[00:00:00] Speaker A: Yes. So the rumor started on the Facebook group about two days before our sailing, and it turned out to be true that Sir Richard Branson joined us for the entirety of our sailing.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Oh, very cool.
[00:00:13] Speaker A: Yeah, so he was there the whole time, roaming about the ship. He stopped by our table at dinner the first night.
[00:00:32] Speaker C: Welcome back, everybody, to this week's episode
[00:00:33] Speaker B: of the DCL Duo podcast, brought to you by my Path Unwinding Travel. And Sam, do your jingle.
[00:00:40] Speaker D: Simply the best.
Better than all the rest.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: All right, this week's listener review comes from Mr. Opus, who writes sailing with the DCL Duo. Brian and Sam host an incredible show about the joy and fun of cruising. Brian and Sam do an incredible, incredible job of building almost immediate rapport with the guests on their show. Each episode provides an array of perspectives that give a realistic impression of the good, the bad, the great, and the mishaps that may occur while on board or off board a Disney cruise ship. They provide a window into a range of experiences to help you get an idea if you'd enjoy the premium adult dining, a concierge room, an extended sailing experience, and plenty of ideas for port excursions. Thank you for bringing great content that my family and I can enjoy listening to every week. Well, thank you, Mr. Opus, for that wonderful review. We really appreciate it. And for all of you out there listening, here's my psa.
Please remember one of the easiest ways to help support the show, head over to Apple Podcasts, hit those five stars and if you leave a written review along with your five star rating, we will read it on the air at the top of one of our main episodes. And if you happen to be listening on not Apple Podcasts on places like Spotify, YouTube, which apparently both dwarf Apple podcasts in terms of number of people listening to podcasts or consuming podcasts. But if you're on those platforms or any other podcast platform, give us the stars, the hearts, the popcorn boxes, the thumbs ups, the whatever it is they let you do to rate our show. It helps us get get the show in front of more people. So with that, Sam, I'm going to throw it over to you to introduce our guest and our topic for today.
[00:02:13] Speaker D: Awesome. Thank you, Brian. All right, well, I am wearing for those who are watching on YouTube, I am wearing a Ship Happens Virgin Voyages T shirt today because we're actually going to be taking a foray away from Disney Cruise Line for just, just an episode. We'll still talk some compare contrast to Disney Cruise Line, but for a very special episode, we have guest, first time guest not first time cruiser Kathy to the show. Welcome, Kathy.
[00:02:43] Speaker A: Thank you very much. Happy to be here.
[00:02:45] Speaker D: We are so excited to chat with you. You reached out to us a couple of months ago. You let us know that we were hurting your wallet.
When I say that, I mean you were, you know, listening show and it was causing you to book more cruises. You had booked some thing back to back on the Destiny. You also mentioned having booked a mermaid voyage on Virgin voyages. Brilliant lady. Brilliant lady. Is that right?
[00:03:13] Speaker A: Yes, the Brilliant lady.
[00:03:14] Speaker D: All right, well, we got to talk about this today, Kathy, because we have never talked about a mermaid and voyage. As I was chatting with you pre show, I was mentioning, you know, Brian and I have now been on three maiden voyages with Disney Cruise Line, the Wish, the Treasure and the Destiny. And we're hoping that we'll get to go in the believe maiden voyage. It will depend on the timing, of course, and school schedules and all that.
But they're always really special and there's special guests and special lectures and maybe special performers and gifts and things like that. But we of course have never been on a maiden voyage on any other cruise line. And so it's really cool to have you here to chat about that today. But before we get into this particular cruise, we got to ask you your, your Disney background, your Disney cruising background. Like, how did you first get into Disney and then Disney cruising specifically?
[00:04:09] Speaker A: Yeah, so I would describe myself originally as Disney adjacent.
So I was a nanny in high school and college. And so the kids I took care of since they were born grew up as the ultimate Disney children. So taking care of them, all the traditionals, Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Lion King.
They had a tradition in their family of going to Disney World when they turned seven with their grandparents and so watch them do that. But I didn't actually go to Disney World for the first time until those two girls were in high school and at a dance competition.
[00:04:48] Speaker D: Oh, wow. Oh my goodness.
[00:04:51] Speaker A: Yes. And so I was, you know, almost 30 by the time I went to Disney the first time. At around that same time, my brother and his wife and two little boys dove headfirst into Disney the very first time that they went, when I went with them to the parks and joined DVC.
And shortly thereafter, my brother in 2010 said, we have to try this Disney cruise thing.
So we began cruising with Disney in 2010 and the Wonder was our first ship. And I've now done 13 cruises with Disney and 19 cruises overall.
[00:05:30] Speaker D: Wow. Okay, so you've gotten six cruises on other cruise lines under your belt. When did you. When did you decide, okay, I'm going to go outside that Disney cruise bubble and try a different cruise line from
[00:05:42] Speaker A: the very beginning, because my first cruise was as a child in the 1980s on the USS Constitution and Hawaii.
[00:05:50] Speaker D: Oh, my God, that.
That's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: And then went on Norwegian on a Mediterranean cruise when the kids graduated from high school.
And.
And then I took. I'll call it a gap year in 2019 and did an entire cruise around all of Europe on Celebrity. So went with some friends. And it was just a unique schedule and itinerary and have done a couple of seaborne cruises to explore the Baltic and Sicily and Greece. So that kind of, in a nutshell, is the background.
[00:06:28] Speaker D: Wow. So you have a very varied cruising background in the sense that you've been on a lot of different ships on several different lines and, of course, in several different places. Seems like most of your cruising outside of Disney has been in Europe then. Is that kind of a fair assessment?
[00:06:44] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:06:45] Speaker D: Yeah. Well, and that. That makes sense because, you know, we do get asked quite a bit about, you know, I want to venture outside of Disney, like, or Disney's so expensive, and I want to see Europe. And I think when you're going someplace where the ports are more the destination versus the ship, I can totally understand why somebody would decide to cruise on a competitor line that might be, you know, less expensive, because the onboard experience, probably in those situations, not to say it doesn't matter, but it may matter less than it does, you know, in the Caribbean or something like that. Yeah. Well, what made you decide to sail on Virgin, first of all, at all? Because you hadn't sailed on Virgin before. And then what made you say, I'm gonna book that first? Well, Maiden, you know, Mermaid and Voyage is technically not the first voyage, just to be clear. Like, on Disney, they do all kinds of, like, previews and things like that, special guests, those sort of things. But the Mermaid and Voyage, just like a Maiden voyage on Disney, is the first paid revenue guest sailing on the ship. But it's still. It's like a big celebration. But. Yeah. So what made you decide version? And what made you decide this particular Mermaid and Voyage?
[00:07:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I was having dinner with some friends at the end of January, and they mentioned that they had this cruise booked in May. And I had listened to the episodes on your show about Virgin voyages and said, well, hey, that's great. Do you guys care if I join you? Because seems like I should experience this cruise line, and I had not yet Done. Alaska.
So that's how this all happened. They already had it booked and I jumped on.
[00:08:28] Speaker D: I love that. I love that. Now, Kathy, where are you located? Are you on the west coast or the east coast or somewhere in the middle?
[00:08:34] Speaker A: I'm in Dallas, Texas, so exactly in the middle, yeah.
[00:08:37] Speaker D: Okay, so it's, it's. I asked that because it's, you know, it's far to go, obviously to, to Seattle to go to Alaska or Vancouver to Alaska. If you're coming from the east coast, it's still far for you coming from, from the Dallas area, but. But not quite as far. So. Yeah, that makes, that makes sense now.
So the timing of this cruise is of course, like planned out. You don't, you're not like sort of choosing. You're just choosing to go on this cruise with some friends. How many of you were to total?
[00:09:07] Speaker A: There were nine of us all together.
