What a great adventure, and learning opportunity! Thank you for sharing your journey and I look forward to seeing more videos about the facilities on board.
What a wonderful experience! I look forward to watching your journey. It will be interesting to see if you ever get bored or miss family and friends for such an extensive cruise.
❤ So excited to find your channel. The Backroad Tourist told us about it today. I saw when you guys arrived on the ship and was hoping to learn more about you all. I'm a retired teacher from Texas who now lives in the UK 🇬🇧, since 2009. So I'm very interested in how you will be fitting in mathematics and science on your homeschooling journey around South America. Thank you so much for the intro video. Hope you will make a personalised one of your cabins once your stuff arrives. Have a blast! ❤
New subscriber here. What an adventure for the whole family, enjoy every minute of it! I'd be very interested to see videos about your day-to-day life on boat, the activities, entertainment, dining, interaction with other passengers/owners, and how the kids take such a long trip, Smooth sailing and I'll be waiting for new videos!
Lovely video - thanks so much for sharing 😊. I used to be a ship's officer and there were bikes available for us to use which was fabulous. There may well some place in the crew areas where you could store your bikes instead of the beautiful balcony. Enjoy your adventure of a lifetime! ❤
That's so interesting. I would love communal bikes. Someone bought a scooter in Spain and that seems like a terrific purchase too - less space, easier to carry if the area is hilly.
You are all doing an amazing voyage. I am glad that you have decided to do it as a family and before retirement age. Just relax and enjoy when making videos.
Nice to meet you all. Been following the ship on the Marine Traffic App since it left Belfast. Be great to see you in all the places. Thanks for sharing your experiences with us. Don’t get upset by any rude comments you get some people love to be unkind on RUclips. I see someone already complaining about the music! Have fun!
Thank you. I'm sure we'll need that reminder repeatedly. ;) And the ship location apps are so cool! The grandparents are using them to see where we're at.
What an amazing journey you are on, so going to look forward to following you on it and experiencing so many wonderful places through your vlogs. Have a great time. 😀
Ive been following a couple of other Villa Vie YT channels for awhile now. Happy to add you! Love learning about this lifestyle! Im sure you will have a wonderful year! Also enjoyed Lucia's sign language lesson!!
So happy to see a family onboard Villa Vie living out the dream I have for my two daughters and I. It would be great to see how your home schooling works perhaps in a future video.
Hello THE CRUISE FAM, I just subscribed to your channel to enjoy your wonderful adventures and in the future consider renting your balcony cabin for my husband and I to be able to experience a different cruise option. Just wanted to say your daughters are so lucky to have this amazing experience with you all as a family, wonderful memories waiting for you all to cherish.
That's very sweet of you to say! Our rooms will be available at the end of May. You're more than welcome to reach out to us on our website. www.thecruisefam.com
What a great experience for all of you, and just a tremendous opportunity for growth! In addition to knowledge gained by visiting and learning about other cultures, there are so many lessons that can be learned about video production! And public speaking! And social media management! Thank you for letting me be along for your adventure!
So much work to do on coming across more natural. We're all hoping to improve on that front! :) But the real opportunity is exactly what you said - cultures we haven't been exposed to up to this point. It's going to be an adventure!
What an experience. So nice to see this for a family. This is on my bucket list. I’m so envious. I love your calm approach and look forward to so much more. Best of luck to all of you. I also did not know cabins could be rented out for partial trips. Great opportunity for for someone to make a bigger decision and a chance for you to take breaks. Happy sailing.
New subscriber here! I’m pretty sure I saw your family in the background of one of Midlife Cruising’s videos. Wishing you all the best. I can’t wait to follow along your adventures.
You did see us! We said hello to Angela on camera in our first week on the ship. They do an awesome job documenting everything. I told her she's a terrific realtor - we picked our cabin after she did her video tour.
