Virgin Voyages Not your Grandmother’s Cruise Ship! Sailing on the Scarlett Lady from Miami March 29-April 3, 2024 Virgin Voyages is an exciting new cruise line with a completely adults only concept. We recently sailed from Miami to Puerto Plata and Bimini in the Bahamas and liked this style of cruising. First of all, the line is adults only (18+) so you can vacation without OPK (other people’s kids). Virgin Voyages is an active party atmosphere and seagoing play area for adults that is curated by Sir Richard Branson. Virgin offers multiple restaurant offerings, free basic wi-fi, tips included, basic beverages (brewed coffee, sodas, water bottle filling stations), real ice cream by the scoop and plenty of music offerings around the ship. It would be a great choice of cruise product for honeymoons, couples get-aways, empty nesters, young adult friends groups and any age adults including singles with a free-spirited attitude. The price is higher than a traditional cruise line but with the inclusion of up to $600 in tips, specialty restaurants and basic wi-fi that cost more on all the other cruise lines, it is a good value. Price, Explore and Book Virgin Voyages This ship has a total of twenty included restaurants / food outlets. 7 of the restaurants are comprised in a food hall concept where you can order from multiple restaurants at the same table. When I took the Virgin training class they extolled “no buffets” which made me wonder how you would feed a whole ship? The Galley Food Hall filled the place of the traditional buffet for breakfast, lunch or dinner as it is open all day. You can raise a flag and order like a food hall, but we wandered and used it as a buffet with cooking stations as it appeared most people did. In the Galley, you can choose from Let’s Taco About It, Bento Baby that does take away food for breakfast and sushi later in the day, The Daily Mix which did breads at breakfast and had a great salad bar for lunch and dinner times, The Sweet Side with desserts, Noodle Around with ramen, The Burger Bar which we did not try but heard had excellent French fries, Hot Off the Press with sandwiches and paninis plus Diner and Dash which had breakfast all day and “Diner” food also later in the day. I noticed the pot roast and mashed potatoes seemed popular one day at lunch. This has a pretty large area of tables and we ended up eating on the back of deck 15 most of the time with a view of the ship’s wake but many of the indoor tables were also located right next to panoramic windows. They also had takeaway food prepackaged to grab and go which I saw people use in a few areas of the ship and people were walking everywhere on the ship with little mini pizza boxes. Some of the bars like the Dock and Dockhouse Bar have light bites to go with drinks but food is included everywhere you want to eat. They also offered ship delivery eats (room service) which we did not use. We were up late for breakfast on our sea day back from Puerto Plata so we had a huge salad from the food court and brought a pizza up to the Galley deck to share. We also had some nibbles during the OPA hour in the Dock at 4P daily when they serve Greek food like lamb skewers and a hummus platter. Price, Explore and Book Virgin Voyages All of the restaurants are included with the passage fare but six of the specialty restaurants require a reservation for dinner but we did see lobster was an upcharge at the Wake. We scheduled to eat at Test Kitchen, Extra Virgin (Italian), Gunbae Korean BBQ, The Wake (seafood and steak) and Pink Agave (Mexican). The have an app where you can book restaurants (and do just about everything else) connected with your voyage. The app is a work in progress as we had trouble getting restaurant reservations (as did many people), but that was fixed pretty easily when we visited with personnel onboard on day 1 who seemed to have access to additional restaurant reservations. The training classes I took indicated you could walk-up and get seated in a reasonable time; but personnel onboard said with a full ship we should get reservations as walk up was hard when space was tight. As we dined with people, they indicated they needed to be really flexible to get filled in to a restaurant without a reservation. We noticed a waitlist of about 35 room numbers at The Wake podium that probably did not get fulfilled since our reservation was 8:30PM and the restaurant was shutting down when we left at 9:30P. The first night we ate at the Test Kitchen which seemed to be a coveted reservation. Test Kitchen was a six course meal and the menu had very basic descriptions of ingredients like corn and asparagus. This was so interesting, I am going to describe our menu. The first word was corn and the appetizer consisted of corn butter, corn fritters and other various iterations of corn. The appetizer was lime cured smoked salmon, our first course was sliced beets as an appetizer stuffed with nut puree and dressed with beet foam, the entrée was rack of lamb or shrimp pasta, the intermezzo was asparagus and spinach sorbet (which was actually good) and dessert was strawberries in various forms with white chocolate, nuts and wasabi believe it or not. I will admit we hit the Pizza Place at 1A as we could have used a little more food to eat at Test Kitchen but we had a big Cuban lunch in Miami, so it was a good pick for the first night. The Extra Virgin Italian restaurant was very good. We shared an appetizer of calamari, then came a chef’s selection of high quality antipasto and cheese board. After that came a primi pasta course and all of their pasta onboard is hand made so we had a good carbonara. This was followed by a black sea bass as the segundo. Wine by the glass or a bottle is not really expensive. We had a decent bottle of Tuscan red for $31 to accompany dinner. Dessert was a handmade limoncello ice cream. Service was exceptional. We had an excellent 2 person wait team even though it was evident they had squeezed in extra tables on a holiday weekend to accommodate extra reservations. We had a table for two at Extra Virgin and enjoyed the intimate experience provided. We docked in Puerto Plata for the day and took a ship tour. All of the shore excursions on Virgin are meant to be a little different from the standard ones offered by cruise lines. They are cultural, local artistry, really-active for thrill seekers and finally Richard’s favorite activities in the various ports. We took a (cultural) Taste of Puerto Plata that was excellent. We stopped at three different restaurants for small bites of typical Dominican food. The tour also included a walking tour through the old town of Puerto Plata and a stop at the Rum plant which included a tasting of six kinds of Dominican rum. The guide was excellent as he strived to explain typical Dominican lifestyle along with his personal philosophy which was to be happy in whatever you do. It was a four-hour tour with excellent food at all the restaurants and a couple of small stops in the city for hot chocolate and mamajuana which is a red wine, rum and roots drink popular in the Dominican Republic. Gunbae Korean BBQ was interesting. It is tables for six with a grill in the middle. We had very nice table mates but did not understand the waiter who was from Bali Indonesia. Luckily one of the couples ate a lot of Korean BBQ so they interpreted some of the dishes and practices of this type of eating. An initial assortment of various Kimchee type of salads started the meal. We played a drinking game, led by our waiter with complimentary Korean Soju shots. The menu was a little book with wooden covers and we had three pages of menu including light bites, noodles and then the Korean BBQ entrées. Food was good as we all shared various things we had ordered that were all cooked in the middle of the table. Dessert was a couple of choices of Korean style fruit ice cream. Price, Explore and Book Virgin Voyages The Wake is the Virgin Voyages seafood and steak restaurant. It is in my opinion the classiest and best restaurant on the ship. Gina had a shrimp and grits with spicy red sauce including capers and baby cilantro. I had a filet mignon with sides that included creamed spinach, roasted wild mushrooms and twice baked potato. The meal started with clam chowder that was very interesting as it had a few fried clams, potatoes and a light creamy sauce. Dessert was a great chocolate tart with a dark moose and shaved dark chocolate. Service was excellent and a decent bottle of French Rhone was $39 even though they had a wine list that went into the hundreds. Bimini was a quaint Bahamian Island that is mostly run by Resort World that controls the pier, the Hilton Resort World Casino Hotel and also the beach club that it rents to Virgin Voyages for an exclusive event when Virgin is in port. Jitney’s come out on the pier to pick you up and take you to the Virgin Voyages beach club which had an excellent swimming beach. In Bimini, Virgin Voyages operates the bars and also sets up two outdoor dining areas with food included for all Sailors. The menu was upscale private island meets Caribbean Kitchen with jerk chicken, snapper ceviche, watermelon/pineapple salad, cassava fritters, soft tacos, curried pumpkin, and rum cake for dessert. Food was included and your wearable arm band took your bar tab to the beach. The Beach Club has a huge pool a lot of chairs for free and cabanas for an extra charge. There is also a separate beach club area for Rock Star Suites. The morning when we arrived was quiet and sedate but the afternoon became a huge pool party for a few hours once DJ Gilla arrived on the scene. The last night we ended with Pink Agave Mexican cuisine which offered a menu of small, medium and large plates. It is not your normal Mexican menu so we asked the waiter for advice. He explained it is upscale Mexican cuisine, so we pick two from the entrees to share and we’ll bring the rest of the menu. Not wanting to waste food, we eliminated the tuna and a couple of other small/medium plates and shared a Bistec Marinero en Escabeche (ribeye steak) and Cochinita Pibil (marinated pork) plus he brought a double guacamole. The drink menu did not list margaritas but they made one of the best margaritas we had ever consumed. We ordered a bread pudding to share for dessert but he also instructed the assistant waiter to bring a chocolate taco. He said it was his best dessert since we were agents experiencing Virgin for the first time he wanted us to try his best dessert and he was right! If you are not familiar with Sir Richard Branson (Prince Charles knighted him in 2000) , his background includes music and record stores prior to entering the airline business, cell phones and even rocket ships for a while. As a result, that thread of music is wrapped up with the Virgin Voyages