A major milestone was reached on Friday when the Fincantieri shipyard in Italy floated out the Brilliant Lady, the fourth cruise ship for the innovative cruise company Virgin Voyages. The fourth ship, named Brilliant Lady, will join her sisters, Scarlet Lady, Valiant Lady, and Resilient Lady, in service by the end of 2023.
The floating-out ceremony is a major event in the building process of any cruise ship since it marks the beginning of the last stages of development, including the interior fittings. The port of San Juan, Puerto Rico, will serve as Brilliant Lady’s base of operations.
After a rough start in 2020 when the Scarlet Lady, Richard Branson’s first cruise ship, was delayed in her debut, Virgin Voyages has been running at full speed ever since. The cruise line’s fourth ship set sail Friday, marking a major milestone for the company.
On November 25th, the ship was floated out at the Sestri Ponente shipyard in Genoa, Italy.
The shipyard may now move on to the critical last stages of construction, such as interior ship outfitting and beginning and testing technological instruments onboard.
Brilliant Lady has a gross weight of 110,000 tonnes, a length of 278 metres, and a width of 38 metres. The ship can accommodate 2,770 passengers in 1400 staterooms.
Brilliant Lady, like her sisters, will be outfitted with several technical improvements to reduce the amount of vibration and noise onboard.
Onboard, the vessel makes extensive use of home automation technology, allowing visitors to operate a variety of cabin services such as air conditioning, lighting, opening and shutting curtains, and managing entertainment systems through an app on their phone.
In the next months, Fincantieri shipyard personnel in Genoa will finish the ship’s interior, which features 22 restaurants. Steakhouses, Korean barbeque, burger joints, vegetarian eateries, international food markets, and more are some of the dining options included with the cruise fare.
The ship does not have a formal dining room or a buffet restaurant like those offered by other cruise operators. Virgin Voyages, on the other hand, aimed to create the atmosphere of a posh boutique hotel.
Beginning around the end of the year 2023, passengers aboard Virgin Cruises’ Brilliant Lady will depart from the PortMiami terminal to set sail on their first-ever cruise. There will be stops at Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic; St. Croix, United States Virgin Islands; and San Juan, Puerto Rico, throughout the course of the five-night Brilliant Caribbean Holidays cruise, which departs on December 24.
Beginning on December 30th, Brilliant Lady will sail out of San Juan on seven-night itineraries to the Southern and Eastern Caribbean.
The seven-night Sunsets At The Lesser Antilles itinerary sails from Puerto Rico to the islands of Aruba, Curacao, Martinique, and St. Kitts and includes stops in Oranjestad and Willemstad. Tortola in the British Virgin Islands, Pointe a Pitre in Guadeloupe, Bridgetown in Barbados, Castries in St. Lucia, St. John’s in Antigua, and more are just some of the ports of call on other cruises.
But although the sister ship, Resilient Lady, has been delayed, the delivery of her sister, Brilliant Lady, is on schedule. Many passengers will have to reschedule their cruises because the ship won’t launch until the second quarter of 2023. At one point, the ship’s first voyage was slated to begin on August 14, 2022, from Athens, Greece.
