Virgin Voyages Reviews

VirginVoyages is a bit slow and clunky. In trying to make restaurant reservations it’s very spotty. For example, I can make a reservation for myself, however when I try to make it for a larger party it still makes a reservation for one person. No option in the reservation area for a brief note. If you encourage reservations for planning purposes, you need to do much better. It would not except my cabin mates credit card, he would just get to a point and it would just get stuck, and we verified accurate input numerous times. I was able to go into my app and do it for him because we were on the same booking number.

Being in the business field I understand that this is a startup company and they are working out the kinks. The overall experience in the ship was unmatched by any other cruise line. When VirginVoyages works as expected it enhances the experience. I’m giving five stars because I am confident with some bug fixes this application will work great. No other cruise ship that I have been on has had such advancement using technology. Will definitely be booking again and looking forward to the improvements made. 1.7 stars on this application is not a fair rating, everyone has to start someone and I think this is an excellent start.

The bugginess of VirginVoyages wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t an important part of the cruise experience. You know it has issues when they recommend in on board documentation that if you have app problems, you should not reinstall VirginVoyages when using ship’s WiFi due to slow connection speeds (honestly, even the free WiFi was plenty responsive). This is terrible advice since this is the ONLY way to recover from the “connection problem” error, which I absolutely guarantee will happen at least once during your trip (three times for me). Also, expect to force close VirginVoyages frequently. While annoying, this fixed most issues.

When it works, functionality isn’t too bad. It could use some fine-tuning, but otherwise works well. PS: Expect the menus in VirginVoyages to slightly differ from what you get in the restaurants.

This is my 2nd cruise (dec 2021 and sept 22) and it worked better 2 months into them sailing than it did during my current cruise. I even have the premium internet as part of the deep blue rewards and it does not help minimize VirginVoyages crashes. I was not able to book any restaurants despite not having eaten already at the one in question and VirginVoyages kept saying I had a clash when nothing was on my agenda. This is the biggest downside to the cruise and with it relied on so heavily it’s a big pain point. Sailor services is somewhat helpful but to go to them for every issue is cumbersome when an app is the answer for everything (or should be). You used to be able to see menus for the restaurants on VirginVoyages , now that doesn’t show up. Opening/closing/uninstalling does not help at all.

Been having nothing but problems with VirginVoyages with just a week out from sailing.
Multiple problems across all areas of VirginVoyages ; impossible to add another sailor to her reservation- have been on the phone with customer service and reservations but still no help. I will say that the cust service reps have been next to useless and told us things that were not true as we found out when speaking with the IT team when trying to fix the issues. Restaurant reservations mysteriously vanished for 3 people leaving only ONE of us on every reservation and cust service unable to change the reservation BACK because the restaurant is full. Unable to book excursions and have to call Virgin AGAIN to do that. Credit card error messages popping up randomly. A real cluster to use.

Boarded yesterday, would have been nice if VirginVoyages knew I was at the port at my embarkation time and I would need my cabin number. No such luck.
Later that afternoon, on the ship WiFi VirginVoyages had the situational awareness to prompt me to watch the safety video but it could not show the safety video. Oh well.
Trying to check out Razzle Dazzle restaurant on VirginVoyages would crash VirginVoyages . VirginVoyages would prompt me to send a failure report w state information about VirginVoyages to explain to the developer why it crashed so they can fix the bug. Then VirginVoyages is supposed to close so you can start it fresh. Even that didn’t work so it should not be out of alpha testing.
I installed VirginVoyages about a month ago. My wife installed VirginVoyages last week. Friends suggest we delete and reinstall.
Junk

VirginVoyages has definite WOW factor in its design, but unfortunately it lacks in performance. A few particulars that could use help: the ship maps are an important part of your first few days on board and these were difficult to find. I frequently found myself lost navigating VirginVoyages trying to find crucial information. VirginVoyages also appears to hit no less than a thousand APIs upon startup fetching every piece of data in the universe. It’s entirely too slow, especially on intermittent ship wifi, to launch VirginVoyages .

I found the animations, clever commentary, and some functions to be quite nice, but unfortunately it doesn’t make up for a lack of performance.

I leave in 20 days and I can’t get VirginVoyages to stay open so I can upload the things I need on the ship to function. Last cruise it kept kicking me off and locking up. The advice is comical as you have to uninstall to make it work. I’m surprised that a company this large can’t make a reliable and user friendly app.
I hope VirginVoyages doesn’t disappear with all my transactions immediately upon leaving the ship like last time. Come on Richard- higher standards!

I’ve had the virgin app downloaded for about 2 weeks now, up until one of the recent updates logging in has been no issue, app worked fine. But since a recent update I’ve been unable to get past the login screen and keep getting an error display to something to the effect of “failed to process your request, try again later”. How this update got past Apple and Virgins development team is truly shocking. Unfortunately the only way to complete checkin is via VirginVoyages . I had to contact “Sailor Services” to book dining which was supper simple just frustrating that I should’ve been able to do it via VirginVoyages but it won’t let me login. PLEASE FIX THIS

I have restarted and reinstalled both my phone and VirginVoyages and I continue to get the error” uh oh, we hit a snag, your request can’t be processed. Please try again” How many times do I need to try again? How will I register if I it’s not accepting my email and password…

Edited Review
I decided to update my review from 1 star to 4 because VirginVoyages appears to be working perfectly now. I did have to call and email a ton but the issue seems resolved. I was successful w/ check in and making dining & entertainment reservations accordingly.

The cruise is great, but VirginVoyages and their digital systems in general are extremely buggy. I understand that they outsource this tasks, but do they even have a QA team to quality prove these products? My app just hangs for a minute and then says “oops, try again”, and nothing works. I have to reinstall it to make it working for a couple of times and then it gets into this same state. I showed the issue to a crew member onboard, but they couldn’t help with it. Their inroom system is glitchy too - it’s playing the safety video again and again not allowing to enter the normal TV mode. We have to call for a crew member to help (if they can at all). So, in general - everything’s extremely buggy.

We took the cruise out of Spain and Virgin wants you to use VirginVoyages for anything and everything you do. This is a great concept and love everything about it but the problem is that VirginVoyages doesn’t work 90% of the time! VirginVoyages crashes, doesn’t work off ship, it sits and spins trying to load and doesn’t update in a timely manner. Virgin switched our excursions but VirginVoyages never updated so we missed 1 excursion and the other one got moved to a later time and we were early because VirginVoyages never updated. The ship is beautiful, the staff is great, the food is excellent but if you make your guest to be dependent on an app, it better be almost flawless!!!

I traveled for a second time this week with virgin and was in a suite. The staff said there were still bugs and we didn’t have as many this time. Last cruise in May VirginVoyages was unusable. This time is worked much better with the exception of the message portion and ship eats. I’m travelling again in 4 weeks and hope it gets better again. Happy to provide more feedback again. Virgin are great and highly recommended

That’s to be expected since the line hasn’t yet launched. Disappointed that I can’t reserve things on the ship yet despite being in a RockStar Suite and well within my advanced reservation window. I hope they will still honor that part of the deal even if it isn’t the advertised amount of time.

Even still VirginVoyages and the check in experience is still miles above the rest of the industry

I am booked to go on my first Virgin Voyage next month but my experience with VirginVoyages is making me question why I’m doing it. Everything about the cruise experience is managed through VirginVoyages and yet only one of my Shore Things is showing up. Many repeated calls to customer support have not yielded results. I am frustrated beyond belief. This was supposed to be an amazing experience, which I’m paying a lot of money for— and thus far, the experience has been a nightmare. Richard Branson, why haven’t you invested resources in VirginVoyages when it’s completely vital to the cruise experience? Ugh.

