[00:00:00] Speaker A: All right, with that, we got to head into, like, the biggest differentiating activity on virgin voyages. So this is pirate night on steroids is what this is called, Scarlet Night. And there is a whole story behind it. It's not just like, just dress in red. There's a whole story.
Welcome back, everybody, to a special live edition of the DC L duo podcast, brought to you by my path, unwinding travel. And now also WDW and DCL magazine. We want to thank DCL magazine for sponsoring our live and bonus episodes. And they have asked me to ask you, are you the world's biggest Disney cruise fan? I think we are, Sam.
[00:00:47] Speaker B: Yes, I think we are.
[00:00:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Show off your love of all things Disney Cruise with specialty t shirts, puzzles, and bags from DCL magazine. And grab a 2025 Disney wall calendar to start counting down to your next cruise. I know, Sam. I still have to go order one of those for you.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: You can visit the shop by heading over to wdw dash magazine.com. and right now, you can head. You can head over there and save 10% on everything, including their magazine subscriptions with the code all caps Dclduo. So head over there, check it out. Be sure to sign up for their waitlist so we can make DCL magazine a thing, as they would say in mean girls, right? We're trying to make DCL magazine a thing. So head over there and sign up for that. We really appreciate them sponsoring these bonus shows and our live shows. So thank you so much for that. And head over there and check them out. All right. With that, Sam, we got a, man, we got a. We got a heck of a show here tonight because no guests. It's just us carrying this entire topic. Thank God we were actually on virgin voyages. All right, so we're going to be talking about our virgin voyages cruise, and we are.
[00:01:46] Speaker B: And I'm wearing red in honor of the occasion. And I also have a virgin voyages blanket on my lap right now that I am wearing or using in honor of virgin voyages as well. Even though I am wearing a Disney cruise line t shirt it says may contain cruise snacks.
[00:02:00] Speaker A: I'm wearing a Mickey hat, so I know. I got that. Got that going for me. All right, I am going to hopefully share a PowerPoint deck here. If I can get this window to work.
There it is. There it is.
[00:02:17] Speaker B: But you're not in presentation mode.
[00:02:19] Speaker A: I don't have time to figure the end window presentation mode out right now. So we're just going to deal with this. All right. It also enabled me to move around things a little bit faster.
All right, so we're here to talk about virgin voyages. I'm going to start at the top, and then, Sam, as you're talking, I have to go over and pull up some very special predictions from CT out there, tinfoil mouse ears and Tracy, because we're going to have to do a little rapid fire round on ourselves at the end and see how many of their predictions we got right. So for those of you out there, wait until the end. CT and Tracy did some predictions across different categories of things and which each of us thought would carry the day is between virgin voyages and Disney. And having read them, I am so excited.
[00:03:01] Speaker B: Oh, I love this. I haven't seen them yet. I knew they were doing this, but I have no, I have not seen them yet. I will tell our audience, though, for those of you watching live, please feel free to jump in with questions at any point and we'll try and answer them, whether they be questions about preferences that we had or questions about, you know, virgin voyages as compared to Disney Cruise line. We're happy to answer that question. I want. I want to give a shout out to season.
And I believe her partner, Key, who we met on the cruise, they came up to us. I don't remember which day it was, but it came up to us in the sip lounge. We were about to sit down and have afternoon tea and said they listened to our show and they happened to be on the same sailing as us. It was their first time on Virgin as well. And season commented that cruise confirmed our love of DCL. Hope you two had fun. Can't wait to hear your take. Season, thanks so much for introducing yourself. I was hoping we would get to see you a little bit more on the cruise and run into you again. I'm sorry we didn't. But lovely meeting you.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: Yes, yes. It was great. Great to meet you. Thanks for. For shouting our names so that we could say hello. We always love that. Hello to people who actually listen to the show. So. All right, with that, we're going to dive in here. I just wanted to start off with this shot of. I got to be in the right window to control the thing, right? Here we go. I want to start off with this shot of the ship. Virgin voyages ships look very different than a lot of the other cruise ships out there. There are this, like, gunmetal gray kind of color, lots of red. Sam noticed as we were boarding that the lifeboats, the top of the lifeboats.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: Are red, so they're not that red and white. Yeah.
[00:04:38] Speaker A: So it's this all red and gray color palette.
Let me back up and give some details. We have this up on the screen of our voyage. So we did a four night voyage on virgin.
It had two stops. One at key west, which we will talk about. We are super excited to go there, and one at Bimini, which is their private. I'm putting air quotes here. I'm doing like Bunny, little bunny Foo Foo, but private beach club area, which we'll talk about too, as well.
We sailed in he mega Rockstar category, which was last minute decision on my part because we had heard such good things about it. We'll talk a little bit about what the differences are across the different sailing categories and what's included there, but won't spend too much time on that because we've had many others on the show, many episodes on Virgin, where you can go like what the different offerings are on board.
[00:05:32] Speaker B: And to be fair, we're not the experts on all of the nuances of the differences like we are on Disney. We can tell you that for concierge, but we're not the experts when it comes to virgin. And so if you ask us a really obscure question that we didn't experience ourselves, it might be hard for us to answer it, and it would be easier for us to just look it up on the interwebs or for you to ask your lovely travel assistant or travel planner for assistance in that way.
[00:05:58] Speaker A: Yes. We used a travel advisor to book this cruise. So shout out to Kaylee and Karen for helping us out with this. Uh, but what I want to do is start because it's one of the inclusions. So we stayed at the Miami or, sorry, the Marriott Bayfront, I think it was, or something like that. Bayfront hotel. Yeah, yeah. Which we've stayed at before. Uh, it's perfectly fine hotel. We flew in the night before to the Miami airport, stayed there. Our virgin experience really started.
[00:06:23] Speaker B: Pristine bay. That's it. Marriott, Biscayne Bay.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: Yeah, it's fine. It was a fine hotel, not one I strongly recommend.
Our experience started that morning because mega rockstar includes. Has an included transfer. So we did not. Full disclosure. We did not have a ton of contact from our virgin, like a shoreside agent or anything like that. In fact, I think the people you're in contact with are on the ship and so did not have any real pre crews contact from them, other than setting up our private transfer, which thankfully worked out, because not only did they have the wrong, like, name, well, they had Sam's name, which is fine, but they had my phone number but wrong.
[00:07:04] Speaker B: And so they had one of, one digit of Brian's phone number. The last digit of Brian's phone number they had wrong. So when they showed up to pick us up, they, they tried calling and they were getting wrong number. And then they asked at the hotel, but they asked with my name, and my name wasn't registered at the hotel because the hotel was registered under Brian's name.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: So way more detail than our listeners need here, Sam. So anyway, and saw that there was a guy there with, there was a guy there with a sign we identified immediately. Nice black suv picked us up, loaded up our luggage, and we were off to the port of Miami. It was probably a five minute ride. We were the only ship in port that morning, so that was made things much easier. Let me tell you, if you haven't sailed out of the port of Miami before.
[00:07:50] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes, that day, that, I know that day. But I was going to say that afternoon is when we get picked up. So this is one major difference between Disney and Virgin is that disembarkation for people getting off the ship. They can get off anywhere before by 1030 in the morning, but that means embarkation is later. So the boarding, we didn't get picked up, and we were the first to board the ship other than back to back cruisers.
We were in the first group, but our pickup time from our hotel wasn't until, what was it, 01:00 p.m. brian.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: Yes. We got picked up at one to get to the port. By 130, we got, we drove up to the port. There was little, no traffic again because we only ship in port. There was a special lane for Rockstar and mega rockstar. So we got in that lane, rolled up, one guy there with some luggage carts and maybe five, six people milling about. Luggage came out of the back. Luggage got on the luggage got tagged right there.
[00:08:48] Speaker B: They didn't, they didn't send us no tags. No tags were sent ahead of time. You do the tags right there at the port. One odd thing, you actually, we didn't realize this. You keep the same luggage tags for embarkation as debarkation. We had taken ours off and threw on the mountain. We had to ask for new ones because we didn't know them.
[00:09:06] Speaker A: Yeah. When it came to the last night and we were like, how are you going to know where our luggage goes? They're like, well, didn't you keep the tags in your luggage? You're like, no, why would we do that? We just didn't we didn't read. I never learned to read.
So, yeah, we're supposed to leave them on. But anyway, we got our luggage off and into the cart and walked up. Someone checked and verified that we were, you know, in the rockstar, mega rockstar category.
Walked in, walked straight up to a check in desk, showed passports. That went very smoothly.
One of the cool things I want to talk about here in a second is we got these.
I keep clicking on the wrong, on the wrong screen here. I'm clicking actually on the window that we're in, and that's not going to work. I have to click on this window. We got these. Basically, they're bracelet kind of things. They're like rope bracelet, climbing bracelet kind of things. And this was our essentially key of the world card. There was no plastic key given to us. The things on the top there that say, feeling naughty and make a splash already an indication that you're on kind of a unique virgin voice cruise are little RFID or NFC frit witch, you know, pucks. And they opened our doors. They allowed for the, you know, charging throughout the ship, and they allowed for debarkation, re embarkation at the ports of call. They were simple. They worked every time.
Once we figured out you have to keep the side with the wording down, you need the other side up for it to work consistently. So that was fine. They're waterproof, so they could go in the shower in the ocean if you didn't want to take them off. I took mine off at night, but it was easy enough to get on and off again.
Look, I will just say one thing on the tech, the app was awful. Uh, pre cruise, it was not terrific. On the cruise, it was okay. It was okay, but it was not terrific. And it was not the most user friendly in terms of finding things like that. It took, it took a while for us to figure out where things were, but these things worked every time, and they were lightweight, unobtrusive. It didn't make my wrist sweaty. Like, I never had to take it off because the virgin crew walks over with essentially an iPhone, and if you're buying a drink, they just tap your band. And because we were mega rockstar, it's all included. If you weren't, you just get charged for the drink. There's no tipping on board, so you don't just wait and sign anything. So.
[00:11:24] Speaker B: And they still scan you even if you're mega rock star, because rock stars and mega rock stars all have the same looking black band. So these bands were all the same from rock stars and Meg rock stars. Everybody else had the same band, but in red. So they knew. They knew if you were at least rock star status, but they didn't know if you were completely all inclusive as a mega rock star, if you had certain beverage limits as a rock star.
[00:11:51] Speaker A: So some of the things included with Rockstar one is this private transfer one was the priority embarkation. So this whole process getting set up, one was we got on the ship first. So all of the rocks, mega rockstar rooms are on deck 15. They basically called Deck 15. I don't know, maybe 30 of us, maybe 25 to 30 of us walked on. We were first on the ship.
[00:12:12] Speaker B: They were two elevators full.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: Yeah, we may be after this process of getting the bans and going through security, I think we sat in the kind of the lounge area for maybe 15 minutes and kind of got set up on the app and logged onto ship's wifi, had, like, some water, and then they. Our mega rockstar agent, Luke, came over. We'll have a picture of Luke here in a second. You kind of see him there in the preview. He came over and talked to us for a bit and said that he would meet us in our suite on board.
After 15 minutes, they called Deck 15. We all walked on, tapped on, walked onto the ship. I'll tell you what, that crew is dressed in some pretty outrageous outfits as you head onto the ship. Uh, we walked into deck. I think it was six or seven. I can't remember which seven. Deck seven, which we'll talk about in a second where everything is but deck seven. Um, there was no grand atrium. There's a small spiral staircase, kind of a hub, but.
[00:13:03] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Not a. Not a big atrium like you would expect on Disney.
[00:13:08] Speaker A: Yep. Led past a bar, given a glass of champagne. Then we were all funneled onto two elements. Elevators head up to deck 15.
