This cruise is completely underwhelming. The entertainment is almost non existent. Their idea of a quiz is to give you a jigsaw with an hour to see who can complete it first, or a printed out map of US states and ask you to name all of them. They also have a games cupboard (only open set hours) because of course I want to go on a cruise and play Trivial Pursuit! First cruise where I’m clueless as to who the entertainments manager is as he/she never made themselves known to the passengers. They certainly know how to sell what’s on because if you visit their App on board, they overhype it all. You are promised a magical Scarlet party, basically they remove all the chairs and tables from the theatre and play music. Was like a school disco with no atmosphere and getting drenched in other peoples drinks. Another one that sounded intriguing (forgotten the name) was basically the ships dancers getting guests up to dance whilst twirling around shiny things, and not even doing the same routine with one of the ships singers finishing it up with just 1 song! .I can honestly say on an 11 night cruise I have never been so completely bored, particularly during the day. They have two staff DJs on board and not once did they speak, there was absolutely no engagement with their audience. Thankfully they have free cabin movies we could use - but I’ve never watched a movie on a cruise before! There were so many issues with food and beverages such as running out of white wine, lager, food items, and this was in the first few days. Having been a frequent cruiser, this is the first time I have ever wanted to cut my holiday short and been sorely tempted to stowaway on one of the other cruise liners I’ve seen on the rare times we have been docked in port. On an 11 night cruise with only 3.5 days in port it is not acceptable to offer such limited entertainment. We did have a medical emergencies which cut short a whole day in Lisbon so we ended up there early evening for which we got one hour of cheap fizz which is simply not adequate compensation. The entertainments team should have got together to sort out a Plan B. If I had been able to view the ship before booking I don’t think I would have bothered. Most of the bars seem to resemble airport lounges where you feel like you are sitting waiting for something to happen as all the seats are on the main walkthrough and why did Virgin think that guests don’t want a swimming pool, 4 strokes is the most you can manage before you reach the steps.

The only good Virgin supplied entertainers are the Slam Allen band who are based in a completely unsuitable venue to be able to either watch them or dance to their music. I would have loved to see the skating show but this was cancelled due to a clash with Tony Hadley who had to rearrange due to our late arrival in Lisbon, why wasn’t this rescheduled for the night that Tony Hadley was due to appear? The nerdy guy was also entertaining as was the Duel Reality show but each were less than an hour long.

We only booked on 28/02/22 expecting 1 day in Madeira and 2 days in Lisbon, however this seems like this was never part of the itinerary so a mistake was definitely made by either Imagine Cruising or Virgin . Read more