cantgetin

They aren't listing my favorites! This could be a BIG problem. It will be interesting to see what is being served on our upcoming cruise.

Remember that The Galley offers a nightly special at dinner. We saw everything from GOOD gnocci (not the paste that is in Extra Virgin), beef wellington, fresh carved roast beef, etc. On our cruise, the evening main special was listed on the daily paper program (you get it from Sailor Services, either Grounds Club location, or the big red desk). There are also dessert specials, but they are not listed, start at lunch, and may be gone before dinner starts! Also daily specials at various outlets in The Galley at lunch.

Another good reason to book with an agent--they do the fighting for you! It never hurts to have a third party on your side. I don't know how agents work in Canada though.

We've done the "I don't like this food, let's go elsewhere" thing a couple times. Fortunately, they have changed the food at some of those places since then (same name on the dinner show, but different menu). You're never lacking for something to eat!

VV has a pretty bad history of even remembering celebrations that have been noted and then confirmed with Sailor Services. You can have a bottle of wine or champagne sent to them if you wish. Or, depending on how much you want to spend, you could call your travel agent and have the "Splash of Romance" package added to their reservation as a gift from you. It wouldn't be a surprise as it will show up on their reservation,

I won't say it spoils it, but I wouldn't miss it.

Mine took 5 months and then didn't address the issue. Such is life. Bottom line, port at BCN is a lot better than at Miami in MANY ways.

We didn't care for test kitchen B menu....on A menu we had a much more "fun" waiter and did several substitutions with the vegetarian menu. My cruise partner's feeling was that A was "ok," B was a no go. That's basically where I was as well. The chocolate coconut desert on A was amazing (vegetarian), very rich. Wish I could get that without going thru the menu! Not sure I understand the above post. If you qualify for the status match and apply, there should be no problem...but in reality, mine didn't come thru for our first cruise. My cabin mate's did, so we could both take advantage. The qualifications for the match and the application are under "Loyalty" on the VV main web page. Just scroll down till you see "loyalty" and it is easy from there. DO apply at least a week before your cruise, or basically as soon as you book. On future cruises till the end of 2023, it will show up automatically.

1. Average price of cocktail $13. Range $9-17 for things we got or considered. Beer starts at 5, a glass of wine is about $10. This is accurate as of May 2023. 2. I didn't know there were menus in the app. There are several on line that are essentially accurate. There was a new menu last week in Razzle Dazzle on Resilient Lady, No one knows whether that is moving to the other ships or not. In addition to the menus on line, several of the restaurants offered nightly specials during our 15 night cruise, and The Galley had an evening special as well as lunch specials. 3.Reservations matter if you want to eat at a certain time. What we found was that we could go to a restaurant the night before and they would make us a reservation for the next night, even if the app showed nothing available. In addition, you can do walk ups--we never had to wait more than 10 minutes except the one time that The Wake told us that they couldn't get us in for brunch that day, but offered a reservation for the next day. 4. No 5. You get "deep blue extras" which includes (and I'll likely forget some things...all benefits are per cabin, not per person). Premium wifi (upgrade from standard). Priority boarding(any time you wish starting at 1:30), a cocktail party, $10 daily at Grounds Club, invitation to a cocktail party, a HUGE bag of laundry free (this matters on a 2 week cruise!). a couple of items pressed , $100 bar tab, a special desk at Sailor Services to deal with any problems (shorter line). 6.If you have been approved for the status match, you have priority boarding. This means you can show up any time after 1:30 and board right away. You'll get a "Sailor's Club" ribbon wristband before you enter the terminal and will be prioritized to a special line. You'll board after the suites and people who paid for the romance package. Bottom line, we've always been in our cabin before 2pm. Hint--some of the restaurants we thought we wouldn't like ended up being favorites (Razzle Dazzle was a prime example here--they have lots of meat based dished that aren't on the menu) and places we thought we'd love were not near the top of the list...The Wake service was SLOW and food was ok. We didn't want to spend 2 1/2 hours on dinner again, so didn't go back there! And there are better steaks and salmon other places on the ship! Don't rule out a restaurant without trying it. On the other hand, we'll never do Test Kitchen again. Personal preference only.

As tacocat noted, you yell Gunbae during the game at the beginning before dinner is served. The staff yells gunbae each time a new group is seated, but I've never had a table that participated to that. Once the game is over and the food is being served, we engaged in table conversation and eating, not yelling as people entered.

VV has a solo cruiser meet up usually just before the sail away party. After the sail away party, anyone interested is invited to a "singles or sailing solo" dinner in Razzle Dazzle, no reservations needed. THese are hosted by a member of the "Happenings Cast." On our TA crossing, there was also a daily meet up activity on sea days. There are usually groups for each sailing on various social media sites; some are more active than others. We had several "special interest" groups including one for solo cruisers. The only place you will be seated with other cruisers is at Gunbae. Beyond that, you can meet up with others and add someone (or 3) to your dinner table, or you can ask when you enter whether there is another single who might like to share. THey don't normally put people together other than at Gunbae.

yes

Before my first cruise, I expected RD to be my least favorite restaurant. It ended up being the top choice! ALWAYS great food, and with one exception (Bimini day), great service. We believe that they had staff from a different location in RD on that day as we didn't see anyone we recognized and the service was.....not good. Sure, there have been some hiccups, but they were rare and quickly rectified.

