We saw a Daily Drop (an awesome daily travel hacking email) newsletter that advertised a deal for a Basically free Virgin Voyages Cruise….and we had to do it. I mean thats why we became nomatic right? To do last minute, hop on a plane, take a train to wherever we need to be to get the best deal? Yes. all day every day. Anyways back to the newsletter.
This is what it said:
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Woah… cruises…? With POINTS? That’s a rarity…. | |
Virgin Voyages is offering a limited-time deal to book a cruise on the cheap with points, and it’s VERY exciting. | |
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Here are the details: | |
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Now, you may be thinking, “Woah, Mike… Earlier you said it was 62,000 points, but just now you said it was 80,000… What gives? Are you a dirty liar? Surely there must be some explanation. |
Book a cruise for 62k points
Wait a second...Virgin Red Points....
How the heck do you you even earn those…? As Americans, we dont fly Virgin or even have any idea about the whole Virgin brand. The ships are almost brand spanking new and we’ve never sailed them before. So reading on…we learned we could transfer our Chase or Amex points to Virgin Red points and then we could use them to book the cruise.
Amex Points Portal
We decided to use Amex portal to do the transfer simply because we just did. There was no difference between the Amex or Chase option. So you know how I said 62k points, not 80k like the Newsletter said? Well, at the time, Chase and Amex were giving out 30% transfer bonuses! So 62k points turned into 81k Virgin Red points.
Virgin Red Points & Applicable Sailings
We made the transfer, after making yet another rewards account on virgin…. Ugh. The worst. On Virgin Reds’ Spend section, there was a 80k cruise redemption section that would give us an access code to input when we booked our applicable sailing. The applicable sailings were leaving from Barcelona on Valiant Lady or from Athens on Resiliant Lady. It also had to embark between June and August 27th.
Our Sailing
We booked the “Greek Islands Glow” itinerary leaving from Athens on August 20th. This worked perfectly for us as our Eurail global pass ended the 21st! The total cost before we put in our “magical access code” was $5,266. Thats INSANE. That’s a balcony sateroom, free soda, free meals at amazing restuarants, free entertainment, and just an awesome trip….We could not believe it was real. And it gets better.
How we're getting even more benefits
We wanted to see what else we could get and Virgin will status match….hmmm interesting. Well guess who they match? MSC cruiseline. And Guess who also Matches other loyalty programs. MSC Cruiseline. So you know what that means!!! the double status match. Oh ya baby. We have Hilton Gold status through a few credit cards. So we status matched Our Hilton Gold to MSC Gold through MSC’s website here. Then, once that is approved, we will go here to get our Virgin status to match our MSC status. This is only availible until December 31st, 2023 so, hurry. If you ahve any of the below statuses, I suggest you match it even if you aren’t sailing right now!
Perks of Loyalty Status
Virgin calls their loyal sailers Sea-Rovers after sailing twice…strange but okay. So once we are statused matched, we will automatically be Sea-rovers who will get the following:
