scubagal44

I have the Yellow Leaf chair hammock that I got on Amazon for much cheaper than they wanted on the ship. I use it outside and it's perfect.

Hah, yeah, won't be booking any additional at this point. We were never super frequent cruisers anyway so it won't change much for us, but it was nice to add in a VV here and there. We'll enjoy our upcoming February sailing and likely bid adieu after that.

On Scarlet a couple weeks ago, reservations were needed for the Festival Show. It was a mentalist/comedy show at the time, and it was always fully booked.

Personally I don't find the VV beds to be any more or less comfortable than most hotel beds. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I like myself a firmer mattress, though, soft/pillow top beds inevitably ensure my body is just one huge knot upon wake up.

The fried chicken is currently on the RD menu, so you're in luck! I had the Pink Agave steak last week and it was perfection, and hubby also got the tacos and he loved them! Hubby also got the aforementioned watermelon at RD during brunch, and yes, it's for real! His pictured below. 🥰 Don't miss the bacon at RD, either! It's to die for.

Based on my sailing last week, it's just RD that has a new menu. But don't worry too much, all the food is still amazing!! I didn't have a bite of a single thing on Scarlet last week that wasn't perfection.

The menu change is fleetwide and in all destinations. I was on Scarlet last week in the Caribbean and it was the new menu.

Yeah, not a fan of the new menu. RD was one of my fav dinners on Valiant last year, and last week on Scarlet we didn't even go there for dinner because nothing on the menu was appealing and I didn't want a burger. Sad.

I completed the survey in early Oct with the original wording ("your next voyage") and received the access key last week with the new wording ("your next new voyage"). As I was on Scarlet at the time I didn't feel like dealing with it, but today I emailed my TA and asked if she could get the Loot applied to my next, already existing reservation in February. Literally 5 minutes later it showed up for me in the app, so moral of the story is to have your TA handle it if you used one. 😄

It's the last step here, in the app.

On the ship now and yes, you can now order yourself at each individual counter. You can also sit and raise the flag for someone to come take your order, so the choice is up to you.

Just want to point out that VV does in fact offer longer than 4/5 night Caribbean sailings, I'm booked on a 7 night sailing in February. I've cruised both X and VV, and I don't think I'll be returning to X anytime soon with all of the goings on. I also think most of you would be surprised by the actual demographic and atmosphere on board, but I get that you only know what you've seen in marketing campaigns and such. Spoiler alert - all adult ages are on board! It's much less "Las Vegas" than you'd think. I couldn't care less who tries VV or not, I'd just caution against the quick assumptions. In trying something new, you just might find something you really enjoy.

Some have recently reported that this approach didn't work - that when they went to cancel the excursions onboard to use Loot instead, they got their refund also in Loot and not refund back to credit card. And that was the only option. So, I guess just don't count on that being an option anymore. You can try it and hope for the best, but they may have changed the procedure for everyone.

Walk ups were also not possible when I sailed. I had pre-booked reservations each night luckily, but I saw people without reservations getting turned away at every meal.

I'm on the 2/3 Valiant sailing and was able to access the app today, and select my embarkation time. Only thing currently messed up is that my cabin is showing as GTY when I already had a great cabin selected when the sailing was on Brilliant. I've emailed my TA to look into it, I thought we were supposed to have everything stay the same with the move to Valiant.

I'm booked on this sailing, here you go

Lol I can tell you that I booked my Brilliant itinerary based on itinerary/ports alone, as the Brilliant's Caribbean itineraries were far superior to the other ships' ports. I truly couldn't care less that I'll now be on Valiant instead. It's a like for like swap, the ships were always going to be near-identical.

Hoping it's a seamless transition for those of us booked on Brilliant-now-Valiant out of San Juan. I can't imagine we'd have to be cancelled from Brilliant and rebook everything on Valiant?

Definitely not too old! On my first VV I sailed with my mom who is in her 60s, and she wants to do another one. 😁 She had the same qualms as you before we went and it was not even an issue.

We're doing a red eye out of SFO for our BL sailing in Feb 2024. Price was less than $400pp roundtrip with 3 hrs connection time at MIA. I found that to be pretty reasonable, especially with how fllight prices are these days!

I'm doing Option 1 in Feb, chose that over the Option 2 itinerary mainly because I've been to Barbados, Antigua, and St Lucia already and found them to be fine (not wow), and have never done any of the ABCs. And we plan on doing more of a land based trip to the BVIs in the near future, so not really interested in going there on a cruise. But, choose which ports sound most interesting to you! Curacao is a scuba diver's destination and we're looking to dive in at least one port, so it was an easy choice.

Agree with this, on my Valiant Med sailing the Dock was ALWAYS packed and there was no way to snag a daybed for comfortable seat unless (I assume) you showed up super early in the day and chogged a spot. Also contrary to what is posted in this thread, on the same sailing the back of deck 16 where the net is was always busy. That's where I would go for lounging/sun, and there was always a crowd there with me. Nobody was ever on the net, but all the seating the wraps around the aft of the ship was always 85-90% full and all of the bigger circular "beds" were always in use.

So sorry that happened to you, that sounds terrible! Glad you're both ok. If others are going to Marseille and want to see the Cathedral, I can recommend the Petit Train. It seems a bit touristy and silly, but for €8 it takes a very pretty scenic route along the coast and then up to the cathedral, where you can get off and then catch another one back to the harbor when ready. It's quick, easy, and well worth the cost IMO for the "no stress" experience of getting to/from Notre Dame de la Garde.

1. I have no experience with Mermaiden sailings, so I can't speak to this. Hopefully someone else can chime in. 2. Well, of course I'll have to say that this is subjective. Menus are pretty readily available on the interwebs that list offerings and pricing, like this here, I'd recommend perusing those and then making a decision after you get a feel for prices. For my next 7-night sailing on Brilliant, hubby and I have $1400 between Sailor Loot and Bar Tab and we think it *might* be enough. 😆 I think I remember your most recent X live and you do like your drinks (as we do) so I'd recommend at least one more Bar Tab and with the bonus (I think it's $50 right now?) that may be enough. IDK. We also factored in the times we expect to be on and off the ship to help decide what's enough. 3. I assume you're sailing on Brilliant? Seeing things in the app is less a factor of total time remaining until sailing, but rather Brilliant sailings just aren't loaded into the app yet because the ship isn't finished yet. But, you'll be able to book restaurant reservations 45 days ahead of time. All of us sailing Brilliant are just in a holding pattern until VV pushes the ship's sailings to the app.

You shouldn't have any issues, I did a live from my Med sailing on Valiant in Oct and the main issues I had were with the slow internet speeds rather than anything on the CC end.