Virgin Voyages - Virgins no more.
No longer a Virgin Voyages virgin! We are ending our fourth day on the ship. And here are my opinions so far: the ship itself… the ports we visit I’ll follow up soon with.
So far we don’t know if we could ever go back to another cruise provider. We do love the kids in our lives, but having a cruise that has no kids is pretty awesome. I think travelling in Europe also changes the clientele a little bit from the classic Caribbean cruise. Would we return to the Caribbean? Maybe if we were travelling with a bunch of friends.
The ship itself is beautiful. We had early boarding thanks to our agent Rochelle who did our booking, so we were able to run around the ship and check things out before it got too busy. The ship is big but not unmanageable. I think they have done a good job of making use of the space. We are still finding nooks after 3 days… like the free arcade where we can go and play classic games like Donkey Kong and Tetris arcade style. I was sad to see that there was no pinball machine, but I guess on a ship it would be constantly tilting.
We are in an XL balcony room with my favourite feature of the Virgin Cruises, the hammock. I don’t think we have ever used our balcony as much as any other. Being able to just relax in a hammock with a book or music is such a simple luxury. Our only complaint is that we only have one, so we need to take turns.
The room is nicely appointed. There is enough storage space, I feel, but one can never have enough. It’s automated nicely with automatic curtains and preset lighting preferences. It’s also nice to use a tablet to pop into a movie with a push of a button. I didn’t hate Minecraft; it was cute.
The steward is friendly, and our room is cleaned daily. No towel animals here, but I’m okay with that. Although, we could have used one today as he did miss leaving a shower mat towel.
The food options are awesome. There are various restaurants that you can reserve; all restaurants are included, with some having some buy-up options. Like you aren’t getting a Tomahawk included at the steakhouse but it is available if you wanna pay.
In the board game / karaoke / trivia area, you can get popcorn, pretzels, hot dogs, and wings. They also have a candy bar; I have already had a bag of licorice, the red vine style.
We were also happy to find a cribbage board since we neglected to bring our own. Lots of games and puzzles… actually more than I have seen on a cruise that has kids.
The galley kitchen area is instead of the classic cruise buffet. They have a bread / dessert station, made-to-order salads, sushi bento boxes, fresh sandwiches / paninis, all-day breakfast, a burger and hot dog bar, and specialty food. I had a big, luscious piece of suckling pig the other day. The food rotates, so I always make sure I re-look at my options daily.
There is also a made-to-order pizza restaurant, a taco station, a juice bar, mezze options on the back deck, an ice cream stand, coffee and juice stations, and unlimited pop! The unlimited pop is almost as good as the hammock. But not quite. Brad is not a fan of the coffee, but I drink any coffee except airplane coffee, so I’m not complaining.
We did order breakfast to the room one day before Bodrum, Türkiye, and they have a very clever delivery system. Everything is stacked in containers, and your condiments and cutlery are integrated into the handle and bag system. So much easier than the classic tray. If you order any food that comes with a charge (liquor, coffee, premium item) and you spend $10, delivery is free. If you don’t, you pay $10 for room service. But no tips!
Wi-Fi has been pretty reliable, which is nice. I’m going to do some work on the sea day, so we’ll see how that goes. We have a premium package, which is a bit faster, but uploading for all my photos and videos isn’t the fastest, but I’m still not going to complain.
Virgin does do some things quite differently than other cruise lines. There are no announcements or daily briefings. I kind of like that, but it does mean you need to stay on top of your bookings and activities in the app. This includes booking your excursions and tenders off the ship when needed. Restaurant reservations can be a bit of a Hunger Games also, but we haven’t had any issues getting what we have wanted for bookings.
Their craps table is $10. I’m happy about that!
I think this post is long enough for now, so I’ll save more goodies for later in the trip and another post. We have done some shows and eaten at one reservation-required restaurant. At this point we have visited Santorini, Bodrum Türkiye, and Mykonos. Tomorrow we leave Mykonos and then have a sea day.