Our rooms were ready immediately after boarding. We got into our room. We'll show you pictures of that here in a second as well. In fact, I'll just. I'll go over there. I just wanted to say one more thing on these pucks. Disney. This is what I want. I don't want the magic band. The magic band is so big. I don't need light up. I don't need vibration. Like, this was perfect, like, for me to wear, and it worked. And the other thing that worked really well was having the crew equipped with something that could scan it on the spot, so I never had to take it off.
[00:13:43] Speaker B: Like Brian said. They had, like, what looked like an iPhone that they would scan you at every point of sale. The person was carrying this, like, iPhone thing, and they had one and they would carry it around in their pocket everywhere they went.
[00:13:54] Speaker A: Yeah. So got to our room. This was our room. I'm doing it. I'm doing it again. I swear I'm going to get it right by the end of the show. This was our room. So we stayed in what was called a posh suite. So in mega Rockstar, I think there were basically four levels of suite. One was like. I don't know what it was actually called, but let's just call it the outrageous suite.
[00:14:12] Speaker B: To keep with the massive is the highest.
[00:14:14] Speaker A: The massive. The massive suite, which is like one of them on board. Then there is. I forget what the next layer down is called. Then there's us, the posh suite, and the two. The two right there. The posh and the one above it are very similar layout. Just one's bigger than the other. Our suite had this living space you can see in the bottom right hand corner. So a couch, a bar. There's a record player off there in the distance. Huge tv. Like, one of the biggest tvs I've ever seen in a stateroom room.
[00:14:42] Speaker B: And two tvs, one in the living room space, one in the bedroom space.
[00:14:46] Speaker A: There's a Nintendo switch that you can't really make out. The whole room was controlled by basically, like a little tablet. It wasn't an iPad, but it was a tablet. It would open and close the drapes. It would turn on and off the lights, set the mood with the lights if you wanted. If you're watching them, you could watch anywhere.
Yeah, you could watch anything on tv. There was tons of movies all included.
And if you're watching a movie, you could tap a button, say, put it in cinema mode, and it would, like, do some, like, cool piping and, you.
[00:15:15] Speaker B: Know, change the lighting.
[00:15:16] Speaker A: Yeah. And so, yeah, it did. It did everything in the stateroom for us. The record player, P's. You could order specific vinyl if you wanted, and they had it in stock, or it's also just a Bluetooth speaker. So I hooked my phone up to it and just played Spotify through it. The bar in the mega rockstar category is stocked. And they asked us if there was anything we wanted it stocked with. And we asked for a couple of things, and they brought us, like, there's half bottles on the bar. And when we asked for specific things, they brought us one liter bottles of liquor, which we just packed and brought home because there was no reason to open them in the. In the stateroom. Uh, so we. We brought home some nice liquor with us from the cruise.
[00:15:53] Speaker B: With mega rockstar, they will refill it every single day if you. If you need them to. With regular rock star status, they will refill it once. Um, and so you can't get necessarily extra stuff with the regular rockstar. And then with regular rooms, they don't have. I don't believe they have a bar in room. Um, but we found some. This was not something we really used because we had all included liquor, and we prefer somebody else to make our drinks for us, not to mix our own.
[00:16:23] Speaker A: But we did hear from people who like. So, for Rockstar, where you don't have unlimited drinks throughout the ship, and you're. You've got a bar tab that you're managing, too. So you have some drinks included, but up to a limit. Like, people were making drinks in the room, and if they wanted to make margaritas, they would say, okay, well, we'll bring you all the stuff to make. You need. Lime juice, salt, limes. Like, we'll bring all that stuff to you so you can mix a margarita in the room. Uh, so they'll bring in anything you want in terms of, like, a mixer. Um, the difference is, if anything depletes on our bar, they replace it in the rockstar category, if you have a margarita party and run through all of your tequila, that's it. You get.
[00:16:56] Speaker B: Well, they replace it once, I believe, and that's it.
[00:16:59] Speaker A: They do not. They do not restock your bar.
[00:17:00] Speaker B: They don't restock it at all. Okay, we have a question from Josh McHenry. Any tub in the room? No, there is no tub in the room. I don't know if other categories have tubs, but remember, this is an adults only cruise, so we're not washing any babies in a tub. So we don't really need a tub, I guess. And there are hot tubs if you want, on. Not just on the pool deck. There's hot tubs, but then there's also hot tubs on Richard's rooftop.
[00:17:26] Speaker A: Yeah. I also want to highlight. So we have this huge balcony taken from this view down the bottom left there, you can see it has, like, a kind of. Some almost, like, bar stool kind of chairs with a table, then two loungers. There's the famous virgin red hammock hanging there on the balcony to the right. There's an outdoor shower there that you can see. We were able to use that one day. They don't turn it on until they're at least 11 miles outside of land. So it's not on import. It's not on if they're cruising too close to shore. We only had one sea day, and Sam called and said, it's not working. And they, they called down to engineering and had them turn them on for the.
[00:17:59] Speaker B: They actually had to call the bridge first to find out if they were at least eleven nautical miles from shore. So then they called me back and said, okay, the plumbers have turned the shower on. What you can't see in that picture, actually, is directly where I'm standing when I took that picture. There's also a couch, an outdoor couch there. That balcony was huge because it was the entire length of both our living room and our bedroom in our suite. So.
[00:18:22] Speaker A: But it was great. It was. It was great. We sat out there, like, a couple days. Uh, sat out there, and the shower was great because we could turn it on, get, like, cooled off, and then sit in the chair and read. And then. So instead of hopping back and forth, the. The pool. Um, so this was. It was a great room. The shower was a little odd in the picture here. You can't see, but the controls are, like, kind of in the. Where the bottom left hand corner is for the window.
[00:18:45] Speaker B: Rain shower. Yeah.
[00:18:46] Speaker A: And then you had to walk all the way across the shower and get under the rain head shower. And it was. So it's just, it's a weird layout, and there's no curtain or anything to keep the water off the floor. So we ended up with, like, two towels down there to kind of keep the water in. So it was a. I would say this was a really nice room. It ended up being way too much space for us. It's like, we would not sail in this room again. We'll talk in a minute about. We'll talk in a minute about whether we.
[00:19:10] Speaker B: Don't forget we had another toilet, not just in this bathroom.
[00:19:13] Speaker A: Yes, there were. There was a small powder room with another toilet and sink. But, uh, I would not sail in this room again. It's just too much space for us. Uh, we'll talk in a minute about whether we want to stay, keep sailing mega rockstar or not. Um, as I said, our helpful rockstar agent, Luke, came and met us in the room, and our luggage was there within the first, like, five minutes. We were sitting in the room like, uh, so pretty quick. Yeah, came pretty quick. So this was our mega rockstar agent, Luke. He was from South Africa. He was fantastic. We probably saw Luke once a day. We might have seen him more often if we were in our room, but we were almost hardly ever in the room except a couple times. But Luke was great and took care of us fabulously. We'll talk about a few special things that Luke did for us. After we talked to Luke, we decided to head up to see Richard's rooftop, which we had heard so much about. It's a fabulous, entirely outdoor space on the very front of the ship. Lots of loungers, lots of what I would call. What do you call those? Day beds? Yeah, like tons of day beds. Uh, some rope kind of beds, like you'd expect. Like a rope netting kind of bed if you're catamaran.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: Yeah, they actually, some of these bed things look like. They look like trampolines, but they are. You don't jump on them, but they look like trampolines.
[00:20:28] Speaker A: Sam thought they were trampolines.
[00:20:32] Speaker B: Yeah. But anyway, they were really cool. And there. But there. But these day beds that were everywhere also had, like, these, like, terry cloth material.
I want to call it, like, a sheet on top of them, which is great, because you know how when you're on those daybeds and you, like, are sweating and you kind of stick to them? Well, this prevented that, so that was really nice. Richard's rooftop is a space that is only available to suite guests. So only available to rock stars and mega rock stars, not available to the rest. You have to tap your band in to get. To get in. Um, as Brian said, it's on, um, Deck 16. So it was one level up from us on the front of the ship, and we were in front of the ship. So super easy access for anyone who's sailing megarock star. And then. But you could access the regular deck space. This was sort of one level above the pool deck because the pool deck's actually on 15. So similar to a Disney ship where you've got, like, deck eleven and twelve, and where eleven is the pool deck and twelve is sort of that balcony that goes around and you can look down on the pool deck. That's what that kind of setup was between deck 15 and 16 on the valiant. Yeah.
[00:21:38] Speaker A: Let's. Let's talk a minute about. Let's. Let's talk a minute about the decks. I'm going to move on to this, uh, this picture of us, uh, with the octopuses are a big thing, octopi, on this cruise. We'll tell you why in a minute. Um, so this was a sculpture. They had the main atrium, but as starting at the top, as Sam said, there's, deck 16 was where Richard's rooftop was. It was an overlooked deck. Uh, there was actually a running track, a full, independent running track. You didn't have to run through anything. It was meant for running and walking. And that's it. That's elevated up above deck 16 toward the aft. We didn't actually get a chance to go running on it because we had some rain showers intermittently, and it was a little too hot for us to. To go running on. But I think the next time we go on virgin, or I guess if we go back on virgin, that looks like a great place to go for a run in the morning, especially at sea. Uh, you move down. You had the sort of the pool area. There were two. There was a major main pool, and then there was another pool called the wellness pool. Um, the main pool had, like, shallow areas and a deep area and lots of people just kind of, like. There were loungers, right I on the pool deck. So you could just sit on the deck or lounge on the deck, be in the water, have your drink. There were no restrictions on having drinks in the water. There was a pool bar by the main pool. You walk through a little area. There was a wellness pool that has some, like, was supposed to be kind of connected to the gym and be a quieter pool, relaxation pool. They had some outdoor exercise equipment by the pool. I think a lot of people use it just as, like an auxiliary hangout pool. I think there were some hot tubs over there as well, another bar. And then on either side of that pool were indoor spaces. One side was the cardio theater kind of space for all the cardio equipment, the cycling, the spin classes. On the other side was all the weightlifting equipment inside. So, you know, all of the strength training kind of stuff.
We wandered through both. Lots of equipment, lots of space, towels, water lockers to lock your things up in. If you kept going backwards, you would hit what was called the galley. The galley is the equivalent of a buffet, but it's not buffet style. It's made to order stations. So they had sushi tacos, burgers, an all day diner. They had, like, a bagel place, a coffee place. I'm probably forgetting something, but just tons of options of food. But it was all walk up and order. Now, the menus were not expansive, like, each place would have kind of, like two main items and a specialty item you could get for the day. Most of them serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with some exceptions, like the. I don't think the taco place did have breakfast. So they all serve kind of breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
[00:24:16] Speaker B: Some of them weren't open for dinner. They rotate with the top for dinner.
[00:24:20] Speaker A: Taco place wasn't. Yeah, there was some grab and go stations where they'd have salads and sandwiches and some desserts that were just available all day. You could just walk up and grab one and leave.
Nothing in the galley is extra. In fact, all of the food on board, with some exceptions around some, like, upcharge items, like if you want to have caviar, champagne, or. We'll talk about, in specialty dining, a couple of those items. All of it's included. You don't have to tap anything. You just walk up, order, leave with your food.
I'd say the galley. We'll talk more in depth about food in a second. But the galley was kind of a nice space. And the open 24. Open 24 hours, which was very unique to Disney, so if you wanted a late night, you could get one.
[00:25:00] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's really, the stuff that's available 24 hours is more of your, like, burger or, like, eggs variety. Right. So then they have, for the breakfast, I thought was a little bit strange because they have a lot of items already pre made, but then you can also order, like, made to order eggs, but you still have to sort of wait in the same line before you get to the ordering. So it's not. I don't love the setup of the galley, but that is essentially, the galley is the only main dining slash buffet on board. And it's not really a buffet, and it's not really main dining. It's. It's more like a quick serve type of environment. But some of the foods are a little bit more, um, upscale, and some of the foods are just more kind of standard.