cruise product, which is a good thing. There is an album area as a relic from the record store but we never saw the DJ spinning disks on our voyage even though there was a dj booth. We all were issued a stylish wearable armband that is made from recycled sea plastics. It was used to charge, get on and off the ship plus as your door key. We really enjoyed the musical groups onboard. To me, music and entertainment are one of the most important factors in a cruise vacation. On our five day voyage, there were 4 or 5 different musical groups from duos to full 5 piece bands onboard. Check out my 90 second video of our varied entertainment and parties onboard. I started this off with this is not your grandmother’s cruise ship which is true unless granny goes out clubbing until 2A with you. The Scarlett pool party was a wild dance party with large blowup red octopuses featured in various places on the ship and Scarlett night is entertainment heavy with activities in various venues scattered around the ship. We ended the evening at the after party in the Manor which is the nightclub modeled after Branson’s original music studio in London but it was a little too wild for us even though the younger crowd was enjoying a club style dance party we did not wade in. We found another band Shevonne and the Force at On the Rocks an indoor bar doing an 11P and midnight sets that featured a great singer who had two appearances on America’s Got Talent with accompanying funk band that was very talented. We returned to our room at about 2AM for a well-deserved rest. Price, Explore and Book Virgin Voyages The last evening was a seventies and eighties themed dance party in the Manor which was more suited our taste of music but there was certainly something for everybody music-wise on Virgin Voyages Scarlett Lady. Sailors as Virgin Voyages calls cruise passengers were aged between 25 and 50’s but there were some older people who we even saw at the late night events, so it is partially your state of mind. DJs are playing modern music including techno, rap, reggaeton, club dance music and even some dance hall reggae but there were also other bands in clubs at night, so you could listen to music even if you did not attend the show or the nightly Manor party. We followed a couple of groups around the ship including the Ohona Duo a South African singer and her Ukrainian husband guitarist, Matthew Lennox who did finger style guitar that he mixed with his own looping and Kairi Latin Band from Columbia. All of the groups seemed to fashion their sets for the venue and the time of day. Virgin Voyages two “roadies” seemed busy moving equipment as the bands played in different venues at different times across the spectrum. We stopped in to view the shows onboard. The Red Room Theatre had retractable seats so the first night it had two sides, the second show we went to was traditional seating with a stage and the third one had no seats at all. One was called Dual Reality which was a “Cirque du Soleil” type show where two teams competed with tricks, high pole acrobatics, jugglers and even a hula hoops lady. The second was called Ships in the Night which to me had a theme that was too deep to describe but was an excellent quality production show with good singing. The last night was the “Untitled Dance Show Party Thing” which was also 70s, 80s & 90s popular music based freeform show that prefaced the Studio “72” (for the year) party in the Manor Since this ship is adults only and the age skews younger, parties are more risqué and this product is very LGBTQ+ friendly. The first night, we skipped the pajama party but it looked like people were enjoying the vibe on the top deck. In my opinion this would be an exciting break from real life if you ditch your kids with grandma, are empty nesters, traveling with a group of friends or lucky enough (like us) to be a dual income no kids couple. You can pre-purchase and get extra bar tab but it is nonrefundable. Virgin Voyages sells bar tabs and gives you $225 for the cost of $200 and $350 for the cost of $300. Sometimes Virgin Voyages runs promotions where they award Sailor Loot which can also be used as bar tab or in other areas of the ship. As a tip, since you will probably spend more time in bar-like areas buy a bigger bar tab than you think you might use to get as much bonus as possible. Another note about bar tabs, drinks are reasonably priced on Virgin, unlike the other cruise lines. An entry level sparkling wine was $7 per glass and you could always find a decent wine in all the venues for $8 or $9 a glass. If you are drinking pink drinks or better wine/champagne you would be in the $11 to $14 range. Drinks do not get charged the 18-20% service charge that gets added by other cruise lines so you pay what you see on the menu. Remember, you get included nonalcoholic beverages like filtered water, sodas and non- pressed fruit juices are no charge with the Virgin Voyages program. We bought $200 and got $225 for two people but blew through that by day 4 as we usually don’t party to all hours of the night but “edgy” and “party” seemed to be the two key words on Virgin Voyages and many venues had bars, so we hit the dance floor with a drink in hand many nights. The ship is built like a boutique hotel so there is an abundance of different “spaces” where the music and many times light food choices were offered along with bars