Virgin Voyage Overview

The speaker is providing tips and tricks for travelers going on a Greek Island Glow cruise. They emphasize the importance of being on time for embarkation, adjusting to ship time, and exploring the ship early. They recommend taking physical copies of travel documents and being prepared for limited internet access. The speaker highlights the use of the cruise app for scheduling activities and making restaurant reservations. They advise setting alarms for the date when dining and show reservations become available. The speaker suggests prioritizing group dining reservations and warns that spots fill up quickly. They mention the availability of breakfast and brunch options and highlight the galley as a food court with made-to-order options. The speaker also mentions Scarlet Night, an event where passengers dress in red. They note the presence of live music and encourage passengers to explore different areas of the ship. Hey, Greek Island Glow travelers, I hope you guys are super excited. You're about 51 days away from your voyage. I just wanted to send you a little document slash presentation to assist and give you a couple tips and tricks before you guys get on board. So hopefully you guys can watch or listen to this or kind of click through it and review on your own to get some things. I just wanted to be sure I gave you from my own voyage on top of some things that I provide to all my clients. So remember tips are really just made to make your trip go a little smoother. Things can always happen. Little hiccups do occur. There are some things that are out of people's control. Just try to get over it quickly. Be flexible so ultimately you end up enjoying yourself. The biggest tip I have is that recognize that the ship will leave you. Please be sure to be on time for your assigned embarkation time slot, that is in Athens, Greece or in Piraeus. Know whatever time it is there is the official time as far as local time. But once you do get on the ship, you are on the ship's time. This is actually how people get left in port coming back. So it's not that people don't realize what time it is. They end up having the wrong time on their watch or their iPhone and it may not be the ship's time. It's probably the local time when they get off at port. Make sure you adjust so your advice, my advice sorry, is that you explore the ship right after you get on and after you do the mustard drill in your cabin and you mark it on the app. It's when the ship is really empty and you can kind of get acclimated and get some great pics of all the spaces before people get up and get all in them. Take screenshots of the important things that you need to remember. You need to have physical copies of all of your travel documents, your airline boarding tickets, etc. All of those in your carry-on bag or whatever purse you have. Remember that you're traveling and every place does not have the level of Internet accessibility and Wi-Fi that we have here in the U.S. So you may want to have, if you may want, if you have a connecting flight somewhere and you can't pull up your document because you have it on your phone, again you want to make sure you have those confirmation numbers maybe taken as a screenshot or something so you can access it. I usually do that for my hotels just so I don't have to scramble when it's time to check in. If you have any excursions booked through a link that I shared with you, I will actually be sending you our copies in the mail before your departure. But also make sure that you have that information because ultimately it's your responsibility to either be there to contact them 24 hours before, whatever the sign print says, or to cancel. And that is part, you know, of what you have to do. But having those papers makes it really easier to check in. I know you guys are a group, but be very flexible and have fun on this ship. There is no key card. The band or the bracelet is what they'll give you, and it'll be your all-access device. The other thing is that there are no announcements. So that's something that seems to be a bother for some other cruisers. And I think it was a good job in removing those, but you still do need to really pay attention if you're used to somebody coming over the announcements and saying, hey, we'll be in port or, hey, this is occurring on the ship. So they're not going to do that. So you really need to know what you have scheduled and what you need to do. And this is also for when it's time to get off the ship. No one's going to announce, you know, that they're having bingo today. So all of those things you really need to keep up in the eye of yourself. These are the cabin assignments in your group with your reservation and your stateroom numbers. The first number of the room represents the ship level or the floor of the ship that your room is on. And you're able to go to your cabin as soon as you board, which is super convenient. So while you're in there and you complete your muster drill on the television, it should recognize you as soon as you walk in the room. Just take a moment to familiarize yourself with the room and the remote and the tablet that's in there that controls all the room settings. And you'll see that there's still or sparkling water that will be placed in the room daily and refreshed daily. You can most definitely fill your personal water bottles with this to start