new_cruiser

Northern New Zealand is experiencing unusually wet weather for the time of year. We boarded in Auckland on 10 January. Our first two ports of call were canceled due to the rough sea conditions. Instead, we had an extra day in Auckland and an extra sea day. The cyclone didn't directly hit but tge fringes still caused heavy seas. Instead of going directly south down the East side of North Island from Auckland, we started going North and went around the West side of North Island to Wellington. We had some rain and lots of clouds. Rains have continued and the situation in Auckland is now much worse with some flooding. The airport flooded Friday and people were stuck in it because the flooding blocked the roads. All flights were canceled. Domestic flights restarted Saturday but getting international didn't until Sunday. Baggage claim flooded too.

This is the plug adapter we use: https://www.amazon.com/Inovat-American-USA-European-Adapter/dp/B01AZ9BIKG/ref=mp_s_a_1_45?crid=3EKH3LRXT6HII&keywords=euro+plug+adapter&qid=1674769802&sprefix=euro+plu%2Caps%2C653&sr=8-45

There is at least one US outlet in the room and a low power (shaver) one in the bathroom. There is also at least one European outlet in the room. A heating appliance like a hair dryer is usually voltage specific so a 110 V one shouldn't be used on a 220 outlet with a plug adapter. (Some travel hairdryers may have a switch to adapt for voltage.) Windstar provides an adequate hairdryer that plugs into the Euro outlet. Euro plug adapters are small so you might as well bring a couple.

Go to the Windstar cruise finder. Under Specials, click Last Minute Deals. Some are between $1000 and $2000 currently. I don't recall seeing prices below $1000 very often pre-COVID. I did get a great deal last December (2022) on a 7-for-7 on the price of my crossing Cruise Collector a bit before the Price Assurance window ended. The prices went back up after so my fare for 23 days was less than the fare on the 10 non-crossing segment.

We've had some Windstar cruises with unusual itineraries that booked full or near full and the price only went up. We were glad we booked them early. If booking the cruises Windstar does a lot like some of the Caribbean, Panama/Costa Rica or Tahiti itineraries, it makes sense to wait.

Actually, the change was made well before the pandemic. The price assurance policy used to be up to 7 days before sailing. Then they changed it to 180 days (or maybe it was 120 days) which I felt was too long and unfair to the cruiser. After some months, they changed to 90 days, the same as final payment. I feel that's a reasonable compromise that allows for booking a cruise you really like well in advance getting your choice of cabin with some price assurance and Windstar being able to sell spare capacity by last minute price reduction.

We arranged with a tour guide to drive us to the port in Colon with a stop in Portobelo to visit the Royal customs house and the fort there before arriving at the ship in the early afternoon. It cost less for two people than the Windstar transfer.

I've bought wine at intermediate ports and have had similar experience to others - I've brought it on board and they haven't said anything about it. I haven't tried to sneak it on or anything. It's mostly been bottles that I intended to bring home and if they had wanted to hold it for me until the end of the cruise would have been fine with that. Occasionally it has been a bottle to drink in the room or take to the dining room a pay corkage - but in that case not more than the 2 or three bottles allowed per cruise. Occasionally, I've bought a small bottle of an unusual local spirit (e.g. mastika from Greece). They checked my bag on boarding and didn't say anything about it either.

There were several pieces of info in my post. Not clear which you are requesting a link for. Hopefully one of these covers it. On: https://www.windstarcruises.com/ships/star-legend/ scroll to the bottom and choose View Deck Plan which opens a pdf of the deck plan. Look at the key for the symbol indicating 3rd birth. The deck plan also shows a typical cabin layout. The waived and reduced solo supplement page is: https://www.windstarcruises.com/reduced-single-supplement/

Cabins with a third berth are marked on the deck plan. There are not a lot 2 to 4 in most categories so you should contact Windstar to see if one is available in your category. Cabins have a good sized sitting area with a couch and two chairs so there should be adequate space to be comfortable during the day. I have no experience with the comfort level of the 3rd berth. Some cruises have a reduced solo supplement (generally 25%) and the normal solo supplement is 75%. I don't know what Windstar charges for a 3rd person in a room. Edit: The spring Barcelona to Athens is on the reduced solo supplement list, the one on Star Legend in the fall is not so you might consider whether the spring dates could work. Or, if you book the three of you sharing a room, you might check the reduced solo supplement list from time to time and change the booking to two rooms if it gets added.

The issues are similar on the Star ships - doorways with raised thresholds. A motorized scooter might be too large to work in the space available and too heavy to lift over the raised thresholds. I've never seen anyone on the ship with one so I'm only speculating. Also, on most of the cruises there are tender ports so if one will debark there, any mobility aid would have to be transferred to the tender which would be a problem for a scooter.

We've come on board after spending 4 or 5 days traveling and sent everything into the laundry right away with no issues. At the end of the cruise, we left with everything clean except the penultimate day's clothes to spend a few more days on land before flying home.

Your comment isn't helpful and doesn't apply to the question the OP is asking. It isn't whether a luxury good is worth the extra price. Where the break point is that makes it cheaper to get the drink package than buy individual drinks is a reasonable question. It doesn't have an exact answer because the drink prices vary but one can give a ballpark number - if one is a 2 or 3 drinks a day person, the drink package doesn't pay. Break even is somewhere around 5 or 6 drinks a day.