everywhere onboard. One night was Scarlett night where everybody wore red and this culminated in a Scarlett pool party that was one of the wildest party scenes I had viewed on a cruise ship with half of the guests ending up dancing in the pool in their red clothes. The Beach club at Bimini ended up like a Vegas Pool party with a DJ spinning dance music, people again dancing in the pool (at least in bathing suits this time) and colorful blow up floats for everybody. We had a Sea Terrace room which was comfortable with both chairs and a comfortable hammock on the porch. The room is very modern with moods driven by i-pad with curtains that open and lights that come on automatically when you enter the room. Like most cruise lines, they offer Inside Cabins, Windows, Sea Terrace (balconies) and Rock Star Suites with include priority activities, boarding a special top deck area and drinks. The Rock Star Suites all have a private area on the top deck called Richard’s Penthouse. As we have walked the ship for five days from end to end, it has so many inside public areas that are designed like a boutique hotel and many outside areas where you can find space away from the crowds. Adults only means a lot of things in the cruise shipping industry. First of all there is only so much outside space on a cruise ship so you reclaim space for adult activities with the exclusion of waterslides, kid’s activities, kids clubs and things like roller coasters or go cart tracks. That equipment takes up a lot of space on the top deck and also inside the ship which the adults get back in the form of sitting areas, venues/bars and outside public decks. We took our morning walk up on the track located on deck 17 each morning where six laps is a mile. Virgin has outside workout areas, exercise areas, lounges and more inside spaces with couches and bars. We played basketball, bar shuffleboard, foosball, life sized deck chess, with the free play video games including 70s pac man, a video race car crash at Daytona and Super Mario onboard. There are Bali loungers and seaside venues like the Dock on deck 7 with real shuffleboard, a large gym near The Galley on 15 and even boxing ring on deck 16. There are more areas to just hang out besides the pool area and Virgin has also added an outside boardwalk on deck 7 and a back deck on deck 16 plus the regular pool areas with two pools in the middle top deck of the ship and multiple Jacuzzis scattered around the ship. As some of the specialty dining rooms are group meals so we talked with guests about Virgin Voyages and overall people like this product. As it is a new product, we were surprised that some were even repeat guests. The entire experience is app based including dining reservations and activity schedules and we found sometimes the internet based app did not work correctly, had to take a break or reboot our phone frequently because of slow internet. We think edgy was the best word to describe the product and while it will bring new cruisers into the market for cruising some really traditional cruisers might not like that edgy side of the product as it might be too noisy or too different with lack of main dining restaurants from what they expect as traditional onboard food, beverage and entertainment. If you went to bed by 11P, you would have had a delightful day with entertainment in various places but would miss the crazy parties. Likewise with Bimini if you went over to the beach club in the AM when the ship docked and come back to the ship around 1 or 2PM, you would have missed the pool party so you could do this product and not partake in any of the crazy party like happenings, if you just want good food, daytime entertainment onboard and no kids. Price, Explore and Book Virgin Voyages One of the things that impressed me in my initial conversations with the crew is that they had come from many other lines to join the Virgin Voyages crew. They all thought the contracts were “fairer”, the crew quarters nicer than most ships and the crew food better. As a result, they have a very experienced and welcoming crew. Overall, we liked Virgin Voyages as it had a lot of activities, music and interesting food onboard. We thought all the food offerings were high quality so foodies would enjoy Virgin Voyages. We also compliment Virgin Voyages for the selection of entertainment we were traveling with as we saw no bad musical act which I cannot always say about shipboard entertainment. The ships are beautiful and the extra “adult” spaces meant you could always hang out somewhere different. In addition to the restaurants there were food offerings (tapas plates, popcorn / candy, fudge, fruit pops and bar foods in various venues so we always seemed to be eating our way around the ship. Book Virgin Voyages with our Travel Agency Vacation Tour & Cruise blogs are written by John Rice, our President who has experience as a tour operator and retail travel agent for 39 years. When we blog about it, we live it as we experience every trip that we write about so you can trust it’s info from a first-hand source. Call, email or text us to get more information and book Virgin Voyages as our travel agent services have zero fees to book cruises, but you get questions answered by agents who have Voyaged on Virgin and your booking is handled by experienced travel agents who care about your vacation. Contact us to book Virgin Voyages (813) 868-0007, info@vacationtc.com , text 813-503-8759

