Virgin Alaska
Currently on our last day of Virgin's first Alaska voyage on Brilliant Lady and we have had a lot of disappointments.
First of all we wish we were given a heads up there would be a film crew utilizing much of the ship spaces for the bulk of the cruise.
We were removed from our prebooked thermal spa time and asked to leave Social Club and multiple decks on multiple occasions.
When not asked to leave there are Film Crews with light bars, drones and cameras in your face at all events and loud drones taking footage a large amount of the time including past our balcony on multiple occasions we were not the only ones to be upset by this, A heads up at booking or at least before boarding would have been nice.
Both of our excursions booked through Virgin were not at all what were advertised and were frankly complete outright scams and they are refusing to refund us all the way which is a huge disappointment for the premium prices we paid.
In Junuea we had to tender to port, which in itself is not an issue, but proved a logistical nightmare the crew was unprepared for.
What was unacceptable was they were completely unable to accommodate folks in wheelchairs,
we were not told this until already on board and about a day or two before we stopped in Junuea which is unacceptable and likely an ADA infringement.
I'm lucky I am able to move on my own with mobility aides but I watched the crew turn a gentleman in a wheel chair away after he had been waiting telling him "if you can't walk we can't accommodate you and you can't disembark here today"
I hope they compensated that gentleman accordingly.
We were pretty far from the glaciers and only stayed for a few hours. I would prefer an inexperienced Captain be safe rather than sorry but I have had very different (better) Glacier views on different cruise lines.
This is not my first Alaska cruise or our first Virgin cruise, but I highly recommend going with Holland or literally anyone else more experienced if you are looking for the full Alaska experience.
Virgin was obviously more preoccupied with getting promotional footage than they were with the actual experience this go around. It felt like our feedback regarding the scams they helped facilitate have not been taken seriously and we are pretty disappointed considering the cost of excursions in Alaska