[00:00:00] Speaker A: The trend that happening in chat is a call for DCL Duo Virgin Voyages Podcast cruise.
I am not opposed. I will just say that.
Welcome back everybody to this week's live episode of the DCL Duo podcast. Brought to you by my Path Unwinding Travel and and Sam. We're back. We're back. You're muted now. You're not muted now. You're not muted.
You are unmuted. You were unmuted. Yes.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: Sorry. I'm so happy to be back. I have to apologize to those of you who were here on YouTube 3 hours ago looking for this show. That was my fault. I had posted on our Facebook and all our socials about tonight's show and of course I'm a little jet lagged and so I wrote down 5:30pm Eastern, 8:30pm Pacific but it's the opposite and I don't know how I got that in my head.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: So sorry everyone. We are wearing. We are wearing Sam's got her Ship Happens. That's S H I P for everyone listening to this afterwards. I'm trying to enunciate that one Ship happens T shirt on from Virgin Voice. I of course am rocking the smoking jacket some of you may have seen on Instagram from Scarlet Knight.
[00:01:24] Speaker B: And yeah, we PJ Party, Brian.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: Oh, the PJ party. Sure. But it could have gone for Scarlet Night.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: It could have gone for Scarlet Night as well.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: And I Sorry, it's been a week and we're a little jetlined. I've completely forgot to say this bonus episode live show is also brought to you by the good folks over at WDW magazine, our live show sponsor. Really appreciate the great folks over there. And so we're gonna actually have them on here later in August for some fun kind of special live shows that we're exc to share with you. But we can't talk about what they're about yet.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: Look for a couple of live shows in August that are going to be on non Mondays. These are going to be additional bonus episodes, not replacing the Monday episodes. So we will have one missed episode at the end of this month because we'll be on our Alaska cruise.
But we are going to have some, as Brian said, some bonus bonus episodes on some non Monday nights. So look out for those.
[00:02:22] Speaker A: That's right. But thank you to the folks over WDW magazine. If you have not headed over there to check them out, be sure to head over to dcl-magazine.com you can get your issue of the the special float test edition of the DCL Magazine that they did. And fingers crossed, we're going to have another edition of that here in the near future. But for now, head over there, check it out. If you use code DCLDUO, all caps DC DUO, you can get 10% off everything in the WDW magazine store. Some great calendars, of course, the magazine subscription, I think that they have consolidated. I've got to go back and check my email. I think it came through while we were gone. I think the consolidated down to one digital subscription now for the magazines. So you can get just all the goodness and so watch out for that.
So, yeah, check over there. Check them out, please. Head over there and check them out because they support this show each and every week and we appreciate them for that. So. All right, Sam, we gotta talk news.
[00:03:15] Speaker B: Brian, are we gonna bring out.
[00:03:17] Speaker A: Yeah, let's. Let's bring in our guests for news. Let's bring in our guest for news. So, of course, this evening we have with us the DCL duo, senior DCL duo, senior Michael and Tracy. Michael, of course, rocking his Virgin Voyages hat. Tracy with her Turks and Caicos sweatshirt there, fresh off of Virgin Voyages, all of us. We departed Miami yesterday evening and our fresh bs, Tracy is tired, but welcome, guys. Welcome to the show. Good to see you again. Good to see you again. We're all looking tan.
Oh, Michael. You guys are. You guys are muted now.
How'd that happen? How is everyone muted? Try that again. There we go.
[00:03:53] Speaker C: Hi there.
We at least made it back yesterday.
[00:03:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:01] Speaker B: Technically speaking. Well, actually, we got home yesterday by Pacific time, but not. But today by Eastern time. So.
[00:04:11] Speaker D: Yeah, tired, but it was so good.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: All right, DCL News. Let's rock this quickly, Sam, because we got to get back into. Everyone is excited to hear about Virgin Voyages from the four of us, you know, but.
[00:04:22] Speaker B: But we do.
[00:04:23] Speaker A: We do have some DC news.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: The Virgin Voyages quattro, let's say. Yeah, but.
But we got to hit a couple pieces of Disney Cruise Line news first. Is DCL itineraries still not out yet, so we still don't know any. Except give one second. DCLA Temporary is not out until from beyond, you know, early September 2026. Except Brian. Brian is now the sleuth.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: No, no, no, I can't. I cannot take credit for this. Thank you to our good friend CT over at Tinfoil Mouse Ears for pointing out that another creator out there, Joe from Back to the Mouse, had been trolling the Galveston website. And the Port of Galveston has a calendar on their website and that shows the magic. Making calls on Galveston starting November 20th of 2026 with alternating five night, four night sailings, a couple six night sailings, and one week long sailing out of the Port of Galveston. So we do know that the magic will be in Galveston in the Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's time frame. So watch out, I guess, for that when the itinerary releases. But the magic will be in Port of Galveston. You can hover to the official port website and look at their. I think it's in their cruise and park working area. I'm looking at the calendar now. You can kind of see which ships are there. And they clearly got the Disney Magic labeled. I went over this afternoon, I was scrolling through. I'm like, I don't see it. I don't see. I don't see it. Maybe Disney had them pull it down. But it is up there starting in November 2026. So. Yes.
[00:05:55] Speaker B: Well, and some other small pieces of news from Disney Cruise Line we have seen now from a couple days ago, Disney Cruise Line posted on Instagram and Facebook pictures of the Stern character, which we all knew, of course we've seen the concept art was going to be Spider man and a bunch of the spider bots. And so now they have actually released the actual images of the character and what it all looks like in real life. So it's pretty cool. So check that out over on Disney Cruise Line's Instagram account.
That's probably the best place to look for it. Another piece of information that came out or photographic information or videos as well is actually some of the puppetry, some of the tight puppetry that is from the Hercules the musical show, also from the Disney Destiny. So there's also a piece of concept art. I posted it on reposted on our Instagram, but it's on the Disney Parks blog. So if you're looking for that picture, a little bit more information about the Hercules the musical on the Disney Destiny, as well as a little video of those puppets in action and sort of how they move. Then you can check out both Disney Parks blog as well as Disney Cruise Line's Instagram account.
So, yeah, so good stuff coming out. Of course, as we said, no official word on itineraries.
[00:07:17] Speaker A: So I guess Karen's saying in the chat that the Disney Wonder is on the port schedule for Sydney in December 2026 into 2027 as well.
[00:07:26] Speaker B: Yes, I have heard that. But I have also heard whispers that even though the Wonder's on the port schedule, that is going to change. So that I would look at that with, with a little Healthy dose of skepticism.
[00:07:42] Speaker A: Healthy dose of skepticism, yes.
Yes. Which all of us, until Disney releases anything, by the way, even that Galveston stuff is just pure speculation.
[00:07:50] Speaker B: So they can change. They can change. They do have commitments to the Port of Galveston for certain ships and a certain number of ships, but they could certainly change which ship is there and when.
[00:08:01] Speaker A: And when. Yeah.
[00:08:02] Speaker B: And when.
[00:08:02] Speaker D: Exactly.
[00:08:03] Speaker A: All right, I think we're ready to get into our Virgin Voyages review. I've changed my background for the evening to the valiant lady parked in Miami.
So we are ready to go wearing the smoking jacket. I'm getting several comments on the smoking jacket. Compliments, I should say, not just comments on the smoking jacket. I want everyone to know Sam thought it was ridiculous for me to buy this. Probably was ridiculous for me to buy it. But we got a lot of compliments. I get. We got a spoiler alert. We had an NBA former NBA player on the cruise. And part of one of our things was he had to say hello to the best dress person at an event. And that was me with smoking jacket. So there you go. I'm pretty excited about this. I think. I think rivaled only by the matching one left. Yeah, yeah.
Don't be mean, Michael. Don't be cruel. Come on. I was not the only one, though.
The only other outfit that we wore that you gotta head over to our Instagram to check these out that might rival my smoking jacket is, of course, Michael and I wearing matching.
I learned the name of these today, Sam, from somebody matching Roosevelt's cabana tuxedos is what they call them. So there you go. There you go.
[00:09:07] Speaker C: And I thought I could have. We could have worn that.
[00:09:10] Speaker D: Oh, yeah.
[00:09:10] Speaker C: I think we talked about it at.
[00:09:12] Speaker A: One point, but yeah, for sure.
[00:09:14] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:09:15] Speaker A: Well, hey, let's.
[00:09:16] Speaker C: Who knew that was going to be the popular outfit?
[00:09:18] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly, let's. All right, well, let's dive right in. And I want to preface this with. I really want to hear Tracy and Michael's thoughts. You can. We have an episode in the back in the back catalog where Sam and I talked about our first Virgin Voyages cruise. And I think a lot of our feedback is going to track to that episode. I think if anything, maybe I am a little bit more enamored with Virgin voyages after our second sailing than I was after our first.
That said, I think the people we really want to hear from tonight are Tracy and Michael, because first sailing. Also very experienced Disney cruisers.
And so I think there's a lot.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: Of people on any line outside of Disney. So I want to be very clear with this preface, Tracy and Michael, they have sailed on Disney Cruise Line. They're both. Well, actually Tracy is a Pearl cruiser. Technically. Michael's one away from Pearl is 24 cruises, 26 cruises between, across the two of them. But they've never sailed on any other line before. Sailing on Virgin Voyages with us this past week. I want to start with Tracy and Michael, who is Virgin voyages for? Obviously 18 and older, but who is it for? Would you say now that you have sailed on Virgin Voyages, you want to take it?
[00:10:34] Speaker C: Yeah, I'll start.
Like Brian when he went the first time, I was a little apprehensive about getting it being too far on the wild side.
And while there might be some of that, there's something for all adults. I mean, you can find where you fit in. There's enough different ship spaces, there's enough going on simultaneously that you can find your crowd, your location to hang out. And that may change through the day. The same venue may change. Who's there.
I don't think any of us were up much past midnight, but you know, the bars were. A couple of them were rocking until 2, 3 o' clock in the morning.
[00:11:19] Speaker A: But to put it in perspective, we would have all been in bed on Disney Cruise line by about 10pm because.
[00:11:24] Speaker C: There'S nothing else to do.
[00:11:25] Speaker A: Yeah. So this is clearly a ship with some adult nightlife to it, which we'll get into. I want to rewind for a second. I just want to. So I know you were both apprehensive about this cruise. I want to start there. What were you most worried about heading into this cruise?
[00:11:42] Speaker D: I think for me, I'm directionally challenged. I'm a super picky eater.
And just some of the, the talk about, you know, an all adult cruise, you know, in Virgin Voyage, you know, like, like just some of the, some of the hype, like was maybe going to be too much that I wouldn't like. Like that part that was, that was what I was like the most nervous about was, you know, I know how to navigate a Disney ship really easily now because I've been on all of them. So it's. You get around, but I'm really directionally challenging. Can I just say for the record, like day two, I found my room all by myself with no magnets on the door. So like, you know, the food, we, I'm sure we'll get into that. There's, you know, a few, a few wins, a few losses there.
But Overall I am 100% glad that we went.
I don't know if you have like what you were most worried about.
[00:12:39] Speaker C: I really, by the time we got on the ship because what I was most apprehensive about was that it was going to be all party everywhere all the time and loud and people being obnoxious. Just the videos you see on YouTube and Facebook of what's going on.