I was concerned as each of our cruises has been more full than the last. Bottom line, we have never had an issue, and if I didn't know the ship had more passengers, I never would have guessed. We were just under 2K on our last cruise. And yes, there is a person who is very active on various social media sites who complains about everything related to VV and claims to have inside information on various cruise lines. NO cruise line will satisfy everyone all the time. Look at the bulk of the reports before making a decision.

OK, I've never re-typed the info. I've just ticked the box that says I'll be responsible for both of us. Is that what you mean by "covering?" It has always worked for us, both on bar tab and on loot. It also hasn't mattered who the DBE was assigned to--we both qualified, but on the first two cruises, the benefits were only listed for one. Interestingly, for our upcoming cruise, we are both listed as having DBE. I know that all the benefits are "per cabin."

Will be interesting to see if this expands to all ships. We had at least 4 special desserts at RD on the TA, but none of them are on the menu that was posted above. Will miss the cookies--we used to get them "to go" for a middle of the night snack.

On Valiant it was appearing on the app each day and someone was posting it to FB. The app seemed to be updated just once each morning..

I saw a post elsewhere that VV has canceled 4 cruises on Resilient Lady and that they are restructuring their Australia cruises to make them longer. Sorry, I didn't pay enough attention to the details as we are not booked on any of these.

The "Beer Chicken" at RD was also great, and I don't drink beer. I have no clue how they made it, but I ordered it at least twice on our last TA. Agree that the special burgers were better than the standard, although adding a little seasoning made the standard decent. I think VV is still fine-tuning things in some areas, but continuous improvement is good!

As of April 2023, service problem was mostly solved on Valiant as well. We had one episode where they tried to bring us food that belonged to someone else....and once when I got a wrong item (I ordered a turkey and cheese panini and they brought the special of the day panini). Not bad for a 15 night trip. When we saw the food that belonged elsewhere, we pointed out that it wasn't ours, the crew member checked the ticket and took it to the other table....ours appeared within about a minute. Overall service was much improved from our previous experiences.

We had the same experience at The Wake....very slow service. 45 minute wait (timed) from being seated till someone took our order. 2 1/2 hours for dinner. And supervisors standing around doing nothing. In contrast, Razzle Dazzle was great and the supervisors would bus tables and otherwise get involved when it was busy. RD was a surprising bright spot on our cruise.

We had the same experience at The Wake. We sat for 45 minutes between entering at our scheduled time and having someone take our order. The meal, with no dessert, took 2 1/2 hours. It made no sense at all, and as you noted, we were not responsible for any of the delay. Interestingly, there was a couple at a nearby table who had 4 servers/wine stewards/whatever fawning over them all night. I don't know who they were; I can name several people associated with VV that they definitely were not. We had no trouble getting reservations or changing them, but none of our sailings have been completely full. Our most recent was just under 2000. One hint in response to a comment above--you can always make a reservation for an evening event and cancel it if it becomes obvious that you aren't going to make it. Conversely, there are people looking for reservations, even a few minutes before some events start. Additionally, there is a standby line as many do not bother to cancel reservations when their plans change. And if there is something you couldn't get a reservation for (fitness class, evening entertainment, whatever) go to the location 10-15 minutes early and wait....if there is a no show, you can get in. Good review--thanks!

Walter, I think you are my cruising soulmate. We have 48 cruises over 28 years on at least 5 lines (I think I'm forgetting gone, but....) and I won't book anything less than a 7 night cruise and feel that longer is better. My logic is that I spend essentially the same amount of time and hassle getting to the port for a 14 night as for a 4 night, so have no interest in the shorter cruise. At this point, we have 29 nights on Valiant and none on Scarlet. We have the Scarlet TA booked in 2024 as well as another cruise on Valiant. I'm glad I'm not the only one who experienced variations in food quality on the same ship, different cruises, and in April found Razzle Dazzle to be the absolute star in terms of both service and food quality. We had great service in most of the other restaurants, but the food quality was not as good as previously. We found the food at The Wake had improved, but the service was awful. The service at The Galley was also greatly improved. So, where we are with VV....we'd like to explore the other ships, but will not be booking anything until our next Valiant cruise. From there, it will likely depend on the experience on that cruise. We've experienced changes in food quality over time on other lines, basically in a roller coaster fashion. However, nothing we've seen elsewhere has been quite as rapid as on VV. Maybe we just caught changes in head chefs or something else to explain it.

That's exactly what I do--put in my credit card and tick the box that says I'm paying for my travel mate who is in the same cabin. I've done it the same way for each cruise, and never would have known about the "covering your expenses" message had I not used her phone once. I don't know what the difference is between "covering" and using just one credit card for the cabin, but it has never made any difference in our accounting.

Yes, in our situation it was automatically set up so that we both had access to all the loot and bar tab with either bracelet. The funny thing is that the "wallet" couldn't be seen on my travel partner's phone--she would just show up as "your expenses have been paid by....." I could see all the details on my phone. Also, do you qualify for the loyalty match? If so, your bar tab bonus should be adjusted to $100, in addition to the $100 complimentary bar tab that is part of Deep Blue Extras. If you don't know about the loyalty match, go to the VV web site and scroll down to "loyalty." You can read the qualifications and apply on line; allow a week for it to show up.