers interested more than they are changing to attract “typical” cruisers.

I think its still a bit too early to judge whether they are trying harder to get the "typical" cruisers. I also had never done a cruise before Virgin and all of the things that people say they "miss" from other cruise lines such as announcements, photographers and a cruise director have put me off trying any others. I don't see Virgin adding those sort of things, some of the tweeks such as more paper-based announcements, more focus on the paper whats on guide and similar are welcome. I think they are also trying to tailor each trip to a crowd, I did the transatlantic last October and I think they knew those trips skew older, most of the party nights started at 10pm whereas on the current Carribean sailings its 11 or 11.30. I don't think that is a bad approach to having a bit more appeal and changing things up depending who is onboard, but not really altering the core product. Personally (although I never saw it over four cruises) I didn't care for Never Sleep Alone too so I'm interested to see what comes next. But from what I know of the Miss Behave Show they are exactly going for more mainstream entertainment! Oh and on the subject of "We Fancy" I don't think it exists (yet) so can't judge.

don’t forget the Social Club has hot dogs, pretzels and chicken wings in pate afternoon and evening and The Dock has food in the afternoon too. So for the 3-5pm time when there is less at the Galley the other venues have some stuff. Then pizza is 9pm to 1am as well.

Pretty sure they went at least six months ago?

Looking at the line up for the next few weeks it looks like Festival Stage guest acts will be filling in. For those who have been before this is probably a good thing to have more variety. Also the Miss Behave show recently got added to Valiant Lady and Scarlet Lady now has Its a Ship Show that’s been on Valiant for a while.

Oh one other thought on the pool loungers, if the ship isn’t busy or the weather isn’t great they might not unstack the loungers and put them out on decks 16 & 17. But most of the time there will be some on both 15 & 16 and sometimes deck 17 at the rear, but that does have exercise classes up there in the mornings.

There are plenty of loungers by the pools and on the deck above plus a few more on the promenade deck seven. Most of them are standard mesh suspended between a metal frame, pretty standard compared to many hotels I’ve been to. Comfy with a towel on them. Most of the chairs elsewhere on the ship and in the restaurants are as comfortable as I’d expect for a restaurant. Only off ones are the solid wood fixed low seats in The Dock.

On the first night everyone gets free sparkling wine for the sail away at the pool from 6-7pm or thereabouts, the captain will make an announcement. then for rockstars only it’s free Moet around 5-6pm in Richard’s rooftop, although it will move for bad weather.

Onboard there are about four main entertainment casts. There are the dancers who do UntitledDancePartyShowThing and some other stuff. There are the circus performers who do Duel Reality and other bits. There is the house band (SPF5 or Plan B). Then almost everything else onboard is led by the Happenings Cast; they run the trivia, some fitness bits, the grog walk pub crawl, the karaoke and The Diva drag queen and The Hostess also have musical shows. The Happenings cast is about 12 personalities, one of which used to be called The Bounce. From memory the Happenings cast is, The Hostess, The Diva, Dr A, The Balancer, The Spark, The Flair, The Hype, The Foodie, The Gamer, The Artist, The Charmer.

agree with rest of your post, except this bit. There is unfortunately some soft sell during “workshops” on VV. the posture alignment workshop is just a sales pitch for insoles. but I’ve never been on any other cruise line and your list of issues reinforces that I’m unlikely too. The announcements would probably be the biggest issue.

VHS usually led by The Balancer with The Spark and The Hype. the role of The Bounce might have been eliminated or renamed?

There were quite a few early on when Valiant Lady was new, they cancelled some of the UK cruises with short notice in favour of The Bachelor filming for a month or so. Also Resiliant Lady’s launch was delayed and some cruises got cancelled but that had more notice. Now I don’t see it happening. Maybe the launch of Brilliant Lady will also get delayed but I don’t see anything changing on the other three ships.

Nobody is getting deep blue extras for April onwards so it’s not that you can’t seem to get it added, those benefits do not exist for 1st April onwards. There will be a new loyalty programme. Once that is announced you may get those new benefits.

And if you don’t pre-purchase bar tab then your credit card just gets charged on the last night with whatever you’ve spent onboard. But for many people over a five night cruise $400 of bar tab will get spent.

What class of cabin did you pay for? If you paid for a standard sea terrace then being moved to another sea terrace room definitely isn’t an upgrade. But from sea view or inside this would still be an upgrade as you gain the balcony.

There is no status for April onwards as the current loyalty program ends 31st of March. The website states the deep blue extras are only through to March 31st https://www.virginvoyages.com/sites/sailing-club there will be a new loyalty programme but no one knows what that is or what the perks will be, I’m expecting an announcement during March.

I’d be very surprised if there is no Duel Reality. also both shows are still listed on the main website and this has been updated recently to add Miss Behave’s Gameshow. https://www.virginvoyages.com/onboard/events-and-gigs

There are no meet ups, but many of the sailors and crew are LGBT and I had no trouble finding other LGBT people to chat to around the ship.

Personally for longer than four nights I want an XL to get the full size bathroom.