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Virgin Voyages Review

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We get a lot of questions from clients about Virgin Voyages. Is it just for young people? Is it a party ship? Would older people enjoy it? Well we recently had a couple return from their first cruise on Virgin Voyages. They are in their 80’s and their friends who cruised with them are around 75. Here is their review, pro’s and con’s so you can see their thoughts on their cruise. Unedited.

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So overall we really, really enjoyed Virgin.  It’s quite different but different in a good way.(mostly good)

We did do a bit of “tongue in cheek” pros/cons as we encountered things, so I will share those with you in the event you are interested.

Pros

  1. Lovely ship – loved the décor, modern and fresh.
  2. Can’t say enough good about the dining situation.  No MDR, just specialty restaurants with no upcharge!  What’s not to love about that??? I was able to book us into each one of them and we loved, loved, loved them.  The food, outstanding, service outstanding.  Really cannot say enough about how great the dining experience is.
  3. Love the “bar tab” experience.  Where you can share the $$$.  Makes complete sense and I wish other cruise lines would adopt this.
  4. We booked the XL Sea Terrace and loved the bathroom set up.  Separate room for toilet and separate room (with door) for the shower.  We did see a regular Sea Terrace cabin and those bathrooms are kinda ughhhh.  I’ve never seen a smaller bathroom on a ship.
  5. And oh that hammock on the verandah.  AWESOME!  Since I’d been to many of the ports before, I spent a couple of port days in the hammock reading.  Hammock = brilliant!
  6. I really liked the unusual separation into twin beds.  They end up in an L configuration which means lots of floor space in the cabin as one bed is parallel along the wall.
  7. Entertainment – very unusual to not have a cruise director, you find all the info you need on the app.  The app worked great, some probably don’t like this – but I did.  The bingo was cheapest I’ve seen recently with a $35 for 3 cards option. On HAL is starts at $50.  The subject of entertainment will also be on the “con”list but I do want to give props to the show called Persephone.  It’s basically a Cirque de Soleil type show with lots of acrobatics.  It’s really, really good.
  8. Loved the later arrival times in ports and departure times.  I don’t know if that is standard for Virgin – but we were arriving around 10am and leaving 7 or 8pm.

Now to “cons”.

  1. There is zero focus on the Captain or the bridge team.  For all I knew, the ship was driven remotely from London.  Not even crew bios on the TV.  And since they pride themselves on “no announcements”, you don’t hear a peep from the bridge.  They don’t even have cruise maps on the TV – like current positon, speed, etc.  Or a list of the upcoming ports.  You CAN find that on the app (the ports) but nothing about where in the world you are.
  2. Cabin service – the first two days the cabin was not made up by 3pm.  I am used to HAL, where they almost come in as I am leaving for breakfast and the cabin is always made up well before noon.  On day 3 I found our cabin steward walking around the aft part of our deck around noon.  I asked him if the cabin was made up yet and he said “no”.  I asked why it was taking so long and he jumped to attention and said he would do it immediately.  Which he did – but I found that so strange.  From that point forward, I found the “make up our cabin” on the iPad in the cabin and hit that button in the morning before going to breakfast.  I would get a message in the app about 15 minutes later telling me it was complete.  We never did figure out if this is because many of the passengers are up until 2 am so they don’t make up cabins early????  You can flip a button in your cabin that says “needs service” – but they don’t seem to pay attention to that.  The request on the iPad DOES work.
  3. Entertainment – nothing is regular.  Sometimes there is an evening show, sometimes not.  They also have very unusual shows.  A magician that was a bit strange (made a lot of mistakes) and one crazy show in the library that made zero sense, so we left.  We rated this a con even though we loved Persephone.
  4. Persephone is a show where the audience stands the entire time and the show occurs around you.  A bit strange – but when we walked in, one of the crew asked me if we wanted chairs and I said “yes”.  He directed us to deck 7 where there are chairs and you overlook the show.
  5. No cruise director – just a Diva.  Who is quite entertaining.  Not sure why I’m putting this on the con list other than there are no typical announcements, you have to be on the app to know what is going on.
  6. While my pool days are in my rear view mirror – I don’t sit out by the pools, but the pool is VERY small.  Loungers all packed, so putting on the con list as it would really be a con if I wanted to lay out in the sun.
  7. Last, but not least, the towel quality is total crap.  I’ve never seen such thin towels!

Ok, this went on longer than I planned, but I sort of got on a roll.  I would definitely cruise on them again!

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If a Virgin Voyages cruise sounds like something you would enjoy and want to experience, call our office at 817 481-8631 or 800 766-2911. Any agent will be happy to help you.