Valiant Lady is the second cruise ship to have been built for Virgin Voyages and, like the first, made her inaugural sailings out of the city of Portsmouth, England. While we cruised on Valiant’s sister ship, Scarlet Lady, back in 2021 – and you can read about that experience here: Scarlet Lady UK Weekender Cruise – that hadn’t been the maiden cruise for the vessel, but for Valiant Lady the timing was better, and, of course, the location was perfect as we can see Portsmouth cruise port from the front gate of our house.
This is the first part of a short series of travelogues aboard Valiant Lady on her so-called Mermaiden Cruise that would see us depart Portsmouth on a Friday, arrive in Zeebrugge, Belgium on the Saturday, stay overnight, then cruise back on the Sunday for arrival back in England on the Monday morning. Not a stunning itinerary, but for cruises this short you don’t get a lot of options, and unlike longer cruises where the destination is the thing, for a cruise with Virgin Voyages it becomes far more about the shipboard experience.
Cruising And COVID
We live in The Time Of Coronavirus as I write this, and when we cruised with Valiant Lady, so let’s start with what we needed to do in order to get aboard this cruise ship and sail as safely as possible. While the UK’s government was firmly pretending that the pandemic was over (because getting money from sick people into party donors’ hands is far more important than having poor people live) the cruise lines were still operating from a base position of “Dead people can’t spend money on cruising” and were insisting on some precautions. As with the year before’s cruise on Scarlet Lady, all passengers and crew needed to be fully vaccinated. Slightly differently from the year before was the pre-boarding testing procedure, however. On Scarlet this had been done near the port on the day of departure and, for too many people, had proven to be a long-winded, queue-inducing, moan-producing process that Virgin were keen to avoid. Certifiable, at-home testing kits, sent out and taken up to 3 days before boarding was the solution this time around, and while the initial information, email delays, and postal worries about kits arriving in time could have been handled better there’s no doubting that this worked well as a system. That day-of-the-cruise stress of not knowing if you’d pass a test and had wasted your journey to the port was a thing of the past.
Virgin Voyages VIP Treatment
We’d been seriously impressed with our Seriously Suite grade of Rock Star cabin when we’d boarded Scarlet Lady in 2021, and booked not just the same type of room this time around, but also the same room itself. My wife has issues with directions so this made sense, a bit. Being a Rock Star means you get some perks for that extra cash you’re splashing, and that started right at the cruise port terminal we’d walked down the road to. A doorway marked “VIPs and Rock Stars” allowed us to bypass the queue in a nearby tented area, walk straight into the port, straight up to a desk, get everything checked in a couple of minutes, get our bands, get walked across to the security screening area, and through that onto the shuttle bus that left within another couple of minutes for the short transit to the ship. From arrival at the port to stepping on Valiant Lady was just over ten minutes and most of that was the shuttle bus wait and drive.
We’d expected to just head to our room to drop off our carry-on luggage, but were instead directed to the Manor venue where glasses of champagne were being handed out and, after a short delay, we were introduced to our Rock Star Agent to make sure everything was working on the app (more on that later) and if we needed any help. We only needed to book a show for the final night of the cruise – something that wasn’t appearing on the app for some reason – and this was quickly sorted for us. Then it was off to the room.
Our Seriously Suite cabin on Valiant Lady was identical to that on her sister ship. We knew that the more basic cabins had been upgraded with some warmer accents following feedback of the rooms being too spartan, but you couldn’t accuse the suites of being the same and there was no need to change what was already fabulous. If you’d like to see more of the room in video form then hit the Scarlet travelogues for that, but a quick note about the ever-so-minor differences: the alcohol in the included mini-bar lacked gin (we know that many people enquired about that) but also included some wines and beers, so that was good; a better vinyl effort this time around with some Sex Pistols instead of bloody Drake and Santana, but they had maiden voyage teething issues and it turned out that everyone with a turntable got the same album; the black soap was no more in the bathroom; there were no sex toys in the cupboard.
As this was the Mermaiden cruise we also received some Virgin cups. I don’t know how much use we’ll get out of them, but a freebie is a freebie.
We unpacked while watching the safety drill video in the room. It’s better than attending in person but it would be nice to have an “Actually, I’ve cruised before so can we have the 2-minute refresher, highlight video option, please?” option as it got a bit tedious.
“Where shall we go first?” asked my wife. “Do you want to wander around and take some photos?”
I didn’t, for a number of reasons. The ship was clearly not going to be vastly different in appearance, to start with, and we’d boarded early, which meant there were hours of people still boarding to contend with. People with wheeled luggage and phones taking selfies every three steps didn’t feel like the ideal backdrop against which to wander around with a camera and a wife who would clearly only be barely tolerating the boredom. I gazed into her eyes and read her innermost thoughts. She wants a drink, I thought.
“It’s nice and clear, so let’s do what we did last time and head to Richard’s Rooftop.”
This was the area at the front, on the top of the ship, that in a warmer climate would be a great place to chill out and relax, reserved only for the Rock Stars. For these Portsmouth-departing cruises, more a gimmick, but one we were still entitled to check out. A change to Scarlet Lady was that our cruise bracelets opened the gate to this area instead of a card. Made more sense. We headed in and treated ourselves to a drink from the limited selection they had available.