your day. And don't forget to pack metal straws as the ship is super plastic friendly. And the little cleaner tools that you clean your straws out with, because you don't want to keep using that straw if it's not clean. So on flat four, these are some of the main tips and facts that I gather while on board. And again, some of these things are just things that I share with my clients on a regular basis. So the app, the app, the app. Straight up, the app is the most important thing that you will have on this cruise. The Wi-Fi was pretty reliable, but I personally had issues with my app not functioning, because I did not follow the step-by-step instructions from the beginning. They're going to give you a little card, like a little, almost like a business card, that has those instructions on them. Be sure to use that to set up your phone correctly the first time. Because I found myself at Sailor Services, and then they fixed it, and literally all I needed to do was to have read the directions and follow them the first time. You really do use the app daily, so load it with activities so you don't miss everything. One of the things I did on day one was to look over the schedule and say, Hey, what's happening, and let me kind of preload the app with those things. Even though I did overload it, I still didn't want to have a time when I was just like, Hey, what's going on, or what was I missing? So I really did use the app to refer to constantly all day, even to see what time I had to go to dinner or to recognize what time I needed to go back to the room to get ready for dinner. Even though dinner's not super official or fancy, unless you want to be. So you definitely don't have to do a big preparation. Again, the app is very useful. That's almost like a downtime thing that I did if we were just kind of chilling, or when I did go back to the room at night, I made sure that I was putting the other things in for the app the next day. One of the things I don't want you to do is to get off the boat and say, Oh, I feel like I missed out on a lot of things. Your dining and your shift things, or your show reservations, will be available on the app on May 16th. Prioritize this date. Set an alarm, wake up at 8 a.m., because this is a heavy, sought-out date. Go ahead and put the restaurant reservations you prefer in your schedule. You guys are all linked together as a group, so what you will be able to do is see what everybody else put in their app or scheduled. I'm still going to reach out to Isha to see which restaurant she decides to do as the group for a group dinner, but I will tell you that I personally would not suggest that you guys do more than one group dinner to max. As a group, really the service is going to be slowed down, and with a group of 14, I know that some restaurants don't permit more than 10. But again, I think that they'll help you figure some things out, but I'm sure whatever one you choose, you'll be able to get that group dining slot. But for personal dining for more than 10, you know, if you pick the group dining at the agave, at the pink agave, Diné would not be able to pick pink agave another time that week. So the app says, hey, you already selected this restaurant, and we want to give all our sailors an opportunity to experience everything. So one of the things that you will see that happens on the app is that spots will fill up quick, but if you don't get a specific reservation on regular days, you can try again when you're on board, but do that as soon as you get on board and once you're able to, because if you wait until the day of a show or a couple of days before dinner, you're not likely to get that spot. Keep in mind there are also breakfast and brunch times in a couple of the restaurants, and dates at the wake and razzle-dazzle. So I had a bottomless brunch, I believe, and it wasn't even really early in the morning. It says about 9.30 or 10, so those were still open for breakfast, which is not typical on cruises. But again, schedule it so you get to taste everything and do everything. The ship does still have what's called a galley, which is what they call it in the Navy, and it's really like a food court, but it serves everything made to order. There's great options up there. There's also, of course, like bento boxes and salads, but you can get burgers made to order. The boat does, of course, have a pizza place. They have, you know, street tacos and ramen, and they have so many options up in the galley, but be careful to pay attention to what their hours are so that you don't miss a time that they're closed and then you don't have a reservation until later. So Scarlet Night is also pictured on this screen. That's where you guys get to wear your best red. The ship is kind of dope. It's red lighting, and they have all kind of decor up, and people really get into it. I was only twinsies with one other person who also must love Torrid, but it was okay because there were so many people dressed in red. It was really a fun night. Unfortunately, our ship, it was really windy on the ocean, so they had to be taken inside into the red room, which was kind of tight. So we just stopped in just to experience it, and we dipped out and just went to chill in some other spaces. There are really nice spaces and caveats all over the boat. Please make sure you kind of don't get stuck in one or two. Lots of live music as well.