[00:25:44] Speaker A: Yep. With some exception. So, like, with some exception, like, the nail salon was up on deck 15. I think it was no deck. Deck 15.
[00:25:52] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:25:53] Speaker A: Um, with some exception, everything on the ship that you want to go to is basically on decks five, six, or seven. And so. So if you're on deck 15 and you're not going to the pool, you're basically headed down to deck seven. There's a stairwell that connects seven with six. There is no. There were some, like, the spiral staircase connects seven and six. Regular cruise stairwells connect six with five. Five to start at the lowest deck five was where sailor services was where the spa was, where the thermal suite was, which is the equivalent of, like, a rainforest room on Disney. Five was where razzle dazzle was, which is where we had breakfast on the last day. And we will be talking about food here in a second.
There were a couple other restaurants on five, I believe. I think that's where the wakes. The wake was on five, but you entered it on six. And so. Yeah, so there was that up on deck six. I would call deck six primarily the shopping deck. Well, there's lots of shopping. That's also where the casino was, where the red room was, which is kind of like their main theater.
Yep. It was also where the manor.
[00:27:01] Speaker B: The manor, which is the other theater space. Yeah.
[00:27:03] Speaker A: Yep. The manor.
[00:27:04] Speaker B: There's two main theater spaces on board, as Brian mentioned. The manor. The red room. And then. Yeah, that's. And then decks seven.
[00:27:13] Speaker A: And then. And then. Well, hold on. Tons of shopping. Tons of shopping. This is where the tattoo parlor is. It's where the barber shop is. It's where the very high end shopping is. It's also where like the sundry store is and the Virgin voyages store is. And then once you get past that, there's entrances to two restaurants on deck six. I am never going to remember which restaurants were where.
And then when you go up to deck seven now you're into primarily bars. So lots of bars and restaurants and smaller eateries.
Top is the record shop.
[00:27:50] Speaker B: It's kind of like. And it's kind of the main hub. So deck six and seven are kind of the main hub of the ship, I would say. And so, yeah, as Brian said, the other decks are all just like staterooms. So between deck seven and deck 15 is just all staterooms or some staterooms on 15, as we mentioned we were. And there are some staterooms, I believe, on deck five. But decks eight through 14 are all state rooms.
[00:28:16] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:28:17] Speaker B: So, yeah, so this.
[00:28:18] Speaker A: This photo is from deck seven, right by the spiral staircase.
[00:28:22] Speaker B: Yeah, this is.
[00:28:24] Speaker A: This is the eight. The quote unquote atrium that they have on board.
[00:28:28] Speaker B: I want to answer about the tattoo shop. No, we did not get a tattoo, Bryant. Neither Brian nor I have any tattoos. And that is actually a rule of mine that we.
[00:28:38] Speaker A: But it was very. It was very pop. It was very popular. There was a line the first day for the consultation to sign up. Yeah, it was always. It always seemed like there was people in there. So it's. It's a very popular space. Maybe one day, but not. Not this cruise.
[00:28:52] Speaker B: Never.
[00:28:52] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So one thing I wanted to sort of. So that's the ship layout. I wanted to pause for 1 second to say a couple of things, is, I think one of the opportunities that Sam and I both identified, I think Sam would call it signage. And I would just call it layout. We were told by a rockstar agent, like, the whole concept of the layout of the ship is you're going to get lost, and that's fine. You'll discover some new space, meet some new people, have a new drink. Right? Like. And I was sort of like, that's great, except, like, I need to know how to get.
And it was. It was very confusing. It was very confusing. And the signage was not always the greatest. So that was how.
[00:29:30] Speaker B: Yeah, you have to walk through certain bars to get, like, to the very back of the ship. For example, there's, like, this deck called the dock on the very back of the ship that has some, you know, things that might have some events that happened there. And so I was trying to get there, and then I'm like, oh, I have to, like, walk through this bar that's on, like, the port side of the ship, but then I have to cross over to the starboard side of the ship to walk through this other bar in order to get there, because you can't walk straight through. So the things like that, that are just kind of confusing and no good. Like, mapping or, uh. I mean, there are signs at the elevators as to what's on the level and. And with little arrows, but they're really small, and there aren't signs like, it, um. Like on Disney ships, where you're walking down the hallway and you see a sign above that tells you, like, what you're walking towards. So that was, um. Yeah, so that was one of the things that we found to be, I would say a negative, just being able to sort of find your way. And I will say, even though I know where some things are on this ship, as Brian said, I couldn't tell you at this point which restaurants were on which level, especially because we only got a chance to go to each of them once.
[00:30:37] Speaker A: Yep. So, one other thing I just wanted to say. Josh. Josh Henry asked, did you find the size of the main pool sufficient? We'll have a photo here in a second from Scarlet Knight that shows the main pool. There are some things we did not get a chance to experience on this ship. One of them was actually the two.
[00:30:52] Speaker B: Go in the pool.
[00:30:53] Speaker A: It was, um. It started raining, I think, the first day. It was a bit on and off rain on our sea day, and we also had some spa appointments and the thermal spa and some things. Some, like, activities we wanted to do. The pool was busy all the time, so don't. Like. No one seemed to be deterred from going to the pool. We just did not get a chance to experience it. I think if we had been on a longer cruise with more sea days, we would have found our way out to the pool, but we didn't get to experience it this time.
[00:31:19] Speaker B: And on port days. On port days, the pool, I would say the pool looked like a lovely place to hang out on port days. The pool, to me, seemed kind of crowded on those on the sea days or, like, on embarkation day and our one c day. But we got off and spent a lot of time in port at Key west, and then we spent part of the day at Bimini, at the beach club. And so we did not get to really spend time at the pool on those. Even on those port days, which would have been the more ideal time, I think, to enjoy the pool, because the pool is. Is. I don't think the pool was that small, though, I will say. I thought it was quite big. The main pool, I thought, was quite big. But there's a lot of people who are hanging out at the pool, as well, so, yeah, crowded. Not kids soup. Maybe a little adult soup.
[00:31:59] Speaker A: Yep. All right, I want to shift gears, Sam, because we got a ton of food to talk about, but before we get to food, I want to talk about some of the unique onboard activities we got to experience, because virgin was. Is, like, geared toward adults, so they have some things that we haven't seen on board before. Uh, one of the things, I put up a picture here, sam did a. A puzzle.
[00:32:16] Speaker B: Speed puzzle challenge.
[00:32:18] Speaker A: Puzzle. I helped her, but it was a speed puzzle challenge. Had an hour to put it together, and the fastest team, which, on our session was 20, took him 20 minutes.
We got together. Puzzle.
[00:32:28] Speaker B: Okay. We're respectful.
[00:32:30] Speaker A: The prizes for all of these things, by the way, were free drinks, which we didn't need because all of our drinks were included. So I'm not sad that we didn't win some of this stuff, but. So we did this speed puzzle challenge. We did a trivia event where we showed I up, and they do multi round trivia. And we showed up, and we had unknown, unbeknownst to us, missed round one. We were in the middle of round two and doing really good, and we heard the couple next to us. I asked them and was there earlier around. They said yes, and we just joined forces because we knew some of the answers that they didn't, and they knew some of the answers that we didn't, and we ended up losing by. In a tiebreaker. A tiebreaker round. Yeah. You know, number. It was like the number of strings in a grand piano. And we were woefully low on our guests, but. But we had a great time. We did some trivia. There were always, like, little kind of events going on. There was some, like, sip and paint and trivia's galore. They had a bar that had board games in it where you could just go and grab a board game and play with friends.
It was a very relaxed atmosphere, kind of, you know, folks doing stuff on board, but nothing felt like it was, like, in your face. And if you weren't doing it, you know, you're missing out.
[00:33:32] Speaker B: There were two nights where they did karaoke and actually the bar that we're sitting in. Right. In a picture. Yeah. So they had a ton of events going on. It was, of course, different stuff than what you see on Disney. And there were some things you had to sign up for. For example, the sip and paint was an extra charge. There was a charcuterie making class. There was a coffee class. Those were extra charges, but there was plenty to do that was included. In fact, I. I did grab just from one of our days. I did grab the day at a glance. Now they have all this stuff in the app, but they also printed navigator.
[00:34:07] Speaker A: My friends, a printed navigator for all.
[00:34:08] Speaker B: Of you, like, that had sitting out in certain places. So I happened to grab, you know, one of them. But, like, you know, there's some stuff here that is extra cost. It shows you if it's an extra cost, and then there's a. But there's a ton of stuff. There's like, you know, in the evening, they might have roaming magic with the charmer. They would have, you know, glam station motivation, where you go and get yourself glammed up with sparkles and stuff. So, I mean, tons of stuff going on all around the ship.
[00:34:36] Speaker A: And sam, let me. I want to focus this in on a couple of activities that we did, not the ones we didn't do. So. So let me, let me. But let me get us there. So I'm going to start off with.
We did a grog walk. We had heard a ton about this as sort of as a pub crawl to do on board. There is an extra fee. It was $50 a person. I believe you have to sign up for it. It's very popular. It does sell out. We wanted to do it the first night so we could, like, meet some new people, and so we did the grog walk. What you see here is the uniqueness of it is it starts at 1 bar and it goes to four different bars throughout the ship.
And what they do is at each bar, they give you a mission. And so these cards here on the left that are in our hands, we're supposed to keep face down until we turn them over. And then it'll be something like, find someone who has the same color eyes from you. Find someone who grew up in the same hometown as you find, you know, like that sort of thing. And you have to like, go find a stranger who meets the qualifications.
[00:35:30] Speaker B: Within the grog walk.
[00:35:32] Speaker A: Within the grog walk, you take them up to one of the happenings cast. That's their events cast is happening. They're called happenings cast. They're fantastic, by the way. We should talk about the crew in 1 second. But they, they are fantastic. You take them up to one of the happenings casts and you sort of show that you met the challenge and she gives you currency, and then you take the currency to another happenings cast who's guarding the drinks. You give her the currency and she gives you your, your, your drink.
[00:35:56] Speaker B: So it's like a mini, it's like a people scavenger hunt within a group of about, I don't know, 40 people or something.
[00:36:04] Speaker A: And our version of the Grog walks, it went to four different bars. At the last bar, they announced that they were going to end at the PJ party. So they have a pajama party one night on board, and Sam brought her PJ's. And I was not feeling like I wanted to be in my PJ's. I was not PJ ready. And so Sam went back at the third bar and went to the fourth bar where the PJ party was. And you can kind of see there's like the PJ party sign and rules. And Sam got a fun picture there. So, Sam, you wanna talk a little bit about the PJ party?
[00:36:32] Speaker B: Yeah. So the PJ, well, the PJ party, because I was part of the grog walk, we got handed my last. Had to hand my mask. We had a mask that sort of signified that we are with the grog walk the whole time. Handed in my mask, I was handed a Long island iced tea. So that was the last drink of the night for the grog walk. And what it was was, it wasn't just people from the grog walk. This was the PJ party was open to everyone on the ship. And so tons of people wearing pajamas, mostly wearing tame pajamas, a few wearing maybe a little bit more revealing pajamas, but nothing really too crazy. And it was just. It was a party. There was dancing, there were bars, there was music, but there were a lot of people just kind of sitting around lounging. It was. I didn't stay very long. Cause I think Brian's introverted nature was tested, uh, from the grog walk because there was a lot of sort of forced interaction. When you got to each bar, you did this little scavenger hunt task. And so I think he was like, I need to get away from. I've had my fill of people. I need to get back to the room and veg. And so I went, you know, by myself. But I did have a couple of actual cruise friends that I, we had met, actually, on the wish, so shout out to Shay and Doug. I don't know if they're listening or watching, but fantastic people that I had met previously. In fact, when we got on board, I saw them was like, I know you from Disney Cruise line. What is another interesting thing to point out is a ton of cruisers are Disney cruise line cruisers, I would say, and a ton of cruisers their first time on virgin, but they've sailed on other cruise lines like royal or celebrity. So just a interesting, interesting thing to note. But, yeah, BJ party was fun. I didn't stay long, though.
