Brilliant Lady is Virgin Voyages’ fourth ship, and our first sailing with the line — eight nights Seattle to Vancouver through Southeast Alaska in September 2026. We came in as Royal Caribbean people, curious whether the adults-only, design-forward pitch holds up over a week.
Boarding
Efficient. Seattle enforces boarding slots more strictly than most ports, but showing up at 1:30 for a 2:15 slot was a non-issue — they were already taking 2:45 and earlier. With pre-check-in done in advance there were two very brief checks and we were aboard.
The wearable that serves as key, wallet and everything else took, by my estimate, a minor in physics to fasten. I spent the first few days re-checking mine so it wouldn’t slip off.
Who This Ship Is For
Virgin very clearly — and very cleverly — aims at Gen X and Millennials. The no-kids policy delivers exactly the crowd you’d expect: young couples, empty-nesters whose kids just left, LGBTQ couples, groups of friends, singles. The parties, the events and the whole setting are built around them. If you want a ship full of families, this isn’t it, and that’s the point.
Service and the Cabin
Service impressed us. The in-room tablet is more than a gimmick — a couple of taps produced extra coat hangers in under two minutes — and it runs one-touch “mood” scenes that handle the lighting and the curtains together. Throughout the ship the crew were consistently, genuinely friendly.
Friendly is not the same as plentiful, though. There was always someone available to bring a drink. There was much less often someone clearing tables in a crowded eatery while people stood holding plates looking for a seat.
Food
Nearly everything aboard, right down to the quick-serve counters, is cooked to order. The upside is quality; the downside is that there’s no grabbing a slice of pizza or a burger on demand — expect fifteen minutes for tacos or a panini. Across the week the food landed a notch above other lines rather than in another league. My daily scoops of ice cream were, for the record, delicious.
The restaurants sorted themselves out clearly by the end: Rojo and Pink Agave were exceptional. Gunbae was good. The Wake was meh — much like any other cruise dining room, which is not what the hype promises.
The Wake deserves the detail, since it’s the reservation everyone scrambles for. Our party of six was split four and two, or else the restaurant “didn’t know when they could seat us.” A side never arrived for one of the pair. We were charged a corkage fee on wine we’d been permitted to bring aboard — lesson learned, drink it in the room. The filet came medium as ordered but seared black outside. Fine. The roasted artichokes and twice-baked potatoes were also fine. Not worth the scramble.
One Real Annoyance
The eateries fill with people working on laptops and lingering long after they’ve finished, taking tables from passengers holding food and hunting for a seat — which sends them wandering the ship carrying plates. Some of it may be Alaska-specific, since fewer people are outdoors. It’s more a fellow-human problem than a cruise-line one, but it was real and it happened daily.
Bars and the Casino
The bar program is a strength — good cocktails, good lists, and staff who enjoy the work. The casino is smaller than the norm and, critically, non-smoking: as a nonsmoker, not having to cope with cigarette smoke to play a hand was a genuine pleasure. There were nearly always open seats at $10 and $15 blackjack and the other table games, fewer slots than you’d find elsewhere, and it was never uncomfortably busy.
Wi-Fi: The One to Plan Around
The internet is kinda meh. The included tier kicked us off repeatedly, so we upgraded to Premium Wi-Fi — which was still meh. My VPN and a handful of other services wouldn’t work at all unless we bought “business internet” at an extra $50 a day. The connection dropped sporadically, and text messages over Wi-Fi calling were sometimes noticeably delayed.
None of that matters on a pure vacation. It matters a great deal if you’re a business owner who has to check in and actually do things every day, which is us. Budget for the upgrade, or plan to be genuinely offline.
Would We Go Again?
Overall, Brilliant Lady is a fine ship. The design is sharp, the crowd is well matched to the concept, the casino is a small delight, and two of the restaurants were among the better meals we’ve had at sea.
So: would I sail her again? Probably. Has Virgin won us over as our cruise line of choice? Not just yet.
The ports are written up in the Alaska post.