LandlockedCruiser01

Draconian masking and social distancing, eliminating social experiences that make cruising fun, banning sharing of tables, making QR codes mandatory for everything, etc. Carnival was like that last year, and might still be.

I had THE BEST piano bar experience on Inspiration (R.I.P.) in 2019. The pianist was David Wiley. He was very good at his job, no doubt. He knew what the cruise crowd wanted to hear, and played exactly that. In other words, Billy Joel or Barry Manilow, not Carrie Underwood, or worse, Justin Bieber. Even though he was Australian and not American. But what made the piano bar experience great was me and the two ladies I met the second night there. They were the ringleaders of their group, and they adopted me, as I was cruising solo. We bantered with the pianist by interjecting our own lyrics while singing along, requested nostalgic songs, and got onstage to sing karaoke-style while he played. We became the center of the action each night, and the crowd loved us. My Inspiration review talks about my piano bar experiences in good detail.

Before I left Carnival due to their Covid worship and their new lack of paper schedules and menus, I sailed with them. They always had a Latin night on the main promenade, with salsa, bachata, and other dance music played by a live band. And on other nights, they had light rock music you could swing dance to. (Songs like the "Come Fly with Me" or "Rock Around the Clock".) There were always people on the dance floor. It was mainly 20- thru 40-somethings, with a smattering of older teens joining in. But no age group was excluded. If you wanted to dance, you just did it, either with the person you came with or by asking a willing taker.

It sounds they're one of those one-person changing rooms, like one-person restrooms. The earlier post made it seem like it's a large, communal changing room for both men and women, with no partitions to speak of. Which makes Woodstock look like Disney World in comparison.

No gender-separated locker rooms? What, what?! Are you saying both men and women undress to nudity in front of each other, while they change from casual/street clothes into swimsuits/towels? I know VV wants to be "woke", but this is a US-based cruise ship, not Woodstock 1969!

I'm aware of that. I was referring to the general onboard vibe, not money. I'm sure you've seen bars like I described, found in newly gentrified neighborhoods, where mundane fries cost $25, are sprinkled with nutritional yeast and sea salt flakes, and hyped up as "vegan" and "farm-to-table". And the atmosphere puts off anyone who isn't a snooty hipster or a virtue-signaling trust fund baby. That's the vibe VV's advertising materials gave off; I didn't expect to feel comfortable there at all. I'm glad you had a good time on their ships, which gives me some hope in trying them out. But they REALLY gotta change their ads! At status quo, they're alienating a lot of people with their "Jersey Shore" image. Earth to Virgin: not everyone is Snooki or The Situation!

My reaction of VV was the same: it struck me as a place for trashy Kim Kardashian wannabes, the kind that haven't worked a single day in their lives, and just coasted on their looks and/or trust funds. Today, I'm a little bit more willing to give VV a chance, but they're still doing p1ss-poor job of making an average burned-out office worker feel even slightly welcome. They still feel like the annoying, snooty bar that charges $25 for a plate of farm-to-table cheese fries.

I very much share the OP's political views on Covid. But the threat title strikes me as "cutting off the nose to spite the face". There have to be other options than leaving NCL just because it ports in Bermuda. What about booking cruises that don't go there altogether? Or if sailing on a cruise that goes there, simply staying on the ship that day? I could rant about Covid politics until I get banned from this site, but even I say that the OP's reaction is a bridge too far.

Great review, and thanks for posting! 👍 I have one question, and it's a deal-breaker. Are you required to be tethered to your digital leash, colloquially known as a "smartphone", to scan QR codes and such? Or can you cruise old-school, by using paper menus and schedules, and unlocking your cabin with a ship card? Also, masks and/or social distancing; please say "no"! Vax card, I can handle.

The "grab and go" contains are all plastic on top of plastic, and I'm sure the utensils used to eat all that food are plastic too. I hope Virgin Voyages recycles those containers and utensils properly, without virtue-signaling by using paper or sugar straws. (Looking at you, Carnival!) I'm as unwoke as it gets. But I can get behind "innovation" if it's done right. Even so, I'd much rather see reusable china plates and metal utensils, like on old-school lines. It takes only one idiot to leave a plastic container on the deck, where it gets blown into the ocean by wind.

I cruised solo 3 times already. I never felt unsafe, and felt lonely only briefly during specific times. People after mid 20's age usually nonjudgemental, and simply won't care that you're cruising alone. Every time I cruised, I got adopted by friendly non-solos, and had the time of my life with them.

I concur. Chicago public high schools don't have school buses. But... Chicago has excellent public transit by American standards, so that's how teenagers are expected to get to school. (They get reduced fares.) This is probably also true in cities like New York. So if a kid can navigate a public transit system, they can navigate a cruise ship.

What about tilting the chair in against the table? It's a nearly universal sign in the US that a place is occupied. It's done in bars, in casinos (like at slot machines), at in some casual restaurants. I don't know how widely recognized it is outside of North America, though, as most crew members are from European and Asian countries.

That's an honorable but dangerous attitude. Carnival knows people are feeling like this. So it keeps cutting back its product, using The Covid as a pretext, because the suits know they can get away with it. Let them get away with it long enough, and Carnival will be as bad as Spirit Airlines or EasyCruise. Instead of this attitude, we should be speaking out. We must show Carnival aggressive contempt, not fawning respect. They're cutting back onboard services, use The Covid as an excuse for it, and get political support for doing so.