[00:38:12] Speaker A: Another fun activity we did was they actually had an afternoon tea at sea in one of the bars called sip. Uh, and I know that Disney has, like, the olafs tea and all that sort of stuff, but this was $19 a person. Not like several hundred dollars for your kid and a $100 for the adults. This was $20 per person. Uh, we had a nice little tea set up here with, uh, you know, kind of a standard three tray tea tray. Uh, you know, the, the. I thought the food was, uh, the food offered at tea was good for $20, you know, tea and some tea sandwiches. It was a nice little respite during the afternoon. We got to sit there and have a leisurely tea, uh, and read a book. I'd say one thing universally on this ship is like, slow down, relax. Like, no one needs to be up at eight. No one needs to be off the ship at Bimini at 830. Like, get off the ship at ten. Heck, get off at noon. Like, our rockstar agent was shocked that we weren't in our room at like 10:00 in the morning, that we were, like, already at breakfast and off the ship. So, like, they really kind of preach, like, a leisurely life. Like, you know, take a nap in the afternoon and gear up for the evenings. So tea was. Tea was lovely. I thought it was a great experience. And for $20, like, I mean, yeah, I thought it was. I thought it was perfect.
[00:39:22] Speaker B: Yeah. They had an option with champagne that was like 35 or $40, I think. But we opted, we had. We had 35, we had plenty to drink on this cruise. We didn't need a glass of champagne.
[00:39:35] Speaker A: With tea, and we could have gotten a glass of champagne for free just by going up to the bar and getting a glass of champagne and bringing it back to the table. So we didn't want to pay the $35. So our free drinks were, like, up to $25 a drink. If we ordered a drink that was over $25, which we never did, they would have charged us the full amount of the drink, not the difference. Uh, and so you kind of have to, like, make sure that you're always kind of paying under $25 a drink. We also got two bottles of wine, up to $90 a day. Uh, so at dinner, you could have ordered, you know, uh, two bottles of wine. I think, uh, we'll talk about this later. But I think mega Rockstar is, like, great if you're with a group of people, because you can share your benefits. Like, you can order a round of drinks. You can order bottles of wine for the table. Like, they're not policing it like royal does. In fact, they encourage you to kind of share the benefits a bit.
[00:40:24] Speaker B: So, yeah, you just have to only order two drinks at a time. That's how it works. So you can, like, I could have ordered two drinks at one time and Brian could order two drinks at the same time, and that would have been within our benefits. And then five minutes later, we could order each two more drinks. So that's how you order rounds from.
[00:40:41] Speaker A: I love this comment from Robin. They are voyaging, not cruising. I think I. It was totally a different vibe on board, and I was. I was there for it most the time. Like, in fact, I don't think we got a chance to embrace it as much as I would have liked because it was such a short cruise. All right. With that, we got to head into, like, the biggest differentiating activity on virgin voyages. So this is pirate night on steroids, is what? This is Scarlet night. And there is a whole story behind it. It's not just like, just dress in red. There's a whole story about a sailor who meets a octopus goddess and she wants to show him her world, and she does. And they go to, deep down, every.
[00:41:21] Speaker B: Every night, he comes down into the sea and they go too deep on one occasion, and he's not going to make it. So she sends his soul up into the sky and his soul becomes a red moon. And so this is the myth of Scarlet knight. It's about, it's a love story, of course, a tragic love story, because he.
[00:41:41] Speaker A: No, no, Tracy, not, or this is not an evil.
[00:41:43] Speaker B: This is not Ursula.
Oh, yeah. Brian, Brian. Ct is saying the shoes should have made the pants.
[00:41:51] Speaker A: So we had, we had, Sam had her red dress, and she had some red adidas sneakers. I had my red Tommy Bahamas shirt and some white pants and some red puma sneakers. So we understood the assignment. Everyone is supposed to be wearing red, I should say, on dress. By the way, virgin is super casual. I wore shorts to dinner every night. No one cared.
[00:42:12] Speaker B: This night, I think.
[00:42:13] Speaker A: Yeah, this night. Yeah, no one cared. In fact, like, our rockstar agent was like, where? Whatever you want, who cares, you know?
[00:42:18] Speaker B: So, so I will say, though, if you sail on virgin, bring a red outfit for scarlet night. Because if you are not wearing red, you will actually kind of stick out because, like, 95 plus percent of the people are wearing something red. That doesn't mean you have to wear an entire reduced outfit.
[00:42:37] Speaker A: Yeah. So the, the mission here is dress up in red. The night starts around, I think it was 09:00 because we had dinner. Yeah, I think it was around 09:00 and then there's just like, parties kind of going on all over the show, all the bars, everything. There's a big kickoff in the quote unquote atrium again, where they have some dancing and they tell the story and there's a little show. But after that, once you break off.
[00:42:59] Speaker B: There'S, there's a wedding that happens. It's not a real wedding, but it's like this really funny thing that they do that's sort of a, that's this, like, fake wedding. They, like, pull people out of the crowd, and then this, they pull somebody else who's now the best man. And this person is like somebody's college friend. And it's really, it's just this fun, kooky thing that they do in sort of, as Brian called it, they're sort of atrium from there.
[00:43:21] Speaker A: There's, there's parties throughout the ship. There's entertainment going on throughout the ship. Now, I want to highlight that. One of the benefits of having our rockstar agent was he got us an invitation to this Scarlet Knight tentacle tour. The ticket for which is up there in the right hand corner. Uh, you don't have to be sailing rockstar. Get one of these. If you make friends with the happenings cast, they can kind of like, get you little invites to secret things. But the tentacle tour was fantastic because what it did was enable us. We had a guided scarlet night, so we had a happenings cast member who kind of got us a good spot to watch the show in the atrium. It was a tour of, like, I think, twelve people.
And so got us a nice spot in the atrium to see the show. And then after the show was like, all right, let's move. She was basically like, I'm your mom for the night. I make sure you get from place to place and that you have. You have enough drinks to keep you sad.
But when mom moves, you move with mom or you get left behind, and she's. And sometimes mom may leave, but mom will come back. All right, so. So we, like, we were in the atrium, and then we booked it to the back of the ship. And all of a sudden we had a. She set us at this round couch that had. We're sitting there, like, right in front of this bar, and all of a sudden, here come the acrobats from the acrobat show doing a little performance right in front of our couch. And other people could come out and watch, but they didn't have prime viewing right up with the acrobats. And then after that, they wandered off and someone came out and did the story of Scarlet night for us and with, you know, some pictures and things. And so we heard that, and we booked it to the other side of the ship. And we got split off into little groups and taken into this area that you have to get through, through backstage cast areas. They have an entertainment bar at the very front of the ship that you cannot access unless you're with a crew member and you get invited on one of these little tours. So we got up there and we had another story of Skyrimite, only Scarlet night. Only this was about how it was not really the real story. The real story was a pirate. Right? And so.
[00:45:12] Speaker B: You're giving too many spoilers, Brian.
[00:45:14] Speaker A: Well, so we had a drink there, and we heard the alternative story of Scarlet Knight. And then we left and we went over and we were kind of put in front of the line for the theater and got to see the little show that the. They do with the octopus. We get to hear the octopus goddesses version of Scarlet Night. So we heard the sailor's version, the pirates version, the octopus's version. And then we go upstairs, and scarlet night culminates in. In like, a deck party like you wouldn't believe. So this is the main pool with all the happenings, cast kind of around dancing. You see people on either side. I don't have a photo of this, but once the party really gets going, they just tell everyone to get in the, like, get in the pool. All these people who are dressed just get in the pool and start splashing around and partying. And there's a big dj up there, and it goes until midnight.
You can definitely hear it, the party, from your room, even if you're not participating on deck 15. But at midnight, it's done. And they. They take the party inside to another venue for, like, an after party kind of vibe. So not really bother us all that much.
[00:46:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:17] Speaker B: Now, to be clear with, when they say people get in the pool, people are getting in the shallow part of the pool. So people are getting in water up to, like, maybe their knees. So I was. I'll tell you, when I. When people told us about this, I was envisioning people, like, dunking their entire bodies into the pool. But that's not what it looks like. It's more people. And we put some of this stuff on our instagram, but it's people, like, they're wading in the water and kind of splashing around and dancing more than anything. So it's not as wild as it maybe, I think sounded to me. I'm not saying it's not wild.
It is a lot of fun, and there's a ton of dancing, and people really just enjoying themselves. Everybody's been drinking all night by then, of course. But this is happening at, I think about 1045 at night when they're doing this thing. And like Brian said, it ends at midnight, and it goes into, like, a club party space for the after hours dancing. But everything is open. Like, not everything. Bars are open late on this ship. This is not a ship that shuts down at 11:00 p.m. like, on Disney. This is going to probably, like, I don't know. Probably. Some of the bars are 02:00 a.m. yes.
[00:47:24] Speaker A: I got to put this because I think. I think you missed it. There are definitely people who get in the pool. There were people in swimsuits who got in the pool for what we saw.
[00:47:34] Speaker B: Though, was mostly people waiting in the pool and dancing. Not fully in the pool.
[00:47:39] Speaker A: Okay. I saw some people get in the pool, but fine. So scarlet night was a great time. The last activity I want to highlight that we got to do was another special invite that our rockstar agent got us. I have zero pictures of it because it was back in that front set. Front entertainment crew bar, and it was a special small performance with the envoy magician slash mentalists that they had that was unbelievable. But when we walked in, they made us put our phones in sealed pouches so that we couldn't get to them for the performance. And so there are zero pictures of this thing. They were very secretive about it. Again, you don't have to be selling rockstar to get this kind of thing. You just have to make friends with the happenings cast and you may or may not get an invite. Like, I think if you ask for one, they're not going to give you one. I think if they like you and they think you're fun, they'll, they'll give you an invite. This thing they ran multiple times, so I think they ran it, like kind of a couple times across the crew. So it wasn't like a one and done kind of experience. So I think if you were showing up consistently to events and having a good time, you probably would get some kind of invite. So we know that people trust Disney for their vacations, and it can sometimes be a little nerve wracking to think about trying something new. Right, Sam?
[00:48:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Whether you're considering branching out to a new cruise line, an all inclusive resort, or exploring Europe, the team at my path unwinding travel has the expertise and connections across the globe to plan almost any vacation. They can even help with the universal parks. They've helped us plan our vacations beyond Disney, including royal Caribbean Princess cruise line, and virgin voyages.
[00:49:03] Speaker A: Their team of travel professionals all understand the needs of a Disney traveler can help you decide if another option is right for you, and then guide you through every step of your new vacation experience. Whether you are dreaming of a fun getaway to an all inclusive resort, a river cruise in Europe, or an adventure in Costa Rica, the folks at Mypath unwinding are ready to help. Even if you have already booked, reach out for a complimentary consultation to make your next vacation even more amazing.
[00:49:25] Speaker B: If you want to learn more and take advantage of the amazing team at mypath unwinding travel, then head over to mypathunwinding.com dclduo or email dclduoypathunwinding.com to let them know we sent you their way. Thanks. My path unwinding for sponsoring today's show. Now back to the episode.
[00:49:45] Speaker A: With that, we have to transition to food. We are running way low on time. All right. And there's a ton of food to.
[00:49:51] Speaker B: Cover and we haven't even talked about the happening staff, which are, yeah, we should. Amazing.