And by the time we got on they realized it's like not everyone's going to be like that. It's just like when you read a review on, on Amazon, you know, it's, it's biased towards the negative. You know, it's the same same there a lot of the, the videos you see, it's because people found it funny, they find it interesting, they want to find something wrong with it. So by the time we got on, I had reasoned that that's not going to be everyone. There's going to be spaces to get to that are, that are quiet. So that had really subsided and, and that, that was confirmed when we were on the ship that there, there really is something.
No matter what kind of adult you are, you're going to find your place.
[00:13:42] Speaker B: Can I jump in and just say the thing I was most worried about the first time? And I don't know that I said this on our last, on our first episode, but I'll say it again now because I think my fears were even more allayed on this cruise. I was afraid I wasn't cool enough for Virgin Voyages.
And I got to tell you everyone.
[00:14:03] Speaker A: As the co host of a successful podcast, I'm just not cool enough for this.
[00:14:08] Speaker B: There's a little bit of that like, you know, that you know, self conscious, like teen tween still inside me. And so I was a little worried. Am I not cool enough for Virgin Voyages? I gotta tell you though that everyone is cool enough for Virgin Voyages. This is a very like choose your own adventure body positive, very diverse in terms of races, in terms of sexuality, in terms of what people look like. It is very, it is a really nice environment of very different people. You have, you're going to have some people who are real different from you. Maybe they live a different lifestyle and different way of relationship being like non monogamous relationshiping.
But like there's plenty for everyone. And there are people from all walks of life on this ship. There are people with disabilities on this ship. There are people who will look like you and people who will not look like you. And then of course the crew, you've got people from all different nationalities and really diverse crew as well.
[00:15:16] Speaker A: I will say this may be a place where both the hype and Virgin's own marketing are kind of doing it a disservice a little bit because I think their marketing is all about this sort of adult, tongue in cheek, cheeky, edgy cruise line for beautiful people. But it ran the gate.
There was an 85 year old guy, the Scottish guy that we saw, it was like 85, 5 year old dressed in his full regalia for dinner one night. Definitely folks with disabilities, folks using mobility scooters, just like you see on Disney Cruise.
It runs the gamut. Now I think much like any other cruise line, the type of people and the experience you're going to have is also like there's a bunch of different factors that go into that. One of which was this time we opted for a seven night sailing to the Caribbean on Virgin as opposed to a four night sailing that we took to start.
I will say this, I didn't see a ton of difference between the two. I'm just going to be perfectly honest about it. But I think coming out of Miami on three and four night sailings, you're much more likely to draw the bachelorette crowd, the bachelor party crowd, the weekend getaway drinking crowd, all of that sort of stuff is much more likely than on a seven night. So I think if you're really concerned about it, I'd say look at a longer sailing with an asterisk. Unfortunately, Virgin does not seem to be doing any seven night sailings out of Miami on Valiant lady to the Caribbean for the next two years. So I don't know why that was because our ship felt pretty full. But I would say those shorter sailings are probably like being on, you know, Carnival or Royal. Like, you know, the shorter the sailing the least, the less expensive it is, a little rowdier it gets. But I think it really is kind of, it does run the gamut.
[00:17:04] Speaker C: So let's to your point though, I did see at least two or three different bachelorette parties on the seven night cruise.
[00:17:11] Speaker B: Oh yeah, there are, Listen, they were there.
[00:17:13] Speaker C: I mean they. But it wasn't.
I mean they were tame, they weren't out of hand.
No more so than anyone else.
[00:17:22] Speaker D: Well, and the thing that I want everybody to know is that there were spaces where people were sitting with their family and playing games or doing puzzles. There is a place where you can go sing private karaoke so you don't have to sing in front of all the people. There were places that were rocking the house until 3am it was, and it was all like, all the time. You could find. If you're not into staying up till 3 o' clock in the morning and dancing all night long, it's okay. There's like a ton of things to do.
If you are into that, that's cool too. And that was the thing I think that I got the most from this cruise was like you said before, it's like for everybody, for those who watched the show a few weeks ago when we talked about taking our newly adult daughter to her graduation cruise on the Disney Treasure, I literally said to him, I think we could bring Lexi on this cruise ship too. Like, I think she would like this as well.
You know, the music was great. Like it just. But there was so, so much variety that whatever you want to do, there.
[00:18:30] Speaker B: Was a place for you. Yeah, yeah. Well. And we had a. We have a question in the comments from Vanessa and whether or not this cruise would work for you and Andrew. Absolutely. Vanessa. I think this cruise. And Robin Sweat is answering as well that she has a brother who has similar disabilities to Andrew.
And you know, I definitely think that this, this would work. I don't know where the accessible areas are for some of the shows because I wasn't paying attention to that, I'm sorry to say, because it just. It wasn't as obvious to me maybe as it was on Disney. But I'm sure that there are. The one thing that I would want to find out more about is where the accessible areas are for Scarlet Night. Because you don't want to miss Scarlet Night. And there's a lot to see and do on Scarlet Night. And that would be the one area where I'd want to reach out to. I hope they have similar to what Disney has, which is sort of a disability services so that you can find out more information. But I would definitely encourage you to do that because I think that would be helpful. But we saw folks in wheelchairs on the cruise. We saw folks in mobility scooters on the cruise. And definitely the ship and the hallways were very accessible, very, I would say, easy to navigate. The one area that, you know, like I said would might be difficult is like on Scarlet Night where it's real crowded and everyone's out. That's the one area where I'd want to have more information.
Well, let's jump to a couple of the events that we did.
[00:20:07] Speaker A: Before we do events, I want to talk about a. I think there's a couple of things we need to do to orient folks into Virgin that we did not do just yet. So first I want to talk about they only have four ships.
All right, so they have the Scarlet lady, the Valiant lady, the Brilliant lady and the Resilient Lady. Brilliant is their newest ship.
[00:20:23] Speaker B: Yeah, it's the.
Yeah, Brilliant hasn't come out yet, but yes, four ships.
[00:20:28] Speaker A: That's where I was headed.
[00:20:30] Speaker B: Sorry.
[00:20:31] Speaker A: Brilliant lady is coming out. She will start off sailing in New York and then she's going to make her way around the United States and up into Alaska and will be based permanently on the west coast, by the way, doing Mexican Riviera cruises, Alaska cruises, repositioning cruises on the West Coast. So that's me. Fabulous, if you're a west coaster, to have that Virgin ship out. All four of them, exact same, the exact same layout ships, exact same size ships. These ships are probably about the size of what we're going to see out of the new class of ship that Disney is building. Slightly bigger than the Magic and the Wonder, slightly smaller than the Dream and the Fantasy.
They have all kinds of cabins to them. They're cater to some solo cruising. So they have some special cabin categories for solo cruising. You know, they've got traditional inside, you know, cabin categories.
Most of the ship has some kind of balcony going on with the state rooms. They of course have, have sort of a regular, you know, you know, passenger cabins, you know, category. But then they also have their suite class Rockstar which Tracy Michael sailed in and then a mega Rockstar category which Sam and I sailed in. And those come with a whole bunch of added perks. I, I will not go into detail on all of those perks right now, but a lot of added perks that are really nice.
The ship sale primarily out of the. Sorry, the Valiant lady of Trigger on sales primarily out of Miami.
I also just wanted to quickly kind of run through a couple of orienting things around venues and dining just so folks understand in terms of venues, these ships are smaller but interestingly enough seem to have feel like they have more venues than the Magic and the Wonder or even the Dream and the Fantasy half.
Well, there's no, there's no kids club and there is like, instead of having three main dining rooms, they have a bunch of restaurants.
So they. There is no main dining concept on Virgin. There are a bunch of specialty restaurants. The restaurants on board Virgin include Extra Virgin, which is the Italian restaurant, the Wake, which is a steakhouse style restaurant, Pink Agave which is the Mexican restaurant, Test Kitchen which is kind of a supposed to be like a chef's tasting menu kind of restaurant.
And then Gunbae which is the Korean barbecue restaurant.
You have to make reservations to dine at these places. And so they don't open reservations until you get on board the ship, unless you're sailing in one of the rockstar categories.
And so you have to get on the ship and make reservations for dinner.
And you go to those restaurants if you can't get a reservation or you can't get one at a time, you want whatever it is. They have a pizza place, which I'm sure that we will hear from Sam and Tracy and Michael about the pizza place. They have a pizza place and then instead of having a buffet, they have an area that is called the galley, which has more of like a food court kind of feel, I would say. There's different stations serving different kinds of food.
There's a Mexican spot. There's a sushi place. Spoiler alert. Not the sushi's not great. There's a grill, a bakery, a ramen station, a salad station. They've got a couple coffee bars on board that serve specialty coffees and drinks.
Everything.
All of the food is included with the exception of some menu upcharges that you can pay for. Right. But very. But it's like usually one menu item and you, trust me, you don't need to order it to have a great meal. So all the food is included.
[00:23:56] Speaker B: Lobster, crab type add on or an upgraded steak or a caviar add on kind of a thing. So it's completely not necessary. There's no dress code for dinner.
[00:24:07] Speaker A: Well, Karen, I was gonna say there ain't no dress code on board. Like the like version voice like they're. They're kind ask is not to wear swimwear into the dining room. But beyond that, they do not care. And if you saw the photos of us, Michael and I in our outfits, our Roosevelt matching outfits, we went to dinner in those. So like. Like they.
[00:24:25] Speaker C: We went to Gun Bay.
[00:24:27] Speaker B: Well, but we could have gone to dinner.
[00:24:29] Speaker C: We could have gone to any restaurant.
[00:24:30] Speaker A: We could have gone there. There is no.
No dress code on board other than please don't wear your swimwear into dining.
Yeah. Wear clothes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The other thing. So there's lots of bars on board. Multiple bars. There's Sip, there's the Social club. Sip is the Champagne Bar. There's a social club where. That's what Tracy was mentioning. People doing board games, playing cards, all that kind of fun stuff.
[00:24:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:58] Speaker A: There's a. There's the Draft House or the Draught House, which is a beer. There is the Mediterranean on board. Yeah.
So there's. There's A ton of bar spaces, a ton of restaurant spaces. There is a casino just to set expectations.
It is not in your face. It is not something you have to walk through every day. There is no smoking in the casino. The smoking areas are two areas on board the ship.
So. And they're. One is on the. They're both. One is on the outer deck. I think one is maybe that. The den casino. We couldn't tell which is a separate.
[00:25:33] Speaker B: There's a small, separate casino room. That is a smoking casino room.
[00:25:36] Speaker A: Yep. And then they've. And then beyond that, tons of activities on board. They've got kind of an adult playground area with a seesaw and swings. Two pools on board.
One kind of main pool with a DJ and bars. The other kind of more of what they're calling a wellness pool that's surrounded by the gym and stuff. There's a outdoor heavy bag there.
If you see in the picture. If you're watching this online, you see in the picture there's a big jut out at the top of the ship. There's a big cargo net back there that you can lay on. There's an arcade for adults on board. That's all free. Play video games, like old style video games on board.
There's a running track on the top deck of the ship. You probably can't make out in the picture that's behind me. But there is a running track on the top deck of the ship. But just like I just want to put tons of venues and spaces on board.
In a spa. There is a spa and there's a thermal suite in the spa. That does cost extra, obviously the spa treatments. But even the spa is broken up into a men's salon, a women's salon, a spa and then a nail salon. All separate venues. There's a tattoo parlor on board. There is a shopping area on board.
So lots and lots of spaces. Lots of places where you can get lost and wander around and have fun. So I just want to do that. I want to orient that into the ship. With that Tracy, Michael, my next question for the two of you. You step on the Valiant lady.