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Virgin Voyages - Not your Grandmother’s Cruise Ship! Sailing on the Scarlett Lady from Miami March 29-April 3, 2024 Virgin Voyages is an exciting new cruise line with a completely adults only concept. We recently sailed from Miami to Puerto Plata and Bimini in the Bahamas and liked this style of cruising. First of all, the line is adults only (18+) so you can vacation without OPK (other people’s kids). Virgin Voyages is an active party atmosphere and seagoing play area for adults that is curated by Sir Richard Branson. Virgin offers multiple restaurant offerings, free basic wi-fi, tips included, basic beverages (brewed coffee, sodas, water bottle filling stations), real ice cream by the scoop and plenty of music offerings around the ship. It would be a great choice of cruise product for honeymoons, couples get-aways, empty nesters, young adult friends groups and any age adults including singles with a free-spirited attitude. The price is higher than a traditional cruise line but with the inclusion of up to $600 in tips, specialty restaurants and basic wi-fi that cost more on all the other cruise lines, it is a good value. This ship has a total of twenty included restaurants/food outlets. 7 of the restaurants are comprised in a food hall concept where you can order from multiple restaurants at the same table. When I took the Virgin training class they extolled “no buffets” which made me wonder how you would feed a whole ship? The Galley Food Hall filled the place of the traditional buffet for breakfast, lunch or dinner as it is open all day. You can raise a flag and order like a food hall, but we wandered and used it as a buffet with cooking stations as it appeared most people did. In the Galley, you can choose from Let’s Taco About It, Bento Baby that does take away food for breakfast and sushi later in the day, The Daily Mix which did breads at breakfast and had a great salad bar for lunch and dinner times, The Sweet Side with desserts, Noodle Around with ramen, The Burger Bar which we did not try but heard had excellent French fries, Hot Off the Press with sandwiches and paninis plus Diner and Dash which had breakfast all day and “Diner” food also later in the day. I noticed the pot roast and mashed potatoes seemed popular one day at lunch. This has a pretty large area of tables and we ended up eating on the back of deck 15 most of the time with a view of the ship’s wake but many of the indoor tables were also located right next to panoramic windows. They also had takeaway food prepackaged to grab and go which I saw people use in a few areas of the ship and people were walking everywhere on the ship with little mini pizza boxes. Some of the bars like the Dock and Dockhouse Bar have light bites to go with drinks but food is included everywhere you want to eat. They also offered ship delivery eats (room service) which we did not use. We were up late for breakfast on our sea day back from Puerto Plata so we had a huge salad from the food court and brought a pizza up to the Galley deck to share. We also had some nibbles during the OPA hour in the Dock at 4P daily when they serve Greek food like lamb skewers and a hummus platter. All of the restaurants are included with the passage fare but six of the specialty restaurants require a reservation for dinner but we did see lobster was an upcharge at the Wake. We scheduled to eat at Test Kitchen, Extra Virgin (Italian), Gunbae Korean BBQ, The Wake (seafood and steak) and Pink Agave (Mexican). The have an app where you can book restaurants (and do just about everything else) connected with your voyage. The app is a work in progress as we had trouble getting restaurant reservations (as did many people), but that was fixed pretty easily when we visited with personnel onboard on day 1 who seemed to have access to additional restaurant reservations. The training classes I took indicated you could walk-up and get seated in a reasonable time; but personnel onboard said with a full ship we should get reservations as walk up was hard when space was tight. As we dined with people, they indicated they needed to be really flexible to get filled in to a restaurant without a reservation. We noticed a waitlist of about 35 room numbers at The Wake podium that probably did not get fulfilled since our reservation was 8:30PM and the restaurant was shutting down when we left at 9:30P. The first night we ate at the Test Kitchen which seemed to be a coveted reservation. Test Kitchen was a six course meal and the menu had very basic descriptions of ingredients like corn and asparagus. This was so interesting, I am going to describe our menu. The first word was corn and the appetizer consisted of corn butter, corn fritters and other various iterations of corn. The appetizer was lime cured smoked salmon, our first course was sliced beets as an appetizer stuffed with nut puree and dressed with beet foam, the entrée was rack of lamb or shrimp pasta, the intermezzo was asparagus and spinach sorbet (which was actually good) and dessert was strawberries in various forms with white chocolate, nuts and wasabi believe it or not. I will admit we hit the Pizza Place at 1A as we could have used a little more food to eat at Test Kitchen but we had a big Cuban lunch in Miami, so it was a good pick for the first night. The Extra