[00:49:55] Speaker A: It's just been like, they were really, really good. And so what virgin prides itself on, so I would say the service, I don't know what Sam thinks. I thought it was as good as Disney cruise line. Like, I'm going to be perfectly honest with you. And I thought the happening staff was great. And what, what they pride themselves on, on virgin is that the crew can kind of be themselves. Like, some of the crew had uniforms, but these were pretty relaxed uniforms. And then the happening staff, you know, they look like straight out of a Michael Jackson video half the time. I mean, it was about letting their freak flag fly, if that's what they want to do. And so they were, I mean, they all had nicknames. So, like, what was Faith the foodie?
[00:50:28] Speaker B: We.
[00:50:28] Speaker A: Faith the foodie.
[00:50:30] Speaker B: Lex.
[00:50:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Who turns into faith the booty?
[00:50:33] Speaker B: Faith the booty at night. So, yeah, no. Shout out to Faith, Dorissa and Lex. Those are, I think, our three favorites. We spend the most time with them. The very events that we went to. All of them are amazing dancers. I know that sounds weird, but I think all of them, like, their primary performance, you know, quality is they're all amazing dancers. And there's all these, like, sort of dance routines that they do, particularly for Scarlet night, but even for other times as well. But they're all like these amazing, like, like you see on Disney Cruise line with entertainment staff, all these, like, amazing, like, really outgoing personalities and they're really great at getting people sort of involved and into the activities and into the story and so, yeah, really, really fun. All of them, I think, were amazing. Those are just the three that we probably spent the most time with.
[00:51:23] Speaker A: Yep. All right, so I'm going to try and back us up here and let's talk about food. I had some food inter dispersed here. Uh, we're going to cover this quickly and then we'll give in our rapid fire round our, like, overall impressions around food.
[00:51:35] Speaker B: There's a Josh's question. Is it obvious who the crew members are with the relaxed uniforms of. Yes, they do have name tags, but also their clothing is a little bit more distinctive.
[00:51:47] Speaker A: Yeah, they will not look like they're in a uniform. I mean, they look like they're in virgin voyages wear, but they're not wearing the same uniform as everybody else. So, yeah. All right, let's talk about food. So we experienced a lot of the food on board and we had some clear favorites. I'm going to start off with one that we really liked. So on the day we boarded, we weren't feeling like we needed a big lunch because we kind of. We had a breakfast included our hotel. And as Sam said, we boarded late, so our breakfast was kind of later in the morning. We almost had, like, a brunch, but we got on board, we wanted to get a snack or something to eat, and our rockstar agent said, you should head down to the dock house. They've got some great little bites, and, oh, boy, did they.
[00:52:26] Speaker B: They call it the mezzakar is all mediterranean. So this is like a steak, kind of souvlaki type dish. Then we got a polenta dish and a shrimp dish.
[00:52:38] Speaker A: Polenta had feta cheese baked into it. It was delicious.
[00:52:42] Speaker B: All of these dishes were amazing. One thing I would also note, in general, this ship is super vegetarian friendly if you are vegan, and vegan if you are not. The. Obviously, these dishes were not. But every place we went had, like, a ton of vegetarian options. And I know we'll talk about pink agave in a little bit, which is the mexican restaurant. But our. Our favorite dishes at pink agave were the vegetarian appetizers. So I would say, like, this was probably. These three appetizers were probably three of our favorite things. We ate, like, the whole cruise, and they were on.
[00:53:15] Speaker A: And again, 100% included. Like, no charge for this, right? So this isn't like going to the bar on the Disney cruise line, and you want to order wings and you have to pay. In fact, they had another bar that served wings.
[00:53:26] Speaker B: Soft pretzels.
[00:53:28] Speaker A: Wings, hot dogs, soft pretzels, and popcorn. All included, like, zero charge for that stuff. Right.
[00:53:34] Speaker B: That was kind of that pub that you saw us sitting in or me sitting in holding that puzzle.
[00:53:39] Speaker A: Yeah. And they also had in the app, they had stuff that you could order anywhere on the ship and have it brought to you. And it was. It was not, like, the most expensive menu I've ever seen, but it wasn't a small menu. And that stuff all included, uh, the only complaint we heard about that stuff was that typically took around 40 minutes to come. Right. And so that was a little longer than people wanted. But, um, still, it's all included dinners. So one unique thing about virgin is you have to reserve your dinners. It's. There is no main diethouse dining room. What they've done is they've made a bunch of little restaurants, and that is main dining. And so you have to reserve dinners in those restaurants if that's where you want to eat. If you don't want to eat in one of the restaurants, you can always go to the galley. You can always go to dockside, the pizza place, which was very good. We'll talk about that. But so you can always go to one of these places. But the restaurants you have to make reservations at, because we were sailing mega rockstar, we were able to make reservations in advance of getting on.
If youre sailing, I think its rockstar. And below, maybe rockstar gets advanced. But anyway, you make the reservations when you get on the ship, and they can fill quickly. Some of the restaurants are more popular than others. Our first night dinner was at Pink agave, which is a mexican restaurant on board. I know. Gasp. A sit down mexican food place on board, I guess. Well have one of those in the fleet soon enough on Disney.
And the way it works is you, you can order anything you want on the menu as much as you want. In fact, we ordered some appetizers and ate it. And the guy, the guy would come by and be like, more appetizers? And we're like, no, we're good. And he'd bring the mains. More mains? Or like, no, we're good. I mean, if we ordered, like, a main to share, they'd be like, what? Why don't you get something else? Just order something. No, we're good.
[00:55:18] Speaker B: There was one upcharge item, I think, on this entire menu. So outside alcohol, of course, is additional if you're not selling mega rockstar or if you don't have a bar tab, um, based on status or rock star status. Um, but basically, the only upcharge item, I think, on this menu, there was a fish, um, main that had, like, three that had, like, scallops and halibut and something else in it. And so that was one upcharge item. We didn't order that. We ordered some other stuff. This is, um, a shrimp dish. So these are, these are our cocktails. These are, these are appetizers, actually.
[00:55:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:55:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:55:52] Speaker A: And I want to point out for the people who are vegetarian in the upper right hand corner corner there, that's guacamole and chips. Entirely vegetarian. The corn, which was a massive hit. Like, our rockstar agent said, order the corn. We did. Great hit. There's potatoes up there. They do have chorizo in them. So not vegetarian friendly. Uh, but these, these two dishes right here, vegetarian friendly and fantastic.
[00:56:14] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:56:14] Speaker A: Um, we ordered this shrimp dish here that you can see. And then the other dish here is a chicken tamale that I thought was good. I think Sam thought it was okay.
[00:56:22] Speaker B: I think the shrimp was the weakest dish of all of these. I would say, like, the corn the corn was the star. The potatoes were maybe number two, and the guacamole was number three.
[00:56:31] Speaker A: But, yeah, I thought the guacamole was the weakest because it was just not very seasoned.
[00:56:37] Speaker B: No, there were no chips in queso, Tracy. These are like. It's. This is, like, what I'm going to call this fancy Mexican. Okay, so this is not, like, your standard Mexican. You can get more closer to standard mexican fare in the galley, but this is your. This is the mexican option on board, Evan.
[00:56:52] Speaker A: Yeah. And so then for mains, we had this steak that turned out to. We've heard it's one of the best steaks on the ship. We did not get a particularly good cut of that steak. It was very fatty. It's glistening because there's basically. It's covered in, like, melted cheese. It just was not our favorite dish. I actually, Sam, didn't love it, but I love this pork dish in the bottom left hand corner here. I thought it was super good as braised pork, and the sauce was really flavorful.
[00:57:17] Speaker B: And then will say. I will say I did not love. I loved the appetizers. I did not love the mains or the desserts at this restaurant.
[00:57:25] Speaker A: Yeah. But all that said, it was at least Disney main dining quality food. I will say that. And some of it, I think, was way better than anything I've had in Disney. Maintaining.
[00:57:35] Speaker B: Other than the steak. The steak was.
[00:57:37] Speaker A: I think the steak was probably on par with some of the steak I've had on Disney cruise line. That's sometimes good and sometimes not good. It just depends on the cut and how it's cooked and all that stuff. The desserts, we had these chocolate tacos, which are basically. Basically like chocolate cookies with a chocolate mousse in the middle or a colder mousse. And then we had this, like, mexican bread pudding, raisin bread pudding. Uh, but both were good. Uh, the bread pudding, I thought, was the best, but the tacos were. Were also good. As a chocolate dessert goes, I thought.
[00:58:06] Speaker B: The bread pudding was. Was good. I thought I didn't like the chocolate tacos, but I'm just not a big chocolate, chocolate person.
[00:58:12] Speaker A: Yep. All right, next up is the wake, which by far was the star of the show and is easily on par with anything I've eaten in Palo. On Disney Cruise line. They do not have a restaurant that is equivalent to a remy or an enchanted word. I'm just gonna. They have one.
[00:58:27] Speaker B: They have kitchen that's trying to.
[00:58:29] Speaker A: We didn't get to eat there, and we've heard super mixed reviews about test kitchen, um, from people who ate there on our cruise, from people who. So, like, I'm. I don't think it's going to be Remy quality. This was easily palo quality. I might even say it edged it out. So we're going to talk a little bit about this one. I would definitely, if I was on a seven night cruise, eat here twice. So the wake is a steakhouse on board.
Making a funny face at this. Like, we love this Parker house roll bread.
So good. So good. That was the first thing they brought to the table for appetizers. Sam had this clam chowder that came out, like, the bowl on the left, and then they poured the bowl in the middle, the wool in the middle, and then they pour the chowder over top of it. I had a taste of it. She loved it.
[00:59:16] Speaker B: It was great.
[00:59:17] Speaker A: The far left hand side there is a wedge salad that I would probably was. It was okay. It was not the. It was not great, in my opinion. I probably wouldn't get that again. I'd probably get a different starter. I'd probably, frankly, get the clam chowder. I thought that was fantastic. We did order two upcharge items. So this is a small seafood platter that they had. And when I saw it and saw dollar 45, I was like, oh, this is going to be like two of each thing. So it's came with clams, steamed clams and mussels.
Half of a lobster tail and some lobster claws, shrimp. Oysters and crab claws. And then in the middle there, there's actually some, like, pickled mussels and some sauces for the oysters and other seafood. This picture doesn't do it justice in terms of its size. There were, like, eight oysters, eight mussels, eight clams, a ton of shrimp. It was mass for $45. Sign me up. It was.
[01:00:15] Speaker B: And there was a bigger one they had that came with alaskan king crab legs. And Brian wanted to order that one. And I was like, we. I don't think we need that. The king crab legs also. And we were so glad we ordered this one because it was massive. And that one would have been bigger. It was more expensive, of course, but, yeah, this one was, I believe, like $45. Yes. And, Matthew, this could have been a mistake on its own.
[01:00:37] Speaker A: This was the mistake, because now if I go back, I know one night I'm ordering some, like, appetizers and, you know, a main and a dessert, and the next night I'm going to order this and. And I mean, and dessert. So, um, this was fine. I cannot under, like, oversell this enough. I don't think, like, it was delicious. Uh, and I would definitely get it again, was worth every dollar of the $45 upcharge. What we also paid for as an upcharge was the tomahawk steak. So this thing was a 36 ounce steak with the bone like that?
[01:01:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:01:10] Speaker A: Uh, it came out. It was massive. Um, we shared it. It was perfect to share. In fact, we didn't even finish it. We had these sides that you can see here. The asparagus. Sam didn't love the sauce on the asparagus, but the asparagus, these french fries were to die for. And then if I ever. If I ever sell mega rockstar again, I'm definitely going to ask my rockstar agent to just one night be like, bring me fries from the week. Uh, it was so good. The sort of other side issues we had was a twice baked potato, which is one of the best baked potatoes I've ever had. Uh, and then some cream, spinach, and everything about this meal was just fantastic. And the tomahawk steak was, like, a $50 upcharge. Again, I think it was worth every penny. Next time I go, I might try just one of the regular steaks to see if it quality is similar.