I am going on my first cruise with Virgin very soon and as instructed I downloaded VirginVoyages to book restaurants and some activities.
Not only it has been a nightmare to book anything on that App but the customer service is even worse.
I sent an email with no response and I waited on the chat for more than 1 hour only to be told when it was my turn that there are no agents available.
I should have read all the reviews so I would not be surprised by how horrible VirginVoyages is.
I sure hope the cruise will go well but if not, I will definitely not recommend it to anyone.

In their quest to be hip, virgin has neglected usability. VirginVoyages is not at all intuitive. You have to hunt and peck for things that should be on the homepage. There should be a deck plan that is easy to find and easy to navigate. The reservation system should not say Uh Oh every single time you try to make an edit. You should be able to add sailor loot from VirginVoyages , or at least online! Overall VirginVoyages is very glitchy and not user friendly. They’ve had an extra almost 2 years to get this right before they sailed. It really should be much, much better.

We cruised on the Scarlet Lady last week. I like the concept of using VirginVoyages as a form of all communication onboard the ship. No loud speaker announcements all the time. However, VirginVoyages is unstable. I had to close and reload a minimum of 4X day due to bug issues and freezing. Worst day was the embarking at Terminal V when app nor wi-fi worked and we were waiting to get our Covid test results. They kept giving us different passwords and instructions every few minutes while in the terminal. Virgin Voyages is a wonderful cruise line but IT has major issues that need fixed.

VirginVoyages is where you are supposed to order food, book reservations, contact guest services, see the itinerary, etc.

The problem is that I am currently on the Scarlet Lady and VirginVoyages just doesn’t work. All I get is errors or persistent loading messages. The only suggested fix is to delete and install, which I’ve done at least 4 times.

VirginVoyages appears to be designed well and with good intentions for a unique cruise experience, but right now, its best to forget about it after you get onboard the ship.

I almost never rate apps but this was so terrible I had to. Just disembarked the Scarlet Lady today and while I enjoyed the cruise, VirginVoyages was terrible! Why wouldn’t you include a deck plan on VirginVoyages ? I ordered a drink from VirginVoyages and it never came, when I decided to cancel it I was still charged $13. Had to go back and forth with sailor services to have it removed. I had to delete and reinstall it at least once a day because it would just keep spinning. Just…go back to the drawing board on this because this was the worst part of the cruise experience.

This is absolutely the least functional app that I have ever used since smart phones were invented. It is mind boggling that, with all of the money that Virgin has put into Virgin Voyages, they can’t get their app working practically at all. The same problems that plagued VirginVoyages a year ago when I first started using it, still plague VirginVoyages today. I have seen zero improvements over that time despite thousands of people complaining about it, and reporting the same issues. Everything about the cruise relies on VirginVoyages as Virgin wants you to use it for everything you do, so the frustration never ends, not even when you’re on board.
The problems are too numerous to list, but just figure that every single thing that VirginVoyages is supposed to do, it does not do well, or in some cases, at all. Also, it is very difficult and non-intuitive to navigate.
Most of the other reviews list out specific problems and they are all accurate. I believe that if Virgin Voyages cares about staying in business, they need to throw VirginVoyages away and start over from the beginning, because it must be unfixable based on the fact that nothing has improved at all.

I have tried to get my husbands and my account resolved for the past 4 days. First the US number sent me straight to voicemail during business hours. I used the chat, had a case created, and was told by the agent it would be fixed in 48 hours. I called after 48 hours had passed, agent had zero notes added, and had closed my ticket. The agent on the phone created a ticket said it was escalated, it would be completed in the next 2 hours, and I would get an email. I called after 6 hours, this agent was the worse of all 3 experiences. He asked me for the ticket number I said I didn’t have a ticket number. He said yes because we don’t give those out rudely.I said why did you ask me for a ticket number. He said because you said you have a ticket trying to be smart-alecky. He did basic troubleshooting with me for 20 minutes, interrupting me and told me to just show up at the terminal and that we didn’t need VirginVoyages !!! Now all the reviews I’ve read said we need VirginVoyages. I’m so disappointed in VV customer service. I hope this is not a reflection on how the cruise will be. I’m still trying to get this fixed before our sail date…

