Scarlet Lady

Scarlet Lady is the ship that had to prove Virgin Voyages could exist, and she spent a year and a half not being allowed to. Fincantieri completed her at Sestri Ponente on February 13, 2020, she was christened eight days later, and her first revenue voyage was scheduled for April 1. It did not happen. Virgin moved the debut to mid-July, then canceled that; moved it to October 16, 2020, then to a tentative January 2021, then to May. She finally carried paying passengers in August 2021 (six short “seacations” out of Portsmouth, two to four nights, capacity-capped and restricted to vaccinated British guests), and did not begin the Caribbean program she was built for until October 6, 2021, eighteen months behind schedule.

She is a 110,000-ton, 912-foot hull carrying 2,770 sailors against 1,160 crew, driven by two 16,000 kW ABB Azipods, and she is the template for the three sisters that followed. Nothing about her is unusual as a piece of naval architecture. What is unusual is what Virgin left out.

What is aboard, and what is not

There is no buffet. There is no main dining room either, and no specialty restaurant, because the distinction does not exist here: around twenty sit-down venues, from a Korean barbecue to a steakhouse to a diner that runs late, and every one of them is in the fare with no surcharge. You book them like restaurants ashore rather than being assigned a table and a time.

There is no formal night, no captain’s table and no dress code past what you would wear to dinner in a city. Gratuities and wi-fi are in the fare. Cabins run Insider, Sea View, Sea Terrace and RockStar Suites, with the top tier grouped into RockStar Quarters; the Sea Terrace balconies carry a red hammock, which is the one piece of Virgin design everybody photographs.

The rest of the ship is a running track around the deck, Redemption Spa with a mud room and a salt room, a proper gym with unlimited group classes included, a tattoo parlor, Richard’s Rooftop as a suite-guests’ terrace, and The Manor as the nightclub. The theater does not run a traditional production show.

Where she actually sails

She is the only Lady Virgin sends to Greece, and the Aegean is the fixed point of her calendar. Everything else in her year is arranged around getting her back to Piraeus by May.

The summers are Athens, from May to October, the same way every year. Round trips leave Piraeus at seven to eleven nights and the recurring weeks are Greek Isles & Mykonos Overnight, The Adriatic, Albania & Greece and Greek Isles, Turkey & Mykonos Overnight. Piraeus every week, and Mykonos on nearly all of them, which is to say that nearly every Greek sailing she runs stays the night there. Santorini follows at some distance, then Bodrum, Rhodes, Chania, Kuşadası, Dubrovnik, Kotor, Sarandë and Corfu. The longer versions at ten and eleven nights push east to Istanbul for an overnight, or south to Alexandria and a run into Cairo. A few Rome turnarounds and Barcelona one-ways hang off each end of the season, on Mediterranean: Athens to Barcelona and Italy & French Riviera.

Then she crosses, and the two Caribbean winters on the books are not the same winter.

The first is Miami, November through April, and it is short. Four- and five-night weeks built around Virgin’s own Beach Club at Bimini, which she calls at on essentially all of them: Key West & Bimini Beach Club at four nights and Grand Turk & Bimini Beach Club at five are the staples, with Dominican Republic, Mexico and Bahamas versions of the same five-night shape filling in around them.

The second is San Juan, and it is a different holiday altogether. From November 2027 she turns around in Puerto Rico on six- to eight-night Southern Caribbean weeks: Southern Caribbean Cruise and Southern Caribbean & Aruban Nights. Philipsburg is the most frequent call, then St. John’s, Oranjestad, Bridgetown, Willemstad, Castries, Charlotte Amalie, Roseau, Basseterre and Fort-de-France. Starting from Puerto Rico is what buys that: no two-day crossing at either end, so the same week reaches four or five islands instead of two.

Transatlantic crossings at twelve to fourteen nights join the halves (Barcelona to Miami in one direction, San Juan to Spain in the other), and there is a Halloween westbound among them.

Who she suits

Adults who want the Greek islands with a beach-club ship attached. The combination is genuinely uncommon: most Aegean weeks are sold either by small premium ships or by mass-market hulls doing the western Med, and a 2,770-guest ship running Mykonos overnights with no children aboard and every restaurant included is not something another line offers. Late-season sailings, September and October, are the pick; Piraeus is still busy and the Cyclades are not.

If the Caribbean is what you want from her, take the San Juan winter over the Miami one. The Southern Caribbean weeks are the better version of the same ship, and they are the half of her Caribbean program that her sisters mostly do not duplicate.

She does not suit families, and that is absolute rather than a matter of tone: nobody under eighteen sails. She does not suit anyone who wants the ritual of a cruise, because the formal night, the assigned waiter, the captain’s table and the buffet have all been deliberately removed. And on the four- and five-night Miami weeks she is a poor value proposition against the Florida short-cruise market unless you specifically want the adults-only room, that is the segment where Carnival and Royal Caribbean are cheapest, where Virgin’s all-in fare has the least to absorb, and where two of her sisters are selling the same four nights anyway.