[00:09:09] Speaker D: Oh, wow. Awesome. Fantastic. Now, were you sailing solo yourself, like your own room or did you share a room?
[00:09:17] Speaker A: No, I was solo in my own room, which was great because Virgin didn't realize I was connected in the same way to the other eight. So when I boarded, they gave me tons and tons of information as if I were a solo traveler. So that was really great to be able to see what they offer.
[00:09:37] Speaker D: Oh, that is awesome. That's fantastic. Well, I want to talk about that, but before we get there, I want to talk about like the planning or communication, like pre cruise, like, were you, what kind of room had you booked and did you kind of, were you able to book any activities in advance, like your dining, for example? And then of course we got to talk about what you booked in terms of excursions.
[00:09:58] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's pretty interesting because my friends had already booked and than I booked. I'm a little bit more particular that they are. So I had selected to choose my exact cabin and then I ended up upgrading to the premium fare because on Virgin, if just one person in your group is on the premium fare, then you can book your dining reservations for the entire group at that earlier window.
And so I was the one out of our five cabins that booked premium. But then that gave me access to book every. All of our dining 60 days in advance with a party of nine was something that was desperately needed.
[00:10:49] Speaker D: Yeah, well, and if you, I mean, there are a lot of groups that travel on Virgin voyages in general because, you know, lots of, like, you might have, you know, a bunch of a big group of friends all sailing together or several couples sailing together, family sailing together, of course, without kids, it's all adult only on Virgin. But yeah, you do have a lot of big groups and so then you're competing for dining reservations with everyone.
And unless you're on that premium package, the only people who get to book dining in advance are sailing Mega Rockstar or Rockstar. The general public. Right. Everybody else is booking.
I believe when you get on board through the app, that's the earliest.
[00:11:29] Speaker A: There were two different options you could. There was one grouping that was like 45 days out, another grouping that was 60 days out. So it seemed tiered. But most people could book prior to getting on the ship. Just the number of days before dependent upon your fare class. And I ended up, I just. With the premium fair. I had just booked the regular Sea Terrace room because I just. With nine people I thought, well, if I went Rockstar, but the other eight weren't. It just didn't seem like that was the time to try it out.
[00:12:00] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a good call. And if you're not like a huge drinker too, it's you because you do get that bar tab with Rockstar status. But if you're not a big drinker, it might not be worth that upgrade to do as a, you know, as a solo cruiser. And so it's kind of like figuring out when is the right time and what's the right situation. I think that was very smart to do the, the premium upgrade. Now let's talk about excursions. Of course you're sailing. This is sailing out of Seattle, right. Not out of Vancouver.
[00:12:32] Speaker A: Round trip Seattle.
[00:12:33] Speaker D: Yeah, love that. And let's talk about what your ports of call were and what you booked for each one and were you able to book those at like further in advance or at the 60 day mark? When, when did that booking happen?
[00:12:47] Speaker A: Really? I could start.
It was interesting and I think this is because it was a mermaid and they didn't have everything worked out so I could start booking shore things pretty much right after booking. But what I noticed is they really didn't have very many shore excursions available.
And as we moved along in time closer to the sailing, more and more shore excursions became available.
And that really great shore excursions really weren't coming on until like 30 or 45 days before the sailing. So I think it was a function of them being new to the market, not having, having everything sorted out.
So that was an interesting experience.
Also interesting that you pay for it as soon as you book it. So that was a little, just cumbersome because then so many Shore excursions were coming on and then I was dropping and adding to get better things. And so you constantly were having this reconciliation of money and that.
[00:13:48] Speaker D: We had the same experience on Virgin and also on Royal Caribbean in the sense that you, you can book shore excursions really anytime or other sort of add on things. Like on Royal, there's the specialty dining, but you can, you can cancel things ahead of the cruise, but you've already been charged for them. So it's a constant like refund, recharge, refund, recharge situation. Whereas Disney of doesn't charge you until like either two days before or the time of depending upon what the thing is. Right. So it's, it's kind of nice when you haven't. Don't see those charges going back and forth at the same time. I, I understand.
You know, it's Disney's unique in the industry. I think most are like Virgin and Royal. I want to talk about communication from the cruise line in advance. Were they giving you guys information about like what was going to happen or what was going to be special about a mermaid and voyage?
[00:14:46] Speaker A: No, they really didn't. And I was kind of surprised about that. So most of the information came through Facebook. There were two Facebook groups, one in general for, for all Alaska sailings, and then the second just for our specific voyage. So that's really where the information started coming through. And then even though our cruise, the Mermaid and out of Seattle, the cruise the week before us did go to Alaska, they just started in a different place and ended in Seattle. So I think they considered a little bit more of a repositioning. So that's where we really got the information in the Facebook group because the people on that cruise were, were posting, hey, here's, here's what's happening. You know, there's two, there were two new happenings, cast members specific to Alaska. There were, you know, each of the dining room had dishes that were unique to Alaska. So it really wasn't until like that cruise that we started just sort of through the grapevine starting to, to figure out what was going to happen and what was going on.
[00:15:57] Speaker D: Yeah, it's so interesting because I feel like with new ships, like that's unfortunate. Like fortunately or unfortunately, that's kind of how you have to kind of like wait until like the previews are happening essentially right before you get like a lot of that detailed information. Not to say you won't get some information like, you know, the names of the restaurants and themes of the restaurants, for example, just like on Disney but you don't know, like, exactly what to expect. And of course, as somebody who was sailing Virgin for the first time, you know even less of what to expect, except for the fact that you would listen to our show, and we have done several episodes about Virgin and comparing it to Disney. What were your biggest. I don't know, like, did you have any, like, trepidation, nervousness, worry, anxiety? Right. Like, about going on Virgin, being an experienced Disney cruiser but also experienced on other lines?
[00:16:49] Speaker A: I did not prior to the cruise, but as soon as I arrived at the port, that started.
[00:16:56] Speaker D: Well, no,
[00:16:58] Speaker A: it was, you know, again, I think Mermaid and Kicks not worked out. Very first time they're sailing out of Seattle. Embarkation was a nightmare.
[00:17:08] Speaker D: Oh, yeah.
[00:17:09] Speaker A: I was like. Like, oh, no. And, you know, in my mind, I'd heard the show, I had heard the comparisons, and I. In my mind, I'm thinking, oh, it's gonna be like Disney for adults in terms of expectations and service. And I had printed out my luggage tag at home and then read it and was like, staple and tape. Heck, I'm not traveling with a stapler and tape. I'll just have. I'll. I'll just have the bellman at the port, at the porter, you know, tag my bag for me, and I get to the port. And the porters would only take bags that had tags.
So if you didn't have a tag, you had to go stand in this massive line that took me 30 minutes to get through just to get a tag.
That was the piece of paper that they printed off from the Virgin employee. Instead of having people with, you know, stickers that they could just write your number on and. And put it on.
[00:18:06] Speaker B: I will say, just for a tip for those at home, if you're looking to sail on a different cruise line, Disney is one of the only and perhaps the last that actually sends the luggage tags in advance as stickers that you can take with you.
Most of the cruise lines do have you print something off at home and, like, fold it in some way. The trick is, on Amazon, you can buy these plastic luggage tag holders that those then slide into, and you kind of take those with you, and then they just kind of screw together with a steel kind of loop onto your luggage, and you can just, when you get on board, take out the luggage tag and take home the. The holders. So a lot of people who sail Royal frequently, for example, will have these or Carnival.
So. So, yeah, it is. It is a big difference between.
Or a difference. I don't know if it's A big. It's a difference between Disney and Virgin and just know that going in.
[00:18:56] Speaker A: So, yeah, yeah, I 100 would have purchased the holders had I known how big of an issue it was going to be to tag my luggage at the port. That was the start of what became an entire cruise of long lines.
