Jessetfan

That wasn't our experience. We were seated directly next to another couple at the counter. It ended up being an absolutely great time, and we ended up seeing them throughout our cruise.

I've only been on VV once, and it happened that there was a medical emergency. I don't imagine that they'd get there earlier by design, since it's also lost revenue for them.

Definitely take it easy. On our sailing a couple weeks ago there was a medical emergency and we were in Miami at 10:30 PM (might have been earlier, I fell asleep) on Friday night after leaving Bimini at 6:30 PM (I think).

For a place like Test Kitchen you can also swap out by course if a particular ingredient doesn't appeal or you have a dietary restriction. We were able to do that last week when a couple of options I really wanted to try didn't appeal to my companion. He greatly enjoyed the dishes he got instead. The couple we sat with also did substitutions for different courses.

I agree with you about late nights. We often wished that the Social Club were open later. We would get out of a 10 PM show to find everything that offered a sweet option closed, so resorted to picking desserts up in the afternoon or early evening and stashing them in our room for snacks on the balcony. It would have been nice for Sweet Side, Lick Me Til Ice Cream, and the Social Club to be open until midnight or 1:00 AM. We didn't find the service in the Galley to be slow most of the time. We enjoyed the food for the most part, except for a ramen dish that just wasn't to my taste. We really liked the restaurants, and we were happy not to have to worry about paying extra.

We ran into this as well. I wish we could have had anywhere as an excuse to be. It was well past showtime, and it would have been rather unconvincing that we were hardcore PJ people. I had to duck a question about my state's newly elected governor when I knew that my answer would not go over well nor serve any purpose since I was unlikely to see the people we were seated with again. Honestly, these were the only grumpy people we encountered, so I'm glad we got it out of the way early. Everyone else we encountered was absolutely lovely, and I think it really is just luck of the draw. We ended up talking to people at a lot of the restaurants because the tables are fairly close together everywhere, and we got advice on what to eat elsewhere or just had really pleasant conversations some of which developed into chatting when we ran into them again on the ship. I think we'd give Gumbae another shot either hoping to have made friends to go with or hoping for better luck with tablemates.

It was six for us last week. We had the unfortunate experience of being seated with two grumpy couples, most of whom spent the meal buried in their phones. The food was great, but the meal was extremely long. I would recommend against booking on the night of embarkation.

It's a $7 delivery charge, waived if you order anything with a cost attached like specialty coffee, fresh OJ, or alcohol. We paid the fee and were happy to do so. It was one of my things on the must do list, breakfast in bed at least once.

I tried the goat cheese frittata, and it wasn't to my taste. My friend had their "Razzle Dazzle breakfast" and didn't care for that much either. He preferred the scrambled eggs in The Galley. I loved breakfast in The Wake, although my friend didn't have a ton of options there; he did like the French toast. We both liked The Galley and room service.

We intended to do it (I brought really cute PJs), but dinner ran past 11 (8:30 reservation), and we were both tired, so we decided on a PJ party for two. Maybe we'll make it next time.

It's as described earlier, video in cabin, check in at station, move on with your day. It was super easy.

I just got back from my first cruise on VV, and I ended up loving the restaurants, and it really was easy to make changes if we needed to. We ended up having to make several changes to our reservations because we enjoyed the trivia and mind benders, so our strategy was usually to go to the restaurant where we had reservations at opening and ask if we could eat early. We were never told no, and on our last night they were even able to turn our reservation for two into a reservation for four when we asked some new friends if they wanted to join us. I think one of the keys is to be polite and take no for an answer if they can't do it. We were able to change a show reservation without a problem and even get into a couple of performances that the app said were sold out without any problem. We thought it was great. The food was also fantastic. The only place we weren't big fans of was Razzle Dazzle, and only specifically for breakfast. I'd give them a try at lunch on our next voyage and try the chicken sandwich, but everything else we had was great. There was so much variety, and we definitely didn't get to try everything. We didn't spend a dime on any of the "Treat Yourself" options, and I don't feel like we missed out on anything. Since everything was included it was a great time to try new things, some of which I enjoyed and others that weren't to my taste. Overall, I feel like they have a great concept, and I loved the idea of breakfast dessert, which we took advantage of a couple times.

Is that on both ships? I've seen some YouTube videos where the "secret" dish at Razzle Dazzle is butter chicken, which is much less likely to get my attention. Also, any pictures of the secret steak?

Looking forward to trying that next week!

I'm actually pretty excited for the way that Virgin does reservations. I booked my cruise for next week last August, and my friend and I have been maintaining a spreadsheet for plans, so we knew where we wanted to go on what night and at what time quite a while before we could make reservations. I signed onto the app the day reservations were available, and with the exception of our first night I was able to book exactly what we wanted within 15 minutes of the planned time. Our first night I think we ended up booking an hour later than ideal, overall not bad at all. We may make one change depending on whether Test Kitchen has our preferred menu on the night we have it booked currently, but other than that, I'm thrilled with the way this has worked out. When I've booked before (Carnival), I've made sure to book the steakhouse in advance, and the last time I did (granted about a decade ago) I had to do so by phone. This was easy and I didn't have to talk to anyone to do it.