Tried The "Cruise Ship For Millennials"... Is Going On A Cruise Worth It In 2022? Shelby Ch

Cruising has long been a style of vacation popular with families and older folks. So when I saw the new Virgin Voyages cruise line, I was curious. There's no water slides, no ice rinks, no formal dinners, and most importantly, no kids. So this cruise has a totally different vibe from other cruise lines. It made me think, okay, is this a cruise line for a new generation? And will cruising ever catch on for millennials? And looking at their Instagram, you can tell they're catering to a younger crowd. It's probably the first time I've looked at a cruise and thought it really actually looked appealing to me. And I knew I just had to check it out and see what it was like. So I booked a five-night cruise and off I was to Miami. I had never been on a cruise before and it occurred to me while boarding that the demographic was not exactly what was portrayed on Instagram. And I know I'm going to get questions about this. You do have to get a negative COVID test before you get on and they do provide this to you. However, I thought it was interesting you don't have to get it at any of the ports. And I went on this cruise in December, so things might be different now. But yeah, potentially somebody could get it at a port and spread it around the ship. So the main things I was interested in was the food, amenities, design slash aesthetic, demographic of travelers, and the ports. But first let's talk money. I got a balcony room for $13.50 per person and this includes all food, which I feel like is a pretty good price for basically a four-star hotel on the water and drinks are not included. So here's how the cost compares to other cruise lines. This is all for a five-night balcony room. As you can see Virgin Voyages is the most expensive, actually quite a bit more expensive than all the other cruise lines. So that is good to note. Also good to know you can get an inside room for about $900 or you can lock it in at this $640 rate. Of course, having a balcony is nice, but it's quite a bit cheaper if you go without that. So let's start with taking a look at the ship itself. This ship is definitely smaller than some of those massive Royal Caribbean ships, but you know, bigger is not always better. It definitely was still big enough that there was more than enough things to do and explore. But this side-by-side of a Royal Caribbean ship, you can really see the difference. The ship has two pools and four hot tubs and the area at them reminds me of like a Vegas style hotel. It's very cool. The design definitely feels trendy and fun. It doesn't feel outdated at all obviously because the ship is like brand new. I really like the day beds. People have complained about the size of the pools, but honestly when you're on the ship they feel pretty big. So on occasion they have DJs out here playing or live music and then the four hot tubs sprinkled throughout. Two of them have really nice views of the ocean and I found that they weren't always super busy. Sometimes we got the hot tub to ourselves. The design of the ship really does feel modern and it reminds me of anything that the Virgin brand would do. It's cool. It's fun. There's a walkway at the top that you can run or walk on and it's also down to earth. It's nice, but it doesn't feel like you need to be dressed up everywhere you go. This is the one area I've heard people don't like on the ship. This design, everyone I've heard, they just think it looks a little bit quote-unquote chuggy. I thought that was funny. Lots of cool tile. They got interior designers that like knew what they were doing. The restaurants feel like trendy restaurants in any big city. The pool area feels like a luxury hotel pool or kind of like a Vegas style pool. There's mood lighting throughout. Even the elevator had really cool mood lighting. Certain parts of the ship felt more yacht-like than cruise ship and I feel like that's what they were going for. Just all around it feels like a more modern take. It makes the style of other cruise ships look pretty outdated and so in terms of ship design, I would give them five out of five. Now let's take a look inside the room. So remember I did pay a little bit more for the balcony room and I would say it's well worth it. I think you pay like three or four hundred dollars more but you just get an amazing view to wake up to and eat your room service on. So here's a look at the room. The bed actually can be turned into a couch which a lot of people don't love. At no point did we actually turn it into a couch. So it being a ship, it's of course not going to be a huge room but it's definitely enough space for two people. The bed was really comfortable and what I liked about this room is it's really high-tech. You can control everything in the room with the iPad and you can get unlimited room service because it's all-inclusive. On here though, you can request fresh towels, cabin cleans, laundry pickups. You can open and close the blinds, adjust the lighting color and brightness. Overall, it's a very high-tech room. You can even turn it on those different settings. So like there's zen mode or photoshoot mode. So hangover, let's play hangover and see what happens. Okay, so they shut the blinds and they just make it dark. That's pretty funny. How about photoshoot? It just opens. Okay, cool. There's also a bunch of movies and tv shows you can watch. The style again is really modern and fun. Of course, it reminded me a lot of a virgin hotel or just really any cool boutique hotel in a major city. It actually kind of reminded me of Citizen M hotels if you guys know those hotels. The bathroom in the room is small but it being a cruise ship, I was expecting that although I know other ships sometimes have bigger bathrooms. It is modern though like you have a rainfall shower, you have a good amount of counter space, some pretty nice products that you can use. Obviously, a bigger bathroom would be nice but I think this is kind of standard among a lot of cruise ships. Also something cool on the balcony, you have a hammock and it's actually really comfortable. I