Good comeback! 👍 Still, how do you handle social situations with members of the opposite sex? The kind usually done with one's partner or trusted friends, like dancing. For instance, there's a band playing, and someone asks to dance with you. (Meaning classy swing or Latin, not trashy grinding.) Or conversely, you're in the mood to hit the dance floor, and ask someone yourself. Cruising and dancing go together like macaroni and cheese, after all. Do you accept the dance invites and/or initiate them yourself? If yes, how do you vet new people, to make sure they know that a dance is just that, and will under no circumstances lead to the horizontal kind? (I'm sure the vetting is more relevant for women than for men.)

There's a world of difference between a cruise line marketing itself as "solo-friendly" with foam at its mouth, and a bona fide solo-friendly onboard atmosphere. CCL used to be the latter, despite not giving solo discounts. Well, until it started worshiping the Covid God: that meant obligatory QR codes for menus and schedules, and draconian mask and social distancing rules in all public areas. NCL, by contrast, was always a Covid atheist, and did more than pay lip service to welcoming solos; I just wish they'd bring back assigned dining. RCI and X are going out of their way to look solo-friendly, by shoehorning single cabins into low-revenue deck spaces. But until a solo passenger sails on them and debarks with a smile on their face, it's all just cheap, transparent window dressing.

Carnival still has Elation and Paradise. They have a classic look: lifeboats at the top, smooth balcony-free hulls, and no crazy bells and whistles. Unfortunately, Carnival has gone extremely woke: QR codes for everything, no paper menus or schedules, lax dress codes, and social distancing everywhere. So those two ships are "classic" in looks, but not in the atmosphere. All in all, we're SOL when it comes to "classic" ships at this point.

That's very good information! 👍 Now I know. Still, I'm sure cruise lines will modify their systems to pull in more air from outside, after Covid has been around. I'm not afraid of it, but I do like the idea of breathing ocean air even when I can't open the windows/portholes, or worse, staying in an inside cabin. That said, I spent 95% of the time on the ship (when not sleeping) on the Lido deck or in various public indoor spaces. So the bathroom cabin thing is a minor issue. The sprays I served their purpose well.

Well, that's different. But the fan strength was still too weak to pull out the post-shower steam and the bathroom usage odors. Plus now, after Covid, we need stronger fans to facilitate air exchange, preferably from outside and not just recirculating the ship air.

I didn't notice this on any of the cruises I've been on. I didn't hear any fan whatsoever; the bathroom was dead silent. Then again, they were all on Fantasy class ships; maybe they don't have bathroom exhaust fans, while newer ships probably do. So that travel-size Axe body spray sure came in handy.

When it comes to air fresheners, I usually slummed it with travel-size Axe body spray. It's been used by middle school boys to attract girls since the day it was invented, but I improvise it as a bathroom air freshener. The bottles are small and cheap enough to simply discard at the end of my cruise, I can spray them like full-size Glade air fresheners, and they block out bathroom odors pretty well. That said, I use them for odors caused by toilet usage, because ship bathrooms don't have exhaust vents like land bathrooms do. That said, I never had to deal with musty-type smells in my cabin, and hopefully, I'll never have to.

I concur with the people saying "12:00 PM or later flight". I honestly don't have any desire to linger in the local city after debarkation. I'm tired from not sleeping enough on the cruise, I'm out of clean underwear and socks, my clothes are dirty, I'm sunburned, my feet are blistered, and I just want to get home! Then sleep in for 10 hours, unpack, wash my cruise laundry, put the souvenirs in their rightful places, upload my cruise photos to the internet, and get ready for the next workweek. Plus, I always get pretty bad debarkation vertigo, despite never getting seasick; that'll thwart the enjoyment of any post-cruise days in the local city. Most, if not all, cruise lines offer airport transfers. That's what I always did. I got to the airport on time every time. I ended up putzing around the terminal aimlessly for hours, due to how early I got there, but at least the chance of missing my flight home was exactly 0%.

Well, like I said, I'm pro-military and conservative. Even so, I think that respecting an area that provided land to build on is very honorable for a military branch to do. Which includes taking enough care of the surrounding environment to ensure that the nearby human and animal populations aren't affected. But that's just me.

Well, the US military has a p1ss-poor track record of caring for the places it builds its bases on. They pollute and trash those places like the world is ending tomorrow---and I speak as a staunch pro-military conservative. So I'd take their words with a grain of salt. But if you still haven't gotten health problems you wouldn't get in, say, San Francisco or Chicago, then I guess they're telling the truth.

It's no secret that some people are gun-shy about cruising solo. Heck, it took me until age 29 to get over that mental block. And I think I have an explanation: social conditioning (read: peer pressure) during impressionable years. (This is US-centric; EU/UK/Aus/NZ social norms may be different.) After all, the earlier in life something happens to you, the harder it imprints on you. Think about it: from middle school until early 20's, doing anything entertainment-related by yourself (seeing a movie, going to a dance, etc.), or at least being spotted doing so by your peers, carries a social stigma. "Consequences" range from brief on-the-spot laughter, to quizzical looks, to months-long social ostracism. That's about 10 years long, especially considering how impressionable and peer-centric people are at that age. As a result, the social conditioning is so strong, that young people simply don't take such a risk, and instead always bring along a friend or a boyfriend/girlfriend, even for banal tasks like buying a new shirt at a mall. Come to think of it, every solo cruiser I met was at least 30, although non-solo young adults reacted to me cruising solo mostly positively. So... even when the years of silly "coolness theatre" are far behind, the social conditioning remains. Some people can easily cast off the conditioning by a certain age, but not everyone. So for them, even at an older age when nobody gives two _hits who's cruising with their "crew" or partner, and who's cruising solo, the early-life imprinting rears its ugly head: "Don't do it! People will judge you!" So they simply don't cruise solo. Well, that's my theory. What are everyone else's thoughts?