Virgin Valiant Lady Day 5: Internet Withdrawals

Our second sea day and our first sea day with a time change. The clocks went back an hour today meaning we had a 25 hour day. Note that if you do the transatlantic going East, you will have SIX 23 hour days. We will get six 25 hour days going West so we can really maximize our time on board. That said if our time is sans Internet, people will really flip.

I woke up early and posted yeaterday's post. I was rhe first standby at Sun Worshippers and there was a no.show.so I stretched.

When we opened our eyes, there was enough light to see the waves on tbe oceN and the ship was gentlly rocking.

I stayed on my mat and was able to do the breathing workshop as a standby because of a no show. 

It was very light outside after the breathing workshop. When it came time for yoga, I stayed on the same mat and there were a lot of people waitimg. Fortunately, rhey didnt have it booked because they all left when they saw the room was packed. I was able to do yoga today. 

I love the free classes, however, if the classes are this in demand for 10 spots per.class in a ship with 1500 passengers, what will passenger experience be like with a ship at full capacity?

Breakfast ar Razzle Dazzle was fantastic.II ordered acocado toast. I then discovered that the sausage I liked so much was vegan.

I didn't realize it was a vegan restaurant. I should have read the fine print- just kidding, it is delicioue. They menu has a naughty section with bacon in a cup. 

I ordered it and it was really tasty.  It is not to be missed! (DEFINITELY NOT VEGAN)

At this point, I had noticed my Whatsapp messages were not going through. We had Internet issues the night before which I assumed was caused by the fog. No Internet.browsing either.

I suspected we were having issues with our Internet because they were switching us off of Starlink which works primarily over mainland and coastal areas and onto a legacy Internet system that works in the middle of the ocean. 

The Internet was hard down for most of today.  We were able to send text messages but no pictures sporadically after 2pm. Some low bandwidth audio calls worked on Whatsapp. 

One huge hurdle is when something like "Free Internet" is included, the thrifty cruiser can't go down and ask for a credit. You didn't pay extra for it so you are just in the same boat as everyone else.

Since there is no local messenger function in the app, with internet down, no one can message each other. It is funny to see how lost everyone was without Internet. My friend figured out that if you dial cabin number plus 1 for A or 9 for Z the phone will work. Old school comms tricks. Also, my friend brought post ir notes so we can let friends know where we are.

I went to sailor services to get my coffee charges removed from my bill and they needed to put a credit card on my account. That took a long time and it was a manual entry into their ipad. I was told crirical systems have a backup Internet for the crew critical functions but it is slow. I didn't a notification that it finally applied for 3 hours. I heard a woman crying in the hall saying she would need to get off the ship tomorrow if the Internet didn't work. The Virgin staff promted extra paper programs because the app would crash or hang periodically.

After a few hours, Virgin put out an announcement that Internet access would be intermittent and that access should improve tomorrow in Funchal.

We played Trivia again this time only tied for second. I ordered a pizza and this time it took 30 minutes. The staff at the pizza parlor seem very overwhelmed. I think these ships are not designed to have a lot of passengera stuck on them for a long time. Normally, they go port to port each day and most of the passengers get off the ship. That is probably how they can accommodate just 7 to 10 passengers in each free fitness class.

I went to a different coffee shop today and found a true coffee artist. Not only did it taste better, he made each cup a work of art!

Tonight we have reservations at Pink Agave. Not having Internet has really allowed us to make plans for dinner and shows the rest of the trip.

Another welcome shot, "a bajo, a rribba, a centro, a dento." I hand the shot ti my friend... We ordered all the appetizers to split. We had duck, pork, and fish tacos. Choco taco and bread pudding for dessert. The food okce again was as good as any specialty restaurant on the sea that I have eaten at.

We played food trivia.

There was a massive line for the around the world in 80 days with the Diva show. They have the show in tbe nightclub section of the ahip called the manor and it was standing room only because I got in line for the show 20 minutes before. The line is all the way back past the elevators and around to the shops.

Although i laughed a.couple times, I really was not impressed. If you like the show Jackass and think midgets are funny then maybe this would be your cup.of tea. I really think drunk people are entertained by anything. They had two men pur.on wigs and lip sync to Shania Twain "I feel like a woman" and that was the grand finale. I have been spoiled by the shows on NCL and Carnival.

Hopefully tomorrow is a better day to the shops.

Happy Cruising!