actually loved drinking coffee out here in the morning. There is a ton of stuff you can do on this ship. They've got workout classes, dodgeball, a comedy show, another kind of acrobatic live show, karaoke, a casino, arcade, a nightclub, cooking classes and bar curls around the ship. So much stuff. I did not even scratch the surface of it. I thought that the karaoke rooms were cool and they also had a more public karaoke at times too. I heard that you could shake your phone in the app and they will bring you champagne anywhere on the ship. So I had to try this out and the app is kind of glitchy. That's one of the main complaints I think of this cruise. So it's $100 for them to bring this bottle of champagne to you. It's probably a $25 bottle of champagne at the store. So like $50 on this ship. But it's a fun thing to do if you do want to spend the money. Although I will say there are bars everywhere so you could easily get out of the hot tub and go get some too. And something this ship does differently is there's no formal dining space. So I guess a lot of cruise ships there will be like a formal dinner. But here there's just the 20 plus restaurants that you can go to at any time and get what you want. And talking with some of the other cruisers, they really didn't like this. They missed the formal dinner. But personally I didn't care. I liked the restaurants. They were good. So the first port we stopped at was Costa Maya which is kind of near Cancun. The Costa Maya port felt a lot more just like generic cruise ship port. It felt like a little older. Still a nice pool you can go swimming in. However, it just felt like an American version of Mexico. It's basically like a mall with touristy stuff, a pool and a bar. But there is a lot of stuff nearby that you can do that's I think a lot more fun. There are things you can do at that Costa Maya port that allow you to explore the island more. But you do have to pay for that. So if you're gonna get off at the port and just stay at that main area, you're not really gonna see the actual country. You're just gonna see like the cruise ship version of it, you know. And we did end up doing one in the morning. It was only a couple hours long but it was pretty fun and kind of random. It was a salsa dancing and cooking class. So we learned how to make two different salsas and guacamole. And honestly, I love a good cooking class where you learn something. And then after they took us to this beach area, we were only allowed to stay here for 30 minutes though. So it's kind of a tease which is why we ended up taking a taxi to the beach. But it was pretty fun. I would recommend an excursion here. They make it really easy to book this stuff in the app. But they do sell out pretty quick and they probably market up a good amount as well. But they've got some really cool excursions. Like you can go explore ancient Mayan ruins. You can go scuba diving. So in Costa Maya, I would definitely recommend going and doing an excursion or going to the beach because the port here is just, it's just not that cool. In the afternoon, we just did our own thing and got a taxi to take us to the beach. So this is where we ended up. People at the port recommended it to us. It was $30 per person for the taxi ride, a welcome drink and a paddleboard rental for a couple hours. We paid a little bit to go to an actual beach. I would say worth it. I think this was way more fun than staying at the port because we actually got to go swim in the water. And the beach here is so warm. It was just, it was so nice. The beach club at Bimini, however you say it, was kind of the standout. It's a brand new beach club that Virgin owns. It's right on the water. Go in the water. We rented jet skis, which was cool. The beach club at Bimini really feels like a luxury hotel pool. So this place is so nice. You really don't need to book an excursion here. I'd say just enjoy the beach and the pool. It really feels like a nice hotel pool and beach. After being on the ship, it is nice to actually, you know, be at a sandy beach. So they've got these awesome day beds, plenty of loungers, umbrellas. The food is included over here, which is nice. And there's a gigantic pool. It's nice. I would definitely, I would hang out here all day and have a good time. Here's the food at this port. They didn't have a menu, but there were multiple options for each course. The food there is all inclusive. So you can get whatever you want. And it was pretty good. It wasn't as good as I would say the restaurants on the ship, but it was still, you know, I liked it. And then there are, you know, swim up bars, whatever. If you want to get a drink, you can do that, but you do have to pay for it. So I like the beach club at Bimini. It was nice for just having a beach day. And something I'll say is we actually had a lot of time at each port. I want to say it was like 9am to 7pm. So you can go off and explore and do your own thing if you want. I don't think cruises are necessarily for exploring a country. It really is more like just relaxing and going to the beach. So not every trip needs to be this big cultural experience. And I would say with a cruise, like probably don't expect that it will be. And that's fine. It is what it is. And it's still a good time. I also think there's something to be said for the convenience of going on a cruise. You can visit two different countries all without having to unpack, get Ubers to another hotel, get on a flight. None of that. It makes it a very stress-free and relaxing vacation. So all in all, I like the idea of stopping at ports. It's convenient. All right, let's talk about the food. Of course, this is really important because if you're stuck on a ship and these are your only options, you know, you want them to be good. And in short, the food is great. I stayed at all-inclusive resorts where the food was not really that good. So I was a little bit nervous going into this, but that's not the case here. The food quality is really good. I don't know how it compares to other cruise ships. But I mean, I did not feel like I was at some all-inclusive place where they sometimes