Tralfaz1138

I assume they have some sort of demand based algorithm driving prices on both entire cruises and even just cabins on some cruises. I ran across one thing (that worked in my favor I suppose) where a Brilliant Suite on the 12 night UK to Spain and Morocco cruise this year seemed a lot cheaper than on similar cruises. The day after I booked it the price on the web site jumped by over $4k so perhaps my booking one spiked demand?. I also ran across a cruise where the price for the biggest terrace Cheeky Corner Suite was less than that of the big terrace Cheeky Corner Suite. Not by much, but still a weird pricing glitch. (It is the England to Iceland & Norway cruise in 2025. $16274 for the biggest terrace, $16484 for the bigger, and $16924 for the big. So weird.) That said, at current prices this is likely the last time I'm going to be a Rockstar on one of these cruises. I still have one MNVV to use, so it'll likely be on something shorter and less expensive.

To be clear, it's $30 for 4 pages (games) with 3 cards each, $45 for 6 cards per page, and I "think" $55 for 9 cards per page. We went with the 6 cards per page where it was a little challenging to keep up at times, so I don't think I'd ever want to try to manage 9 cards.

The one exception might be Persephone (or it's equivalent on the other ships...Duel Reality maybe?). In the case of Persephone at least, there's a section to stand on the floor. If you're planning to do that, then timing doesn't matter as much. But there are also seats on the upper level that are a little bit limited. If you want a decent seat there, arriving a bit early helps.

The Virgin Voyages site has a drop down at the upper right to change prices to a few different currencies including AUD and NZD. When I was browsing cruises while in New Zealand recently I also seem to remember it defaulting to NZD. (Unless your talking about the price of on board items and events being listed in USD which could be a challenge I suppose).

I enjoyed the aft suite we had on deck 9 recently. You get a view of both sides of the ship, so no matter what side of the ship the port is on, you get a view of it. At night, they have lights on back of the ship, so looking at the "blue" wake off the balcony was a nice "at sea" view. It really worked out pretty well as a room, and it was the 2nd cheapest suite on the cruise. It's the smallest actual room size of the suites, but for the time we would spend in there the space was more than enough. (I know OP said aside from suites, but just throwing this out there as an upgrade recommendation since it's one of the cheapest upgrade bids you can make).

I just booked a suite on 14 and "may" be rolling the dice a little. I called up to make the booking so I could try to book one of the front two suites. I was able to get the 2nd one from the front, so it appears to be under one of the mega rockstar suites. I'm guessing the bass from Scarlet Night might still carry, but hopefully the lounge chair setup in the morning will not.

The pork belly is not any different on Resilient either. Gunbae really is, honestly, all about the social element and not really about the food. We went twice since, given the length of our cruise, we ate everywhere at least twice. We met great people both times, and really enjoyed the service both times, but for me the food itself wasn't the star of the show. None of it was "bad". Just most was less flavorful or interesting than food at the other restaurants. (And we did have individual sauces versus the post that mentioned shared sauces, which sounds awful). We just booked a 12 night cruise for next year and will most likely just go to Gunbae once (early) in the cruise.

It might be different when eating alone, but I will say that (in most of the restaurants) at least some seating was generally close together enough to where almost all nights we would end up in a conversation with the people seated next to us. We also had fairly good luck at Gunbae with being seated with "fun" people that we ran into at other times during the cruise, and Test Kitchen has "bar" seating available. As others have mentioned, there are also sea day activities and the various lounges. At The Dock they also had a tapas hour of sorts every day. We went to that on embarkation day and met a few people there as well.

I can't remember if this was a "ticketed" event. But this show was one of my wife's and my favorites on our recent cruise. Probably the most "fun" show of the ones we saw (and we saw most of the available shows since it was a long cruise).

On our cruise I had one of the veggie burger specials that wasn't bad, but when my wife and I ordered regular burgers one day they were terrible. It took a while so maybe they forgot to hit our buzzer, but it was cold and seemed to have been overcooked. So basically a "been sitting under a heat lamp" burger. All other food we had was great, but I will never order a burger again.