[00:19:11] Speaker D: Oh, no.
All right, well, so let's. Let's talk embarkation experience then. As you. Of course, they're going to have glitches. It's the first day, it's the first time sailing out of Seattle. It's the mermaid and voyage. Right. So, yeah, tell us, like, how was that the boarding process? And, you know, how would you compare it to Disney? Of course, knowing it's, you know, it's not. It's not fair to compare it direct. Right. But like, let's say on like Disney's. One of Disney's bad days, right?
[00:19:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:44] Speaker A: I mean, I think for. For me, it was just the number of different lines you had to stand in versus at Disney. I feel it's like, okay, you find your port arrival time or your castaway club status and then you just flow all the way through.
But in this embarkation, and I don't know again, if it was because it was their first time out of Seattle, but again, it was the line to tag your luggage, which I would say the vast majority of people had to have their luggage tags. Then you had to go back and get in a line again with your arrival time. And even if your arrival time had already passed while you were waiting in line, they were like, oh, no, still, you know, go to the back of this huge long queue.
So then there was a queue to get in the door that was based on your arrival time. Then there was another queue inside of stanchions to have somebody look at your passport, to then go upstairs to another queue with stanchions, to stand in, to go through security, to then go into another queue of stanchions for check in. And so in all of that time, huge long queues, no seating. No, it was. They were very long, you know, just in terms of the winding and getting through.
And then once you finally could check in and get your sea band, then you were just straight away onto the ship.
So I just felt like with Disney, you still have lines, but I felt like they were better if, like getting you into the terminal so that you just had a chance to sit and, you know, open the app and see what's going on. And there was literally, I mean, they, I think at the entire terminal area, there maybe were like, 15, 20 chairs.
[00:21:33] Speaker D: I gotta ask, were you in Seattle's downtown like port or were you, you were off. Yeah. You were in the other one. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Which for those who know the Seattle area, there is, in the downtown area there is a small cruise port, but there's a larger cruise port that's just like a 10 minute drive outside of downtown. It's still in Seattle. It's in this neighborhood called Interbay on the way to Ballard. And so it's, it's, it's got a big, a much bigger cruise terminal there at least. And that's where a lot of the ships are sort of going out of. As opposed to the one right, right in downtown Seattle. But it's close and I think, you
[00:22:11] Speaker A: know, that the tip that I would say because some of our group did this because they, they were already there and coming over on a ferry is, you know, with Virgin Voyages you can start checking in and dropping your luggage at like 9 o' clock in the morning and leave everything there for the day. And so for those that came really early, it seemed like they let them go through the whole process so that then when they came back for their arrival time later on, because they already had their C band, they could just like kind of bypass three of the lines to just get to the security line.
So that seemed to be a much better situation if you could kind of get there early, take care of the luggage and get all of that squared away before the real arrival time started for boarding the ship. I unfortunately could not do that because we had five staterooms, two bottles of wine per stateroom and I was in charge of wine.
So I had a case of wine that could not be checked.
And so I had to, you know, so I was going at the time that I was meeting everybody for our arrival time at 2:30 and you had
[00:23:23] Speaker D: to split up the bottles amongst everybody so that each person was carrying on there too. You can't. Even though you have five cabins, they're not going to let you. Kathy on with 12 bottles of wine or whatever.
[00:23:34] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it was fighting everybody giving a beach their bottle of wine and you know, ditching my shipper, by the way.
[00:23:43] Speaker D: I actually just looked at what, what. Because Disney just changed as we're recording. We're at the end of May here and Disney literally just announced their change to now one bottle per person of wine or six bottles of beer. It used to be two bottles of wine per, per adult. I did look at what Virgins was because I honestly had not looked before and I know that theirs is two bottles, but it's two bottles per room. So two bottles of wine per room. So it's not a. Per person.
If you got four people staying in your stateroom, you got two bottles. You got it, you get two bottles. Yeah. If you got two people in your stateroom or one person in your stateroom, you had two bottles. Yeah. So it's just a. Kind of a simple. And this, you know, and obviously the six bottles of beer.
I don't know if actually if you can bring beer on Virgin, I think it was. May have just said. Yeah, it just said wine. Yeah, yeah. So. All right, well, let's.
[00:24:36] Speaker A: You know what's funny is, is I never carry wine onto Disney because they have such an amazing wine cellar on board and their pricing is actually pretty reasonable compared to retail. So I, I don't even, I don't even do that on Disney, but they sent me five emails about it two days ago because one for every reservation I had open.
[00:24:56] Speaker D: That's hilarious. Well, honestly, a lot of people don't realize that though, that Disney's alcohol prices on board in general are very reasonable. And if you think about it like, if you, if you go to the park, so you're gonna spend like $30 for a drink or something, it's kind of crazy, right? Disney theme parks, but on the ship you're not. It's much. It's very, very reasonable in terms of a price for a glass of wine or, you know, or a single alcohol cocktail, something like that.
Yeah, it's surprisingly reasonable. So, yeah, we don't think about it that much either because even though we like wine, we'll often bring a bottle or something. But we don't, we're not like, we don't need to bring four bottles between the two of us. That's really not, it's not something we need. I want to talk about.
You're boarding.
Did you board into. I don't know if they call it the atrium, but the kind of that hub area.
[00:25:45] Speaker A: Yeah, we came in on deck seven. So at the top of the spiral staircase.
[00:25:50] Speaker D: It's a nice place to board. It gives you. It's different than like boarding into a grand hall on, you know, or atrium on Disney ship, of course. But it still has, you know, has an octopus like sculpture and has the spiral staircase. So it has the feel of being a hub of the ship, which it, it absolutely is. Did you get offered champagne or anything when you came on board?
[00:26:13] Speaker A: I'm sure they did.
Part of our group was already on board and had like a scenic area and they were already eating ice cream. So we kind of just like immediately went into our little bubble. But.
But yes, and then they had sparkling wine, you know, up on deck for the sail away party. And as you know, the weather was beautiful last week, so that was nice.
[00:26:38] Speaker B: You mentioned quite a few long lines on board, Kathy, and I'm curious where those came into play most often because I don't think we've experienced too many lines on the ship. But I can imagine the vibe being a little different on a mermaid end with some unique things and things like that. But like where did you see the long lines coming in?
[00:26:56] Speaker A: So the where it was most noticeable was getting on and off the ship. And I don't mean like embarkation and debarkation. I mean like literally every port stop, I would say on average I would be in lines for 30 to 40 minutes to get off the ship at a port.
[00:27:13] Speaker D: Wow, that's significant. Yeah, right.
[00:27:16] Speaker A: I thought so too. I just, I. I wasn't prepared for that. In 19 cruises I had never experienced that.
I also wonder and again, mermaid and trying to figure things out.
So good and bad with the excursions you booked, the nice thing was everything ran on your C band and so the vendors providing the excursions had an app on their phone and they would just tap your C band.
[00:27:45] Speaker D: Oh, that's really nice. Yeah.
[00:27:48] Speaker A: So no stickers, no tickets.
[00:27:51] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:27:52] Speaker A: Bracelets, all that sticker would just tap your C band.
So that was great. The downside of it, I don't know why, and maybe this is all virgin voyages, but you didn't meet for your excursions on the ship. They all would say meet on the dock at 10:15 and so literally the entire ship is trying to get off at the same time. Whereas I feel like most times for ship excursions they're metering people out in groups because they're meeting other places on the ship.
But this was like every person for themselves get off the boat and then try and find people holding paddles with signs with the name of the tour, you know, there on the pier.
[00:28:37] Speaker D: And that is just a non dcl thing. That's the case on Virgin. That's the case on Royal on I think celebrity. Right. Like most of them have, you just meet at the dock. The problem is, is if every excursion meets at the same time, everyone is trying to get off the ship at the same time. Y. Yeah, we. We had the same experience. I feel like with boarding the ship we didn't have like getting off the ship each time we didn't seem to have that much of an issue.