This vapp is the most un-user friendly & most frustrating thing I have ever encountered. And if that doesn’t make it even worse, it glitches out all the time, logs me out, and I’ve already had to delete VirginVoyages and re-download it more than once. If you go to your itinerary of events, you should be able to add events right there! Lots of lag. The fact that when you go from one page to another to try to book stuff, the way the itinerary is laid out is completely different. It’s not laid out by date, it’s laid out by location. So it’s very unnerving and you have to keep going back-and-forth to make sure that you’re not messing up dates and locations. It needs to be the same!! If you’re in your itinerary, you should be able yo add stuff from there instead of going back and forth. My group of 10 are thoroughly annoyed and fed up.

VirginVoyages had the potential to be great. If it worked, you could manage so many things about your cruise without having to call or talk to someone. However, it’s so buggy, poorly designed and slow. You see the slowly spinning logo more than any useful content. Not sure why it takes time to load a description of a restaurant or venue. When the logo starts spinning fast, then something has really gone wrong. Constantly crashing VirginVoyages and jumping on and off Wi-Fi seems to help sometimes. Random buttons or notifications become unresponsive for no apparent reason.

The date picker for dining times is the strangest UI I’ve ever seen. It’s not clear if it’s supposed to be that way or it’s a mistake no one has fixed for over a year. You basically have to guess how to position the date and time you want because the active selection row covers the text.

There’s little feedback if you don’t make a required selection. Other times you have to tap an option that already appears selected by default to get the functionality to work.

The unfortunate thing is that VirginVoyages is basically required for your cruise and it just adds a layer of stress to your vacation.

The Virgin Voyages app could be the worst app ever. We love sailing on Virgin, but get so very frustrated by VirginVoyages . Constant crashing along with the inability to accomplish even the simplest tasks are the standout reasons for my one star rating. Your sailing add-ons rarely show up and I have been trying for hours to book a shore thing excursion, which means give them money and VirginVoyages simply crashes over and over again. Uninstalling and reinstalling will sometimes let me get further down the transaction, but I have been stymied in my attempts to add shore excursions. How could this continue to be a problem two years down the road. Oh… almost forgot that my attempt to change my email address are still unresolved after a year and dozens of their attempts to rectify the problem. Again, great wonderful fun cruises with a horrible app.

The company would be smart to hire new developers and build a fresh app and system. Then when that finish they should fire the whole staff that made this buggy junk.
Leaving the ship causes VirginVoyages to unauthenticate. Using a VPN causes VirginVoyages to unauthenticate. Reunauthenticating is broken if you use faceID. You will have to reinstall VirginVoyages . Sometimes apple ID login takes you to “board with ship info”. Broken. The menu layout is confusing. You have to click through multiple buttons to book something sometimes. You can’t view all the time slots the restaurants have reservations available. You have to select the time you want then see if it’s available (stupid design). The descriptions are too silly and “lol random” attitude. There is no ship map in VirginVoyages .

VirginVoyages is absolutely horrible in every single way. Doesn’t recognize my email after creating an account, then it continuously crashes when you do get logged in. Wouldn’t let us add a payment method until 2 days before the cruise. We sailed with Carnival about 6 months ago and it was amazing. The Virgin Voyages cruise ship is a great ship and the adult only part is great but it’s not worth the horrible app experience. We couldn’t book any shore excursions or things on the ship until a couple days before the cruise. I don’t understand how a cruise line can have such a horrible app with how much money they make. If they fixed VirginVoyages I would probably make this my number one cruise line.

VirginVoyages is horrible, and I'm assuming it's new-ish and not fully programmed properly as of yet. It wouldn't be a problem except that Virgin Voyages doesn't allow you to do any bookings via their website (as I was advised by a service rep) like Celebrity, which means you are forced to use VirginVoyages. I have had problems booking dinner reservations with friends, and now I have to once again contact customer service online or via phone. They have been mostly unhelpful and slow to respond, even chat is tremendously slow, so that will take a lot of time out of my day to deal with. I can only hope the ship experience will be much better than the technology experience.