First impressions.
[00:26:58] Speaker D: I think for me, the lack of atrium was a. Didn't matter to me because when we walked in the. We were on deck seven, if I remember correctly, when we walked in. And it's still a beautiful space. It's just not the open atrium or grand hall that we generally expect from. From Disney. But they, I mean, it was, you know, it was. It was open. They had like a glass railing that there was a spiral staircase that went down.
I thought it was. I thought it was lovely. And we were greeted by people. We were not obviously announced, like Disney, you know, welcome to the Andreco family or anything like that. But there were, I don't know, five or six of the Happenings crew that were dressed and had these great big fans that were like welcoming us and they were, they were super nice and. And then, you know, as the cruise went on, we'd see them along at different, you know, different venues, different events that we did.
So for me, getting, I mean, you know, we've had our name announced a couple gazillion times. It's, you know, not that it's lost its magic or anything, but. But it's not something that I'm going to be like, yeah, I'm not going to go on this cruise because they don't have an atrium. I felt like it was very welcoming and very beautiful. So for me, it was pretty, you know, pretty easy to just walk on and let's go, let's see what we can find.
[00:28:18] Speaker C: And a couple things I'll mention, I mean, being on Disney, we love families. We love kids. The kids running around and yelling and screaming don't bother us at all. We're used to that.
The two places I noticed definitely that kids were missing was one the first morning going up to the galley for breakfast, there weren't kids running into you and running around and, you know, big families in. In the way with not knowing. There were adults that didn't know what they were doing in. In the galley with. With food. But that was one place. The other place was in the staircases. The railing was much higher than, than on the Disney ships.
And I don't know if that was purposeful because while we don't have kids, because it seemed high even for me as an adult.
[00:29:04] Speaker A: But I demoed for you, Michael. The reason why is because if you had a little too much to drink and you ran into the railing, you wouldn't just go right over, just flip over it, right?
[00:29:15] Speaker C: The other big thing, what I liked is on the Disney ships, all the bar spaces are pretty much closed off.
And if they're not open, a lot of them, you can't make use of that space.
On Virgin, I think a lot of it could be because kids aren't there.
All the bar spaces are wide open and they're along the Disney ships I found there's very little open seating on the decks, even the main decks to go just sit and relax in.
You know, if you go there's three booths, and they're all full. You're. You're out of luck. You might look across and see if the other ones on another deck are open. But again, there's only three.
But on. On the Valiant lady, we had, you know, SIPS has three. Three big areas to sit in, so you don't even have to be near the bar if you're looking for. So as you got further away from the bar, it would likely get more and more quiet.
The drafthouse, it didn't open until afternoon. There. There was CV seating there. People were sitting in the. The roundabout, both along the. The top and. And at the bottom, going, going into the social club. Like I said there, there were, you know, couples, families, groups of strangers playing, playing games all day long. Then the draft house going. Or dock house and going out to the dock. You know, there was plenty of space just to sit and be out of the crowd and in the shade.
[00:30:54] Speaker A: I didn't notice this until this sailing. We were sitting in sip, and you mentioned this, Michael, and I said I hadn't noticed this on our first sailing.
I got to give credit to Virgin for some really good design choices for the ship. So on Disney, you walk a hallway to get to a room, and then that room is the bar or the D Line lounge or whatever it is. Virgin made use of the full space. So when you're walking through sip, you're effectively walking down a hallway. But the way that they have set up that bar, it's like, well, I'm walking through the bar. I'm walking through the bar to get to the atrium, and then I'm walking through the atrium to get to the next bar and then the coffee shop.
And so, like, every space has been used in a way that they're, like, almost maximizing that space on the ship to create more spaces where people can congregate, have a drink, sit down, talk, play games, whatever it is.
But without, like, being like, well, this is the room for that and this is the room for that. They're using the whole ship to move you through.
[00:31:49] Speaker D: So I thought, honestly, for me, comparing it to, you know, even the magic and the wonder, it felt so much bigger in a good way. Like, it felt wider. Everything felt wide open. You didn't feel like you had to crunch in, you know, if you were passing people in those hallways. And then to know that on either side of that hallway are seating areas all along that you can just sit down and have a drink, not have a drink. I mean, Michael worked on this cruise, so he was in multiples of these spaces working, you know, and there was places where he could be, you know, every time he needed to, where he could just sit in a quiet area and work and it just seems more open.
[00:32:30] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, well. And this ship holds. So all of the ships on virgin voyages hold like a maximum of about 2,700 passengers. We were full sailing, so that was 2600 some odd passengers on our sailing. That's what, you know, when they consider full, they're talking about the. The rooms are occupied.
Even if they can hold, you know, two people, then they might only have one person. But it was a full sailing.
Michael did work. I remember one of the things that you. You said you encountered was the. The singles meetup. So every day there was a singles meetup on the cruise. And this was not just for solo sailors.
[00:33:11] Speaker C: Cruisers, they didn't have to be single.
[00:33:15] Speaker B: Yeah. So. Yeah.
[00:33:18] Speaker D: So for the record, he was not part of that. He was just working there.
[00:33:21] Speaker A: There was no Coldplay concert on board for anyone who was worrying about that.
[00:33:23] Speaker B: Yeah, but there are, you know, Disney, certainly there are people who sail by themselves on Disney. I would say it's more common on a ship, on a Virgin voyages ship to find plenty of, you know, solo cruisers. And so they would have this meeting up every single morning. I think around 10am they would have a meetup in a particular spot. It happened to be at the Draft House most days, which I think is where Michael liked to start his sort of morning work. Because it wasn't. Because that bar wasn't open. So it was one of the quieter spaces.
[00:33:54] Speaker A: But Sam, I think it's important to highlight. I think it's important to highlight because you're talking about solo cruising. And I think people get this, like, notion of what virgins for is like solo cruisers. People want to meet. It's like a mix and mix. I want to highlight. We start our mornings every morning at 9am with coffee and brain teasers hosted by the crew in the lounge.
[00:34:12] Speaker C: Mindbenders.
[00:34:13] Speaker A: Yeah, mindbenders. Mindbenders. So it was puzzling. And then Sam and I did a speed puzzling challenge and Michael and Tracy helped us.
[00:34:22] Speaker B: Jigsaw puzzles. Mind benders is mind puzzles. So most rebuses and Sudoku and crossword type things.
[00:34:31] Speaker A: Yeah, but like, there was a. I just want to highlight. I think it'd be helpful, Sam, talk to folks about.
There is a huge range of activities. This isn't all like, oh, we're gonna go drink in the bar and then sit by the pool. Like There are people who. Yeah, yeah.
[00:34:45] Speaker B: There are drink tastings and there are other kinds of classes as well that are. There's like a build a charcuterie board class, right? There is a tequila and mezcal tasting. Those are. These are add on costs. These ones that are, you know, include a food or drink as a part of it. There's even a coffee one, I believe as well. Like. So there's a bunch of different kind of, I'll call them seminars, you know, similar to what you have on Disney Cruise line. And some of them include alcohol and some of them do not include alcohol. But there's things throughout the entire day. There are some workout classes as well. Lots of really interesting ones. There's one that's a bungee cord one. That one is an add on course, but cost. But most of the workout classes are not. Tracy did a dance class and then she and I together did the VHS workout, which is an 80s themed workout. Tracy, tell folks about the class that you attended.
[00:35:44] Speaker D: I did two, actually. I did the rolling and stretching class in the gym and it was great. I mean, they had all the equipment that we needed. The guide was really good at explaining what we were doing, why we were doing it. And then I did a dance. Let's see, what was it? Retro, maybe it was a retro, I don't know. But it was one of the Happenings crew and he taught us dance moves. And I know that they had like at least one that was a couple's one, but there were several different. There was, I think there was a salsa. You could take a salsa class. There was several different dance classes if you just wanted to go like, you know, and, and the amount of people that were there for those classes I would say were probably between 10 and 15.
So the classes weren't huge. You weren't, you know, bumping into people. The venues that they held them in were the right size for the amount of people that they had. You didn't have to sign up ahead of time. I mean, you can, you could like, like hard it on your app or whatever. But if it wasn't a paid one, like I didn't. I just showed up at, you know, the, the, the rolling and stretching 1.
The gym, by the way, was really nice.
Bigger than Disney's same. Pretty much the same equipment, but bigger. So that was, you know, that's always something I like to look at too. So. And then like you talked about up on the.
I think it's on deck 16. They do have like the heavy punching bags, although I And they have a pickleball court there. I watched a pickleball game. First time I've ever done that.
[00:37:24] Speaker B: The C days at pickleball, you could go. And they sort of learn how to play. How to play and then play. And they had it from like 10 to 3. It was, you know, going on. So, yeah, lots of stuff to do that is. That is not an add on cost. And then a handful of things that are an add on cost.
And most of the activities are run by, as Tracy mentioned, the Happenings cast, which the Happenings cast is. Is Virgin's answer to the.
The cruise director, assistant cruise director, and all of your entertainment staff. Right. So all of these folks. There's 12 different folks in the Happening staff. They all have a different moniker, you know, based on sort of what they do or what their role is. And they all either teach classes or run the activities.
They do trivia. They do the mind benders. They do all of those, you know, all of the seminars. So. So they are, you know, just. They're all really like outgoing, fun people. They all seem to be at least be able to dance because they have to do some dance as a part of their job. A lot of them actually have come from a dance background.
And they're. Yeah, they're really fun. You definitely make relationships with them if you want to. They are not, you know, they're. If you go to the activities, you will make relationships with them. And you also make relationships with. With bar staff. I'd say that's more so than your wait staff, only because you don't have the same wait staff at the different restaurants and so.
[00:38:56] Speaker A: And the Happenings cast all have, like, roles that they play. That's the other thing.
[00:38:59] Speaker B: Like, you've got each of a moniker. One is like the food, one is the spark, one is the glow.
[00:39:06] Speaker A: But to put it in perspective, like, to make it real for people, there's like the charmer who is like a mentalist on board. And so he's always doing mentalist types of shows or hosting karaoke and stuff like that. Then there's the. Was it the foodie who's who, you know, hosts the charcuterie classes and, you know, that sort of thing. And then there was. Yeah, there was the one who was. I forget her name, but she was like the trivia person, right? And so she hosted all the gamers. So she hosts all the games on board. So, like, they have their little niches and they cross over and stuff. I don't feel like they don't. Yeah.
[00:39:36] Speaker B: Right.
[00:39:36] Speaker A: The bounce. The bounce. Which was.
[00:39:39] Speaker D: Yeah, we're still not sure what that is, but it's fine.
[00:39:42] Speaker B: But they all have a different moniker. They're all, they're all really friendly and like I said, they tend to, to be on the younger side. We're talking mostly in their 20s and maybe into their early 30s, but they're generally like to write out of college and they're multinational. There's also the diva who's a drag queen, who's one of the. She's one of the Happenings cast as well. And she hosts a bunch of different events and a show on board as well.
[00:40:10] Speaker A: So she's probably as close as you get to the cruise director. Honestly.
[00:40:14] Speaker B: Probably the closest you get to a cruise director. Yeah. So lots of different activities on. On board.
One of the paid activities that we did is called the grog walk. It is a pub crawl. I recommend if you're going to do it to do it on your. The first night. It's usually one of the things you can sign up on. Usually a couple times across the cruise, depending upon how long your cruise is. I saw it on the schedule, I think like four different times. But I think on most cruises it's only offered, you know, once or twice.