I've never had the package, but I've often been at dinner or in the lounges/bars with others who did have it and find your experience is unusual. The people with the package were well attended to, got ample wine refills at dinner and attentive bar service. If I drank enough to make the package worth it, I wouldn't hesitate to get it.

Most drinks are much less than that. Most of the wines are between $8 and $11 a glass (our most recent trip was August so inflation may make some changes in that, but presumably not up to $15). Cocktail of the day is something in the single digits - can't remember exactly at the moment - maybe $8. Most other cocktails are $12 or less. When I've calculated the trade off, it takes more than 5 drinks per person per day to break even on the drink package. And that's if the drinks are at the more expensive end of the range so really that probably applies to the all inclusive package as well. (I've only personally calculated for the drink package as I'm 4 star so get internet free and my husband does fine without the internet package, so the All-Inclusive would never benefit us. After our next trip, he will be 4-star too.) If I have more than 2 drinks a day, I don't feel well - not a hangover, just feel sort of uncomfortable right away, and at sea, my tolerance goes down. Usually there are a few occasions during the cruise with free drinks - something when you board while you check in, wine at the captain's welcome (usually the second night), Yacht Club cocktail party for anyone past their first Windstar cruise (servers go around with wine but you can also get a cocktail if you ask for one), sometimes as a welcome to the Beach BBQ. So my usual bar bill for a cruise is less than a few days of the beverage package.

Many doorways on the ship have a lower ledge that you will have to lift the rollator over.

Actually, before the pandemic the 7-for-7s varied in how much of a deal. Sometimes they were a great deal and sometimes very little was knocked off the price. I've seen more than $1000 and I've seen where the price wasn't really any lower. It really depends on how well cruises are booking up. I've had a couple of cruises where the price never went below where we initially booked - the price just went up. The ones where that happened were itineraries that they do less frequently. I think it is less likely on the itineraries that they do over and over during a season. I've even seen times when the price went up - usually because they base price on the cruise was going up so after the 7-for-7 it was higher then it had been before. With inflation, possibly the base prices are being adjusted. And I've seen times when the 7-for-7 price was down from where it had been but then the price was still down after the 7-for-7 was over - in those cases, it was getting close to last minute so I guess the cruise had lots of space and they lowered price to fill vacancies. My best score was post pandemic - spring this year when they lowered the price on my crossing Cruise Collector just before the price assurance window closed. They lowered it so much that I decided to upgrade to a balcony suite at a lower price than my window suite and still saved a bunch. After that week the price went back up and my fare for was less than the fare for the non-crossing segment of the collector.

To clarify, it is the OBC that you get from Windstar that is not useable for gratuities - that's the OBC that comes from Windstar promotions, Yacht Club, etc. The OBC that I get from my agent is a different category (I forget how it appears on the statement at the beginning of the cruise but it has a different name) - it's refundable if not used and can be used for gratuities.

They don't have an app. There is a webpage that you can access when on board the ship to get menus, daily programs, opening times, etc.

I have had success with receiving and making calls with the package. Note that the internet service isn't fantastic - we had one day on a 10 day cruise where it didn't work much of the day. The data rate can be slow at times. When I bought unlimited internet on a cruise (January 2020) they didn't require buying it for both people in the cabin. I bought just one package. I haven't bought it since then because since then I get it for free as a 4-star Yacht Club member.

I've been on two ocean crossings with Windstar: Pre-stretch Star Legend Pacific crossing from Tokyo to Seward Post-stretch Star Legend Atlantic crossing from Saint Martin to Lisbon Both crossings were surprisingly smooth. In the Atlantic crossing, there were some very high seas forecast for our original path but the Captain altered the course and changed the one stop to avoid the high seas. Both were Star Collectors with a crossing followed by another segment and in both cases, the heaviest seas I encountered were during the non-crossing segment. On the Alaska cruise, we happened to hit a rough day on the Gulf of Alaska so it was pretty rough for a half day getting from Seward to the Inside Passage. In the round trip out of Lisbon after the crossing, we hit rough seas going from Portimao to the Canary Islands. I guess that a multi-day ocean crossing allows more options for adjusting the course based on sea conditions than getting from point A to point B in 24 hours or less.

We were luckier on our Windstar Cruise in August, Neither Santorini nor Mykonos had mega ships in. As far as I recall, none of the ports other than Athens had a mega ship in.

I think the number of people getting free laundry from Cruise Collectors and other B2B is why. At the time they dropped the laundry package from All-in, they also dropped the All-in price by $10 which is more than the laundry package cost so people didn't lose by the change even if they are buying the laundry package. People who have free laundry due to yacht club status (4 star status) also have free WiFi. In that case, buying the beverage package plus the paying the gratuity costs less than the All-In: Beverage package $58.50 (10% discount from $65 - apparently that price has also gone up recently) + Hotel service charge $16 = $74.50. So the All-in at $89 or even the old price of $79 doesn't make sense for a 4-star.

I wonder if this is a new policy. I got a fantastic price reduction on my solo trip in May and still got all the 4 star benefits. I got the fare adjusted to in a 7-for-7 shortly before the 90 day cut-off for the Price Assurance Policy. My price for solo on the 23-day Cruise Collector was less than the per person double occupancy price after the sale ended for the 10-day segment of the Cruise Collector (the other segment was a 13-day ocean crossing which had a lower price than the 10-day segment). I wondered for a while shortly after I got the price reduction if Windstar would come back and say they had made a pricing mistake.

Yes, the hair dryer is in the desk/vanity.