08/27/2026
Cruise #38 — My Honest Thoughts
Cruise #38 was onboard Virgin Voyages’ Resilient Lady for my 50th birthday. The last time I sailed this ship was out of San Juan last year, celebrating my parents’ 50th anniversary.
A lot has changed with Virgin Voyages since then, and unfortunately, I don’t think many of those changes have been for the benefit of passengers.
This was my first Virgin sailing since they introduced their tiered fare system and stopped including gratuities in the advertised fare. Virgin has continued to tell us First Mates that the onboard experience itself hasn’t changed, but after this cruise, I don’t think that’s completely accurate.
Since starting my travel business three years ago, I have worked onboard every single cruise I’ve taken. This was supposed to be different. For my 50th birthday, I wanted to actually disconnect.
My business partner Danette covered for me, and for the first time, I truly did not work while onboard.
At least not in the traditional sense.
The travel-agent stress was still very much there, and a big part of that came from Virgin’s new fare tiers.
If you’re traveling with 12 people or fewer, you probably won’t notice many of these issues. Once your group gets larger than that, things become much more complicated.
Different fare tiers now determine when guests can make dinner reservations. We had several cabins added closer to sailing under different fares, which meant everyone had different reservation windows.
Trying to coordinate dinner before the cruise took some magic.
Then I spent a good portion of embarkation day working with Sailor Services and dining reservations trying to get everything lined up for our group, especially our reservation for the paid dinner show Another Rose.
One of Virgin’s biggest strengths is also what makes groups difficult: virtually all of the specialty restaurants are included in your cruise fare.
That’s fantastic for passengers, but there simply isn’t a lot of capacity for large groups.
Virgin guarantees groups one dinner together at Razzle Dazzle. Beyond that, you’re basically trying to piece reservations together each night.
As the travel agent for my own birthday cruise, I tried to set expectations several times before we sailed. I told everyone that dinner would probably be the hardest part of traveling with a group this large and that there would be nights when we simply couldn’t all sit together.
On our first night, my parents volunteered to eat separately from the rest of us.
Not exactly how I wanted to start my 50th birthday cruise, but thankfully my parents can make friends with just about anyone, and before long they were talking to everyone around them.
For the most part, our dinners worked out about as well as I could have hoped, but it required a lot of conversations with the dining team throughout the cruise.
Then, on our final night, we finally managed to get everyone around one table.
It took some effort. It was definitely a tight fit.
But we made it work.
I don’t think I realized until that final dinner how important it was to me personally that we all got to sit together at least once before the cruise ended.
From a First Mate perspective, I think Virgin still has a long way to go when it comes to handling groups. Norwegian, for example, remains one of the best cruise lines I’ve worked with when it comes to group logistics.
Now, outside of those stresses…this cruise was absolutely magical for me.
This was my 9th Virgin Voyages sailing, and I’ve always believed that every cruise line has something it does particularly well.
If you’re celebrating a milestone with a group of young-at-heart adults, I honestly don’t think there’s another mainstream cruise line that comes close to Virgin.
The food remains some of the best included food you’ll find on a mainstream cruise line.
I also still love that you aren’t constantly being bombarded with sales pitches, art auctions, shopping announcements and upsell opportunities over the intercom.
This was a sold-out sailing, and dinner service struggled somewhat every night. I’ve sailed Virgin enough times to know that this isn’t normally my experience, so I’m willing to chalk some of that up to how full the ship was.
I also booked our entire group for Another Rose, Virgin’s $50 dinner show.
This might be an unpopular opinion…
I didn’t really like it.
Maybe part of the experience works better if you’re drinking since alcohol plays a pretty big role in the show, and I don’t drink. But even taking that into consideration, it just didn’t connect with me.
I enjoyed the paid dinner show on Brilliant Lady much more, even without drinking.
But overall?
My entire group had an amazing time, and so did I.
Cruising is one of the few opportunities we still have in today’s incredibly busy world to slow everything down and spend several uninterrupted days with people we care about.
And that’s ultimately what this cruise was about for me.
Virgin Voyages isn’t for everyone, and it was never intended to be.
I constantly hear people onboard saying, “Well, on Royal they do this…” or “Norwegian does it this way…”
Exactly.
That’s the point.
Virgin was created to be different.
Luckily, I love variety.
My next cruise will be with my family onboard Norwegian Luna in October, which will be an entirely different experience.
And after this birthday cruise, I’m perfectly happy with that.
Hopefully on that one, I’ll be doing a whole lot of absolutely nothing.