But it is a pub crawl. It's an add on cost. You get a drink at each bar. I think we had four drinks across the pub crawl. We ended at the PJ party. That was on the first night. And it is. I know it's going to sound kind of cheesy, but it is like icebreakers. Basically you're sort of forced interaction. That's what Brian mentioned about when we met the NBA player Austin Day on board.
He was in the grog walk with us. And one of the tasks that he was given was to find the best dressed person in the grog walk. And that happened to be Brian in his smoking jacket. So yeah, it's a really fun activity. Tracy and Michael, did you enjoy the grog walk? We roped you into that. We told you we're doing the grog walk night one. You don't have a choice.
We had been told by our lovely and wonderful travel agent Kaylee to do the grog walk on our previous cruise. We had a great time and so we're like, we're doing it again. We're forcing Tracy and Michael and they're going to love it. I just, you know.
[00:41:42] Speaker D: Oh yeah, you twisted our arm real hard. I mean it was for, for me, like I couldn't drink that fast. So I Couldn't finish the drinks.
But it was a great way to meet some really fun people.
So that on the end, that was our first day. So that helped me. If I saw somebody in the hallway, it's like, hey, you were on our grog walk. You know, I met Austin in on that. Another. Another gentleman too, that I had to make up like a little rap song about, which. Which was terrible.
So they had different little tasks that you did. But at the end of the night when we finished at that very last place and we had that really good slushy wine thingamabobi, like, we. We were sitting at a table with like, I don't know, 12 people maybe, that we had met throughout the. This process.
And we were just laughing and talking it up and making friends. And then we saw them throughout the cruise and it. It was, you know, fun to run into them and say, oh, what did you do today in Grand Turks? And to hear what other people were doing as well. So I. It's a great way if you are. If you were somebody who is extroverted, like Sam and I are, for sure. It's a great way to meet lots of people and to like, kind of.
[00:43:03] Speaker B: Set for the introverts. Tracy, I think it's even better because you and I would just go talk to random people.
[00:43:08] Speaker D: And.
[00:43:10] Speaker B: I think it was even better for Michael and Brian because it's like this forced interaction. And so we made friends. As you mentioned, we. We saw these folks throughout the cruise thereafter.
I want to jump and answer Vanessa's question, because folks who aren't looking watching the chat that this is something you sign up for in the app on board. If you are sailing Rockstar you or Mega Rockstar, you'll do that through your agent, but otherwise you will be doing it all. All these things through the app. You only have to sign up for things that are an additional cost and anything else is just a.
[00:43:45] Speaker A: Most are not. Most are not. Like, most of that stuff is not.
[00:43:48] Speaker C: Yeah, I was going to say don't. Don't get the feeling that. That, oh, they're going to nickel and dime you because far from it of.
I mean, we did a couple things that were paid extra. Everything else we did was. Was free. Comes. Comes.
[00:44:02] Speaker B: I think we only did.
I think the. The four of us as a group only did two activities that were a paid activity, one being the grog walk and the other being the. There was a speakeasy event that they're doing it. It's actually a special celebration for the brilliant lady coming out and so they were doing sort of a, call it a food and wine festival or something like that.
And so they did a special kind of spe that was the grog walk I believe was $50 a person, the speakeasy event was $20 a person and they both include drinks. So generally speaking, the add on events are things that are either sort of a specialty workout class or they are and they involve additional food and drinks.
[00:44:46] Speaker A: 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?
[00:44:52] Speaker B: Yeah. Whether you're considering branching out to a new cruise line, an all inclusive resort, or exploring Europe, the team at MyPath Unwinding 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.
[00:45:10] 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. But 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.
[00:45:31] 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 DCLDUOMypathunwinding.com to let them know we sent you their way. Thanks my Path Unwinding, for sponsoring today's show. Now back to the episode.
[00:45:52] Speaker A: So Sam, I want to move us along because I, I, I, we've got tons of stuff we haven't even talked about, tons of questions to ask and we're spending a lot of time on a grog walk. So I just want to like, I want to move us along here. Ice cream. Yeah. So I, let me, let me try to guide us through some categories here because I want to make sure that we hit them and I also want to make sure we get to these questions. Great questions are coming in from the chat.
I want to start with, I think let's, let's start with stateroom. A bunch of people are asking about what the state rooms are like on board.
Just quickly the cruise line did try to disrupt what a normal stateroom would be like and so some of the staterooms have like couches that turn into beds and so they like, you know, make them couches during the day and beds at night. They have some solo cruising staterooms, those sorts of things.
Our view on staterooms may be a little bit skewed because Tracy and Michael selled Rockstar. We sell Mega Rockstar and so our rooms were already larger than a normal cabin.
Michael, Tracy, what did you think of your state stateroom?
[00:46:49] Speaker C: Well, something first yesterday is we were on until they were basically about to escort us off the ship. We were able to walk down one of the hallways and see into a lot of the staterooms so we could see there. I mean, to me they were definitely not as, even those ones weren't as crowded as we see on the Disney show ships. There, there seemed to be plenty of space to get around the bed in the area.
Specifically our stateroom. I mean it has, I, I think it's like they called it some kind of specialty king bed. So it wasn't a full king bed, but it was larger than, than a queen.
[00:47:32] Speaker B: Again, this is, this is Rockstar and mega rock star.
You're not going to get kids called set.
[00:47:39] Speaker D: Sweet. What was our suite called?
I can't remember. Oh, well, doesn't matter.
[00:47:42] Speaker A: Seriously?
[00:47:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:43] Speaker D: You're not seriously sweet.
[00:47:45] Speaker B: Yeah. So you're not going to get king sized beds outside of the Rockstar status. I would say, you know, generally speaking, the rooms are made for, I think two people. Most rooms, you know, there are some solo ones, but most rooms are made for two people. So you're not talking about a room that's supposed to accommodate a four person family. And so I think that's where the difference is. You don't have split bathrooms like you have on Disney Cruise Line, but you will have similar amenities.
I would say the biggest difference is the modern flair to the rooms. Like decoration wise, these rooms are more modern looking. Like they skew in that sort of thematically versus Disney, which is obviously going for the classic ocean liner look.
[00:48:26] Speaker C: That's true of the entire ship.
[00:48:27] Speaker B: Yes, the entire ship.
[00:48:28] Speaker C: The entire ship has a definite modern ski.
[00:48:31] Speaker D: And the thing about the bathroom, I was worried about not having this split bathroom because that is like one of my favorite things on Disney Cruise Cruise Line. But the bat, at least our bathroom in our suite was giant.
Like it was not an issue.
[00:48:45] Speaker B: But this is not. Okay, I gotta give the caveat. Like we're not giving information on rooms to folks because if you're sailing outside of Rockstar, you're gonna have a very different experience. So I don't want to. I don't want to, like, be like all flowers and rainbows about rooms. Like, you get what you pay for on, like on any cruise. So look at the state room and the layouts.
[00:49:07] Speaker C: We, we thought ours was great until we walked into Sam and Brian's.
[00:49:11] Speaker A: Virgin did take. Virgin did take some flack early on for design and layout of some of their staterooms. You know, at the non Rockstar level. Things like light switches hidden in closets, you know, the beds not being the most comfortable because they were couches and beds like this. So, like, it is a you get what you pay for situation. The starting price of a Virgin cruise, however, for seven nights is going to. To be significantly lower than what you would pay on Disney, to the point where what you would probably pay to go on a Disney cruise is sailing in Rockstar already. So if, if you're concerned about room, you know, I think the Rockstar is kind of a good price comparison is between Virgin and Disney.
Another couple, two points on state rooms. One is Virgin does some really interesting things with state rooms, especially around the back of the ship. They have these things called cheeky corner suites that have oversized balconies. Some of them, the balcony is the same size as the room itself.
Thing I'll say is if you can see the. If you see the photo behind me, you'll see lots of like, red dashes of red dotting all of the balconies. That is the hammock that Virgin Voyages installs on every one of the balconies on board their ship. That's right. You get a hammock in your balcony stateroom and it is a comfortable hammock to the point that they sell them on board because people love them so much. So that's another sort of thing that Virgin does. It's a little bit different than Disney. Um, I think one thing we need to talk about that people are going to be curious about is, is food.
And so we did dine as a group. We dined at the Wake, which is the steakhouse. We dined at Extroversion twice, actually, which is the Italian restaurant. We dined at Pink Agave.
We dined at Gun Bay for the first time, all of us, because we didn't eat at Gumbe the last time that we were. We were on board. So I don't know that we can go restaurant by restaurant.
Oh, sorry. And Razzle dazzle, which we did not eat dinner at the last time we were on board. I don't know that we can go restaurant by restaurant.
I do want to, I do want to take a minute to address Gun Bay because it is the. One of the more unique dining experiences on board. I think the other ones are very much like sit down, order from a menu you, you have, with the exception of test Kitchen, sit down, order from a menu, you're served at a table, there's no show happening. You know, the restaurant may have an atmosphere of whatever it is, you know, they're, you know, Mexican food, Italian food, whatever it is, but it's very much like sit down, order your meal, you know, get your food and go. No show.
Michael Tracy, what did you think about kind of the food on board, generally speaking, food quality, you know, all of that sort of stuff. Service in the dining room, in the atmosphere in the dining room.
[00:51:52] Speaker D: I guess for me, it being the picky one, I'll go and just say everything that I had was at least as good as Disney. Some things I had were better.
The atmosphere in each restaurant, they were all beautiful. The service staff was all lovely.
We have one issue. I accidentally but canceled the dinner reservation. It wasn't really. It was actually my stomach. I stuck my phone in and somehow I don't know how I did it. And I think because of that we got a not ideal table. The first night we went to Extra Virgin.
Literally we had. It was canceled for like five minutes. But anyway, so other than that little snafu, I would, you know, I would compare the food to Taste wise for me was at least Disney. Disney, in some cases better.
Again, I'm very picky. So it, and it was a very, it wasn't like I could just order off the kids menu like I do on Disney, you know, I, you know, but they were good about if I, if there was something that I really didn't want on it, you know, if I ordered the French toast at brunch, but I didn't want the pecans and whatever, you know, they, they were able to accommodate that.
They asked us every single time, every single place, including the ice cream place, if we had Alice.
So they are very allergy conscious.
But I would, for me, you know, I can't say that, oh wow, Disney is way up here in Virgin's, way down here. I would say they're pretty comparable. Now take me to Palo and I might, I don't know that I had any meal that was for me, Palo level.
But overall, if you're talking just restaurants now, you don't talk about the galley. That's a whole nother story for me. But for the restaurants.
That's how I would kind of compare them, apples to apples, really.
[00:53:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree with you.
[00:53:53] Speaker C: Definitely. As we discussed, I mean, the quality of the food is somewhere between Main Dining and Palo. I mean, Enchante and Remy go a step beyond nothing we had touched on that.
But Buenos. In the restaurant, there aren't a lot of choices.
I mean, if you're. If you're going back several times to the same restaurant, you're.
You're gonna find two or three things you like, and you're probably gonna stick with those because, I mean, at least that's. That's. That's what I found. But yeah, the wait staff, I mean, they were great. I mean, they all. All of the, the wait staff we had was as good as the. The best ones I've had on Disney.
And I mean, something to keep in mind there is. They're not working for tips.
[00:54:47] Speaker A: That's a good point.