@@TheCruiseFam, oh, that’s awesome! Yes, I love their videos. Makes me want to join in on the fun! Anyway, thank you for your reply. I look forward to your future videos. :)
I just subscribed and im happy to follow your journey, I'm all ready following 3 other utubers living full time on the Odyssey, what a great way to see and experience the world 🌎 wish I could join you! ❤🚢🚢🚢
Great video. This is a very informative video and wish you safe and fun journey. Can't wait for to experience your adventures. Can you share how you do your interactive map on the video showing all the places you are visiting? I have never seen anything like it. I would love to use in it as well to track our regular cruises.
The one where the countries turn orange as we pass by? I have to admit, I pay someone to do those for me. It's way beyond my skill level. He's terrific though and I'd be happy to put you in touch! There is an interesting free app called Relive that records where you go as you're cruising. You can see those videos in our shorts. I'm not using it nearly to its full potential, but you might like to check it out and see if you like it!
Looking forward to following your journey. We're interested too but worried about costs. Can you explain what you paid for the cabins, how much your monthy fees are, and what extras you have to pay for on board and off the ship, such as drinks, entertainment, excursions, classes, medical visits, hairdresser etc. We're worried that while the monthly fee might be just about affordable, the extras could really mount up and we'd not be able to afford to visit the places we stopped at. Thanks.
It really depends on which cabin you choose. The ones remaining and prices are on this website: villavieresidences.com/ 2 drinks at lunch and 2 at dinner are included, but to give you an idea, a Coronoa is $3.50 in the bar, a cosmo is $5. Onboard entertainment is all included with the exception of some oddball stuff like "premium wine tastings." We plan our own excursions rather than going through the ship. Classes/lectures are free. First medical visit is free, we haven't had a second one yet. Haircuts are $32 (some folks do those in port at a lower cost). Laundry and room cleaning twice a week is included. Do it yourself laundry is free including soap. Shampoo, conditioner, body wash and hand soap are all provided by the ship. I'm sure there are other things I'm forgetting... keep asking!
I think those tracking apps are so cool. It's impressive to see all the ships out there! And the plan is to just ignore the grumps, but I definitely appreciate the reminder!
Ahoy !! Sounds like an awesome adventure for the whole family!! Would love to hear more details ….do you pay for food? What entertainment is onboard? Do you have phone service ? Do you have to pay for Wi-Fi ? What’s the price to buy a cabin ? Are there monthly maintenance fees ? More details please 😊
I'm sure they will answer this, but these are all the same things I asked another resident as well. I was able to find a lot of the information on the Villa Vie website. The prices on cabin purchase, short and long term rental options, itineraries, and the additional monthly cost per resident for inclusions. Super interesting and quite enticing!!
I should have linked Villa Vie's website. Sorry about that! This will answer most of your questions: villavieresidences.com/. Food is free. Entertainment... tons of stuff - lectures, dance classes, pickleball, a band, two swimming pools, a really well stocked and used game room, library, exercise classes... I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot of things. Right now we have a comedian on board. Yesterday we did a walking tour of people's rooms. There's no shortage of things to do. We do have phone service. We use US Mobile. Lots of folks are on T-Mobile too. Wifi is free and we're able to do Zoom type calls. Cabin prices are all over the board. You can buy or rent. If you look at the website you can click on every single cabin and see the different prices. Same with monthly maintenance fees - those are different for various classes of rooms. Keep asking! We'll make a video answering these too.
Thanks Karie! It is super interesting. We really had to think about a lot of cabin combinations before we settled on ours. There are even people buying multiple cabins and combining them.
Yes I have so many questions! Cost for your balcony cabin? Do you own for a particular amount of time? Do you pay a maintenance fee? Do you pay for medical on the ship? Food, entertainment etc?
Super excited to follow along!! Are your girls twins or just close in age? I have a singleton and twins all close in age (oldest is 19 months older). As they got older and all ended up about the same height, everyone thinks they're triplets.
The girls are 13 and 15 and not at all biologically related (they were adopted). We've been getting a lot of twin comments though, so there must be something people see there!
Pretty soon, every occupant on the VV will have a YT vlog. Soooo many of the details about the ship space & menu have been broadcast. You all hopefully have better ideas.