[00:29:07] Speaker B: But I. Reboarding, reboarding, reboarding lines.
[00:29:10] Speaker D: Yeah, I remember, I remember like it's. I remember having to wait in lines to get back on the ship like that security lines like just took longer. Like they just weren't as well oiled machine as maybe Disney is in that respect. And that was, and that wasn't on a brand new ship on a mermaid and voyage. So. Interesting. Yeah.
[00:29:29] Speaker A: And also seemed it, it seemed that because crew members getting on and off the ship were in the same lines as passengers. And it also seemed that there were more challenges with their computer system for them to process the crew members on and off, which kind of slowed things down as well.
[00:29:45] Speaker D: Yeah, that makes sense. Now I'm, I'm curious about special stuff. I like, I like to. The part of why I like to do the maiden voyages on Disney is I like special gifts, I like special performers, I like special, you know, talks. Like I like to feel special.
I'm curious. I imagine that Virgin Voyages did some special things for this sailing because they, you know, this is its fourth ship brand new to the West Coast. They're doing the Alaska season and it's just a maiden voyage. So.
Yeah. What kind of special things did they do for you all? Did you have any gifts in your stateroom, for example?
[00:30:26] Speaker A: So the gifts started coming on the second night.
So on the second night when we arrived in our stateroom, we had a tote bag with the logo specifically for the sailing. And inside the tote bag was.
At first I couldn't figure out what it was. The best way to describe it is it looked like a very large flag of the logo for this maiden voyage.
But then I was informed it actually is like one of those really thin absorbent towels, like beach towel. And then we received a little floating keychain like you put your boat keys
[00:31:04] Speaker D: on, like those foam ones.
[00:31:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I like those.
And then we also, which turned out to be really, really great to have before we got off at our first port. We all received special Virgin Voyages scarves and hats.
So those came in very, very handy for, for the rest of the cruise. And so those were, those were really nice. So that was kind of our, our swag bag for that on that second day. Later on we, the next day we received some red flower lotion as our gift, which I kind of laughed because I had already noticed how very strange it was that they did not have lotion in the bathrooms.
Like I would have thought that would be a standard Amenity, like soap, shampoo and conditioner, but evidently not. And that was one of the swag items the next night.
And then the next night we received keel coins that in a nice little leather pouch that, you know, had Seattle and the number of the ship and the name of the ship. So those were our special, special items that we received. And they also had like, a printed. When we boarded in the cabin, like a printed ticket, commemorative ticket for the maiden voyage. So those. Those were the things we had.
[00:32:30] Speaker D: Cool. I like it. What about special, I don't know, guests or performers? Do they have anything like that?
[00:32:37] Speaker A: Yes. So the rumor started on the Facebook group about two days before our sailing, and it turned out to be true that Sir Richard Branson joined us for the entirety of our sailing.
[00:32:49] Speaker B: Oh, very cool.
[00:32:50] Speaker A: Yeah. So he was there the whole time, roaming about the ship. He stopped by our table at dinner the first night.
[00:32:57] Speaker D: Very cool.
[00:32:58] Speaker A: Yes, very nice. And evidently he's a big chess player.
So I saw him on. I saw him playing chess on our first C day on the outdoor chess boards. And then later in the app, they had a special chess tournament that you could sign up for. And so then go. He was part of the chess tournament. And whoever won then played a match against him.
[00:33:24] Speaker D: Oh, very cool. That would be like a cool. You know, that's a cool reward if you're, you know, if you're decent at chess. I'm not good enough to. I don't think I could win a.
I mean, I could probably win a game, but not a tournament. So.
[00:33:38] Speaker A: But yeah, I mean, he was very visible out and about, you know, on the ship and doing different things. And then also the hostess on the Happenings crew is like the original hostess from the entire cruise line.
So she has.
She's been the hostess for the. The maiden voyage of every ship. So she's been on the brilliant lady for, you know, most of. Most of the time since it sale, however many months ago.
So it was. It was pretty cool. Other than that, I don't think, you know, there were lots of rumors of. Because in the past he's had, like, famous friends on board, but.
But there weren't any other celebrities on board with visible things that.
That. That I saw.
[00:34:28] Speaker D: Yeah. You know, one of the things that we think about when we think about Alaska and this is cruising on Disney, but also on other cruise lines is naturalists. Right. Like, often hear about there being a naturalist on board to talk about Alaska wildlife, to talk about the glaciers, things like that. Did they have anyone on board for Virgin Yes.
[00:34:49] Speaker A: So they added two Happenings cast members unique to the Alaskan sailings. They added the Lumberjack and Naturalist.
[00:35:00] Speaker D: That's so fun.
[00:35:02] Speaker A: So. And evidently the lumberjack on board is actually one of the guys from the Lumberjack show in Ketchikan.
[00:35:10] Speaker D: Oh, so cool. So for those who don't know, the Happenings cast on Virgin Voyages is your entertainment cast. And there's all these different, like, characters. One is like the foodie, one is the bounce, one is the spark, one is the, the charmer. Right. Like, so they all have like different roles and they're on, on each one of the ships on Virgin Voyages, you have a person that is designated with this nickname. And there's like, I forget how many of them.
[00:35:37] Speaker B: The Happenings cast.
[00:35:39] Speaker D: Yes, the Happenings cast. Exactly. And then so basically there's like, I don't know, let's say there's seven of them. I don't know. I'm not. I don't remember that exact number. But so for Alaska, there's two extras and one is Lumberjack and one is the Lumberjack and one is the Nashville. That's so cool. And like, these are the people who like, are like, think of them as like the Savannah Bananas. Like, they are doing their job as like running like trivia, but then they're also doing like dances and lip syncing and things like that across for all of the different, any of the different, like, performances.
[00:36:11] Speaker B: What was Faceline? I'm Faith the foodie. The drinks come out and then I'm Faith the booty.
[00:36:15] Speaker D: The booty.
[00:36:15] Speaker B: At night, they're always here to party and dance. Yeah, yeah.
[00:36:19] Speaker A: So.
And then our naturalist was Sue.
And I will say one of the things I was disappointed in is that I would have liked for there to be more opportunities to have organized events to hear them speak. I think part of the challenge with the Alaska cruise is that the way the Virgin ships are designed, the actual inside spaces are pretty small.
So if you're in a cold place and you take away the outside decks, there really aren't any locations that can accommodate large groups of people.
So it was really, really. So that's where the lines come in again, because it either was a ticketed event with like 25 or 30 tickets, or it would be a non ticketed event. But if you didn't line up 45 minutes to an hour before, you weren't going to get it.
[00:37:12] Speaker D: Yeah, they're like their theater and their nightclub are like their two biggest venues, but they're really not that big. Like, if you Compare them to like the Walt Disney Theater on a Disney ship. They are like much, much, much, much, much, much, much smaller. Like we're talking a couple hundred people, not more than a thousand or almost 2,000 people. Right? So it's. Yeah, they don't have those. Because the way that a Virgin cruise works is everybody's spread out in different spaces. Like you said, lots of small spaces. And the pool deck that has also lots of outdoor spaces. Right. I imagine that Alaska is kind of an odd place to be on a Virgin Voyages cruise because you aren't able to enjoy those outdoor spaces in the same way as on a warm weather cruise.
[00:37:59] Speaker B: This is the debate we're having in our house.
[00:38:01] Speaker D: We are right now, Kathy, you're actually helping us.
[00:38:04] Speaker B: I'm getting a significant time off of work next year and we've been thinking about sailing Virgin out of Seattle because we've never gotten to sail out of our home port. And I love the idea of waking up in morning, heading straight to the port. And in fact, we typically sail, you know, rockstar category, so they'll send a car to get us to our house.
[00:38:24] Speaker D: How cool would that be?
[00:38:25] Speaker B: I love the ease of it, but I do worry, having been on Virgin ships, that so much of it is geared around that outdoor pool area and these outdoor decks, you know, that like, does the ship feel super crowded in the other spaces? Because I think, because I think some of what they've tried to do is like, they've tried to build a, a ocean going vessel that feels a bit more like a yacht. So lots more, lots more venues that are smaller where you can do a bunch of different things.
But you know, Alaska, you want to be like, you're not going to be sitting by the pool all the time. So yeah, it sounds like, yeah, well,
[00:38:56] Speaker D: and I want to be clear. We loved Virgin's ship. Like, we love the one that we were on. What was it? The. I don't even remember the Radiant or the. I don't remember what it was. But anyway, we love the ship. We were on the same one twice, but it was in warm weather climate.
[00:39:11] Speaker A: And the friends I was going with, this was their fourth Virgin Voyages cruise.
And you know, they did make the, they did make the comment that had this Alaska Virgin Voyages been their first experience, they probably wouldn't have sailed again.
And, and I think it was just because it is so cut up and so small in the inside spaces that the ship felt so crowded all the time everywhere you went because, you know, outside was just so windy and so cold.
So I think you know that.
[00:39:48] Speaker D: And you're sailing in May, so you're sailing, you know, you're. You were just sailing last week. So you're sailing in May in Alaska, which is. It's going to be colder than in July, typically, for example, or even late June. Right. Like, it does not saying, of course, like you can have, you can have cold weather even in the summer in Alaska. It just depends on the day. Right. The weather can change on day to day.
But yeah, you're more likely to have a colder sailing in May than you are, say in July or August. So that's another thing to factor in as far as timing goes. Well, I want to talk about some of the events on board because we know obviously they're very different than Disney events.
I'm really curious how they did Scarlet Night, like, what Scarlet Night was like, because our experience with Scarlet Night is a huge part of it is on the pool deck, right. And there's basically people jumping in the pool. I cannot imagine at night in Alaska people are jumping in the pool.
[00:40:49] Speaker A: So the way they had designed it was that there would be members of the Happening cast in like different areas of the ship, but then for the actual big event, they would all converge at both the Red room and the manor.
[00:41:07] Speaker D: Okay, that makes sense.
[00:41:08] Speaker A: Yeah. We actually had dinner at 8:30 that night and didn't finish till 10:30.
And the doors were opening for the red room at 10:30.
I got there at 10:45 and the line stretched from the Red room all the way to the back of the ship.
And I just, like, in my mind was like, it's not that big.
So I ended up not going because I was like, I just.
Back to my. Like it's nothing but lines for the. I just was like, I can't wait in line for 30 minutes to then not be able to get in.
[00:41:45] Speaker D: Absolutely. And. And then even if you got in, it was going to be wall to wall people. And it is just. It looks like it's like a dance singing performance thing. Right. Like, so that's kind of. I mean, that's what it is. But I like, if you're wall to all people, you probably can't even see it. Right. That's the other part too, because it's. Unless you're on sort of that balcony floor to be able to see down below you. But even then, if it's wall to all people, I'm not sure how good you're going to get of a view. So I think I probably would have done the same Thing in your shoes, Kathy, Honestly, I mean, I would, I
[00:42:20] Speaker A: walked the line and went, no.
[00:42:24] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I mean, very different. Yeah, I, I, I can imagine. Like, I, I think it would be really fun to sail on Virgin in Alaska, but it's just a very different experience than what you're going to get from Virgin in the Caribbean. Right.
[00:42:38] Speaker A: Like, I think that's what they have to try and figure out. Right. Like, it's their first sailing cold.
So I think that's what they, they have to sort out, which is like, how do you do this?
[00:42:50] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:42:51] Speaker A: Well, I listened to the story before dinner and that was fine. Like in the rotunda, that was fine because you could be in all different levels and kind of look down.
[00:43:00] Speaker D: Yeah. And that's where they do it on the ships in the Caribbean too. They tell the story of Scarlet Night in the rotunda as well. And so it's, and they, I think they do it maybe at two different times too, which helps spread the crowds a little bit as well. I'm curious what you thought of the entertainment overall. And then I want to talk about food because food is obviously very important to talk about on any, with any cruise.
[00:43:22] Speaker A: So I went to Red Hot and it was like, so, so, so loud.
And the thumping of the bass, like, I could feel it in the core of my body. And I was like, this is not for me.
So, yeah. So then I did not go to Dual Reality the next night, but they had Red Hot. I think they did it like, three different nights. I enjoyed the cabarets that a couple of the Happening cast did over at on the Rocks Bar. I enjoyed those. Trivia was great, but again, like, super, super, super crowded.
[00:44:06] Speaker D: Yeah. Was karaoke really crowded, too? I remember karaoke. Yeah.
[00:44:10] Speaker A: I didn't go to karaoke
[00:44:14] Speaker D: when we were on karaoke. Seemed to be really crowded. We did, like, I sang one song early in the night, but it was like, really, it got really, really crowded as time went on.
And so I think in general, like, it's just part of that is again, this sort of virtue of, like, the smaller spaces, you know, on, on the ship. All right, well, we gotta talk food, because food is, you know, we, we think the food on Disney is great.
Brian thinks the food on Virgin is great. I think it's good with some great just. But I'm a little bit of a pickier eater than Brian is. He's a much more adventurous eat. I, I mean, I think we're like, on the whole, we're more adventurous, I think, than most people Brian is at the extreme end of adventurousness, and I am. I'm a little bit picky, to be perfectly honest. But. Yeah. What did you think of the food, the offerings, and also just kind of the setup? Because it is. You do make reservations at different restaurants. There is no dining. The only sort of main dining equivalent is the galley, which is more like a food court than a buffet. It's. It's good, though. I would say the food quality is good, but it's more like a food court with different stations. Yeah. So what'd you think, Kathy?
[00:45:26] Speaker A: So, I mean, there were definitely some hits and misses. My favorite of the. Of the restaurants was pink agave.
The food was like, super, super flavor, flavorful. And the pork and duck there were amazing.
We also really, really liked Rojo, which is only on the brilliant lady. That's what Razzle Dazzle has been sort of rebranded as. And, you know, more Spanish tapas. And they had great Spanish wines in there to go with it, although they were out of half of them.
So those were definitely the highlights. We ate at Test Kitchen twice. Two different menus.
[00:46:04] Speaker D: Oh, interesting. Yeah. We still haven't done that.
[00:46:06] Speaker A: Okay.
One I didn't care for.
So that, you know, that was interesting. It almost, at Test Kitchen just felt like it was trying to push the envelope, for pushing the envelope sake and not for the sake of the actual quality and flavor of the food.
[00:46:25] Speaker D: That's interesting because we've heard that now from several people. I will say we skipped Test Kitchen on both of our sailings because we had heard comments like that. We heard that like, yes, it's. We like, you know, fancy food. We like some molecular gastronomy, but we don't like it just for the sake of doing it. Like, don't do it just because it's visually cool looking, like it needs to taste good and be good also.
[00:46:49] Speaker A: That's what I said. If it were actually molecular gastronomy, it would be great, but it's not.
But, yeah, so that. That was interesting. They do have the best wine list on board, but again, inflated prices. But, yeah, so it was good. I would say. I didn't. I did not care for the brunches.
I felt like the menus were extremely limited.
Maybe it's because I'm spoiled and think a brunch is always going to be like Paulo brunch.
[00:47:18] Speaker D: Yeah.
I felt the same way about brunch. We did one of. We did one brunch at.
What's the steak place on board. Yeah. So we did one brunch at the wake. And I was kind of like, meh. I didn't think it. We had done a brunch at Razzle Dazzle.
That was a little bit better, I'd say. But also, but. But not. But also, I was kind of like not that wowed. I honestly thought that it. I would rather just get breakfast at the galley or go eat like tapas at, you know, the different places at lunch and things like that.
[00:47:50] Speaker A: I do think just for people to be aware because it is so different than Palo Brunch on board Virgin. It's literally breakfast dishes is. It's not a situation where you can have either breakfast or lunch.
[00:48:05] Speaker D: You can get like there is like at the wake, I feel like they had like a steak and eggs dish or something like that. But like it's. Yes, absolutely. Like Kathy said, it's interesting.
[00:48:14] Speaker A: At the wake you could get a steak, but only if you ordered it after noon. So we had 1145 reservations. Two of our people wanted steak, so we just didn't place our order until noon.
[00:48:27] Speaker D: That's funny. That's really funny.
[00:48:29] Speaker A: So another interesting thing is when we sailed out of Seattle, if people, if you're going to sail out of Seattle, it takes you a long time before you actually get out of US waters. So when I got my tab that night, I was a little surprised because I was charged tax on my corkage fee.
[00:48:46] Speaker D: Oh, interesting.
[00:48:47] Speaker A: Because we were still considered in the United States. And so just FYI, whatever you're going to drink pretty much that whole first night out of Seattle is going to be taxed because you're considered still there.
[00:49:01] Speaker D: Yeah. So people don't realize like, so Seattle is on the Puget Sound. Right. So this is a sound like in. In between a huge pieces of land. Right. So Seattle is not on the coast. I know that people.
[00:49:15] Speaker B: We're not like portions of portions of Washington are on the coast.
[00:49:18] Speaker D: Yes, Washington is. But the city of Seattle. But right. The city of Seattle is not on the coast. It is on the sound. Right. And so sound is this bay, basically this U shaped bay. So that's where Seattle is located. So there, there is still land to the west of us.
And so yeah, so you've got you. And including mountains. Right. So like you are in between as you're sailing out for several hours. Like you are in between us land. So yeah, you are not far enough away to be considered an international water.
[00:49:49] Speaker A: So just be prepared to pay taxes on your alcohol even though you're quote, at sea. Let's see.
[00:49:56] Speaker D: That's funny. I. You know, I never thought about that though, Kathy, because we have, like Brian said, we have not sailed out of Seattle ourselves.
[00:50:04] Speaker B: We know that people trust Disney for
[00:50:05] Speaker C: their vacations and it can sometimes be a little nerve wracking to think about trying something new. Right, Sam?
[00:50:10] Speaker D: Yeah. Whether you're considering branching out to a new cruise line, an all inclusive resort, or exploring Europe, the team at My Path Unwinding Travel has the expertise and connections across the globe to plan almost any vacation. They can even help with the Universal Park. They've helped us plan our vacations beyond Disney, including Royal Caribbean Princess Cruise Line and Virgin Voyages.
[00:50:28] Speaker C: Their team of travel professionals all understand the needs of a Disney traveler, can help you decide if another option is right for you, and then guide you through every step of your new vacation experience. Whether you are dreaming of a fun getaway to an all inclusive resort, a river cruise in Europe or an adventure in Costa Rica, the folks at MyPath Unwinding are ready to help.
[00:50:44] Speaker B: Even if you have already booked, reach
[00:50:46] Speaker C: out for a complimentary consultation to make your next vacation even more amazing.
[00:50:49] Speaker D: If you want to learn more and take advantage of the amazing team at My Path Unwinding Travel, then head over to mypathunwinding.com DCLDUO or email DCLDUO mypathunwinding.com to let them know we sent you their way. Thanks My Path Unwinding for sponsoring today's show. Now back to the episode.
Well, you know Kathy, I'm, I'm curious like your, your thoughts thoughts on, on Virgin and if you would sail again, but perhaps not in Alaska. But then I also want to ask you if you had any particularly amazing Alaskan excursions because Alaska itself is just incredible.
[00:51:27] Speaker A: 100%. I'm going back to Alaska.
I just probably going back to Alaska. I would choose a different cruise line so that I felt like what was really missing on this was that ability to hear about what you were seeing and to have some nature talks and things to prepare you for the ports.
The few things they did have mostly were like live streamed. So it was like, well, I don't really want to go sit in my stateroom and watch something on a television.
So I didn't do those. I also found it interesting our day where we went to Dawes Glacier, they didn't make a single announcement.
[00:52:09] Speaker D: Oh, interesting. So you didn't, you had to just like find out through word of mouth that like the glacier was outside that you could go see it.
[00:52:15] Speaker B: Did they have any naturalist talks or anything on board?
[00:52:18] Speaker A: The way I ended up finding out what was going on was my very first morning. I had gone to like that morning mindbenders and met a couple that added me to the WhatsApp group. Because sue, the naturalist from the Happenings cast was active in the WhatsApp group.
So she was posting there. So that's kind of how in our group, because I was the only one on it who knew what was going on because sue would say, hey, we're about to sail through this area that, you know, there's whale activity or humpbacks were reported here yesterday or the glacier's coming up and the captain's gonna do this.
So that was really how I knew what was going on. But I was very surprised that they didn't make any announcements or have an option on the television in your stateroom to say, oh, oh, give me information on, you know, this day we went to Dawes.
[00:53:11] Speaker D: Yeah, that is, that is interesting. Now I do know from our experience on Disney that when they're going through like the, like the glacier areas, right, like they only are allowed to have somebody over a loudspeaker for at certain times and only a certain volume and only for a certain amount of time, right? So like even on Disney, the naturalist came over the loudspeaker. But it was only for, I want to say it was less than. It had to be less than an hour. But it was as we were sailing, it was before we got to the glacier. But it was telling us like what we were seeing and what we were going to see when we're headed towards Dawes Glacier as well.
But on Disney we did have talks in the Walt Disney Theater. I think she did like three different, you know, they were only half hour long ones and I think they did broadcast them on the TV if you didn't want to be there in person.
But yeah, so that's the thing that's missing. And as you mentioned, it's in part probably because they don't really have a large enough theater space to have, you know, the, the majority of guests come.
[00:54:15] Speaker A: I just was going to say back on some of the special things for the Mermaid and Voyage, there also were a couple of SVP's on board that gave talks about like they were giving talks about some of the dry docks. On the other ship they were giving talks about, you know, sort of the logistics and ins and outs. Outs of the brilliant lady. So that was also there just for the Mermaiden, which is cool.
[00:54:40] Speaker D: I mean, of course it's cool to get sort of that inside info about what's going on, on the, on their cruise line in general. But it's. Yeah, but it's hard because you're in Alaska and so you want this stuff about Alaska as well.
[00:54:51] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:54:52] Speaker D: Yeah. So it's like a, it's a hard balance. Right. And because they don't have all these spaces designed for, for that specifically, it's interesting to me that they, they didn't consider designing a different, a slightly different ship for. I know that all their ships are exactly the same with obviously some different theming in some of the restaurants. But because all their ships are the same, their ships are really, I would say, built for the Caribbean type environment rather than warm weather.
[00:55:20] Speaker A: For sure.
[00:55:20] Speaker D: Yeah, for a warm weather environment. Exactly. Kathy, any, any of the excursions you did that you were particularly great that you want to let people know about?
[00:55:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I did this in Ketchikan. The rest of the group did a seaplane, but I didn't really want to do a seaplane, so I.
And they had booked that privately because seaplane excursions through Virgin didn't start showing up as options to book until really late.
So.
So our group had already booked it privately because we're like, well, I guess Virgin's not going to offer them.
But when they did that, I had booked a, it was called the Lighthouse Totems and Eagle Boat tour, which was really great, you know, saw tons of wildlife, so many bald eagles and seals and you know, I, I was surprised how much of the coast that we covered on that boat tour because when we were sailing back out that night night, I was like, oh my gosh, I was here and here and here.