[00:54:48] Speaker C: That, you know, they're doing all that because they genuinely want you to have a good experience. And I'm not saying there. There aren't servers on Disney that. That are doing it for that. I mean, the last one we had on Disney, I know he was doing it for that because, you know, he just loves people and was doing it. But, you know, and the next statement I'm going to make, it just seemed more universal with the bar staff and the happening staff and everyone.
I mean, they seem to genuinely care. You didn't get the feeling that they were hovering around like, I want a bigger tip or I want you to add more gratuity. They're just helping you out.
[00:55:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
I'd say the restaurants compare favorably to Main Dining on Disney. No question. I think some of them are a cut above Main Dining, but maybe a cut below Palo.
There's nothing that approaches a Remy Uran enchante on board. Test Kitchen tries to be that. But we have universally heard not great things about Test Kitchen from people who've gone. I mean, some people have said it's good and they go again. But most of the feedback we've heard about Test Kitchen is avoid it. The other thing I want to highlight, that tipping thing. We didn't say this up front. Two things. Virgin prices are cabin by cabinet cabin. So you go in and you look at the price. It's not $1,500 per person. It's $1,500 for the cabin, and up to two people can sail in that cabin.
They also include tips.
They discourage tipping on board. So no one's handing you. You get A little band, like a. It's like a Disney band, only I think better. We showed it off on the last show we did. It's very small. It's just like an anchor rope kind of thing that goes around and has a little puck on top of it that opens your stateroom door, checks you on and off the ship, pays for everything. They wander around these Android phones, they can tap the ban servers. Can you never sign anything. You're never presented with a way to tip. If you want to tip somebody, you tip them in cash and they're not expecting it. And I think, frankly, the only person.
[00:56:43] Speaker B: Had my nails done.
And if you want to tip, you have to bring cash. There is nothing, as Brian said, there's nothing to sign. There's no percentage to add. There's nothing. There's one exception on the tipping. If you're staying in Rockstar or Mega Rockstar, it is customary to tip your rockstar agent, who is your, like, personal. Personal concierge. So if you're. If it's comparable to sort of concierge on Disney, you would tip the concierge folks on. If you're sailing Rockstar, Mega Rockstar, you tip your. Your Rockstar agent is what they call them. Yeah. But other than that, there's really no tipping. And as Brian mentioned, the, The. The tap to pay, which is typically for a drink, is super seamless and easy. It's much quicker. You can do it from the pool. You stick your arm out and they touch your back. Ban. You know you're banned with their phone.
[00:57:34] Speaker A: Yep. I want to spend one minute on one restaurant, which is Gun Bay.
Gun Bay is the one restaurant we eat at that I think is different than the others.
Gun BAE is a Korean barbecue restaurant. And so you sit one, you do not get a private table. Even as a group of four, you're always going to be sitting probably with a group of at least 8, 6 to 8. So you will be paired up with other people. You sit at a round booth, shoulder to shoulder. That's a little cozy. And there's a grill, a grill in the middle where they're going to cook your food. It is not hibachi. It is much smaller than that.
And basically you can. You. There's some appetizers, things you can order, but otherwise, like the proteins, they just bring out what they're going to cook in the grill in front of you.
Gumbe is unique because of that group dining and for one other reason that is very like virgin voyages. Adult only. Yes. We. You play drinking game At Gun Bay.
[00:58:27] Speaker B: Gun Bay. One round.
[00:58:29] Speaker A: You play one round of a drinking game at Gun Bay. I won't get into what the game is, but you do play a drinking game as a table, and I think it's meant to be as sams, an icebreaker.
And so you kind of get to know your fellow diners by playing this little drinking game. And then, you know, you're all having a little. Few drinks, and then, you know, you're. You're socially lubricated, shall we say, to have a fun dining experience.
And so it is a different restaurant. So if that, you know, does not sound like fun to you, or you're not into Korean barbecue, I would say gumbe is not a must do. I'm glad we did it. I would go back. I thought it was a fun restaurant to go eat at.
There were not a lot of choices in that setting.
[00:59:06] Speaker C: I mean, because you're sitting with the other people. I mean, there were the four of us, we knew each other. There were two other couples. The. The one couple we started interacting with right away. You know, they. They were conversing with us. The other couple, we tried to. To get them involved. And. And it. It just seemed like they were. It wasn't what they expected or they weren't having a good experience or didn't like the food.
So there was less interaction.
[00:59:35] Speaker B: I want to jump in on the food. Overall, food is more adventurous, typically, than what you see on Disney. So there isn't, like, there isn't always a plain steak on the menu or a plain piece of chicken on the menu. So that's one area where I think virgin maybe doesn't do as well as Disney and main dining, which is just that they don't have as many. They don't have really, sometimes any plain options. As Tracy said, you can ask for something. I mean, we both got the steak and an extra virgin, which was like a gorgonzola crusted steak. And we said, can we have it without the Gorgonzola? And they were like, sure, no problem. Right. So they. There are modifications they are, of course, willing to make. But when you look at the menu immediately, you may be like, I'm not sure there's anything on here I really want. So that's one of the. One of the negatives I'd say.
[01:00:32] Speaker D: And I think for us, especially because we've sailed so Disney so often, we kind of know what we can like. I can always ask for a Caesar stuff salad. I can always ask for a Caesar salad with chicken on it. If I want to. At Disney. That was not an option on Virgin.
So now I could go to the Galley and get a Caesar salad or the pizza place, or go to the pizza place and get a Caesar salad. But. But it was. That was not an option in the restaurants. And so that. That kind of flexibility that Disney gives us in the. In the main dining restaurants, where, you know, some nights you maybe order the soup from the other restaurant and they bring it over for you, you know, just because they're being super nice about it. That was not an option on Virgin. So for me, as a picky eater, that, you know, was a little bit. Made me a little nervous, but I didn't starve everybody. I'm. I'm still here, so it's all good.
[01:01:19] Speaker A: Well, and. And look, you can go eat pizza every night if you want, if you're that picky of an eater. They've got Mediterranean tapas that they serve some, you know, some afternoons and stuff that I think got Mediterranean flavor to it, but it's basically grilled chicken, grilled beef. Beef grilled shrimp skewers. They had a place that serves popcorn, soft pretzels, hot dogs.
Yeah.
[01:01:40] Speaker D: Gummy bears.
[01:01:42] Speaker A: Yeah. So. So there are tons of different food options on board.
[01:01:45] Speaker C: Wait, the best food in. In my opinion on it there. There were maybe one miss on the breads and pastries and desserts.
[01:01:56] Speaker D: The bread was so good.
[01:01:58] Speaker C: Breads just overall, whatever you got, we're good. Cinnamon buns.
I mean, whatever they had was good.
[01:02:06] Speaker A: I want to push us into a new topic, because we still got tons of stuff to cover. I think a lot of people get nervous about Virgin for one reason, Scarlet Night. And I think we got to talk about Scarlet Knight and what it is and what our experience with it was.
Scarlet Night, for those who don't know, every sailing has a Scarlet Knight. It's like, for Disney aficionados, it's like your pirate deck party, except if the music was DJed and the storytelling was just.
This is not, like, super risque storytelling, but it's risque. It's got a little adult theme to it. So I know that Ashley asked, what was that big octopus that was on the pool deck? I got my Virgin voyages octopus right here. Like, what was that big octopus on the pool deck?
[01:02:55] Speaker D: Deck.
[01:02:56] Speaker A: This is Virgin's effort, and I think this probably comes from the people they took from Disney to do a night that has some storytelling around it and that culminates in a party. So Scarlet Knight is celebrating this mythological story of the first sailor to cross the Seas. He was interested in exploring the ocean. He's the first one to dive off of his boat into the ocean to explore the depths below. And he meets the octopus, this octopus goddess.
They fall in love. They have, as they like to say on board, an entanglement.
And he and the octopus goddess, she shows him all of the depths of the sea. Of course, he is a human. Needs air. One night, she keeps him down too long.
She sees that the sailor's going to die, and so she plucks his soul from him and hurdles it into the night sky.
There is a flash of scarlet red.
I can't remember if she put it. Yeah, I guess she put it as. It depends on who you ask.
But she plucks his soul, throws it up into the sky. There is a flash of scarlet and it becomes the night moon. So the two of them can forever continue their adventures as the moon constantly sets below the waves kind of thing. And so that is the myth behind Scarlet Night. The reality of Scarlet Night is everyone is out wearing red as some kind of red. And there's just. There's a. It starts with a big kind of production in their atrium, which is nothing like a Disney atrium, let me put it that way. Big production, the atrium. And then there's like lots of little things happening around the ship that you can kind of go see and do and everything then migrates up to the pool deck for a big party where everyone's dancing, people are jumping in the pool, and they're closed on the pool deck. There's a show and there's a party that happens. And then after a bit, that party actually migrates into the nightclub on board called the Manor. And that's Scarlet Night. And Scarlet Night is. Is like they. They decorate the whole ship, but by the time you're going to bed, all the decorations are gone. So like it's, It's. It is. It is a sort of migrating kind of party with lots of different things you can do. We have now twice done something they do on board that's a tour. It's an invitationally tour. I don't even want to mention what it is because I don't want everyone like going out and asking about it. I'm sure you can look. Look it up in other settings. You may have even mentioned on the last show we did. It's a small group tour that takes you from some of the places to different places around the ship to hear the story of Scarlet Knight from different perspectives, and then brings you up to the pool deck for the Big party at the end of the night. So it's kind of a more curated experience of Scarlet night.
Tracy, Michael, what did you think of Scarlet at night?
[01:05:39] Speaker D: I thought. I mean, for me, it was. It was a lot of fun to see everybody dressed up, and it was red. Everything from, like, red shorts to formal gowns. So any array of red is. Is okay.
The show was good. Was I glad that I was on the deck above the pool?
[01:05:58] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:05:59] Speaker D: If you imagine, like, Pirate night down on the deck where the. You know, where the pools are on Disney, where it's crowded and, you know, everybody's trying to get by the stage, be the pirates, whatever. That's what it was on the pool deck area. It was just lots of people, and the music is pretty loud and everybody's dancing.
The dancers and the happenings crew also does some dancing. And then eventually they start dancing in the shallow end of the pool and they start splashing people. And the next thing you know, people are jumping in fully clothed.
But I was glad we were up above because it wasn't quite as crowded. And then. Then the spaces afterwards, like, all the different bars seemed very crowded. Like, I'm not sure how I would have navigated that without the little tour that we did, because it was.
[01:06:53] Speaker B: Unless that night, Tracy, probably you would have been at karaoke with the diva that night. I bet.
[01:06:58] Speaker D: Yeah, you're right. I would have been a karaoke.
You're not wrong. You're not wrong. But I don't know how you would decide where to go, because all the spaces had music. They were pretty crowded. Everybody was. I mean, but everybody was having a great time.
So I. I enjoyed it kind of from a distance, so. And I. And I'm. I do like to party and I do like to dance, so.
But it just. For me, I just couldn't figure out where I was, where I would have gone, you know, So I don't know if you felt it kind of the same way.
[01:07:33] Speaker C: Probably. I mean.
I mean.
[01:07:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:07:37] Speaker C: I mean, I think you would just either have heard about someplace to go or you would have gone someplace with friends. But at the end, I mean, everyone's going to the pool deck for that culmination. I mean, regardless of which dj, which party you're at, whether it's the, you know, the doc had something going. The, you know, Social club had the karaoke. I'm sure there was something in the manor, something while we were in the Red Room room at one point and then. But at 10:45, everyone needs to either be or getting to the pool deck.