Often won't load even with a good connection, loaded pages suddenly disappear while you're scrolling (like looking at events), sometimes it won't let you scroll because it "fights back" and wants to scroll back up.

But worst of all? Connecting to other sailors and not being able to even message them! That should be table stakes! They have a chat with support but not other passengers. It's so technically easy to do that these days that there's just no excuse. There are many many third party platforms Virgin could integrate with to get this functionality but they just...didn't.

Some apps are horrendous… and you delete them. VirginVoyages is horrendous… and critical to your pre-cruise on on-board cruse experience. While the UI is bad, the primary problem is just the quantity of errors. I have been trying to book restaurants for two hours and have never successfully made it to the end. I have literally seen FIVE differently worded error messages because it’s not just one place and one way it errs out.

Like many others, I first wondered if I was the problem. I’ve now moved on to the “given up on VirginVoyages ever working” stage and decided to call them… but I’m posting this review first.

Maybe fire your developers and have ChatGPT write the next version of your app? An artificial intelligence is better than no intelligence at all.

Virgin Voyages' app is a frustrating experience from start to finish. It's astonishingly slow, taking an eternity to load and then crashing 99% of the time. The login process is a nightmare, requiring me to delete and redownload VirginVoyages each time, with no guarantee of success. Even when using the same email, it relentlessly asks for identical personal information repeatedly. What's truly disheartening is that these issues have persisted for years, and it appears Virgin Voyages' product teams have no intention of addressing them. It's high time they consider creating separate apps for different routes to handle their daily user load. VirginVoyages is a voyage into frustration and inefficiency. Since it's too late for me to refund my October trip, I'll definitely NOT consider returning if VirginVoyages situation does not improve, regardless of how wonderful the sailing experience may be. At this point, I would NOT recommend anyone to book Virgin Voyages trips because it only brings you frustration using VirginVoyages . Such a crucial aspect of the voyage is being neglected, leaving passengers with a sour taste in their mouths.

I could forgive VirginVoyages ’s issues if it wasn’t a requisite part of the Virgin Voyages experience. Almost everything must be done through VirginVoyages , with no browser based redundancy. Booking restaurants, events and excursions results in glitches and errors more often than successful bookings. VirginVoyages lacks even a basic ship map to help navigate, so download a PDF before setting sail. There is no information on embarkation/debarkation times or locations and no schedule to show when the ship departs ports of call. There is no way to access account information within VirginVoyages either, and it’s honestly hard to find even on the website. The only place you can find payment history is in e-mail confirmations. I assumed these were teething pains on my first cruise, but the same issues are present now over a year later.

Pre-cruise it was horrible. I couldn’t ever find any information I needed so ended up just googling ifoenthe info and half the time I couldn’t get it from their website. On-board, which is supposed to work ‘differently’ as was explained to me, my request for a couple of room service items never went through to my steward. My room service request features doesn’t work. Half the time I get ‘oops something went wrong, try later.’ It took 4 times to finally book shore excursions. I would book, then get a cancelled notification. Frustrating! For a global company with a trillion dollars you would think their app as well as website would be top of the line high-tech. Terrible!!!

VirginVoyages worked sometimes… we were able to do all our bookings on it but anything else was a pain. Want room service? Just call them. Most of the time it would just show me the menu and not allow me to choose anything. The notifications - I told a crew member we didn’t receive a notification for our reservation (they were kind enough to squeeze us in when someone canceled). I then received 8-15 of the same notification every day for the rest of the cruise. It was very odd. The cruise was an amazing experience and we had a lot of fun. However, an app cannot be made the central hub of the trip if it is not set up to handle everyone on the boat using it at the same time.