What I was told is that they were able to book the same room for the whole trip. However, a number of people bid on upgrades on each leg, so those that won them kept switching rooms. One person also told us that they were required to disembark at Dubai and Singapore, so they couldn't just stay on the ship at those ports.

As I've mentioned this to other retiree passengers they have said the same thing. I've found no sympathy from anyone for people that booked this without understanding what they were signing up for. Most everyone I've talked to like the vibe of the ship, and not all retirees are "conservative". It is definitely mystifying that someone would sign up for 45 days on a ship without really knowing what the ship is like. We talked to a group tonight that also heard some people complain about the lack of a library (though there is a small one here so they were a bit wrong there) and not having a chapel. They also pointed out some people were a little put off by not being presented the option to book different legs of the repositioning in Australia. It's hard to tell what exactly was the thing that tipped some people over the edge.

I forgot to mention one thing. We met a passenger that told us there was a long line of people at sailor services in Athens looking to cancel their cruise even if it meant losing the money. I guess it's part of the reason a number of cabins, including suites, opened up a month before this leg of the cruise left. Many of the Australians I have talked to have told me this was sold as one long cruise there versus the 3 cruises it was sold as in the US. So I guess, maybe, the vibe of the happenings cast as you board and some of the other sailors on board didnt match up with what some of the crowd that would take a 45 day cruise expects. I'm not sure what other issues would come up before even leaving port.