skimp on the quality. You know, everything was still quite good. The only thing I guess the room service food wasn't really as good as the restaurants. Here's what I ordered today. It's an egg white frittata with mushrooms and tomatoes. Okay, this frittata is the first food thing that's been a little bit of a miss for me. The room service is pretty good. I think the food everywhere else is a little bit better. But it's cool that you can order your breakfast the night before to get there when you wake up. I actually loved that feature. Like it just feels very like spongy. I don't know. The poke bowls were also really good. I would recommend these. So far, all the food has been really good. So my expectations. This is actually a vegan pizza. I've never tried a vegan pizza. So we'll see how it is. So I would go to the restaurants for breakfast and everything. But this is just a look at everything. They've got a steakhouse. They've got a Mexican restaurant that's really, you know, upscale. And then they have this area called the galley. Where normally a cruise ship would have a buffet. But there's no buffets here. They make the food fresh for you. Except the sushi was a bento box. But it still tasted really fresh. You can get a burger, ramen. They really have all kinds of different restaurants. And just across the board, the quality is really great. My footage of the food wasn't that great. But there is a channel called Visit With Us that did an extensive dining guide. I'm going to link that below. This is their footage. And they basically recorded all the food. As you can see, it's so good. So watch their video if you really want to see what all the food was like. All in all though, I thought it was super good. They even have this like fine dining experience at the test kitchen. Where they have sort of experimental food flavors. It's really cool because it just feels very fancy. And it's all inclusive. Like it's included. So you might as well try it. This wasn't my favorite restaurant in terms of the food. But it was a really cool experience. So I'd recommend checking it out. There are so many different restaurants. I didn't even get to try them all out. But Pink Agave was one of my favorites. So check that one out. All right. So unbeknownst to me, cruise ships are sometimes known as floating retirement homes. Yeah, I did not know that because I had never been on a cruise before. And also Virgin's advertising made it look a lot younger. If you go on the Instagram, it really looks like everyone is a millennial on this cruise. And that was just not the case on this cruise that I went on. This was one of the first times that they sailed though. So it could be that there were a lot of veteran cruisers that just wanted to check it out. And from talking to people, that's what it seemed like. When you go to a hotel, for example, there's really people of all ages there and it feels comfortable. But on this cruise ship, I'm not going to lie. I felt just like a little out of place because it was overwhelmingly only boomers. You might think I'm exaggerating, but seriously, I just didn't expect it based on the Instagram account. But that might be my bad because I don't know what everyone after was like, well, duh, it's a cruise. And I just, I didn't know that cruises were like that. I had this expectation that we would meet other people our age and it would be really fun. But that just didn't happen, obviously. The ship design, really everything about it down to like the fonts that they use, felt like it was catered to millennials, Gen Z, kind of that age group. But I will say talking to some of the older folks on the ship, they really liked it too. If you are somebody who's like 50 to 70 and you feel like you're kind of young at heart and you don't really like the idea of a lot of cruise ships, like traditional cruise ships, you probably will really like this one and you'll probably meet other people your age and just enjoy the atmosphere. If you're my age, you might feel a little out of place, but still enjoy the ship. Like I still had a good time. I would say don't expect that there's gonna be people that are younger. All right, so will this cruise line work with millennials? I think it could, but only this cruise line. I don't think a Royal Caribbean or like a celebrity cruise line is going to work with millennials. This one works because they did it right. The food is good. It feels almost like it could potentially feel like Vegas on the water if they had like a DJ or something. It's more expensive than a road trip type of vacation, but it is a little cheaper than flying to Hawaii or somewhere like that. It was about $1,200 per person. Considering that's including food and a lot of the entertainment, I think it's pretty good because you're essentially staying at like a four-star hotel, like a nice hotel and you're getting a lot of free entertainment. It is more expensive than other cruise lines, but I think it's less expensive than a lot of other vacation options. I think you're around like your 20s, 30s. You'd probably like the vibe of the music and the design of the ship and everything. However, I talked to a lot of the older people on the ship and they liked it too. They liked that it kind of made them feel younger. So they didn't feel out of place because there were so many of them. I could see that changing in the future. I think that it could. Overall, I really enjoyed this ship. I had a fun time despite feeling kind of out of place age-wise. I still thought it was a fun experience. So that is everything you need to know about going on this cruise line. Like I said, I do think it could catch on for Millennials and Gen Z, but right now it's not really there. I feel like a lot of people just don't really know about this cruise line, but let me know what you guys think below. Would you go on this cruise or a cruise in general? Or is it not really for you? Comment down below. Also link, I vlogged on this trip. So I'll link those down below as well. If you want to check that out, that is going to be it for this video. Hope that you enjoyed and I'll see you in my next video. Bye.