Frankly, they'll probably overlap. We've stopped watching the other channels now that we're on board. But the kids are having fun with it and we think they're becoming better speakers for it. We'll see!
Really like the pace of your video but please lose the music. It makes me think I am watching a YT video and a music channel at the same time. I subscribed and looking forward to future videos.
You mentioned renting your cabin out. Are the owners of the ship ok with that and will renters have go through similar "checks" like other cruise ships?
We have the option to rent it directly ourselves or put it into the ship's rental pool. We haven't made any decisions yet, so I haven't really looked into what sorts of checks might be in place. But that's a great question I hope I can address in a future video!
They are currently the youngest kids on board. There are two other kids on board at the moment and a few more coming on board or back on board soon. They've been really well received, which has been great.
Nobody has been too sea sick yet, thank goodness. The ship provides free pills. I can't remember the generic name off the top of my head. We've used those once or twice, but otherwise it's not nearly as bad as I (mom) thought it might be. Other folks have special wristbands they wear. That might be in a future online order...
Great video overview. I'm looking forward to hearing and seeing how the girls get their schoolwork done and the experiences they will have. This is a great way to learn about our world. Are there other kids on board? Does everyone do classes together?
There are other kids that are older than ours on board. We see one in the business center daily doing his online school work. He's from a different country, so I'm not entirely sure how the curriculum works. More families with children board soon. No classes together at this time, other than things that interest us. Lucia (our youngest) is teaching a very informal American Sign Language class to other residents who are interested in learning.
So awesome. As a retired school teacher I can not imagine a better learning opportunity hope the girls can keep up with friends
Lucia has a zoom call scheduled with the deaf sign language choir this evening. It's going to get easier as we get closer to our home time zone!
What a great adventure, and learning opportunity! Thank you for sharing your journey and I look forward to seeing more videos about the facilities on board.
Thank you! We're really excited about the whole ship, and the opportunities it brings for the kids.
Nice to see a family with kids on board!
It's been terrific so far. Everyone has been very welcoming with regards to the kids!
Oh how exciting this will be for the family! Happy Sailing ⛵!
Thank you!!
what a great adventure for everyone !!!
We're having a blast!
So excited to see your families adventures! Thank you for inviting us along your journey. The memories you all will make will be priceless.
Thanks for coming with us!!
I worked for " crown cruise line" which built the ship ." Crown Dynasty " time flys !
Oh, I want to hear more!! I'd love to share the history of the ship.
What a wonderful experience! I look forward to watching your journey. It will be interesting to see if you ever get bored or miss family and friends for such an extensive cruise.
I'm sure we will both get bored and miss folks. We're hoping some of our family and friends will visit us on the ship at some point!
What a thrill for your kids to experience this!
We hope so!
❤ So excited to find your channel. The Backroad Tourist told us about it today. I saw when you guys arrived on the ship and was hoping to learn more about you all. I'm a retired teacher from Texas who now lives in the UK 🇬🇧, since 2009. So I'm very interested in how you will be fitting in mathematics and science on your homeschooling journey around South America. Thank you so much for the intro video. Hope you will make a personalised one of your cabins once your stuff arrives. Have a blast! ❤
We've spent the past two days unpacking all our stuff that arrived from Miami! We'll do a video soon. Thanks for following along!
New subscriber here. What an adventure for the whole family, enjoy every minute of it!
I'd be very interested to see videos about your day-to-day life on boat, the activities, entertainment, dining, interaction with other passengers/owners, and how the kids take such a long trip, Smooth sailing and I'll be waiting for new videos!
These are great ideas! I'll definitely steal a few. Thank you!
Great experience for the girls.. Happy for them to be able to enjoy this
They're doing great so far! Flexibility has been key.
New subbie! Can’t wait to watch your journey!
Thanks for joining us!
Lovely video - thanks so much for sharing 😊. I used to be a ship's officer and there were bikes available for us to use which was fabulous. There may well some place in the crew areas where you could store your bikes instead of the beautiful balcony. Enjoy your adventure of a lifetime! ❤
That's so interesting. I would love communal bikes. Someone bought a scooter in Spain and that seems like a terrific purchase too - less space, easier to carry if the area is hilly.