Virgin Italian restaurant was very good. We shared an appetizer of calamari, then came a chef’s selection of high quality antipasto and cheese board. After that came a primi pasta course and all of their pasta onboard is hand made so we had a good carbonara. This was followed by a black sea bass as the segundo. Wine by the glass or a bottle is not really expensive. We had a decent bottle of Tuscan red for $31 to accompany dinner. Dessert was a handmade limoncello ice cream. Service was exceptional. We had an excellent 2 person wait team even though it was evident they had squeezed in extra tables on a holiday weekend to accommodate extra reservations. We had a table for two at Extra Virgin and enjoyed the intimate experience provided. We docked in Puerto Plata for the day and took a ship tour. All of the shore excursions on Virgin are meant to be a little different from the standard ones offered by cruise lines. They are cultural, local artistry, really-active for thrill seekers and finally Richard’s favorite activities in the various ports. We took a (cultural) Taste of Puerto Plata that was excellent. We stopped at three different restaurants for small bites of typical Dominican food. The tour also included a walking tour through the old town of Puerto Plata and a stop at the Rum plant which included a tasting of six kinds of Dominican rum. The guide was excellent as he strived to explain typical Dominican lifestyle along with his personal philosophy which was to be happy in whatever you do. It was a four-hour tour with excellent food at all the restaurants and a couple of small stops in the city for hot chocolate and mamajuana which is a red wine, rum and roots drink popular in the Dominican Republic. Gunbae Korean BBQ was interesting. It is tables for six with a grill in the middle. We had very nice table mates but did not understand the waiter who was from Bali Indonesia. Luckily one of the couples ate a lot of Korean BBQ so they interpreted some of the dishes and practices of this type of eating. An initial assortment of various Kimchee type of salads started the meal. We played a drinking game, led by our waiter with complimentary Korean Soju shots. The menu was a little book with wooden covers and we had three pages of menu including light bites, noodles and then the Korean BBQ entrées. Food was good as we all shared various things we had ordered that were all cooked in the middle of the table. Dessert was a couple of choices of Korean style fruit ice cream. The Wake is the Virgin Voyages seafood and steak restaurant. It is in my opinion the classiest and best restaurant on the ship. Gina had a shrimp and grits with spicy red sauce including capers and baby cilantro. I had a filet mignon with sides that included creamed spinach, roasted wild mushrooms and twice baked potato. The meal started with clam chowder that was very interesting as it had a few fried clams, potatoes and a light creamy sauce. Dessert was a great chocolate tart with a dark moose and shaved dark chocolate. Service was excellent and a decent bottle of French Rhone was $39 even though they had a wine list that went into the hundreds. Bimini was a quaint Bahamian Island that is mostly run by Resort World that controls the pier, the Hilton Resort World Casino Hotel and also the beach club that it rents to Virgin Voyages for an exclusive event when Virgin is in port. Jitney’s come out on the pier to pick you up and take you to the Virgin Voyages beach club which had an excellent swimming beach. In Bimini, Virgin Voyages operates the bars and also sets up two outdoor dining areas with food included for all Sailors. The menu was upscale private island meets Caribbean Kitchen with jerk chicken, snapper ceviche, watermelon/pineapple salad, cassava fritters, soft tacos, curried pumpkin, and rum cake for dessert. Food was included and your wearable arm band took your bar tab to the beach. The Beach Club has a huge pool a lot of chairs for free and cabanas for an extra charge. There is also a separate beach club area for Rock Star Suites. The morning when we arrived was quiet and sedate but the afternoon became a huge pool party for a few hours once DJ Gilla arrived on the scene. The last night we ended with Pink Agave Mexican cuisine which offered a menu of small, medium and large plates. It is not your normal Mexican menu so we asked the waiter for advice. He explained it is upscale Mexican cuisine, so we pick two from the entrees to share and we’ll bring the rest of the menu. Not wanting to waste food, we eliminated the tuna and a couple of other small/medium plates and shared a Bistec Marinero en Escabeche (ribeye steak) and Cochinita Pibil (marinated pork) plus he brought a double guacamole. The drink menu did not list margaritas but they made one of the best margaritas we had ever consumed. We ordered a bread pudding to share for dessert but he also instructed the assistant waiter to bring a chocolate taco. He said it was his best dessert since we were agents experiencing Virgin for the first time he wanted us to try his best dessert and he was right! If you are not familiar with Sir Richard Branson (Prince Charles knighted him in 2000) , his background includes music and record stores prior to entering the airline business, cell phones and even rocket ships for a while. As a result, that thread of music is wrapped up with the Virgin Voyages cruise product, which