Because then there's the dancing and more the end of the story there.
And then it's like 11 o'. Clock. They're taking the net off the pool and starting to dance. And the pool set up. There's two legends. I mean, Tracy called it the shallow and it's a few inches deep.
[01:08:35] Speaker D: Yeah, ledges.
[01:08:36] Speaker C: And that's where, you know, the dancers first started. And then, then, I mean, one thing they did a good job of, you know, people know to stay back because there's. There's the pool, there's a ledge where the dancers were and then there's a walkway around it and people were. Were just outside of that and you could tell they, they were waiting to. To ride in.
Most people ran into those shallow ends and just started dancing. And I know, Brian, you made the comment it's like it took a long time for someone to jump fully into the.
[01:09:11] Speaker A: But they did it. But they did it.
[01:09:13] Speaker C: They did it.
[01:09:13] Speaker A: They did it.
[01:09:14] Speaker B: And you know, that's sort of the. It's not the end of Scarlet Night because as Brian mentioned, there are still a party going on that kind of migrates from up on the pool deck down into the manor, which is the club space. It's also the space where they have the ship show that we went to, which is a variety show on board that you do have to reserve, although it's included. It's also a dinner show if you want to eat dinner there. We didn't eat dinner there. We had eaten dinner before.
But yeah, so there's, there's a. There's definitely a lot going on and there's. As. As Michael mentioned, you'd probably would migrate from party to party until you found one that you just kind of vibed with. You like the space. You like people.
I think that's probably the typical way people sort of find where they want to go and spend their time on Scarlet Night.
[01:10:02] Speaker A: Samsung, you mentioned. So Charlie Brown asked in the. When do people jump in the pool? That is the culminating party. 10:45. It starts on the upper deck. It's like, you know, done is the wrong word, but the show aspect of it's done within about 15 to 20 minutes. And then there's dancing happening. And then at some point that DJ kind of shuts down and moves everyone down to the manor to keep dancing because the. It is loud. It is loud on that upper deck when you're up there. And, you know, they move it and confine it into the manor so that people can. Can actually go to bed. If they want.
[01:10:33] Speaker B: Loudest. Good word. I actually had earplugs with me and I put them in during the pool deck thing. So starting at 10:45. Cause there's a DJ and then there's a singer who comes out and it's quite loud. I find it kind of loud. And so I put my earplugs in not for the singer, but once the DJ started pumping.
[01:10:57] Speaker A: I also want to answer Josh's question here. What are the trivia prizes on Virgin? They are not medals. They are drinks. Usually you have to pay for your drinks and people have bar tabs and stuff. So they give winning teams free drinks.
[01:11:07] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Either coffee drinks or alcoholic drinks. Either one. They'll. They'll get you because the coffee drinks are not included. Like you can get coffee, right? Drip coffee. But if you want like lattes and those kinds of things, those you have to purchase at the espresso bar. There are some benefits included with Rockstar and Mega Rockstar that are, you know, one coffee drink a day, I believe, per person. But generally speaking, those are. Those are extra costs. So anything. Those extra cost drinks are what they give you as your prize. So for the whole team.
[01:11:37] Speaker A: Okay, so I want to keep us moving. That is what Scarlet Night is all about. I want to keep us moving.
A lot of ground to cover and my editor is going to kill me for the length of time the show is going. So.
So I do want to talk and Sam, I want to go specifically to you and just talk about shows.
And then we're going to talk about Bimini. So talk about shows.
[01:12:03] Speaker B: Okay, so there's a couple of different shows. We didn't go to all of them. There was a acapella group and beatboxer on the ship. They did a show. The beatboxer did even his own, like, sort of seminar show. There's what's called the Ship show, which is a variety show, which is sort of part game show, part musical act, part acrobatic acts. Think, you know, a balancer, an aerialist and some acrobats. So that's the Ship show. There's the Untitled Dance show, which is a dance show. We didn't go to see that. But that's when there's the Misbehave show, which is, I think, a game show hosted by the diva. So there's a bunch of different shows.
There are a couple of them, like the Ship show, you have to reserve, but they are not. But they don't cost extra. You just have to reserve it because there's Limited offerings. Offerings. And they don't want you to, you know, just sort of no show for it. So you have to reserve those spots. And then because they include dinner. But there's throughout the cruise, a bunch of different shows. The shows are either in the manor, which is the club space, or in the red room, which is the theater space. So just depending upon which show it is, I'd say quality wise, are they as good as Disney Cruise Line? No, but they are a lot of fun. They do have some risque elements and they do have some risque language. But they are certain. Certainly not R rated by any means.
[01:13:31] Speaker A: I would say they're different from my opinion, the ship.
[01:13:35] Speaker B: They are absolutely different. The ship show.
[01:13:37] Speaker A: I thought the singing quality of the main singer was amazing.
The talented acrobat. They are not telling a Broadway story. They are doing a variety show. But the people performing in that variety show are excellent. Like, they are excellent.
[01:13:50] Speaker B: Absolutely. That's the only reason why I say it's not like it's a different style.
But would I say they're as good as Disney because of that? No, but they're really wonderful and really entertaining. So it's just a different. Completely different style.
[01:14:03] Speaker A: I enjoy the shows on Virgin a bit more than I do on Disney. All right.
[01:14:07] Speaker D: There's also people around in the bars too, like live musicians, like they have at Disney, like in the atrium or whatever. There was a violin player. There was a couple that would sang. I mean, so there is that as well during the day and into the evening. So just so you know that that's available as well.
[01:14:23] Speaker A: Yeah. And Robin saying in the chat, misbehave is R rated. I would say that is the one that is more risque and that is the one that we have still not. I tried to get away. We still have not seen it. So it's just.
[01:14:33] Speaker B: There's so much to do. It's hard to fit in there.
[01:14:35] Speaker A: The theater spaces are much smaller on board. These are not the grand Walt Disney Theater. This is like much more like community theater space, all black. You can see like the tape on the ground for the Marks and you know that kind of stuff. So it's not. It is not the same kind of theater space that you will see on Disney CR or even, frankly a Royal Caribbean Cruise Line.
Bimini. All right, we got to talk about Bimini. Bimini is Virgin voyages. I'm going to say private destination.
It is not a private island.
It is more of a private beach, club resort area with a lot. There's a lot to do you can do on Bimini? So there's shore excursions you can do. You can rent golf carts. There's just all kinds of different things you can do on Bimin.
We went to the private beach club. Tracy, Michael, I'm coming to you. Castaway Key versus Bimini, like, you know, or Lookout, you know, basically Disney Private island experience versus Bimini, you know, help folks understand the difference. But also what you thought about the two experiences.
[01:15:37] Speaker C: I mean, for, for me, I mean, a lot of times when I'm going to either cast away or, or when we've gotten to look at just wanting to be in the water and attend beach and, and I, I'd say for, for that it was good. I mean, we, we were right in, in the water off the beach. We, we did have some chairs that were easy to get near, near where we were. And the, the bar was an easy walk back when we wanted something to drink. Even, even if that was water, it was, it was right there and available to us.
One thing they have, we, we didn't go to it. But what they don't have at Lookout or Cast a is a pool.
So if you're, if you're not a beach person, if you don't like the, the ocean water, you at least have, have the pool to go to.
There are times, I mean, both it cast away. When we've been out at Serenity, it's, it's been so shallow you have to go out, you know, 100 yards to get the water up to your waist that, you know, and the same thing in some of the, the family beach areas at Castaway, it seems more hit or miss there where, you know, both, both the lookout and at Bimini that didn't seem to be the case. You're. You're going to, to be able to get into the water fairly quickly up to near over your head if you want.
[01:16:57] Speaker D: And I would say the same. Like the drinks were great. The, the atmosphere was good. The music was, you know, pumping.
You know, we, we did the things that we like to do at the beach, which is get in the water, stand around, talk with our friends friends or lay on a beach chair.
You know, we didn't eat there.
Sam and Brian didn't have the best experience the first time. So they steered us back to the ship to eat, which was fine. I mean, I, I.
[01:17:24] Speaker C: And we did look at the menu.
[01:17:25] Speaker D: I looked at the menu. There was nothing on there I was going to eat.
[01:17:28] Speaker A: So even the crew acknowledges at times, like, yeah, this is not that great.
[01:17:32] Speaker D: Yeah, so for, for what we like for the beach, it was pretty perfect. It was lovely there. The one thing I will say is they didn't have merch at Bimini, like at their beach club. I'm sure if I'd have gone into the actual town, I could have found something that said bimin or whatever. And, and overall the virgin merch is lacking as far as I'm concerned. I'm a merch girl. I like to, you know, bring home something that says something on it where I was.
But, but overall the beach was beautiful. It was clean, the sand was really soft, the water was perfect temperature, the drinks were good and the company was great. So I got no complaints.
[01:18:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I, I think Bim is a great. It's totally different than Castaway. It's not like a fully curated. It's more like a Royal Caribbean, although toned way down. So it's, you know, it's about the pool, the music, the beach, you know, but it's a nice area. I, I will give them beautiful sandy beach, beautiful water, good drinks, easy to get. They don't have bar server circulating though, which is, it's kind of annoying if to get out of the beach, go up, get your drink and come back down. The only people who get bar service are if you book a cabana.
And the cabanas are nothing like you will not, not anywhere near as nice as what you see on, on, on Castaway or Lookout.
[01:18:57] Speaker B: But you can book them. They're available.
[01:19:00] Speaker A: Yeah, they come with bar credit. That's why people book them. They come with bar credit because you got to pay for all your drinks. So drink packages, bar credit, bar tab credit, all that sort of stuff.
All right, before you wrap up, I'm gonna have one more question for all of us, or actually two questions for all of us. Go around the horn. But I want to answer some very tactical, specific questions people have been raising in the chat so they know what's going on.
So someone asked about boarding. Vanessa asked about how do boarding times work? This is a unique thing on Virgin voyages.
So with Virgin, they don't board until 1:30.
Why? Because you get to stay on the ship. Like we had brunch reservation at 9:30 in the morning, so you can actually book a restaurant that morning. 9:30, 10:30, they want everybody off the ship, but they don't board again until 1:30. So there's a later disembarkation to accommodate a later embarkation time.
I don't remember. So someone asked what the benefits are between Rockstar, Mega Rockstar. So some of the shared benefits are priority embark disembark on the ship. So we didn't have to pick boarding times. I honestly can't tell you as I sit here today if you have to pick a boarding time after 1:30 or if it's just show up to the port anytime after 1:30 you get assigned one.
[01:20:15] Speaker C: If you're not rock star or above, you get assigned in. But the difference is at that time you go through and you get right on the ship. You, you shouldn't have to wait like you do at Disney.
[01:20:26] Speaker A: Virgin also encourages at least on the port of Miami they have excursions you can book on embarkation day out of Miami. They encourage you come drop off your luggage at the port and then go explore the city. We don't and so like they're really encouraging you not to just treat Miami as the place where you get on the ship but as a place to go explore and have some fun. So but anyway specifics about boarding 1:30. It's much later but it gives you some more time on the ship at the end. I also want to mention for folks luggage so they don't send you luggage tags. You print them out at home and you you can buy these little plastic sleeves that you can hook onto your luggage and slide your luggage tags in. I think they really want you just to fold them up and staple them them together to get your luggage on board. But even if you don't do either of those things, they will still tag your luggage at the port. So it is not you get the luggage tags 30 days in advance. You got to remember them and tag your luggage like Disney. They'll tag it at the port or you can print them out at home and you can buy these luggage sleeve things. Just search for cruise luggage tags on Amazon and you'll find there's a Royal Caribbean version that's long and and narrow. And there's another version that's squat and fat. We use the squat and fat version. Neither version really worked for versions tags like perfectly. But the squat and fat Virgin version holds the luggage tags just fine.