@TheCruiseFam communal bikes can be so great! I was chatting to crew on P&O's Iona in August and they said they have about 20!
I’m so excited to follow your family’s journey on the seas.
Thank you!
You are all doing an amazing voyage. I am glad that you have decided to do it as a family and before retirement age. Just relax and enjoy when making videos.
Thank you. I really appreciate this comment. :)
Nice to meet you all. Been following the ship on the Marine Traffic App since it left Belfast. Be great to see you in all the places. Thanks for sharing your experiences with us. Don’t get upset by any rude comments you get some people love to be unkind on RUclips. I see someone already complaining about the music! Have fun!
Thank you. I'm sure we'll need that reminder repeatedly. ;) And the ship location apps are so cool! The grandparents are using them to see where we're at.
Looks like a fantastic family adventure. Be careful of salt corrosion if you’re thinking of storing your bikes on that beautiful balcony.
That's a really good call. Hadn't thought about that. Thanks!
Very cool, I am glad this video turned up on my feed. Enjoy your journey, it is an amazing opportunity!
Glad you found us! Thanks for watching.
What an amazing journey you are on, so going to look forward to following you on it and experiencing so many wonderful places through your vlogs. Have a great time. 😀
Thank you! We're having a blast.
Can't wait for the next video the girls are so well mannered they are a credit to you both greetings from australia
Well... we do have control of what shows up in the videos... But they are pretty great in our opinion. :)
Ive been following a couple of other Villa Vie YT channels for awhile now. Happy to add you! Love learning about this lifestyle! Im sure you will have a wonderful year! Also enjoyed Lucia's sign language lesson!!
So glad to hear! Thank you for watching.
Wishing you all "Fair Winds & Following Seas", you seem such a lovely family.
So kind! Thank you.
So cool! I am excited to follow along!
Thanks! We're glad to have you.
I enjoyed watching your video. I look forward to more... Best wishes 💖💖💖💖
Thank you!
So happy to see a family onboard Villa Vie living out the dream I have for my two daughters and I. It would be great to see how your home schooling works perhaps in a future video.
Come join us! And we'll definitely show home schooling. We're sort of learning as we go.
So glad I found your channel. Cannot wait to see your adventures as a family.
Thanks for watching! We're excited to share!
So excited to see your future journey. I hope your daughters meet a lot of youths their ages on the ship. 😊
They would like to meet more kids too. We're looking forward to a couple more families getting on board soon!
@@TheCruiseFam no tours of the engine room
Hello THE CRUISE FAM, I just subscribed to your channel to enjoy your wonderful adventures and in the future consider renting your balcony cabin for my husband and I to be able to experience a different cruise option. Just wanted to say your daughters are so lucky to have this amazing experience with you all as a family, wonderful memories waiting for you all to cherish.
That's very sweet of you to say! Our rooms will be available at the end of May. You're more than welcome to reach out to us on our website. www.thecruisefam.com
Subscribed and liked..Odyssey April 2025..Trinidad and Tobago..My country.
We hope to be along then!
What a great experience for all of you, and just a tremendous opportunity for growth! In addition to knowledge gained by visiting and learning about other cultures, there are so many lessons that can be learned about video production! And public speaking! And social media management! Thank you for letting me be along for your adventure!
So much work to do on coming across more natural. We're all hoping to improve on that front! :) But the real opportunity is exactly what you said - cultures we haven't been exposed to up to this point. It's going to be an adventure!
What an experience. So nice to see this for a family. This is on my bucket list. I’m so envious. I love your calm approach and look forward to so much more. Best of luck to all of you. I also did not know cabins could be rented out for partial trips. Great opportunity for for someone to make a bigger decision and a chance for you to take breaks. Happy sailing.