VirginVoyages experience is ok. Need to seriously invest in VirginVoyages though. It’s a core part of the guest experience. The layout needs improvement and the responsiveness needs serious help. For example, I can’t see all my upcoming voyages in one place unless I go to switch among the voyages. I can’t see what I’m doing on a given day laid down along what other events are going on in one place. It would be nice to know if there’s a conflict and what the alternatives are. People book dinners etc without knowing the times for sail away parties etc. Love the graphic design and iconography, but the organization and information needs to be much improved.

Blue dot in messenger icon remains even after all new messages are read.

Need to improve your release times to faster than 3 months.

VV wants passengers to go through VirginVoyages , but VirginVoyages is missing several key pieces of functionality. To book shore excursions, passengers receive a confirmatory email that mixes up transactions w the total cruise tab. The name of the excursion does not appear, nor is there a unique confirmation number attached to it. I received two confirmation emails that only address the payment — it is processed quickly — but one of them still does not show up in the agenda/log. This means I paid but have nothing showing up in VirginVoyages . No excuse for steering people to an app that doesn’t work, especially when these activities sell out. You should have some proof of the booking.

Never before have I felt the need to write a review for an app. However, as I sit here waiting for it to reinstall on my phone I feel I have the time. Nothing about VirginVoyages works. When signing into our booking I put my spouse’s date of birth - as she’s the one who booked the trip and the only option on the page had “surname” auto filled. Well, that not only booted her out of her account; it bricked both of our apps. Neither app will open, and the tech support is nonexistent. VV better fix VirginVoyages, and by fix I mean trash it and start over. What a horrible experience. It’s bad enough all around outside this issue that the cruise line expects you to use VirginVoyages for every single thing you do every day, and VirginVoyages is a pile of garbage. But beyond that, it’s so bad with this bricked account issue I will simply never book another trip with VV. That’s all, steer clear if given the choice.

Virgin Voyages is great, but VirginVoyages is embarrassingly bad. If it was optional, it would be fine, but the Virgin app is your key to literally everything on board the ship and prior to departure.

Generally buggy, crashes randomly, will sometimes be completely non functional unless you delete and reinstall. In fact, I am on a Virgin ship as I type this, having had to delete and reinstall VirginVoyages which reminded me to leave this review.

Please - if you are going to make VirginVoyages a requirement in order to see the daily schedule, book events, and generally use the ship - hire some help to get it up and running. It’s a MASSIVE weak point in what has otherwise been a very organized, professional, and impressive experience onboard Virgin Voyages.

I have been on one Virgin cruise already and am gong on another in two weeks. I loved the first cruise enough to book another.

HOWEVER, VirginVoyages and Virgin Voyages insistence that everything must be done through VirginVoyages , is enough to make me question going on another Virgin Cruise. Crashes often, excruciating response times, lack of intuitive design… just a few of too many issues to list. I would be much more forgiving if they offered the option to complete essential tasks in a regular web browser, but they do not. You have to do all of your dining reservations, entertainment reservations, shore excursion reservations, etc. all through VirginVoyages . If an app is this essential to me enjoying the vacation I spent thousands of dollars on they need to get it right. in my opinion, VirginVoyages is a big fail. Not only that, but the support they provide when you have a technical issue is minimal.

I have two suggestions for Virgin Voyages. First provide a way to accomplish the essential reservations for a cruise through a web browser application. Second, redesign this mobile app from scratch.

The good news is that the graphical elements are pretty and intuitive.

But for a brand that prides itself in delightful thoughtfulness it’s very disappointing that the engineers of VirginVoyages put no thought into performance and scalability. VirginVoyages intends to facilitate Virgin cruise passengers to make reservations for spa, restaurants, excursions and deals. There are numerous situations where clicking any button puts VirginVoyages into a spinning hold for it to process whatever you clicked on. Too many frequently used options requires deep scrolling to access. We see error messages booking this and that only to find out later the booking did go thru so what error was that? There are hiccups pretty much every time we try to do anything beyond basic functionalities. I haven’t started my first cruise yet and I’m already aggravated.