[01:01:58] Speaker B: They look fantastic. We, the table next to us, I saw one of them had ordered the filet, the other had ordered a fish dish, and both of those looked fantastic. I don't think we needed to order the tomahawk, so if I went back, I probably would just order just the. The filet or the New York strip. But, yeah, we didn't have room for dessert because we were so full. We were also trying to run to one of the special events that night. Um, that was actually. Yeah, we were, this is what, scarlet night, actually. So we were running to meet up for our tentacle tour, so we couldn't stay long and take sort of a more leisurely approach, so we left. Yeah. Some food on the table and left without dessert we did not need.
[01:02:36] Speaker A: All right, so, sam, we are in an hour. We still have multiple food, key west, beach club, and. Okay, so let me just kind of get us through the food. All right, so, um. All right, the last night, we had dinner at extra virgin, which is the italian restaurant on board. Uh, I would say the decor was not great, but the food was really good. The decor kind of reminded me of, uh, what is Kevin. Kevin Bateman? No, it was Patrick Bateman. Patrick Bateman from American Psycho's apartment. It was like these weird like, green tables.
[01:03:02] Speaker B: Like formica green tables. Yeah. Weird.
[01:03:05] Speaker A: But the food was good, so they.
[01:03:07] Speaker B: Have no tablecloths on any restaurant, by the way. They pride themselves in this.
[01:03:11] Speaker A: Yeah. So we started off with some appetizers. You can see here we had a.
Not roasted, a fried artichoke.
[01:03:16] Speaker B: Artichoke, yeah.
[01:03:17] Speaker A: Fried artichoke hearts. We had some meatballs. Both were really good. The meatballs were fantastic. We also had a charcuterie board that we started with. It was great. And then for our mains, I had an agnolotti that was stuff with pork. I want to say Sam.
[01:03:35] Speaker B: Oxtail.
[01:03:35] Speaker A: Oxtail. Sam had the gnocchi, and then we both had individual steaks. And everything about the main courses, I thought, was also really, really good.
Almost palo quality.
[01:03:48] Speaker B: Not quite. This was like, this is where. This is where I would say this was like, the gnocchi here was better than main dining gnocchi on Disney, but not as good as Paulo gnocchi, if that makes sense. So it was. It was. This was a. This was a good meal, but the wake was definitely a better meal. And same with the steak. This was a good steak, but the wake had a better steak. So.
[01:04:08] Speaker A: So, Matthew, I have to say, the face on the last slide, it was me looking at the tom. You can't see it. The tomahawk was right in front of me, and it got cut off. But it was me looking at the sides of the steak. So I just wanted to pick it up and, like, eat it like a lollipop. It was so. Looks so good. Um, last restaurant that we tried on board, uh, we couldn't. We didn't do dining on one of the nights because it conflicted with a special thing that we. We got the magic show that we got invited to, so we ended up eating pizza. Ps, the pizza on board was sort of the best pizza I've had at sea. They had, like, a real pizza oven. Crust was good. They had some. Several options, you know, from straight pepperoni to, like. I forgot it was called pretty fly for a white pie. Uh, and it was. It was really good. There's lots of fun names on board the virgin ship. The ice cream place is called lickmetal ice cream. Uh, and so there's lots of, like, fun little names like that on the last morning. So the benefit of the late disembarkation is you can actually have a breakfast. And so we had a reservation at one of the places we've been told to have brunch. It was called razzle dazzle, and they had the full regular razzle dazzle menu. It wasn't curtailed. Um, I would say it was trying a little too hard to be kind of crazy with the food in a way that we weren't. We weren't really digging for brunch. So, uh, just to walk you through what we had up in the right hand corner there, that is a whole wedge of sort of watermelon, a whole slice that's been cut into, like, four, like, pizza slices. And then it's topped with some frozen berries, like blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and granola. And there's a cream. Yeah, there's a cream underneath. Kind of trying to hold things together. Problem with it is you can't really pick up a slice and eat it because the granola would just fall everywhere. And so you're eating it with, like, a fork and a knife, and it was just too much. Like you really just want. I really just wanted one slice of that with, like, the granola and everything. I didn't need the whole thing. Um, so, you know, it was okay. Um, then Sam had an avocado toast that I think she enjoyed.
[01:05:55] Speaker B: It was okay. It just needed some, like, acid and needed some. Yeah. Needed a little more balance. Balance.
[01:06:00] Speaker A: And then we both ordered this razzle dazzle breakfast. It was, like, eggs, some impossible meat patties, potatoes, and mushrooms. So, again, very vegetarian friendly. Um, they have non vegetarian items on the naughty list. And so, uh, our server asked if we want a side of bacon, and we said, sure. Um, I think that the eggs were fine. The impossible beef patty was okay. It, like, sucked all the moisture out of my mouth a little bit. Um, overall was not my favorite breakfast of the morning. The bacon was candied, and it was, like, just too much, too sweet. Um, so, uh, so, anyway, razzle dazzle was okay. Was not our favorite spot to go for. For brunch. Uh, I think we would probably just end up getting, like, eggs and bacon. What? In the galley. They had great. Some great breakfast items, uh, up there, and so really enjoyed eating there for breakfast one morning, they had, like, a french toast egg bacon sandwich at the burger place that they were doing on the flat girl. So that was. That was really good. All right. We did stop at Key west, which is a unique port that not a lot of cruise lines are stopping at any longer. And we did opt to book a shore excursion or what virgin calls shore things on. On Key west. Day through virgin. This is a shot of the port. We were docked right in downtown. So not at the special coast guard port where Disney was docking, pulled up right into downtown. We could have gotten off and just wandered around. It was very, you know, very accessible into the downtown area. Yeah, you can rent golf carts there and just tool around if you want. But we opted for the tour. So we did a foodie tour of Key west and went to some great places. Went to this airstream trailer spot that had a mahi mahi taco on. Guys, diners, dive in. Diners, drive ins and dives. So that was a great spot. They took us to a place called Cuban Coffee Queen, which has some fantastic coffee and then a mixed cuban sandwich.
[01:07:53] Speaker B: That was, like, the best cuban sandwich we've ever had.
[01:07:56] Speaker A: Absolutely. So good. Um, they took us to this kino mall where some of the, like, original, like, cuban folks who settled in Key west, uh, still have businesses. So one of them is, uh, kino sandals, uh, which are made locally in Key west. We were watching some be made. Uh, Sam bought a pair. Uh, there was a cigar factory that's still making cigars.
[01:08:17] Speaker B: And Rodriguez family.
[01:08:19] Speaker A: Yep, yep. And so saw some cigars being made. And then there's a special coin that they sell on the. So the. The myth is there was a galleon ship that, uh, I forget the name of. The person he discovered brought it up. They found all of these gold coins. He gave one to each resident of Key west. And so there are these gold coins that are. There's originals and replicas, and they go for quite a bit of money, but they were from this ship that was discovered by an explorer who was based in Key west. And so those are fun souvenirs, but very, very expensive. 5000, $6,000 for the original coins. We did not buy one of those. Um, and so that's. That's kind of fun. Uh, we also then had some local seafood. We went to a gas station that was been converted into, like, a seafood spot.
[01:09:05] Speaker B: This was so good. This shrimp was so good. I know it looks like something special, but it was like, fresh shrimp, you know, probably less than 48 hours, you know, old. Um, amazing.
[01:09:15] Speaker A: And I'm. I'm missing. I don't have any photos. They. We also stopped at a restaurant that's popped with the locals that serve some lobster. Mac and cheese. Had that.
[01:09:22] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[01:09:23] Speaker A: I took a picture of this rooster because roosters are everywhere, uh, in key west, just wandering around the streets. Uh, so one was just, like, right at the feet of our table, uh, wanting a bite of our shrimp. Uh, so we. We did the, uh, shrimp here. And then our last stop, of course, was for some tradition kermit's key lime pie pie. It was delicious. I've been looking forward to it all day. They had an option of a regular slice of key lime pie or a key lime pie bar. Unfortunately, it was chocolate dipped. Unfortunately, you can't bring fresh pies back on the ship. That's not allowed. So this was our one bite of key lime pie. And maybe I'll order a frozen pie from Kermit's, have it sent out at some point. But it was. It was delicious. It was a great day, great walking tour. Of course, we took some. An uber down to the other end of downtown and went to the southernmost point in the continental us and got our photo by the buoy. So it was a great day in key west. Definitely a city I would go back to either on a cruise or perhaps even plan like a drive down from Miami sometime to stay there. Great, great day.
[01:10:22] Speaker B: And just to tell folks, so this is. This is not obviously a private stop, right? This is Key west. So we did have to pay for our excursion. So we booked it through virgin voyages just like you had booked your excursion, like through Disney cruise line. So that's what we did for this day. In contrast, Bimini, which I know what we're going to talk about next, that because we decided to go to Virgins beach club, which is one of the options that you can go do bimini on your own. But one of the main option that people choose to go to is bimini.
[01:10:52] Speaker A: Let me just. Sorry. Let me just pause for 1 second, Sam. So this short excursion was $110 per person. I thought it was well worth it. There was a lot of food, a lot of great. You know, there were stops in between with history. Matthew's asking, and I can't tell if this is in relation to the food was included in the cruise price before we were talking.
[01:11:10] Speaker B: So, yes, Matthew, the food on board is almost all included. I say almost because there are some upcharge items, like the tea service we did. That was an. That was an additional. That was $19 per person. And then we did the upcharge items at the wake, which were the, uh, the tomahawk steak and the seafood. But there were plenty of options that were all included and so that we just chose to do it. Now here on Bimini Beach Club, the food is also all included. Similar to Disney cruise Line. You've got food there at the beach club. So this is their private island experience.
[01:11:44] Speaker A: Let me set up here. So one thing on the key west day, I just want to go back to you for a second reboarding the ship, there was a long line. They only had one gangway open with, like, two scanners and one metal detector. And so it was a. It was quite the fiasco to get back on the ship. There was quite a wait. Uh, that was also true for Bimini, although they had two gangways open. So it was a little bit, you know, easier. It. For whatever reason, getting back on the ship on virgin seems to have be a process, and there's a line. So, um, that seems like an opportunity for them on Bimini day. So Sam and I couldn't tell you what the, uh, all the short times were for any of these ports, by the way, because we woke up, we were there, and we had breakfast, and then we got off and, like, it was never, there was never a wait to get off the ship. There was never a huge line to get off the ship. You would go down and walk right off, practically, um, I will say in Key west, finding our tour guide was also a bit of a problem. She had left her port pass, and then we started, like, we're told to walk that way and one way, and we walked that way and completely missed her. So the shore things was kind of a weird setup. And getting back on the ship was tough for Bimini because we were rock stars. We could take golf carts from the pier to the beach club. Now, Bimini is an inhabited island. There are people who live there. There are Airbnbs, there's hotels, there's resorts. And basically what's happening is you're docked and they're driving you through town to a beach club resort that virgin.
It's Virgin's resort, but they, when it's not, when they're not there, I think they open it up for other people to use.
[01:13:12] Speaker B: Yeah, they have trams that go from the ship to the beach club. They also will stop at different spots. If you're doing like an excursion or you want to rent a golf cart, they will. They will drop you at those spots. So there's trams going all the time, similar to Disney. You can walk into Bimini yourself, but I don't think you could walk all the way to the beach club by yourself. It would be quite a hike to do that. And you'd be, like Brian said, sort of walking through town. And so you could do it, I guess, if you had a golf cart, but you would just take the tram basically all the way to the beach club. Or if you're sailing rockstar or mega rockstar, you can take a golf cart all the way to the beach club, which is what we did.
