Hey Owlets,
If you read my original Virgin Voyages review from my time on board Scarlet Lady then you’re probably shocked to see that I’ve been back on board a Virgin Voyages ship since. If I’m honest I wasn’t expecting it either, but when Virgin Voyages invited me for a whirlwind 12 hours on board their new ship, Valiant Lady, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. I’m a firm believer in people (and cruise lines) learning from mistakes so I was keen to see if Virgin Voyages had listened to the criticisms they received from Scarlet Lady’s maiden season and used this to improve their second ship. I’m going to be referencing my Scarlet Lady review a lot in this article as I look to see if things have improved, so I suggest you read that before moving onto my Valiant Lady review.
Before we get into it there are a few things to note. Number one, we experienced issues with boarding AGAIN. This was down to an issue with the PR company, not Virgin Voyages themselves, but it meant that we missed most of the entertainment as the cruise line are very app-focused which didn’t work for us as we didn’t have a booking number. This means that I’m sadly not able to update you on the issues we had with the shows on board Scarlet Lady, but we did still experience entertainment around the ship so I’ll touch on that. Of course this also means that I can’t walk you through the app’s functionality (sorry!).
Secondly, I wanted to point out that Valiant Lady is the same class ship as Scarlet Lady and Virgin Voyages had already ordered Valiant Lady’s construction before Scarlet Lady’s maiden voyage. This means that for the most part the ship is identical (or at least very similar) to Scarlet Lady, and they weren’t able to make changes to some common criticisms like the tiny pool. Having said that, they’ve listened to feedback and implemented changes wherever possible so I’ll touch on that in my review.
Finally, they had a VIP guest on board and because of this they’d taken the decision to close all of the suites, so I’m unable to provide an update on the issues I had with Scarlet Lady’s suites.
After all of those caveats, lets (finally) jump into the review.