So yeah, so that was a really good tour. And while we were on the tour, which didn't know we were going to have it on the boat, it was a local operator and they gave us local Alaskan food from the area. So like smoked salmon and salmon dip and, you know, hot beverages. They kept constantly coming around and serving, you know, coffee and tea and it was a special coffee from Alaska. And so yeah, no, it was, it was, it was really nice and met some great people on, on that excursion. So it was very. And did see a whale tail. So I was happy because that was one of my goals on that. The next day in Sitka we, we had booked car, two cars for our group of nine.
This is a tip if you're going to Sitka, if you book your car through Turo, they'll drop the car at the port for you.
So it's right there when you get off the ship. But if you book through anybody else, you have to, like, take a shuttle into town and take another shuttle out to the airport to get. To get the cars. But having a car in Sitka was great because we were pretty much able to cover all of the sites by being able to drive ourselves. So we did the Raptor center, we did the Fortress of Bears, we went to the national park and we did a hike and went to downtown.
So we just, like, checked all the boxes there in Sitka by having cars. And then Prince Rupert, I did through Virgin Voyages. Again, the rest of the group was just like, hanging out, walking around town, which, by the way, Prince Rupert, totally walkable. Although there are a group of really, really great restaurants about three miles away from port. And there is no such thing as Uber there.
So if you do have access to a car, there are some really great restaurants about 3, 4 miles away from port. So I did a culinary trolley tour that, which is how I found out about these restaurants.
So I'll say there's not a whole lot to see in Prince Rupert.
So, yeah, they had to really stretch for, you know, the, the sightseeing aspect of the trip. But we stopped, we got food from four different places, and it was really good. And our. Our guide slash driver is native to the area, and so she also, you know, was telling us a lot of stories about, you know, the. The native tribes there in the area and teaching us some native words. So that was a lot of. That was. It was. It was fun, but just be prepared. There's really nothing to see there.
[00:59:11] Speaker D: I like it.
[00:59:12] Speaker A: So those are. Those were our three stops. So we. A lot of. Lot of chatter on the boat because again, Mermaiden, they were supposed to have the Zodiac or the small boats to get close to the glacier, but they did not get that sorted. So that was not an option on our voyage.
[00:59:32] Speaker D: Yeah, and a lot of cruise lines will have that as basically, if you get on a Zodiac, a smaller boat, something like that, now you have to pay for it. It's an excursion, essentially, on glacier day, typically. And that gets you closer to the glacier the larger cruise ship can get. And of course, there are times that you can get pretty darn close on a large ship. And so you can get a great view even without doing one of those excursions. We did one of the excursions. I'm not sure I would do it again. I definitely liked. I'm glad. I don't regret doing it, but I'm not sure I needed to do it if that. That's, you know, the Way to explain it. All right, well, Brian, I think we have reached that point in the show.
[01:00:13] Speaker B: Oh, I want to ask. So I got a question or two here, Sam. Okay, sorry, Kathy, just all up.
If you had to do this over again, would you book with Virgin for Alaska?
[01:00:24] Speaker A: No.
[01:00:24] Speaker D: Would you do Virgin again, though? Not in Alaska for sure.
[01:00:29] Speaker A: If I had friends going, I would do Virgin.
I think in fairness, you know, I, I do need to probably experience a warm weather destination and a different ship. I, you know, I think it's just the combination of the ship being newer, you know, newer crew. There just were a lot of challenges that, you know, the other people I was sailing with, because they've been on others, they, they said, no, you really need to, you know, go back and experience it in a different.
In a different setting. And I actually have some friends on Virgin right now over in Europe having the time of their life. So who knows? Maybe. Maybe next time.
[01:01:08] Speaker B: And how did you find the balance on your cruise as between, like, I think there's a lot of people out there that we hear from are like, oh, my God, this is going to be a total booze cruise. It' saw like these, you know, influencer types who are, you know, whatever, you know, like just beautiful people everywhere and I won't fit in kind of thing. Not been our experience overall. But, like, how did you feel about this particular sailing in terms of the vibe on. On board?
[01:01:33] Speaker A: I think I would best describe the vibe as this cruise probably skewed older than a normal Virgin Voyages cruise because it's Alaska.
And I would say that most of the people on board were of the persuasion of I'm actually young, so therefore virgins for me.
And they would constantly, you know, we would be in port next to Seabourn or import next to Viking, and they would be like, oh, that ship's for old people. And I'm like, well, I mean, come on, you people are like, not that far younger old. So I think it was just like, for that it was a lot of people on board that for them, Virgin represented, you know, youth and vitality. And it is a lot look types on board. So it's not an issue of fitting in or not fitting in, but you definitely the vibe is more that, like, trendy party, not drinking party, but just, you know, trendy Instagram party kind of look and feel, feel.
[01:02:41] Speaker B: To be fair, Richard Branson himself is no spring chicken, so.
And it's his cruise line. Yeah, I think, I think he's got the Young at heart motto going on in his Life. Yeah. For Alaska specifically.
If you were, would you go back to Alaska irrespective of Virgin? What cruise line would you look to to get you there? Would it be Disney? Would it be something else?
[01:03:03] Speaker A: Probably I would go Seaboard.
[01:03:06] Speaker B: Oh, wow. Okay. It's a very different cruise line than Disney and, and Virgin for sure.
Lovely. It's a lovely cruise line. It's a high end cruise.
[01:03:13] Speaker A: Sure.
[01:03:13] Speaker B: And then on Virgin, the other question I just want to ask is. It's, it's. You just. You did not sail in a Rockstar category of room. Right. So what was the room situation like? Because Virgin has gotten dinged a couple times over. You know, like they're trying to be really creative with how the rooms get laid out. You know, it could be a couch and then the couch turns into a bed at night and like all this. Did you find the room to be comfortable, you know, workable from your standpoint? Standpoint?
[01:03:39] Speaker A: Yeah, the room's totally comfortable. Workable for all of us. They, they didn't do the change from like bed to couch. Everything just stayed as beds. But the bed was perfectly comfortable. Not as comfortable as Disney, but perfectly comfortable. You know. No, no issues.
I think I had prepared myself for like such a crazy, crazy small bathroom that I actually was like, okay, the bathroom's not that bad. The shower's fine. But I, you know, I had already built in my head, this is going to be tiny me.
[01:04:10] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. For sure.
[01:04:11] Speaker D: Expectations, right? You have to like, you have to temper expectations when you're somebody who has stayed on, you know, had the split bathroom on Disney. Right. It's just.
Yeah, yeah. Jet. Most of the cruise lines state rooms and bathrooms, most of them across. Across all the cruise lines, unless you're sailing in like a luxury category, are smaller than Disney's. Disney's on the bigger end.
[01:04:35] Speaker A: And I did put a bid in for Rockstar but was not successful.
[01:04:38] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm always curious about that bidding we through what we've seen from Royal. Like the bidding process is actually fairly convoluted and it's like highly complex and even if you're the person who bids the most, they may give it to the person who bid the least. So yeah, it's so because they want
[01:04:53] Speaker D: your room for somebody else who bid. Right.
Figuring out. Right.
[01:04:56] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Which is how the dominoes are all going to shake out to get them.
[01:05:00] Speaker D: Exactly, exactly, exactly, Kathy. Exactly.
[01:05:03] Speaker B: Last question I have. Kathy is one of the things that we noticed on the times that we've sailed. Virgin is look, the night year Last Life goes much later than any other cruise line that, that we've experienced, perhaps setting aside Royal for a second. And we haven't sailed Carnival.
But what comes from that too, at least where our rooms have been, is that like, you know, if it's Scarlet Night and the deck party is happening, I mean, that ship is vibrating, there's a lot of noise happening. Like, did you find the extended nightlife interfered at all with like kind of the routine you were hoping to have on board?