[01:13:50] Speaker A: Okay, so at the beach club. Beach club, they have a main pool, some very fun two pools. Yeah, I was saying they have a main pool and a quiet pool. The main pool is bigger than the quiet pool. The main pool had, like, these huge floaties in it by the end of the day that looked like bumper cars, basically, with people sitting in them. The quiet pool was a little less crowded. It was right next door to the main pool. They have beach area for every body, and then they have a special area for the rock stars that has, like, its own bar and eating area and beach chairs and loungers. We snagged one of these daybeds. It was. There was no charge for it. It was just a, you know, it was first come, first serve. They do have some cabanas. I would say, unless you're going as a group, there's not a huge advantage to any of the cabanas. They are not as nice as anything that Disney does on castaway Key. Certainly not as nice as lookout key cabanas. The advantage for folks sailing like rock rockstar for those cabanas is they get an extra amount on their bar tab for the day, so they get some more included drinks and dedicated bar service.
The beach club did not have roving people taking drink orders. If you wanted a drink, you had to go up to the bar and get it and bring it back to where you were sitting.
The food. Meh. Like, the food was not meh. Like. I hear people when they complain all the time about Disney, and they're like, it's only burgers and hot dogs. Well, ps, everyone likes a burger or a hot dog pretty much, unless they're vegetarian. The food that they. They were serving at bimini was a little bit more inventive. They had, like, a ceviche that was not good.
[01:15:20] Speaker B: The ceviche was terrible.
[01:15:22] Speaker A: Yeah, they had a watermelon dish that came out in a hot bowl, so, like, they needed to be cold watermelon ended up being warm watermelon and a pork dish or something else you ordered too. Like, the other two dishes were okay, but not great. Um, all in all, I would say the food, the rum cake picture here.
[01:15:38] Speaker B: Was rum cake was very good.
[01:15:39] Speaker A: Yeah. But overall, I would say the food was not great. Bimini. I thought the beach club, frankly, looked a little rundown for my taste. I think that it is probably our least favorite of the quote, unquote, private island experiences that we've had on Coco key, lookout key, and castaway key. So for me, I think if we go back, one of the things that Sam and I were saying is we just may not get off the ship, like, for Bimini or for any of the ports, really, because a lot of the ports that virgin sails to we've been to before. And it seems like we didn't get a chance to really experience the ship because we were getting off. And while we enjoyed the tour in Key west and we definitely wanted to get off there because we hadn't experienced it before, I'm not sure. Bimini was a huge draw for us and that we'd get off the ship. We'd probably use it as a day to go experience the pool on board while it's, like, not crowded. And ps, we heard from other people who were like, yeah, I've been to Bimini. I'm just going to stay on the ship. So overall, I'd say Bimini was kind of a.
Was not a draw. Was not a draw for me, would not be a reason that I would go back on virgin. Whereas I think castaway key and lookout key are definitely spots that I'd say, oh, that's going to bring me back to Disney cruise line.
All right, Sam, any final thoughts on Bimini? If not, I'm going to get us into our rapid fire round.
[01:16:52] Speaker B: No, let's go to rapid fire.
[01:16:53] Speaker A: All right. All right. We're 16 minutes over. So thank you for hanging in, everybody.
Thank you to CT, Tracy and Wesley for setting us up this little rapid fire round for ourselves. I love it. And they'll be able to keep score and report back how they did. So, Sam, the first category is cabins. Who wins, Disney or virgin?
[01:17:15] Speaker B: I am going to. This is hard. I think I'm going to give the edge to Disney even. We, of course, had this fabulous large cabin, but I felt like the storage space was lacking. If I had to pick, like, balcony versus balcony, I would definitely pick virgin's balcony. And I love the hammock. But I would say overall, I love, like, the split bathroom set up on Disney. I like the storage available on Disney.
I would. I like a one bedroom bedroom on Disney better than this suite on virgin, even though I thought this suite was beautiful. What about you?
[01:17:53] Speaker A: I'm going to say for regular cabins, definitely giving the edge to Disney. They're just, they're set up for, I think, a more luxurious experience with a cabin. If you're not sailing in a suite, it's hard for me because I can't separate the benefits from the suites. And I also think the suites on virgin they're just, they're better for adults, if that makes sense. So, like, I love the record player. I love the bar in the room was huge. So if you wanted to watch a movie, which frankly, they're not like Disney, where it's like, what are you doing in your room? You don't spend time in your room. Like, on virgin, they're like.
[01:18:22] Speaker B: And controlling the lights by the iPad and stuff was. That part was really nice, too.
[01:18:27] Speaker A: I give the edge for, if you're going to sail in suite class, I really think Virgin had something going on there that it just made it felt luxurious to be in one of their suites. So I'm going to give the edge to disney on regular cabins, but virgin on suites. Right. Reservation restaurants versus rotational dining.
I'm going to go first.
This is a tough one because I think by not having a main dining room, you're essentially spreading out main dining food across, like, five or six different restaurants. That said, some of those restaurants delivered a much better experience than anything you're going to find on Disney cruise lines. Main dining close to some of their adult only dining, but with no upcharge. Um, but some of them delivered some real misses and were just kind of, like, a little too inventive for my tastes. Uh, and I love Remy and enchante, by the way, say that, uh, I am going to give. I'm going to give the edge to.
I'm going to give the edge to virgin on dining just because, like, everything was included. Um, yeah, I. I think I'm going to give it to virgin.
[01:19:36] Speaker B: I'm going to disagree with you here. I I'm going to say Disney rotational dining overall is better. Were there some standout dishes for sure on virgin that beat out main dining stuff on Disney? Yes. But overall, I think the quality on Disney is pretty consistent. And I think, like, overall, there's something for everyone. I felt like on virgin, there were a lot of, like, kind of weird things, and you and I are willing to try a lot of things, but even there were a lot of things that I was like, I'm not really sure I want to have that. I wish I could just have a steak and a baked potato. Right. So there were, like, no option. There was not a lot of, like, I'll tell you where our friend Tracy to come on virgin. I feel like there's not a lot of good, like, options for the pickier eater and Eileen more picky than Brian does. And I will say, I think Disney rotational dining wins overall, even though there were some things on virgin. That clearly would beat out Disney individually.
[01:20:34] Speaker A: I'm going to give virgin the edge for one of reason. I could actually have a conversation with you across the table.
[01:20:40] Speaker B: That's true.
[01:20:41] Speaker A: Every restaurant.
[01:20:42] Speaker B: That's true. I mean, that's a different. The atmosphere is different, for sure.
[01:20:46] Speaker A: Even in the bars where there was stuff going on, you could still carry a conversation with somebody. So, um. All right. Food quality, Disney versus virgin. Um.
[01:20:56] Speaker B: Oh, I didn't realize this was a separate category. Okay.
[01:20:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:20:59] Speaker B: Uh, I think Disney for the consistency. Consistency, that's what I would say, because there were lots of hits and lots of misses on virgin. But I think. I think the consistency on Disney is better. And I've got to say that the bimini food was such a disappointment, and I have to factor this into my consideration. I think the castaway food is way better. And I mean, that ceviche was inedible in bimini.
[01:21:24] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm going to have to give, like, consistency of food quality to Disneyland, Disney. That said, if I could eat at the wake every night, I don't think I'd have any issues with food quality.
So, yeah, I'm with you there. All right. Bar spaces, Disney versus virgin.
You know, I'm going to give the edge to Disney on this one, just from a theming standpoint. Like, I think the bars on Disney have, like, fun, unique themes to them. And virgin's bars were more like just going to a bar. Like, it looked different, but, like, for me, it didn't really have a ton of theming around it. And I think that can be fun. Said there were a ton more bars on virgin than you'll ever find on Disney. So.
[01:22:05] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I actually. It's funny, I actually give the edge to virgin on the bars. While I love the theming of the bars on Disney, I felt like there was more variety of type of bar, and there were just. There was, like, more inventive drinks and just, yeah, more variety. I liked. I really liked the bar experience on virgin better. And maybe also because it doesn't all shut down at like 10:00 p.m. at night. So maybe that's part of my thinking in there.
[01:22:33] Speaker A: Uh, variety acts on board. So I want a full disclosure because the next category shows Sam. So be careful. We did not get to all of the shows. Cause, like, on, on virgin, one of the things we loved was we could make reservations for dinner at like, 7715 730, which is when we kind of like to eat. Uh, but it came down to like, well, you're going to a show or are you going to dinner? Like, they didn't run. The shows weren't always set up in a way that enabled you to see them and go to dinner at a reasonable time.
[01:23:01] Speaker B: Well, and the one that we really wanted to see ended up getting canceled because somebody had an injury. So I actually don't think we can really. I don't. I think shows we got to kind of put to the side, I think.
[01:23:10] Speaker A: Sort of show shows I'm going to give to Disney on spec. Right. Like, I mean, I don't think anything Virgin's going to do from a main stage show is going to beat out Disney's Broadway style shows. Now, from variety act standpoint, I find Disney's variety acts to be fairly hit and miss and also pretty constrained. And what they can do on board Disney ship. And the one variety show that we saw for sure was that mentalist on board, and he was, like, killing it in that show. And so I would give it to Virgin.
[01:23:41] Speaker B: Yeah. He actually was not a variety act. He was actually a full time cast member. That's the other part that's different. There was actually a variety act magician that we didn't go see, but the magician mentalist that Brian's talking about was a full time cast member. And I'm going to agree with you there. I think I'm going to sort of think about, like, the mini acrobatic show, the mini magic show we saw. There was so much stuff sort of going on around the ship, particularly on scarlet night, that that's where I give the edge to virgin on that one.
[01:24:10] Speaker A: Yeah. And just, just to clarify something for Josh here, he says having a drinks package option probably helps. Virgin on this one, too. I want to be clear. Virgin doesn't, they don't do, like, drink packages. What they do are either in Rockstar, everything's included, or, sorry, mega Rockstar, everything's kind of included. As long as the drinks don't go over $25, they're all included. And then rockstar, they give you a bar tab. So kind of like a drink package, but it's, it's not like you're buying unlimited $100 or $200 a day on your bar tab, and then you start getting charged for it. And then for regular sailors, you can buy pre buy bar tabs. Like, you can sort of fund your bar tab in advance.
[01:24:48] Speaker B: And if you have, if you have loyalty status, you might also get, like a $100 towards your bar tab or something like that.
[01:24:54] Speaker A: For the wholesaling.
[01:24:55] Speaker B: For the wholesaling, correct.
[01:24:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:24:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:24:57] Speaker A: All right. Uh, okay. Scarlett Knight. So. So just for Tracy's sake, variety acts, we're giving to virgin. Both of us. Shows we're giving to Disney. Scarlet night versus pirate night. I got to give it to Scarlet night.
[01:25:09] Speaker B: Scarlet.
[01:25:10] Speaker A: I got to give it to Scarlet night. Yep.
[01:25:11] Speaker B: I mean, the wish. Pirate night is really good, but I think overall, Scarlet night with the. I mean, you don't have. The only thing you miss are fireworks. Right. But we're not. I feel like the fireworks are more for the kids. So remember, this is an adults only line, so it's a little different. Different in that way.
[01:25:26] Speaker A: All right. Ships activities.
I'm gonna give it to virgin. Like, I really had fun at the trivias, the karaoke. They had an arcade on board. P's that all the games were free play, so we just wanted to.
[01:25:36] Speaker B: We played a little mortal kombat and.
[01:25:38] Speaker A: Teenage mutant ninja turtles.
[01:25:39] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
[01:25:41] Speaker A: But I thought the karaoke was fun. They have private room karaoke that we didn't sign up for because it was just the two of us. I thought that was fun. I thought the trivias were fun. The puzzle thing was fun.
[01:25:49] Speaker B: Puzzle was really fun.
[01:25:51] Speaker A: The grog walk tour was fun. Like, I got to give on board activities to virgin for me.
