John84

You get a different coloured wristband if you are in a Rockstar/Megarockstar (black instead of red). Didn't bother me, and really was just there to help staff with things like access to Richard's rooftop, just clarifying that it's there. Personally I think it is odd they don't do something, purely because I think even minor incentives would help with loyalty/repeat bookings. I'm talking minor things like a small bonus on bar tab purchases (Sea Blazers get $50 apparently), little pandora style charms you could put on your wristband, a minor discount on spa services or premium WIFI, or the ability to book an event or a meal further in advance.

Valiant definitely hasn't, my late June cruise was around 700 sailors and the previous ones had had fewer. The first July cruise was over 1,000 but still below 50% (which would be ~1,300-1,400). My experience was this was good in some ways, especially because you could book everything, but meant some of the side events didn't go ahead due to lack of demand and a couple of the events would have benefited from a bigger crowd to build more atmosphere. We asked at Sailor Services after boarding if we could move to D13 from D14 and if possible to a room closer to the middle of the boat. They did this without charging so we effectively got a $50 upgrade from Sea Terrace to Central Sea Terrace. People were arranging upgrades to better rooms but I'm pretty certain all, or virtually all of these, included some form of payment. You need to factor in that Virgin's ships have a LOT of Sea Terrace/Central Sea Terrace rooms but relatively few rooms above that, a lot of premium rooms are booked by people who got lots of credit for previous cancellations, and a lot of the remainder are taken by people who will have big for an upgrade before setting sail.

There are definitely people who cruise who can put me to shame when it comes to putting away food. We didn't bother with desert for a few meals, and shared the main in Extra Virgin because the meals are very generously sized. Test Kitchen probably was one of the lightest meals overall but it was still a decent amount of food, but we did speak to people who seemed to have done test kitchen & basically another meal the same evening!

It seemed almost entirely deserted on our valiant sailing last week. It's not really surprising as the ship wasn't busy enough for the other non-restricted spaces to be full and for a lot of people hanging around a dead "premium" area with no atmosphere is less appealing than joining the unwashed masses in the more lively spaces.

I don't have access to the full capacity figures but I got the impression from our cruise last week that they aren't utilising the full capacity of the restaurants on "low" occupancy cruises. So I expect this means that although they are sometimes selling out on quieter sailings they could take more diners if they were busy. We never saw a restaurant full even when it was no longer bookable on the app. I'd estimate they could do I also got the impression the dining venues have more space than you think. I'm relatively confident that at least a couple could handle 200+ guests in a sitting, and wouldn't be at all surprised if the single sitting capacity of all the bookable dinner locations was more than 1,000 guests which would mean they could fit all guests on a full ship into 3 sittings. Restaurant bookings when we were onboard went from 18:00 until at least 21:00 so the hours wouldn't really need to change much if at all to allow 3 sittings. Also, I think the percentage of guests not utilising booked venues every night is notable. We used the galley on our 6th night as I wanted a break from larger richer meals and was very happy with what we had. I also saw a lot of people just relaxing in spaces like On The Rocks having pizza or something from the galley and enjoying the live music. You could also choose to do your larger meal for lunch at many of the venues like Wake, and personally I wouldn't want to do that AND have another big meal for dinner.

Exactly. A suite wasn't worth it for me when booking, but it's not like I couldn't see why people may have a different opinion. I'm sure other people are happy to go for inside cabins because they don't think the approx $800 extra for a small Balcony on a Sea Terrace is worth it.

Thanks Chris, that's a really good idea and should be very useful for others. I appreciate you taking the time to put it together.

Thanks. I'd be surprised if it is entirely like that. It seems crazy that if Fab suits sold out and one of the fab suite holders bids for an upgrade to a massive suite (which is available) that virgin wouldn't allow people to bid for the upgrade to the Fab suite that would become available; they'd be giving up thousands of effectively free additional revenue. I'm not surprised they hold some inventory back. Because I was using an access key I could only book a standard terrace, central terrace were available at $40 more, after booking I got an email about bidding with a starting bid of $100 for a central. It looks like they think they can sell some upgrades for more than they'd be able to get by just selling the rooms directly in the first place.

I think you're right. Virgin are letting people bid for upgrades including some where no room is currently available. If the room doesn't become free then the bid won't be accepted. This also makes sense in scenarios where someone in a premium room gets upgraded, because someone bidding for their original room can also be upgraded.