Thanks for watching along! I really appreciate this comment. :)
New subscriber here! I’m pretty sure I saw your family in the background of one of Midlife Cruising’s videos. Wishing you all the best. I can’t wait to follow along your adventures.
You did see us! We said hello to Angela on camera in our first week on the ship. They do an awesome job documenting everything. I told her she's a terrific realtor - we picked our cabin after she did her video tour.
@@TheCruiseFam, oh, that’s awesome! Yes, I love their videos. Makes me want to join in on the fun! Anyway, thank you for your reply. I look forward to your future videos. :)
I just subscribed and im happy to follow your journey, I'm all ready following 3 other utubers living full time on the Odyssey, what a great way to see and experience the world 🌎 wish I could join you! ❤🚢🚢🚢
It's such a cool thing to see the different perspectives. We really needed those videos when we were making our decision!
Great video. This is a very informative video and wish you safe and fun journey. Can't wait for to experience your adventures. Can you share how you do your interactive map on the video showing all the places you are visiting? I have never seen anything like it. I would love to use in it as well to track our regular cruises.
The one where the countries turn orange as we pass by? I have to admit, I pay someone to do those for me. It's way beyond my skill level. He's terrific though and I'd be happy to put you in touch! There is an interesting free app called Relive that records where you go as you're cruising. You can see those videos in our shorts. I'm not using it nearly to its full potential, but you might like to check it out and see if you like it!
Wow - what an incredible thing to be doing as a family - hello from your newest subscriber!
Hello! Thanks for coming along with us.
Looking forward to this adventure. Homeschooled my kids. Looking forward to seeing how you do this. What a great education! Yay!
Originally no kids were allowed.
Definitely a topic for future videos! We're sort of learning on the fly and treating the year as a gap year.
Lovely to meet you ❤ You have quite the journey ahead 🎉
Thank you!
What an experience ❤ I can't wait to follow your journey 😊
Yay! We're glad to have you.
Looking forward to following your journey. We're interested too but worried about costs. Can you explain what you paid for the cabins, how much your monthy fees are, and what extras you have to pay for on board and off the ship, such as drinks, entertainment, excursions, classes, medical visits, hairdresser etc. We're worried that while the monthly fee might be just about affordable, the extras could really mount up and we'd not be able to afford to visit the places we stopped at. Thanks.
It really depends on which cabin you choose. The ones remaining and prices are on this website: villavieresidences.com/ 2 drinks at lunch and 2 at dinner are included, but to give you an idea, a Coronoa is $3.50 in the bar, a cosmo is $5. Onboard entertainment is all included with the exception of some oddball stuff like "premium wine tastings." We plan our own excursions rather than going through the ship. Classes/lectures are free. First medical visit is free, we haven't had a second one yet. Haircuts are $32 (some folks do those in port at a lower cost). Laundry and room cleaning twice a week is included. Do it yourself laundry is free including soap. Shampoo, conditioner, body wash and hand soap are all provided by the ship. I'm sure there are other things I'm forgetting... keep asking!
Thank you for sharing your family adventure! Enjoy!
I think those tracking apps are so cool. It's impressive to see all the ships out there! And the plan is to just ignore the grumps, but I definitely appreciate the reminder!
Hope you have great limit on CC for fuel
BEAUTIFUL !!!
Thanks! We appreciate it.
Great video. Looking forward to more.
Thank you! We appreciate it.
What a great family adventure!
It really has been!
Enjoy your adventure
Thank you!
Ahoy !! Sounds like an awesome adventure for the whole family!! Would love to hear more details ….do you pay for food? What entertainment is onboard? Do you have phone service ? Do you have to pay for Wi-Fi ? What’s the price to buy a cabin ? Are there monthly maintenance fees ? More details please 😊
I'm sure they will answer this, but these are all the same things I asked another resident as well. I was able to find a lot of the information on the Villa Vie website. The prices on cabin purchase, short and long term rental options, itineraries, and the additional monthly cost per resident for inclusions. Super interesting and quite enticing!!