[01:25:57] Speaker B: So this is. This is. I have to agree with you, actually. I got to give on board activities to virgin also. But I would say, obviously, like, with Nathan, like, of course, I would go with, like, you can't bring him on virgin anyway. But for, like, family activities, of course. Disney gets it. But for, like, adult only activities.
Disney has so much less adult only activities because they cater to families. So that's why virgin gets the edge for me.
[01:26:23] Speaker A: Yep.
Pool deck depends on, like, this is so ship dependent. But I'm going to give the edge to Disney for the pool decks, especially for the wonder and the wish for me.
Wonder I love for the adult pool area. Wish I just love for the main pool area, so. Plus, there's. There are no water slides on virgin.
[01:26:41] Speaker B: There's no aqua mouse, aqua duck, aqua don. Gad. Disney wins. I think on pool deck as well, it's different. But yeah, the adult. Of course, there's more adult only spaces, but I think Disney wins on the pool deck.
[01:26:55] Speaker A: Uh, all right, next up is the spa. I I gotta say, like, so I did the shave and facial that I would normally get on Disney, and I've gotten on royal. Royal had the weakest spa of all of them.
[01:27:07] Speaker B: Yes, by far.
[01:27:08] Speaker A: I thought that the. I'm gonna give the edge to, for my taste, the spa on Disney, there's one exception that we didn't really get into, which is the thermal suite on virgin. So the thermal suite on virgin is much like the rainforest room on the other. On the Disney ships is nothing as nice as the one that's on the wish class ships. But it is far and away better than anything I've seen on Royal Oasis class, magic class, and dream class.
[01:27:36] Speaker B: Right, exactly. I agree with you.
[01:27:37] Speaker A: And also, and also nice because they carefully control the number of people in the thermal suite. So because we were mega rockstar, we could, we could walk in and out anytime we wanted. Rockstars had to book. They had priority booking for three hour windows. And then everybody else was like, first come, first serve. And there was a charge, I think, for the thermal suite, for the three hour windows that they booked. And so you got 3 hours and then you're done. And so they carefully kind of metered out how many people were in there, which made it just infinitely more, like, nicer, in my opinion.
[01:28:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say they're almost a tie for me, but I'll give, like, the slight edge to Disney, but it's really honestly the spot. They're run by the same companies, you know, the spa and all the ships. Not Alamis. It has a different name, but they use the elements products. Um, but they're, yeah, they're run by the same company. Um, I, my nail technician happened to be a former Disney person, so maybe that helped, helped color it. But I would say, like, royal, like, their, their spaces are not as nice on virgin, I'd say the spaces are, are close to as nice. So that's where I would say Disney gets the edge for, like, the treatment rooms. I would say Disney's are still a little bit nicer and a little bit quieter.
[01:28:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
And I just think hoax Barbary on Disney is better, so.
[01:28:55] Speaker B: Yeah, of course.
[01:28:56] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm going to give it to that. All right. Concierge versus rockstar. This one's easy for me. I'm going to give it to Rockstar.
[01:29:02] Speaker B: Rockstar. Yeah, mega rockstar. Really? I mean, but rockstar. Mega rockstar for sure. I mean, it's, you don't have a lounge so that it's different. You don't have an indoor space. But, like, the service and what comes, what's included is just at a high, higher level. Yeah.
[01:29:19] Speaker A: Yep. Uh, just real quick to divert us here. Ed's asking, how well does virgin handle food allergies? This was actually something we noticed. I'm not sure. Uh, I would love to hear from someone out there who actually has a food allergy. They noted on our.
[01:29:32] Speaker B: Everybody asked us. Everybody asked us if we had.
[01:29:36] Speaker A: Everybody asked.
Yeah. I'm assuming they do okay with it, but I don't know how it works, because we didn't. We wouldn't sail with anyone who had a food allergy, and we don't have food allergies ourselves. But if you're out there and have a food allergy and know anything about this, we'd love to hear about it. All right.
[01:29:50] Speaker B: And. And, Ed, I I'm skeptical because I saw them using the same tongs for all kinds of things at some of the grab and go spots, and same with, like, the pizza place. I was, like, a skeptical. Like I said to Brian, I was like, I wonder how they are with food allergy. We don't know, though, because they might have an allergy kitchen that they make all the allergy friendly stuff in. So, from what we saw, it didn't. It wasn't apparent to us.
[01:30:12] Speaker A: Okay, Sam, we're at 90 minutes here, so we got to move on. All right. Customers service.
We didn't have a bad cast interaction on virgin at all, but we also didn't have any problems.
I don't know. I mean, man, that's. I don't. Sam, what do you think?
[01:30:29] Speaker B: I mean, I think Disney always goes the extra mile, and you've got characters, and you have, like. I feel like, yeah, I always give the edge to Disney on this because I feel like, overall, we have such great experiences with when things have gone wrong and them going above and beyond. We didn't have that happen here. But I feel like while the cast members were amazing and they were wonderful and friendly, like, I don't know that we had anyone go above and beyond other than, like, our rockstar agent, who was paid literally to go above and beyond for us.
[01:30:59] Speaker A: So, yeah, I'm gonna give a slight edge to virgin on this one. Just because I really enjoyed the ability for the cast to kind of be themselves, it felt a little less, like, forced and unauthentic. It felt more like if they liked you and they were having a fun conversation, it's because they liked you and they were having a fun conversation with you. So I thought, I'm gonna give a slight edge to Bruce on that one value.
I mean, sailing in mega rockstar as compared to concierge, I got to give the value question to virgin. It was far less expensive for us to sail in the top tier suite category on virgin than it would be on Disney, I think, if you got down into the regular sailor stuff. I also think the value is probably better on virgin than Disney.
I think there are places probably where Disney makes more sense from a value standpoint. But for me, uh, I'm going to give the edge to virgin on value at the moment.
[01:31:51] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, I have to agree with you. I think if you're selling adults only and you're looking at virgin, you're looking at Disney, because obviously that's trying to compare apples to apples. Like, you're going to pay less for your virgin cruise in similar, you know, stateroom category, and you're going to have more included, like specialty dining. So in that sense, I would say, yeah, that. Oh, and another thing that Karen brings up in the comments, virgin considers wifi.
[01:32:20] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[01:32:20] Speaker B: Basic human right. The Wi Fi is really good. It's basic wi Fi, but it's better than basic Wi Fi on Disney cruise line. It's not like full on streaming, but you can, like, it's. So it's not like the highest level premium. You can upgrade for a cost to the premium, but you don't need it. You can do everything like email, social media, videos. Take longer. It took me longer to upload some stories that were video on onto Instagram. But, yeah, Wi Fi was great. So that's another value. I mean, you don't have to pay for Internet. It's already included. So edge to virgin there.
[01:32:54] Speaker A: Karina's saying that she's gluten free to go back to the allergy. Gluten free, 1000% as good as DCl. So there you go.
[01:33:00] Speaker B: Great. Corinne, thank you for telling.
[01:33:01] Speaker A: Thank you for sharing that, Corinne. Yeah. All right, last question. Overall, I mean, look, we're the DCl duo, so if I say virgin voyages, we were joking throughout the virgin cruise. Like, we're going to have to go out and start the Virgin Voyagers podcast cast or something. Trademark. Don't. You don't get to take that from Voyager. Yeah, yeah. But, like, no, like, I'm wearing a Mickey hat. I've, like, we. I will always sail on Disney first if I can and if it's affordable.
The reason I might sail on virgin again or royal again is because, you know, sometimes I want to go on a spring break cruise and not spend, like $30,000 to do it, which is like the going rate it feels like on Disney any longer. And andor, I want to be able to sail in a higher class of service and not break the bank over it. So, I mean, it's also, I would say, like, disney has it for me, overall, it's just those moments where I'm like, I just, I don't want to pay what Disney's charging at the moment.
[01:33:57] Speaker B: Absolutely. I'm going to say definitely overall, virgin does not beat Disney. Like, overall, our first love is definitely Disney cruise line. Does virgin beat royal, though? I will say yes, actually. So I would say, like, if I'm. Now, of course, that's like a. If I'm sailing, we're sailing as a family. We're sailing between Disney or royal, right? We're going to pick Disney if everything is equal. But of course, if we want to save a little money, we might sail on royal. If I'm sailing adults only. Like, I'm not sailing on royal. If I'm sailing adults only. If I'm selling adults only, I'm sailing on Disney or virgin.
[01:34:32] Speaker A: Now that said, we are eyeing a cruise next July. We were looking for something. Their son goes to sleepway camp in July for three weeks. And so it's like we always like to take trip during that time. We thought about going to Vegas. We thought about going to Disneyland. I kind of said, like, I can't. I need a trip that's not Disneyland. The next kind of couples trip that we do. As much as I love going down there, I'm just like, I'm like, I'm kind of done. I need to step away from it for a little bit and then come back to it so I can love it again. Kind of like I did with Disney Cruise line a little bit.
So we are eyeing a week long virgin voyages cruise that goes to Costa Maya and Grand Cayman and P's. Well, we haven't been to Grand Cayman. I don't have a ton of interest in getting off. And we've already been to Costa Maya. So we're looking at it as like, we'll get on board Virgin and we won't leave the ship. So we can experience all the stuff that we didn't this time around and have just more leisurely ship life. So we are looking at doing a week long cruise on Virgin and we may get off that cruise and say, wow, that was a great idea. Or we may get off that cruise and say, wow, that was a terrible idea. But that's that. We are looking at going back on virgin voyages. It was a lot of fun. I think we really enjoyed the time as a couple to be able to relax and recharge.
I will say I did enjoy not having kids all over the ship. For an adults only vacation.
And we had fun to go to. The question about the introverted me, like, it was a struggle on the first night.
[01:35:53] Speaker B: Yeah, that grog walk was a bit of a struggle for Brian. By the end of the grog walk, he was.
[01:35:58] Speaker A: There did come a point most nights where it's like, I'm done. You can do whatever you would like to do, and that's fine. Like, I don't mind going back to the cabin and watching a movie. I do that on Disneyland sometimes. Or I'm just like, I just need to go relax and sit in the cabin and watch a Disney, inspirational Disney sports film, which I could also do on Virgin. Cause they had half the Disney movies on virgin voices too. So I think we will go back on Virgin.
I think we both look forward to going back on Virgin. I will be interested to see if our opinion of virgin changes after being on it for a longer cruise. So, Sam, any final thoughts before we let our audience go after an hour and 35 minutes?
[01:36:35] Speaker B: I know, I love it. I gotta say that Wesley was keeping score and I. Mine was DCL eight, Virgin voyages six. Brian was seven. DCL seven, Virgin voyages seven. So Brian actually was a tie and I was clearly not. But obviously our overall opinions don't necessarily go up to the score, but or equal out to the score. And so, yeah, we had a really great vacation. We really. Brian even bought a ship model, a virgin voyage ship model. The one they're discontinuing. It's the red one. They're moving towards a clear one. So, yeah, we had a really great vacation. Would definitely sail royal. Royal, would definitely sail virgin again.
But DCL is still number one in our hearts and so we are not going to be the Virgin Voyagers tomorrow.
[01:37:26] Speaker A: All right, so for everybody out there, as we wrap up, FYI, we will not be back live next week on Monday night. I have a business conference all week and so could not commit to doing a live show next week. So we will not be here live next Monday night. We will be live the following Monday night. And boy, is it going to be a doozy. We have the final check in with our favorite world cruisers, Leslie and Jenny on the first time live. 05:30 p.m. 30.
Oh, I just want to. Out there lives in Florida. Please be safe. You are in our thoughts as we watch the storm approaching Florida. It looks like it's going to be a doozy and really nasty. Like, please be safe out there. Please keep your family safe. And we are thinking about you. So thanks, everyone. Out there for hanging in with us for an hour and 37 minutes and we will see you next time. Thanks for watching.
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