I'm just over midway through the Singapore to Sydney repositioning cruise staying in the Big Terrace Sweet Aft Suite. This is my first voyage on Virgin Voyages so I thought I would throw out a bit of an update on this cruise and how Virgin is doing (as a first timer). I will start, however, by saying that I did expect the cruise to be...different...than the typical Virgin cruise people have talked about on these forums. I'll start with the pre-cruise preparation. For me, at least, it seems like Virgin tried to get us prepared for all of the visas we would need for the trip. I did get an e-mail a few months before the cruise telling me the ship would apply for a visa to Bali so nothing to worry about there, but we were responsible to get our visa sorted out for Australia and they informed us of what we would need to do to fly in to Singapore. So there were no surprises there. I'll circle back around to this topic in a bit, but there is a reason I mention it. The boarding process in Singapore was...chaotic. Given it's the first time Virgin has docked there the staff were, understandably, contract help. In addition to this, a huge RC ship had docked at the same time as Resilient Lady, so that created a mess for people disembarking the ship. They had the "VIP" line, "Priority" line and others set up, but they couldn't tell us when each was boarding, and at one point filed everyone that was VIP or Priority into the priority line. Then they said VIP should go to the other line, so many of us ducked under the separators to VIP. When we got to the check-in counter the computers went down. In the end my step-daughter who was in the priority line made it in to the ship about 5 or 10 minutes before my wife and I in the VIP line. I'll be curious how things work out next year when they do this cruise again. Mind you, I expected chaos, but not everyone did and there were some upset people in line. Once we got on board things got a lot smoother. We met with our Rockstar agent, Gavin, in the Sip Lounge and he got us sorted out on the wifi and getting set up to book events on board. There were not all that many people in the lounge, the reason being (as we discovered later) there were a large number of people on board in the suites that had been on the ship since Athens so they were already dialed in to the system. Since it does seem like the policy for swapping out items in the bar varies I'll note that (in our case) we were told we could swap 2 bottles of liquor for another type. I also got the Redbull and some beers swapped out for another style of beer. I'm not a big drinker and honestly I'm only about half way through a $400 bar tab and I've not made a huge dent in what comes with the cabin. The ship itself has been amazing. Our Rockstar Agent has either stopped by or we've run across him probably 3 times a day and he's always asking if we need anything. He's very on top of helping us out with anything. The room isn't one of the "largest" suites, but it's perfectly good for sleeping in and the occasional time we're hanging out in it. The larger balcony is very nice (and I'm sitting on it as I type this). It's especially nice at night when they have lights on the tail lit up so the wake of the ship is blue in the evening. One thing I wasn't clear on as a "Rockstar perk" is that they 5-6 champaign on Richards Rooftop is every night. I had thought it was just when sailing away. As a port, Bali was interesting. Since the ship had taken care of the visas, disembarking was extremely fast and easy.It's obviously a wonderful island in Indonesia. They people were extremely friendly. We did book our own driver/tour guide for our time there, and we stayed overnight at a VRBO in Ubud. The thing I will warn with Bali is that, at times and in certain places, traffic is no joke. We had planned 4 places to go to our first day but we were running late when we were done at our 3rd and had to drop the 4th stop. So, for anyone planning to book their own activities just keep that in mind. At this point I'll circle back to getting the Australian visa. For anyone planning to do this same cruise next year, or possibly doing the New Zealand to Australia cruise, make certain you have your Australian visa sorted out. My step-daughter joined us on this cruise and we got a call from her while we were in our cabin after returning saying she was being told to leave the ship. In order to streamline people disembarking in our Australia ports, Australian immigration boarded the ship in Bali so they could do immigration interviews during our two at sea days to Darwin. Anyone on board that didn't have an approved visa was told to get back off the ship or was denied re-entry to the ship. There were a few others beside my step-daughter. We talked to another couple the day after all of this that said they never got the e-mail saying they needed a visa. They tried to apply for it on board, but the visa application you use on your phone requires detecting you are in a valid location outside of Australia. So they applied for it in Bali and it was granted. (The approval process is actually very fast). But my step-daughter, for some reason, keeps having hers rejected with no clear answer why so she's still sorting through this 4 days after leaving Bali. The benefit to doing things they way they did with immigration officials getting on in Bali is that getting off the ship in Darwin was very fast. We didn't need our passports so getting off was as simple as scanning your wrist band and getting your bag inspected for forbidden items, and getting on was the reverse. One final thing to note on this particular voyage is that the demographic on board definitely skews toward older people. There are a decent amount of younger people as well, but the majority are certainly older. It's not a surprise, but I figured I would confirm that. The other thing to note is that the majority of the sailors are Australian. Again, not unexpected and they've been a fun group. It's been great talking to a number of them during champagne hour and they've tried to offer advice when they can on my step-daughters visa adventure. As far as general thoughts on the cruise go (and I'll note that we were told there are 1900 people on board, do not "full" but not "empty): The food has been mostly fantastic. (Nothing is ever perfect so one our two items might have been misfires but not in any way that made it "bad", just less "good"). The service has been fantastic. I've never felt like I was just sitting there waiting for service. We've had the A menu at Test Kitchen and loved it. In "honor" of the Americans on board they did have a few days of meals where they added a special "Thanksgiving" option. We've loved most of the shows. They have brought a few comedians on board for the longer voyage who have been alright, but the "normal" Virgin shows have really been the standouts. We did end up going to one of the "secret" shows and it was a lot of fun as well, though it was a performance by a rather quirky magician. We enjoyed his performance, but talking to someone else that had seen it before it sounded like he was less impressed. I was initially worried about so many days at sea but we're about half through those now and there is enough to do on the ship that I've never felt "bored". The Galley is certainly busy at breakfast and lunch time but it's never taken very long to get food there. The only challenge is finding a seat at times and the fact that people take the salt and pepper shakers to their room, so finding them there is hit or miss. My wife and I got the Splash of Romance as well. I will warn people, do not let them tighten that wrist band on you too much. That thing has a sharkbite collar and is made of incredibly tough material so you need to hunt down someone with scissors to get it off. One final thing to note. The original itinerary for the cruise showed Darwin as a tender port, and has Yorkey's Knob as the next port. I guess things changed so in Darwin we were docked, and now the ship will actually be docking in Cairns, which is much more convenient. I'll throw up another update after we've wrapped up the cruise in Sydney, but so far I'm sold on Virgin Voyages as a great vacation option for us.

I did ask him about the PIF discount being discontinued. He said he only found out about it about the same time the public found out, so the higher ups apparently kept that change very close to the vest.

On the Singapore to Sydney I've only seen Bingo with the Diva. I will warn people that they can go through the numbers quickly. There was a guy in the audience that bought the 9 card package and had trouble keeping up. He eventually flipped out, dropped his cards and stormed out shouting all the way about going too fast. It's a fun and goofy show, though.

