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new_cruiser

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About Me

  • Location
    Sacramento, California
  • Interests
    Small ship cruising and small group tours.
  • Favorite Cruise Line(s)
    Windstar

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Cool Cruiser (2/15)

  1. They collect passports on most cruises. For my Japan to Alaska cruise they didn't collect them until after the last Japan port because Japan requires you to take the passport ashore (though mine was never checked at those port stops.
  2. If they don't give passports back as a matter of course to all passengers because some might want to do this, you can let reception know your plans and pick the passports up from them the evening before or that morning.
  3. You can get a laundry package for $19 per day per double occupancy cabin ($9.50 if solo). It has to be bought for the full cruise. Star Collectors or cruises 14 days and longer include the package without charge.
  4. In addition to GeezerCouple's suggestions, there is also and Alaska section of the forums. Look in Ports of Call for Alaska. It is best to post questions about a specific area or a specific cruise line in the part of the board dedicated to that topic. You are more likely to get responses there. If you are tendering in the bigger Alaska ports like Juneau, Skagway, Ketchikan, then it probably means that all the docks are occupied - therefore a pretty busy day for the port.
  5. There is a range for dinner. No t-shirts and no shorts. Nice jeans are allowed (not ripped ones). After more than 30 years in the tech industry, we are pretty casual - mostly polos and slacks for dinner for both of us; sometimes nice jeans on a cooler weather cruise. But plenty of people dress up more than that (perhaps more women than men). So if you would be more comfortable being around the average dressiness of others, you might go a step up from that. Depending on season and location, you might want to bring something warmer for dining on deck (BBQ, Candles and, for the Star ships, the Grill).
  6. They did fine with my silk masks when cruises resumed after COVID and my bras have come out fine. Those are the most delicate things I travel with. I did send the masks in in a separate bag with a note on the laundry tag that they were silk.
  7. I don't understand the comments saying the tender stairs are rickety. I find them solid enough. They are metal stairs that can be collapsed and stowed when not in use but they are sturdy. I was on Wind Surf last October/November and we tendered at a couple of ports. Yes, they always do there best to make tendering efficient, but it gets challenging when the sea is a bit rougher. On our last cruise, there was one port where they kept having to pause loading or unloading because of the swell - late October in the Mediterranean. Most of the time it has been smoother than that so it's not common but it happens.
  8. What I like best about Wind Surf is the excellent deck space. That's an advantage over the Star ships which have good deck space but not as much as on Wind Surf. Of course, when it goes under sail with no motors, that's magical - though on many cruises it doesn't have the right conditions to do that. I don't find the cabins on Wind Surf cramped. My husband and I weren't having difficulty running into each other while getting ready to go out. But for a long cruise, it is nice having the sitting area in the room that the Star ships have. So, for 15 days or longer, I'd lean more heavily toward a Star ship. A suite on Wind Surf would also do that, but you still have port holes instead of a window. I slightly prefer the Ocean View rooms on the Star ships over the Balcony rooms, especially since the refit. The balcony windows have frames around the doors that get in the way of the view. I think the old door frames weren't as thick. I like the nice uninterrupted view from the Ocean View windows.
  9. The Bon Voyage email has a subject like: Fwd: Bon Voyage! Here are your travel documents for your upcoming Windstar Cruises trip, Booking <booking number> It has a pdf of the boarding document titled GTB Ticket.pdf You could search your email for it. You don't need it to board, but info in it can be convenient to have because it has the departure terminal in case you are sailing from a city with multiple cruise terminals.
  10. The article says that Wind Surf will be done in two phases, first in 2024 and then in 2026. So you will have the first set of renovations. If it is done the same as for Wind Star's two phases, the first is the public spaces other than the dining rooms and the second is dining rooms and staterooms. We were on Wind Surf in October-November and had no issues with it's current condition.
  11. Actually, the Cruise Collectors (Windstar name for B2B cruises that are sold under a single fare) always include free laundry. Almost all of them are 14 days or longer anyway, but even if one was under 14 days, they have free laundry.
  12. Our full transit was from Colon, Panama to Puerto Caldera on Windstar Wind Star - no dreary ports involved. (Well, Colon itself isn't delightful but we flew into Panama City and had a lovely private transfer with site seeing along the way.) Obviously, flights were needed at both ends. They also have full transits that go between the Caribbean and Puerto Fuentes (Panama City) since that has opened as a embarkation port.
  13. There are actually a lot more than a couple but they are all quite small ships, I think only one is more than 100 passengers. Most are between 40 and 100. It's a different kind of cruise experience. The fares are a lot higher than mass market lines. Alaskan Dream Cruise, UnCruise, and Lindblad Expeditions all offer these cruises. It's on my bucket list to do one.
  14. On a partial transit of the Canal from the East Coast, you miss going through the Culebra Cut - interesting because it's huge and building it was the biggest barrier to completing the Canal. So if one is taking the cruise in part to admire the engineering feat of building the canal, the partial transit misses a major part of that. We did a full transit in 2019 on and then did a partial transit in 2020. We didn't book the cruise for the partial; it was part of a 31-day cruise from Barbados to Cancun that was visiting a lot of ports we hadn't been to. I wouldn't want it for my only Panama Canal cruise but it was fun going through the locks again - especially because the ship, Windstar Wind Surf, has excellent deck space for viewing on decks 4, 5 & 6. Her masts are too high to exit the Pacific side so that trip was the only time she's been in the Canal.
  15. My cruise was a round trip from Phuket, Thailand, 1998 IIRC. Most stops were beaches of National Park islands 🏝. So a very beachy laid back cruise. They don't currently have any Asian itineraries on their schedule. They have cruises in the Mediterranean, Caribbean, and Central America with some of each on the zero solo supplement list.
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