is a good thing. There is an album area as a relic from the record store but we never saw the DJ spinning disks on our voyage even though there was a dj booth. We all were issued a stylish wearable armband that is made from recycled sea plastics. It was used to charge, get on and off the ship plus as your door key. We really enjoyed the musical groups onboard. To me, music and entertainment are one of the most important factors in a cruise vacation. On our five day voyage, there were 4 or 5 different musical groups from duos to full 5 piece bands onboard. Check out my 90 second video of our varied entertainment and parties onboard. I started this off with this is not your grandmother’s cruise ship which is true unless granny goes out clubbing until 2A with you. The Scarlett pool party was a wild dance party with large blowup red octopuses featured in various places on the ship and Scarlett night is entertainment heavy with activities in various venues scattered around the ship. We ended the evening at the after party in the Manor which is the nightclub modeled after Branson’s original music studio in London but it was a little too wild for us even though the younger crowd was enjoying a club style dance party we did not wade in. We found another band Shevonne and the Force at On the Rocks an indoor bar doing an 11P and midnight sets that featured a great singer who had two appearances on America’s Got Talent with accompanying funk band that was very talented. We returned to our room at about 2AM for a well-deserved rest. The last evening was a seventies and eighties themed dance party in the Manor which was more suited our taste of music but there was certainly something for everybody music-wise on Virgin Voyages Scarlett Lady. Sailors as Virgin Voyages calls cruise passengers were aged between 25 and 50’s but there were some older people who we even saw at the late night events, so it is partially your state of mind. DJs are playing modern music including techno, rap, reggaeton, club dance music and even some dance hall reggae but there were also other bands in clubs at night, so you could listen to music even if you did not attend the show or the nightly Manor party. We followed a couple of groups around the ship including the Ohona Duo a South African singer and her Ukrainian husband guitarist, Matthew Lennox who did finger style guitar that he mixed with his own looping and Kairi Latin Band from Columbia. All of the groups seemed to fashion their sets for the venue and the time of day. Virgin Voyages two “roadies” seemed busy moving equipment as the bands played in different venues at different times across the spectrum. We stopped in to view the shows onboard. The Red Room Theatre had retractable seats so the first night it had two sides, the second show we went to was traditional seating with a stage and the third one had no seats at all. One was called Dual Reality which was a “Cirque du Soleil” type show where two teams competed with tricks, high pole acrobatics, jugglers and even a hula hoops lady. The second was called Ships in the Night which to me had a theme that was too deep to describe but was an excellent quality production show with good singing. The last night was the “Untitled Dance Show Party Thing” which was also 70s, 80s & 90s popular music based freeform show that prefaced the Studio “72” (for the year) party in the Manor Since this ship is adults only and the age skews younger, parties are more risqué and this product is very LGBTQ+ friendly. The first night, we skipped the pajama party but it looked like people were enjoying the vibe on the top deck. In my opinion this would be an exciting break from real life if you ditch your kids with grandma, are empty nesters, traveling with a group of friends or lucky enough (like us) to be a dual income no kids couple. You can pre-purchase and get extra bar tab but it is nonrefundable. Virgin Voyages sells bar tabs and gives you $225 for the cost of $200 and $350 for the cost of $300. Sometimes Virgin Voyages runs promotions where they award Sailor Loot which can also be used as bar tab or in other areas of the ship. As a tip, since you will probably spend more time in bar-like areas buy a bigger bar tab than you think you might use to get as much bonus as possible. Another note about bar tabs, drinks are reasonably priced on Virgin, unlike the other cruise lines. An entry level sparkling wine was $7 per glass and you could always find a decent wine in all the venues for $8 or $9 a glass. If you are drinking pink drinks or better wine/champagne you would be in the $11 to $14 range. Drinks do not get charged the 18-20% service charge that gets added by other cruise lines so you pay what you see on the menu. Remember, you get included nonalcoholic beverages like filtered water, sodas and non-pressed fruit juices are no charge with the Virgin Voyages program. We bought $200 and got $225 for two people but blew through that by day 4 as we usually don’t party to all hours of the night but “edgy” and “party” seemed to be the two key words on Virgin Voyages and many venues had bars, so we hit the dance floor with a drink in hand many nights. The ship is built like a boutique hotel so there is an abundance of different “spaces” where the music and many times light food choices were offered along with bars everywhere onboard. One night was Scarlett night where everybody