We talked to one of the reps about this earlier today on the cruise we are on. He said, if you don't use it in 2 years, you can convert the $300 to a cruise credit for another year after. So you loose the extras but not necessarily the $300.

Strangely, excursions for us actually showed up earlier than midnight EST the day they were supposed to open, so they were on the ball with that one. Just restaurants were goofed up. (And I did try the tricks of deleting the cache, deleting/reinstalling the app, etc. Being a tech person the issues "seemed" to me to be back end related, not app related though).

When it came time to book our restaurants it got a bit weird (on the Singapore to Sydney trip). I basically hit what I think you did (e.g. you could see the restaurants but it basically said no booking was needed for any time slot I chose). This actually lasted for a few days so I finally called VV and booked things over the phone with someone. A couple of days after that, though, the system did "wake up" and the ability to book restaurants was available. I'm guessing the reason for the issue was new itineraries they hadn't properly set up in the system yet. I will say that the fact you can't "edit" things easily in that system was frustrating. My step-daughter is also on this trip in a non-RS room so I booked for an extra person as well. I forgot to tell the person, though, it was for a specific person so all the bookings were just for a "person" so she wouldn't be able to see them in her app. I went in to edit them all and you can't just change the "person" so I had to delete the booking and rebook it with her selected as the +1.

This is interesting. We had actually booked one of the earliest cruises on Virgin for April 2020 when they had Cuba as a port for two days. I remember thinking they were on the expensive side when we booked that (and we ended up cancelling when Cuba was removed and it was changed to just Key West and Bimini). Then Covid derailed their inaugural voyage anyway so I imagine they had to change gears for the pricing on the new introductory phase to just get people back out there when they were the "new kids on the block".

I'd read about this, and the cruise I'm on didn't have the "lower end" suites available when I booked, but then a couple of aft suites and a corner suite showed up. I assumed they were "released" by a travel agent and I called VV to change out my XL sea terrace for an aft suite since the same deal I booked under was still available then and it applied to suites. But looking at the cruise I'm on at the VV site, it shows all but the pretty big and biggest terrace aft suites available, plus a few Mega. So it just seems odd TA's would have been squatting on that many suites for that long. It's also interesting the prices for the suites are so high. There's less than a month before the cruise, it's a 2 week cruise and the embarkation is half way around the world for US people at least. So it doesn't seem like the type of thing someone jumps on with short notice.

One thing that is interesting is the cruise I booked last April that I'm going on in less than a month (which has not shown as available for a while now) suddenly has a bunch of available cabins including Rockstar suites of just about every type. So I'm a bit curious what happened there. The class of Rockstar suite I booked isn't available so I can't "directly" compare but the suite that is the next step down in normal cost is over $6k more than what I paid. (This is for the Singapore to Sydney repositioning so the fare wasn't "cheap" to begin with). Maybe this makes one of the upgrades I bid on more likely to clear.... One can dream. (I will note, though, that the repositioning at the end of 2024 is cheaper than what I paid. They changed the itinerary to have one less stop and it's the west side of Australia, though, so maybe that's why it's cheaper.)

Something else worth doing ahead of time is researching the cost of things in each country that you think you might pay for (e.g. food, items you might buy, etc). If you have any excursions booked through the ship or on your own, having local cash on hand to tip people that help out with it doesn't hurt either.

I'll admit I can't speak for Singapore from experience, but in looking it up online and basing things on travel to other Asian countries it would be best to have local currency. "If" someone does accept foreign currency they will typically round up regarding the exchange rate since they'll have to go through the hassle of exchanging the money. I'm leaving from Singapore on the Singapore to Sydney cruise and the advice I've seen for Singapore is that, if you want to eat in a Hawker market, you'll want cash but in more "commercial" spots you can just use a credit card. I would assume India would be the same way, and I've been to Bangkok where it was best to have baht on hand (I believe one of your stops is in Phuket where you'd want that currency). The exchange rate is generally better if you do it through you're bank before hand, but I imagine there will be places near where you disembark at the ports to exchange money.

The general recommendation I've seen for things like that (from Virgin and really for phone apps in general) is you can first try to delete the cache and/or data for the app to see if that fixes it. If not, you can try to uninstall and reinstall it.