[01:21:45] Speaker B: And don't throw away your luggage tags when you get on board. They use the same tags for boarding and disembarkation. So just an FYI that something we didn't know because our first time on Virgin because Disney obviously uses different tags. Virgin uses the same tags for boarding.
[01:22:00] Speaker A: And disembark Embarkation Rockstar versus Mega Rockstar. So just to say like Rockstar they have you start with like a little bit of a nicer stateroom, little larger stateroom. They have different categories of stateroom within Rockstar.
You do get access to a Rockstar agent on board who can, you know, sort of act as your guest services staff, arrange dining for you, move dining reservations, help you book things on board that need to be booked, spa treatments, that kind of stuff. You get access to Richard's rooftop, which is the private Rockstar Mega Rockstar only area. They do a nightly happy hour where they have a small set menu of drinks that you can order complimentary for the hour between. I think it's 5 and 6 essentially, but you could access that Richard's rooftop area all day as well. They have hot tubs and lots of loungers, daybed kind of things all over there. So if you want a quiet place away from the pool to go sit and relax, you can go to Richard's rooftop. You do get a lower tier wifi package included with Rockstar.
The other tip I'll give you separate from Rockstar Mega Rockstar is they do status matching on Virgin Voyages. So if you have status with Disney Cruise Line, you can go register with Virgin and you will immediately kind of jump up at least one tier in their loyalty status program. And that does get you some benefits like, you know, bar tab on board and things like that that are given to you. So you might get like a, you know, $100 bar credit with your status. You might get discount on laundry or a free bag of laundry while you're on board, that, that kind of stuff. I think Rockstar gets maybe a free bag of laundry now that I think about it.
[01:23:40] Speaker D: No, not Rockstar. No, not Rockstar.
[01:23:42] Speaker A: It was our status.
[01:23:43] Speaker D: It was our status that got us.
[01:23:44] Speaker B: That.
[01:23:47] Speaker D: Was their match.
[01:23:47] Speaker A: Instead, Rockstar used to get a free trip into the thermal spa, which is essentially like the Rainforest Room on Disney Cruise Line. I'd say it's every bit as comparable to the Rainforest Room on Disney Cruise Lines. Very nice. Nice. We loved. We spent an afternoon there and absolutely enjoyed it.
But now Rockstar just gets priority booking and they have to pay the 89 or 86 fee for the thermospa, but you have to book it. So unlike the Rainforest Room on Disney where you buy a pass, either a day pass or a week cruise, length of cruise pass, you have to actually book times for the thermal spa and pay a fee for it on virtual in and you get like up to three hours in the spa before you're supposed to leave.
I think that's a great thing because they actually tightly control then how many people are in there using it. It never felt crowded, it always felt clean.
Plenty of space, all that kind of stuff.
Mega Rockstar, you start to get into all of the Rockstar benefits. Plus like, you know, you have a dedicated, you have a dedicated Rockstar agent who has fewer cabins to be dealing with. You get unfettered access to the thermal spa without a reservation, reservation or a fee. You get free daily laundry. If you want to send your laundry out every day, they will break. They will happily take it, clean it, bring it back the next day.
So there's some added.
[01:25:06] Speaker B: There's no self service laundry on the ships.
[01:25:09] Speaker A: No self. Yeah, you get higher end WI Fi, you get the top tier WI fi package in Mega Rockstar. So someone asked about WI Fi, you do pay actually, I think everyone on the ship gets like a very basic package, basic package of WI Fi, but then if you want slightly faster, you pay more. And then they have a work at sea package where you can actually do zoom video calls and you know, stuff like that. So Mega Rockstar gets the work at sea package so you can do streaming and things like that.
Another key difference between Virgin and Disney, there are no photographers on Virgin voyages. So all the pictures you take, they're your own with your phone or your camera. They don't have roaming photographers. They don't have photo packages. Sort of a what happens on Virgin stays on Virgin kind of situation.
So just know that going in there are no photos photographers.
Someone asked if sodas.
[01:25:58] Speaker D: We still got lots of pictures of Brian.
[01:26:00] Speaker A: Yes, it's too many.
Someone asked if sodas were included on board. There are sodas and, and tea and coffee in the galley area on board that you can go up and get. Virgin discourages single use containers throughout the ship. So it's always a good idea to bring your own cup. Although they have cups there, you know, if you want to grab them.
Sodas ordered from bars, however, do cost. So you know, much like Disney, it's like there's an area where you can get free soda, but if you want a soda from the bar, you're going to pay unless you buy a bar tab in advance. They don't do like drink packages, they do purchase bar tab. And so bar tab is basically preloading money into your account that can only be used for drinks. And so they give, you know, different kinds of packages, like you know, pay $500 to get $750 worth of bar credit, you know, that kind of thing. And so you kind of have to carefully weigh how much you think you're going to drink as against, you know, how much tab you want to preload. I'd say the mixed drinks vary between I don't know, $13 or something like 13, $15. So if you use that as a rough estimate, you can kind of start to get a sense of what you might need on board. Mega Rockstar all drinks are included.
I should say all drinks up to call I think is $28. Was the cap out before you have to pay for it? Yeah. And then, and then you, you got some like you got a up to $80 for a bottle of wine at dinner. Anything over that, you didn't just pay the difference, you paid the whole full freight for the drink or the bottle of wine.
One of the other things that Virgin is known for is shake for champagne. So in their app there's a way that you can shake your phone and they will bring you a bottle of champagne wherever you are on the ship. They used to do glasses is now bottle service only and it's Moet champagne which I think ran about $105 a bottle on board.
Yeah. And there's some packages you can buy, some amenity packages you can buy that include one free shake for champagne while you're on board kind of situation.
So that's the drinks I should also say for Rockstar Mega Rockstar you get an in room bar.
For Rockstar your first round is on them. So they've got a bar with kind of like a, I call them like the half bottles of, of liquor.
You know they'll have a rum, a vodka, gin, you know, something like that. You'll have this fridge stocked with you know like Red Bull soda, you know, things like that. So as you deposit complete that it's gone. And if you want more, you have to pay for it. Mega Rockstar is an unlimited bar with including premium liquor. And so if you drink through a bottle they will replace that bottle or if you want higher end gen, they will bring you a bottle of it and put it in your room.
So that is one of the other differences for Rockstar. Mega Rockstar last thing I want to say, disembarkation is a little different. It's not just a later time. You have to actually if you're not sailing Rockstar, Mega Rockstar book your disembarkation slide lot off the ship.
And so you have to go into the app to register your disembarkation time before you disembark. Just gonna see if there were any other questions that we missed.
[01:29:01] Speaker D: Linda, There was no Chocolate souffle. So CT and I would be very, very sad.
[01:29:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
But I will say the chocolate cookie.
There's no ironing boards because there's no laundry rooms, period. So there's no self service laundry. There's no self service iron ironing. You have to send out things to be laundered or to be pressed.
[01:29:22] Speaker A: Yes.
Do they have connecting staterooms that I don't know. I want to say the answer is no, but I don't. I don't. I don't know is the real answer.
Yeah.
All right, last time around the horn. Here we go. As we wrap up, I think I basically asked this question when we were on the ship, but pros, cons, favorites, opportunities. Give me. What was your favorite thing on board? Virgin. And what was the thing that you liked the least about sailing on Virgin?
Let's start with Sam. Sam, you go first.
[01:29:57] Speaker B: Ooh. Okay.
Oh, this is hard. I didn't, I didn't. I didn't think of this.
Okay, favorite thing.
The favorite thing I love is the bar spaces. I think the bar spaces are really smartly designed.
There's always a place to sit. I would say, like, even if we, like went to a bar and it was pretty crowded, I feel like we always found, we could always find a, a corner to, to sit in and enjoy. So that was, I think, favorite bar spaces a.
I'd say a room for improvement.
For me, I, I think the food can be a little bit weird at times. Some of the food items are a little bit weird and a little bit too different.
And particularly in the galley, I, There were times where I struggled to figure out what I wanted to eat there for. Let's say lunch would be a good example now because the pizza place is always an option or burger is always an option in the galley. It always was able, always turned out okay. But there were times where I struggled. And I don't feel that on Disney, I never struggle to, to find food that I want to eat.
Did I answer all your questions?
[01:31:14] Speaker A: Yes, you did. Tracy, Michael, you can choose your order here. But what, one highlight, one low light, or one, you know, big opportunity?
[01:31:21] Speaker C: Sure.
I mean, the, the highlight is just the, the layout of, of the public space that, that there are places to, to just, you know, sit and relax, either away from outside, inside, in comfortable seating, not, you know, you're not struggling to, to find it like you do on dcl. I mean, I was able, you know, when I wanted to move just to change what I was looking at. It was, it was easy to do And I could even, you know, I went outside and worked in the The Internet worked.
Two downsides. Public restrooms are far and few between.
[01:32:04] Speaker A: And hard to find.
[01:32:05] Speaker C: Not well. Not well marked. So now a couple days in you find it. But on a shorter cruise, you know, a couple days in and your cruise is half over. So you kind of. Kind of learn where they are. And the. The other thing I'll throw in is, you know, working on the cruise, you know, for. For me I. I did prepay for the the premium Internet upgrade and it was great for streaming. Most of what I I did then I had to get on a zoom call. They block it zoom even to to view your calendar on zoom re requires the work at C package which is pretty expensive for. For the whole trip.
[01:32:48] Speaker A: So Tracy, what about you?
[01:32:50] Speaker D: For me, I would definitely say the pastries slash P. Pizza.
Like this is a hot take because y' all know I love pizza and I always tout Disney pizza especially like on the the Treasure and you know, but the pizza on this ship beat Disney's pizza every time. And I had it four times.
[01:33:14] Speaker A: So.
[01:33:15] Speaker D: And then I would say for the the Ms. I agree with Sam on that is the. The food in the galley at lunchtime at break breakfast, I could easily find things that I liked and could enjoy. They had an omelette station they would fry your eggs over. They had some really yummy French toast.
Their bacon was crispy.
Like their breakfast was spot on for me. And but you could also that was just in the like diner ish kind of area. But then like Michael went back to the like the taco place and got like a breakfast burrito. So I think that breakfasts, they were good. But for lunches I was like you. I just. I really struggle because like, especially because I'm picky.
I was either a burger or pizza pretty much or a salad. You know. Now they do I guess another up real quick is because they are very conscious of waste. They. They do the. The salads and a charcuterie board and the sushi all in reusable plastic containers that they take and they clean and then they reuse use those. And the only place I saw paper cups was the coffee shop and the gym. Everywhere else was plastic glasses for your pop and all that kind of stuff. So that I really like that idea.
But the galley definitely was kind of my for lunch was kind of like. And we didn't really eat at the galley for dinner.
[01:34:41] Speaker C: I think it'd be the same.
[01:34:42] Speaker D: So I don't know whether they had different Things that maybe there would have been something else for me to pick from. But, yeah, that was my. That was probably my downer for Virgin.