I should have linked Villa Vie's website. Sorry about that! This will answer most of your questions: villavieresidences.com/. Food is free. Entertainment... tons of stuff - lectures, dance classes, pickleball, a band, two swimming pools, a really well stocked and used game room, library, exercise classes... I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot of things. Right now we have a comedian on board. Yesterday we did a walking tour of people's rooms. There's no shortage of things to do. We do have phone service. We use US Mobile. Lots of folks are on T-Mobile too. Wifi is free and we're able to do Zoom type calls. Cabin prices are all over the board. You can buy or rent. If you look at the website you can click on every single cabin and see the different prices. Same with monthly maintenance fees - those are different for various classes of rooms. Keep asking! We'll make a video answering these too.
Thanks Karie! It is super interesting. We really had to think about a lot of cabin combinations before we settled on ours. There are even people buying multiple cabins and combining them.
Yes I have so many questions! Cost for your balcony cabin? Do you own for a particular amount of time? Do you pay a maintenance fee? Do you pay for medical on the ship? Food, entertainment etc?
Great video; enjoy every moment of your adventure ❤️
That's so nice of you. Thank you!
Super excited to follow along!! Are your girls twins or just close in age? I have a singleton and twins all close in age (oldest is 19 months older). As they got older and all ended up about the same height, everyone thinks they're triplets.
The girls are 13 and 15 and not at all biologically related (they were adopted). We've been getting a lot of twin comments though, so there must be something people see there!
Amazing 😊
Thanks!
Good luck with this adventure ❤
Thank you!
Cool!
Thanks!
I wish you all luck. And great adventures
Thank you! It's definitely been an adventure so far. We're having a great time.
Pretty soon, every occupant on the VV will have a YT vlog. Soooo many of the details about the ship space & menu have been broadcast. You all hopefully have better ideas.
Frankly, they'll probably overlap. We've stopped watching the other channels now that we're on board. But the kids are having fun with it and we think they're becoming better speakers for it. We'll see!
Really like the pace of your video but please lose the music. It makes me think I am watching a YT video and a music channel at the same time. I subscribed and looking forward to future videos.
Thanks for the feedback. I'll (mom) pass it onto the girls. They're the ones that love picking out the music!
Great video!!
Thanks!
You mentioned renting your cabin out. Are the owners of the ship ok with that and will renters have go through similar "checks" like other cruise ships?
We have the option to rent it directly ourselves or put it into the ship's rental pool. We haven't made any decisions yet, so I haven't really looked into what sorts of checks might be in place. But that's a great question I hope I can address in a future video!
Brilliant 😊
Thank you!!
If I had the means I'd do this too.
We'd love to have you!
What does this cost and what exactly is included?
It depends on which cabin you pick and if you buy or rent. You can find out all the info on Villa Vie's website: villavieresidences.com/
Did you win the lottery
Great video! Are you two the only kids on board?
They are currently the youngest kids on board. There are two other kids on board at the moment and a few more coming on board or back on board soon. They've been really well received, which has been great.
Hi
New subscriber..👍👍🇬🇧🇬🇧👍👍
Thank you!
How do you all deal with sea sickness?
Nobody has been too sea sick yet, thank goodness. The ship provides free pills. I can't remember the generic name off the top of my head. We've used those once or twice, but otherwise it's not nearly as bad as I (mom) thought it might be. Other folks have special wristbands they wear. That might be in a future online order...
Meclizine is the medicine the ship provides.
New subs
Thank you!
Great video overview. I'm looking forward to hearing and seeing how the girls get their schoolwork done and the experiences they will have. This is a great way to learn about our world. Are there other kids on board? Does everyone do classes together?
There are other kids that are older than ours on board. We see one in the business center daily doing his online school work. He's from a different country, so I'm not entirely sure how the curriculum works. More families with children board soon. No classes together at this time, other than things that interest us. Lucia (our youngest) is teaching a very informal American Sign Language class to other residents who are interested in learning.
Wish we could join you to escaped trump for the next 4 years. I see that is now possible.
I think you can join for basically anything from a segment to the full 15 years still. I don't believe any of the options are sold out yet!