wore red and this culminated in a Scarlett pool party that was one of the wildest party scenes I had viewed on a cruise ship with half of the guests ending up dancing in the pool in their red clothes. The Beach club at Bimini ended up like a Vegas Pool party with a DJ spinning dance music, people again dancing in the pool (at least in bathing suits this time) and colorful blow up floats for everybody. We had a Sea Terrace room which was comfortable with both chairs and a comfortable hammock on the porch. The room is very modern with moods driven by i-pad with curtains that open and lights that come on automatically when you enter the room. Like most cruise lines, they offer Inside Cabins, Windows, Sea Terrace (balconies) and Rock Star Suites with include priority activities, boarding a special top deck area and drinks. The Rock Star Suites all have a private area on the top deck called Richard’s Penthouse. As we have walked the ship for five days from end to end, it has so many inside public areas that are designed like a boutique hotel and many outside areas where you can find space away from the crowds. Adults only means a lot of things in the cruise shipping industry. First of all there is only so much outside space on a cruise ship so you reclaim space for adult activities with the exclusion of waterslides, kid’s activities, kids clubs and things like roller coasters or go cart tracks. That equipment takes up a lot of space on the top deck and also inside the ship which the adults get back in the form of sitting areas, venues/bars and outside public decks. We took our morning walk up on the track located on deck 17 each morning where six laps is a mile. Virgin has outside workout areas, exercise areas, lounges and more inside spaces with couches and bars. We played basketball, bar shuffleboard, foosball, life sized deck chess, with the free play video games including 70s pac man, a video race car crash at Daytona and Super Mario onboard. There are Bali loungers and seaside venues like the Dock on deck 7 with real shuffleboard, a large gym near The Galley on 15 and even boxing ring on deck 16. There are more areas to just hang out besides the pool area and Virgin has also added an outside boardwalk on deck 7 and a back deck on deck 16 plus the regular pool areas with two pools in the middle top deck of the ship and multiple Jacuzzis scattered around the ship. As some of the specialty dining rooms are group meals so we talked with guests about Virgin Voyages and overall people like this product. As it is a new product, we were surprised that some were even repeat guests. The entire experience is app based including dining reservations and activity schedules and we found sometimes the internet based app did not work correctly, had to take a break or reboot our phone frequently because of slow internet. We think edgy was the best word to describe the product and while it will bring new cruisers into the market for cruising some really traditional cruisers might not like that edgy side of the product as it might be too noisy or too different with lack of main dining restaurants from what they expect as traditional onboard food, beverage and entertainment. If you went to bed by 11P, you would have had a delightful day with entertainment in various places but would miss the crazy parties. Likewise with Bimini if you went over to the beach club in the AM when the ship docked and come back to the ship around 1 or 2PM, you would have missed the pool party so you could do this product and not partake in any of the crazy party like happenings, if you just want good food, daytime entertainment onboard and no kids. One of the things that impressed me in my initial conversations with the crew is that they had come from many other lines to join the Virgin Voyages crew. They all thought the contracts were “fairer”, the crew quarters nicer than most ships and the crew food better. As a result, they have a very experienced and welcoming crew. Overall, we liked Virgin Voyages as it had a lot of activities, music and interesting food onboard. We thought all the food offerings were high quality so foodies would enjoy Virgin Voyages. We also compliment Virgin Voyages for the selection of entertainment we were traveling with as we saw no bad musical act which I cannot always say about shipboard entertainment. The ships are beautiful and the extra “adult” spaces meant you could always hang out somewhere different. In addition to the restaurants there were food offerings (tapas plates, popcorn / candy, fudge, fruit pops and bar foods in various venues so we always seemed to be eating our way around the ship. Book Virgin Voyages with our Travel Agency Vacation Tour & Cruise blogs are written by John Rice, our President who has experience as a tour operator and retail travel agent for 39 years. When we blog about it, we live it as we experience every trip that we write about so you can trust it’s info from a first-hand source. Call, email or text us to get more information and book Virgin Voyages as our travel agent services have zero fees to book cruises, but you get questions answered by agents who have Voyaged on Virgin and your booking is handled by experienced travel agents who care about your vacation. Contact us to book Virgin Voyages (813) 868-0007, info@vacationtc.com , text 813-503-8759

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