[01:34:51] Speaker A: I will say in defense of the. Some of the food, like the. They had a butter chicken in the galley on, like, our last day at lunchtime, and I was like, this is one of the best butter chickens I've ever had on a crew. It was, like, actually flavorful and spicy. So, like, there it was. It was fascinating to me the number of complaints we saw in the cruise group about how I'm not. I'm not. The food is not great. And I'm like. I can't tell if that was coming from people who really wanted, like, a blanket bland food experience and Virgin was just too adventurous for them or what. It. Maybe it was what Sam was saying. The food was just too adventurous. But, like, the thing I am always harping on Disney about is I just. I want food that's interesting. And sometimes it's like, that sounds interesting. And then it comes and it's like, flavorless, bland heap, you know?
[01:35:37] Speaker C: Yeah, I want interesting, not weird.
[01:35:40] Speaker A: Yeah, well. And I want flavorful. Like, Tiana's is flavorful food. But I even think they could turn it up a notch in Tiana's and still be really, really good. But sometimes stuff comes down. It's like, there's no seasoning to this. There's no flavor for it.
[01:35:51] Speaker C: So anyway, and the butter chicken, we. We both really enjoyed it. And you saw someone basically throwing out a whole plate of it.
[01:35:59] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[01:36:00] Speaker C: And I think it was either the spice level or the seasoning level. They must not have been to their liking.
[01:36:08] Speaker D: I agree with Robin. They needed chicken fingers and fries as an option. I could not find a chicken sandwich on this shelf ship. You guys like a breaded chicken sandwich, like on Disney. Especially when they have the spicy one.
So good they didn't have one. Didn't exist.
[01:36:22] Speaker A: Before I give my highlight and my lowlight and wrap us up, there was one question I forgot to answer. And there's also one trend happening in the chat right now that I want to acknowledge.
And so the one question was, for multi, adult, multigenerational parties, which is better, Virgin or Royal? This is really. I think there is no clear answer. This is a know thyself. I think if we were sailing with my parents today, I would be like, we're going on Virgin. Because my parents regressed by, like, they live in New Orleans. They love Mardi Gras. They love French Quarter Fest. You know, like, they. They love that Party time atmosphere. I think my mom would get a kick out of like all the stuff happening around the ship. Noise level may be a little high, but like, you know, other than that, I think she'd get a kick out of it and I think the food would be up her alley, all that sort of stuff. So it's like you got to know your party. If it's a much more sedate, you know, kind of thing, like maybe royal, I will just put a pin in like royal for a second and say royal ships are pretty crowded and they're pretty hectic. And so like I, I also, you know, you got to be willing to tolerate some of that kind of stuff. So it really is just. No, I think you got to know your party really well and know the pros and cons of different cruise lines to figure that question. I don't think there's one right answer to that question, unfortunately. Vanessa so the trend that happening in chat is a call for TCL duo Virgin Voyages podcast cruise.
I am not opposed. I will just say that.
So I am not opposed. If Karen's out there watching, maybe she'll pencil in. We may try to have a version.
[01:37:46] Speaker B: Erin's in Paris right now, so she's definitely not watching.
[01:37:50] Speaker A: She's not watching live when she listens to this after. Just know Karen, that might be coming your way for, I don't know, 20.
[01:37:56] Speaker B: She's going to start planning it as soon as she episode.
[01:37:59] Speaker A: Brian she did offer to have her, I think her Virgin Voyages sales rep offered to come on the show. So, you know, there you go. So maybe we'll have them on and we can talk about making that happen.
[01:38:08] Speaker C: All right.
[01:38:08] Speaker A: My highlight and my low light. So my highlight is actually probably going to be shocking to most of you listening and to Sam. I found this cruise to be one of the more social experiences that I have had in cruising, even on Disney. I think there are definitely people on Disney who like to engage in chit chat. But some of what I feel like is happening on Disney is like, oh my God, I'm on a family vacation. Please don't talk to me. I need my alone time. Just leave me alone. My kids are in the kids club. Just leave me alone. Alone. Right? On this cruise, you get in the pool and it's instantly like people are like, you're talking, you're chit chatting, you're having drinks. You make friends. Like Sam loves these. You make friends everywhere. We made two friends. They might be out there listening. Chirag and what was Amrita Amrita Amrita. We did brain teasers one morning and we won. And shrug, it was like, how did you get so many points? And we started and they were lovely people and I'm just not sure that that has not always been my experience.
[01:39:03] Speaker B: At the grog walk that we saw around the ship later. I wish we had gotten to spend more time with them. But yeah, it's, it's. I definitely. And then of course, some people in the pool start talking to me and they happen to have a different lifestyle.
[01:39:15] Speaker D: And told me all about upside down.
[01:39:17] Speaker A: Pineapple action happening over there. Yeah, I'm not.
[01:39:19] Speaker B: I won't tell you all the stuff they told me because we are a family friendly show, but there's some interesting stories I'm not sure I wanted to hear.
[01:39:27] Speaker A: Yeah, my.
[01:39:28] Speaker D: Well, it's interesting because at the gym it was the same thing. When I go to the gym at the Disney, nobody makes eye contact and nobody talks. And in the gym everybody was talking. Everybody was like, hey, can I work in here? It was just, it was, it was very interesting social experiment because I was just like, what is happening? Why? You know, all these people sure, work in with me, no problem. Like, I'm, I'm good, you know, so that's interesting that that's what you also saw.
[01:39:53] Speaker A: My, my low light for Virgin is just the noise level. And so like at the pool they have a DJ and it starts off at like, I feel like. I feel like Milton from Office Space. It starts off at a reasonable volume and it feels like there's a timer happening. And every hour it just goes up a level and up a level and.
[01:40:11] Speaker B: Up a level is when they.
[01:40:13] Speaker A: But it's to the point where it's.
[01:40:14] Speaker C: Like, you're like, everyone's away, let's go.
[01:40:16] Speaker A: It's to the point where it's like, I can't carry a conversation with the person I'm talking to at the pool because it's getting so loud. Right? And so I do think that they have an opportunity to, to maybe just turn it, turn it down a little. Right? Just turn it down a little. Like maybe their motto is turn down for what? But, but, but like just a little. Just a little. All right, so that's my. One thing is I thought I found at times the noise was getting a little out of hand. I mean, especially like we were in the nail salon and the whole room is vibrating from the DJ and it's like normal for the nail technicians. And I'm like, is there like an essential bolt in this ship that is Just slowly being shaken loose by the base.
And I also look at that and go, if you're going to music that loud, did no one think to add extra soundproofing in some of these ship spaces to prevent the noise from traveling? It was not a problem in our stateroom. I just want to be perfectly clear. We weren't up all night listening to loud music or anything like that. But it was just in a couple spaces. You get this bleed through effect from another venue that's right there. Maybe that's what they're going for, frankly. Maybe they're like, get out a sip and go to the manor and shake your booty. I don't know.
Noise level was. Was a little bit challenging.
I lied. I've got one more question because someone asked it in the chat and I think it's the right one to end on.
Who here is sailing on Virgin Voyages again? Who will sail on Virgin Voyages again? Sam, yes or no? Oh, I see. Hands raised. So Sam's a yes, Michael's a yes, Tracy's a yes. For those of you listening after the fact, I'm a yes. We will definitely sail on Virgin again.
Disney still has her heart and we still have an 11 year old son.
[01:41:50] Speaker B: So yeah, don't worry, we're not becoming the Virgin Voyages duo, but we see a place for Virgin Voyages in our cruise repertoire, let's put it that way.
[01:42:01] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[01:42:02] Speaker D: The vibe is just so different. You know, Disney is just that laid back and then you get on Virgin and like the DJs pumping and, you know, it's just. It's a completely different vibe. And so it just depends on what vibe we're going for. And for us, if Nathan's coming, we're gonna go sail. Nathan, you know, so.
[01:42:19] Speaker A: Yeah, well, and I think, I think Tracy hit the nail on the head too. Like not hearing the Disney music all week and instead just kind of having this like, soundtrack going. It just, it totally create. Created a different mood.
[01:42:30] Speaker C: Not one let it go.
[01:42:31] Speaker A: Not one let it go.
[01:42:32] Speaker D: Not even a karaoke.
[01:42:33] Speaker A: All right, we are going to have to leave it there because you're an hour and 45 minutes into a show. Thank you for all of you for hanging in with us. Thank you for all of you who will listen to any portion of this episode after on our podcast channel. We will be back next week, 5:30pm Eastern, 8:30. Sorry, 5:30pm Pacific. See, I did it, Sam. I did it. 5:30pm Pacific, 8:30pm Eastern. On Monday night. Next week, we will have the fabulous, the Incomparable. The first time guest but who we know well. Chris, Paul and family coming on to talk about their amazing Mediterranean cruise they just got off of. Can't wait to hear. Yeah, cannot wait to hear all about it.
[01:43:13] Speaker B: And as Karen says in the comments, if you've stayed this long, be sure to hit the like button before the show ends on. And don't forget to subscribe to us on YouTube if you are not already subscribed.
[01:43:24] Speaker A: And Tracy Michael, thank you for being our guest this evening. If you want to follow along with Tracy and Michael's adventures, you can head over to Instagram and follow, follow Adrift together.
That's drift together.
They were posting fabulous pictures from the Virgin voyages sailing. So fun little account to follow. So head over there and follow them. Michael's pointing at Tracy because it's her account.
[01:43:44] Speaker B: It is all Tracy Michael pictured in it. But it's all, it's all Tracy.
Yes, she does great, great posts and videos and content traveling but but also content at home.
Yeah. Thanks again you guys. Thanks for all of you who are watching at home, for all of you who are watch recorded on YouTube or all of you listening on our podcast channels, we so appreciate you and we will see you next week.
[01:44:14] Speaker A: Well, thanks to everyone out there for listening this week. We really, really appreciate it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast. You can keep getting great content from us every week. In fact twice a week we publish shows. So be sure to hit the subscribe button to get all of those great episodes. And if you want to watch us alive, we have a live show now every week, Monday nights, 5:30pm Pacific, 8:30pm Eastern over on YouTube.com DCLDUO so be sure to head over and check that out. If you want help support the show, be sure to hit those five stars on Apple Podcasts. And if you leave us a written review, a five star written review, we will read it at the top of one of our main episodes. So please head over there and hit those five stars. Of course you can also help support the show by supporting our fabulous show sponsor, My Path Unwinding Travel. You want to book your next Disney vacation? Head over to mypathunwinding.com dclduo or email them at dclduomypathunwinding.com so they know we sent you their way. If you've got questions or you'd like to connect with us, the best way to do that is to head over to DCLDuo.com it's got links to all of our things, full catalog of the podcast episodes, including a searchable catalog for the podcast links off to our vlog a link to our Etsy store. We sell some fun fan inspired magnets link to our Patreon if you'd like to help directly support the show each and every month, just head over to the website or patreon.com DCLDUO also has a way for you to sign up for our substack newsletter that we're hoping to start really pumping out monthly here at least, and a few blog articles that we've written, so DCLDuo.com is the best way to connect with us. You can also of course email
[email protected] or reach out to us on our voicemail line at 402-441-35590. That's 402-413-5590. The DCL duo Podcast is not affiliated with Disney Cruise Line, the Disney Company or the Disney Family of theme parks. The views expressed on the show are solely those of the individuals on the podcast and in no way reflective. Use the Disney Company or Disney Cruise Line. If you have questions about a Disney Cruise or Disney Vacation, please contact the great folks over at My Path Unwinding Travel or Disney directly for your own travel agency. It thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time for another fabulous adventure with the DCL Duo.