[01:05:34] Speaker A: Well, back to the un particular, and I was very particular about my cabin location.
So I was on deck 13 just by the forward elevators.
So for me, it was very quiet.
I had zero issues with that. I also noticed, like, if you would go through the app and stuff, most, like most programming stopped at midnight on this cruise. So I don't know if that's like common on all Virgin cruises, but on this one, most stuff was kind of wrapping up around middle night. I don't. I'm sure Scarlet Night went longer, but I don't. I don't know how far.
[01:06:11] Speaker B: My sense is they try to then consolidate everyone into like an after party and the club space, you know, that's down by the casino and kind of buried in the ship a little bit to help. Help with that. But yeah. Yeah. Well, Kathy, I think we have reached that point in the show where I need to hand you back over to Sam for some arbitrary questions, some arbitrary rules, and more than a dash of judgment that around we know as rapid fire. Sam, take it away.
[01:06:32] Speaker D: All right, Kathy, I gave you a preview pre show that we're going to just do a versus rapid fire and gonna. I think I know what's gonna be the winner. I mean, I don't know that I can really like. I'm gonna try and do this with a straight face.
Okay, so we're gonna be. The answers are either Disney or Virgin. You can also throw in like a special mention of another cruise line that you've sailed that you think is doing this really, really well. So let's start with the booking process, like, ease of booking. You know, I'm talking the cruise, the onboard activities, things like that. But before you even step foot onto the cruise line, Disney or Virgin, I
[01:07:11] Speaker A: would have to give it to Disney. And listen, I think Disney's app is so glitchy and frustrating that I didn't think anything could be worse until I got on the Virgin app.
[01:07:24] Speaker D: Yeah, the Virgin app's not great. Let's be honest about it.
Yeah, I have to agree with you there. All Right.
[01:07:31] Speaker B: Disney. Disney. It better than some, better than some.
[01:07:35] Speaker D: Not better than many, but better than some. All right. Yeah, that's going to be its new motto. All right.
Onboard daytime activities like trivias and mind benders and things like that.
[01:07:48] Speaker A: It's kind of a tie actually.
But at least Disney has medals for the trivia.
[01:07:53] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah.
You don't win a drink or a coffee. You on Disney, you win a medal. I, I like that too. But you know, it just depends on what you, what you prefer. All right.
Shows. This is like.
[01:08:05] Speaker A: Oh, I mean, Disney.
[01:08:07] Speaker D: Yeah, it's right. You just. I mean, I'll be honest. I, I thought the performers on Virgin voyages were incredible, but they don't. Yeah, it's not, it's not Disney quality. All right. Food.
[01:08:18] Speaker A: So for high end food, Remy hand sand down. I mean, nothing comes close to Remy or Paulo for that matter. But if you just compared main dining to main dining, you know, pink agave and rojo had some really, really flavorful things.
[01:08:38] Speaker D: So you're giving it to Virgin on the main dining category.
[01:08:41] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. You know, it's, it's tough, but. Yeah. And I think it's because they have more dedicated kitchens versus a central kitchen.
[01:08:48] Speaker D: It is, I mean they're. When you're cooking for hundreds instead of thousands at once. Right. Like, it's just the quality can be really good. I. Bri, Brian agrees with you. I'm going to tell you this, Kathy. I disagree only because the, the, the hits were really good, but the misses were really bad. And I've never had something like inedible on Disney. And I did have, I did one. I, I have, I did have a animators palette. Oh, interesting. Okay. There you go. All right. Okay. Bar spaces.
[01:09:19] Speaker A: Oh, Disney.
[01:09:20] Speaker D: Well, I mean, if you like theming. So of course. Yeah. All right.
[01:09:24] Speaker A: Part of that too is because I liked the drink offerings better. I mean the wine, the wine was much better than I could get by the glass on Disney.
[01:09:33] Speaker D: Oh, wow. Okay, that's good to know. All right. Overall service.
[01:09:38] Speaker A: Disney.
[01:09:39] Speaker D: Overall cleanliness.
[01:09:40] Speaker A: Disney.
[01:09:41] Speaker D: And overall cabins.
[01:09:43] Speaker A: Disney.
[01:09:44] Speaker D: All right. And then the overall goes to Disney. All right. All right. So now, now if you were going to sail in Alaska again, you mentioned Seabourne. I'm veering away from my rapid fire, but I'm curious why Seabourn and why not Disney in Alaska?
[01:10:04] Speaker A: Because it's a smaller ship, so a little bit more unique itineraries and I think I would get a little bit more of that naturalist programming that I really was craving on, on, on this sailing.
So I feel like I would get that a little bit more on Seabourn than Disney just because they're really only catering to adults. Not that kids can go on Seabourn, but they don't have any programming or anything and there's typically very few on.
[01:10:36] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. Now, one of the other cruise lines that I want to just mention for people who are considering Alaska, we hear a lot of really good things about Princess in Alaska. Alaska, like Princess is very well known, of course, course it skews older. But there are families who sail on Princess in Alaska and they are known for having great naturalists and whatnot on board as well. All right, Kathy, I'm going to ask you, I do want to ask you two Disney questions. I want to ask you which one is your favorite Disney Cruise Line ship and then I want to ask you where your bucket list cruise would be on a Disney cruise. So let's start with what's your favorite Disney ship in the fleet?
[01:11:12] Speaker A: So favorite Disney ship is the fantasy. But I'll preface, I've not yet been on the Treasure or Destiny.
[01:11:19] Speaker D: To me, that makes total sense. All right, and then what is your bucket list cruise someplace in the world you haven't been that you would love to go on a Disney ship.
[01:11:28] Speaker A: 100% is cruise over in Asia that goes to the Asian parks.
[01:11:32] Speaker D: Yeah. Fantastic. Kathy, thank you for playing. Of course you win because Disney wins. So thank you. Thank you for. But no, you've really, you've honestly really helped us from on a personal note, you've really helped us because. Because we have been having this debate,
[01:11:49] Speaker B: AKA you have only solidified Sam's position that we need to sail Disney even though it's my sabbatical for work. So.
[01:12:00] Speaker A: Well, sorry about that. But in this particular case, in this
[01:12:05] Speaker D: case, Sam is right. Sam's not always right. But in this particular case, Brian, I know you always like to ask.
[01:12:12] Speaker B: Yeah, Kathy, what's next? What have you got planned if you anything.
[01:12:15] Speaker A: So I'm doing a back to back on the Destiny, getting on board Labor Day. And then I have a couple of three night girls trips in November on the Dream and then I'm doing on the Dream in April, the repositioning from San Juan to Port Canaveral.
[01:12:34] Speaker D: Awesome. Fantastic. So lots of great cruises in your future and your first time on the Destiny.
I'm sure you'll enjoy it. It there are. I warn you exactly. That's my only. That's the only warning. But Kathy, thank you so much for agreeing to be on the show. It's been wonderful having you. Thank you for listening, of course as well, but we really appreciate it. We'd never, obviously we've never talked to anyone who's gone on a maiden voyage on any other cruise line beyond Disney. And it's just really interesting to hear the perspective of, you know, a maiden voyage, but also to hear the perspective of sailing on on sailing to Alaska on virgin voyages. So we really appreciate you coming on and doing this unique show with us.
[01:13:17] Speaker A: Thanks so much. It was fun.
[01:13:23] Speaker C: Well, thanks 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 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 DCLDUOYpathunwinding.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 where you see 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 as a way for you to sign up for our substack newsletter that we're hoping to start really pumping out monthly here, at least on 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 402-241-35590. That's 402-413-5590. The D.C. dual 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 or your travel agent. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time for another fabulous adventure with the DCL Duo.
[01:15:24] Speaker B: Good night.