Although we’d watched the safety video in our room there was still a second part to the muster process that required brief attendance at our muster station – for us that would be the Manor – in order to make sure we could see how to put a life jacket on. But we still had time ahead of that point so we followed up our Rooftop visit with a trip to the Dock so that at least one Fig Sour could be purchased. It was our favourite drink on Scarlet Lady, and it didn’t disappoint on Valiant Lady either.
On our way to the muster station we spotted one difference between this ship and her sister: the Instagram-friendly spot between the Social Club and the Roundabout was more vibrant, replacing the non-swinging swings with mirrors and a sea-based mural. We would discover that the artwork on the ship was pretty much the only difference between Scarlet and Valiant, and that Valiant was overall more colourful and warm.
Valiant Lady Departing Portsmouth
We met up with some friends for a bit of a chat but headed back to our room ahead of Valiant Lady departing Portsmouth on her Mermaiden cruise. Our room on the port side of the ship gave us the best views of Portsmouth as we left but we’d not taken into account that this cruise was taking place five months earlier in the year than the last time we’d sailed out of our home city. The anticipated views of the dockyard and naval and historical ships wasn’t possible because it was already dark, but what we did get to see this time around was the Spinnaker Tower all lit up, and since it was a Virgin Voyages cruise ship leaving, we got treated to the iconic structure illuminated in red for the occasion. Sailing past The Hard and the Round Tower was great as we could hear chants of “Play up Pompey!” echoing across the still, quiet water of the Solent.
Once Valiant Lady was away from the city, the Spinnaker Tower reverted to the yellow and blue colour scheme it had been lit up in to show support for the people of Ukraine in the truly barbaric war launched by Russia.
Razzle Dazzle
You probably know by now that Virgin does dining a little differently too, using more specialised restaurants rather than a generalised main dining room that you might find on other lines. What this means for Virgin is that they can perfect a limited menu and present the illusion of a far more varied offering, and that likely works for shorter cruises but I do wonder how longer sailings or repeat cruisers might feel about it. For us it meant we’d have a chance to swap out one of the restaurants we’d been to on Scarlet – The Test Kitchen, given that its set menu was identical – with one we hadn’t – Razzle Dazzle – while keeping the two venues we’d liked enough to try again for subsequent nights.
We had a mixed experience at Razzle Dazzle. My food was generally fine because I’ve got a wider tolerance for certain foodstuffs, but for my wife there was the underlying issue that the way that many places try to make vegetables taste nice is to mix them up with things that cause pain. Enough. With. The. Fucking. Chili. People. Not everybody wants their lips to swell up or to sweat from their eyes or – and this is really crucial – the just plain, godawful taste of chili peppers. They’re not nice. It’s not big to say you’ve eaten something that was both revolting and made your tongue sting. What the hell is wrong with just making a vegetarian dish with nice flavours?
One of the ways that my wife tried to reduce how much painful crap she was going to be served was by taking advantage of the Secret Menu. Should I even be telling you about the Secret Menu? I’m going to because I know how many people visit this site and therefore am pretty sure it will mostly remain secret. The Secret Menu gives you access to a specially-prepared steak option. Let’s say that it was a better option for my wife, but that we wouldn’t rush to recommend it. It wasn’t bad, but if you like steak then there are far better steaks to be had on cruise ships. To be fair, you can’t expect the best steak in the world from a primarily vegetarian restaurant. I went for a plant-based burger, which was decent enough. We did enjoy the cocktails a lot.
Valiant Lady Red Room Dance Party
After dinner we caught up with some friends for some late-night drinking, listening to music, drinking, chatting, laughing, and drinking. This mostly took place in the Draught Haus (or Beer Haus, or Brew Haus, because we frequently forgot its name) which allowed the music being performed in the Roundabout Atrium to filter up without drowning out conversation.
Our conversation mostly revolved around how much trouble everyone was having with the app. Everyone but me, that is. Nobody else could log in while mine was behaving perfectly fine. This issue with the app would not escape me completely, and an awful lot of people on Valiant Lady experienced problems with it that would not be resolved until well into the following day, but there will be more on that in the next episode of this cruise travelogue series. Suffice to say, it’s all very well being a technology-first company in a bid to cut down on paper waste, but you’ve got to have backup plans in place for failures to get information to people, and it simply seemed like Virgin weren’t prepared for this at all.
Late in the evening, two of the people we were with – Paul and Carole – mentioned that there was a dance party taking place in the Red Room. This was a location we’d not visited (other than to take a photo) when we’d cruised with Virgin before, but in which we’d be able to see a show later in the cruise, so I was interested in tagging along with them to see what this was like. We left my wife with the other couple we’d been spending the evening with – Sandra and Chris – and went to see what a Virgin Voyages dance party looked like.
It’s a good thing I took some video because I don’t think a description alone would have done the occasion justice. Inflatable whales, talking animated cats, California Valley Girl monologues, moving stage, wild choreography to graphics about consumerism; if your dance party bingo card had all of those things on it then you may have been in line to win a prize. It’s probably easier to watch some video clips than try to imagine the scene.
“What was that all about?”
Shrug.
“It was good, though, wasn’t it!?”
“Yeah. I think it was.”
And that’s a decent enough summing-up conversation about cruising with Virgin Voyages as you’re likely to get.
We had some more drinks back at the Draught Haus before calling it a night. In the next post in this Valiant Lady cruise travelogue series I’ll cover our day in Belgium and the excursion we took in Bruges that turned out to be very different to what we were expecting and incredibly entertaining. So very Virgin.