RandomBaritone

I remember something in the $1,300 range. At 1K I'd have jumped on it.

Great info. Ours is a 10-night cruise, so for an extra $30/night over their minimum upgrade fee, I think we'd do it. But we'll see how rich I'm feeling at embarkation.

Stupid me......forgot you are sailing Europe....duh.

I am sailing the Surf in December out of St Maarten for a week cruise. My Europe cruise isn't til August next year out of Amsterdam on the new HAL Koningsdam. Wonder if the Surf will ruin the Koningsdam experience.:confused:

They'll certainly be different. For me, the kicker was that we've never once stood in line on Windstar, even at embarkation. I detest queues. I don't mind waiting per se, but at least give me champagne and a seat while I do it. :D

Wow! 35 nights.... How do you even begin to pack for that? Lol

Spring for an unlimited laundry package! We're leaving this week on an 18-night trip, 10 of which will be a cruise on Wind Surf, with only carry-ons. Our clothes will be cleaner when we get off the ship than when we board. :)

Maybe it’s because we have become mainstream, same sex marriage and all. It seems a lot have been posting on the other roll call boards.

Indeed! While we'd love to meet other gay cruisers, we're more looking for general tips and advice. It reminds me of the church situation 20 years ago. Back then you had to go out of your way to locate a parish that was "open and affirming," which was the code word for gay-friendly. (Kinda like "FOD meetups" were the code for gay cocktail parties.) Nowadays it's the norm, at least where we live.

Oh, and we're from Massachusetts too: Cambridge to be exact! @CruisingJoe, are you nearby?

One last thing....please write about how best to spend time awaiting your flight out....mine doesn't depart till after 3PM.

Thanks

You mean your flight home after the cruise ends? Ours is a European itinerary so we're actually spending three full nights post-cruise in Copenhagen to give us time to enjoy the city. But I'd be much less likely to time it that way for a Caribbean or South Pacific cruise.

Where are you thinking of going?

I am sailing on the Surf this December....very excited to do so. Has anyone else sailed her and what were your thoughts? I love the idea of a smaller ship and the water platform. Very curious as to the level of service as well as the food.

As I continually fall out of love with the ever growing big ships, I am hoping Wind Star is a breath of fresh air......just like Star Clipper was.

Thanks

Tom

My husband and I are sailing on Wind Surf in eight days! We're big fans of Windstar in general. The people are so interesting, and the vibe is utterly relaxing. We knew the moment we set foot onto a Celebrity ship that big ships weren't for us -- we've stuck with Windstar since then.

The service felt roughly equivalent to Celebrity, as did the food to be honest.

They will occasionally upgrade (at no charge) prior to the cruise. This Spring on a very lightly booked Pride we were moved up several categories about a month before the cruise.

 

You can also ask upon embarkation. Last fall on the Surf we'd booked on the lowest deck, and I was offered a complementary upgrade to the same cabin one level up or to a suite for a considerable upcharge. We took the free option.

This is exactly what I'm hoping will occur with our Baltic cruise next Saturday. May I ask what the suite upcharge was? The website says that it may be "as little as $500 per person," or $1,000 total.

Thank you for the comparison. Do you know when they will open up their late winter/early spring itineraries for 2017? Also, does the wind surf go under sail very often? For me, that would be the best part of the experience.

No clue about when 2017 will open up.

As to when they go under sail, we certainly saw the sails unfurled for a significant portion of our last Windstar cruise, but I can't say with any certainty that the captain ever turned the engines off entirely.

Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but I thought it was $58 a person which equals $116 a cabin based on double occupancy not $116 a person x 2.

 

 

When I look at amenity add ons, it says $933 per cabin for our 7 day cruise. So I'm guessing $933 / 7 = $116 + 15% = $133.40 a day

 

This is my first Windstar, so I could easily be wrong.

You're correct: it's $116 per day + gratuity for a cabin, not double that. :)

We are also long time Celebrity cruisers looking for some different itineraries especially in the Caribbean. After seeing a show about the Wind Surf, we're thinking about trying them out. What is it that you like about them when compared to celebrity. I realize that's it's probably like comparing oranges to apples.

 

Is their website actually worse than celebrity's? :eek:

 

Sue

There's no comparison for us: though Celebrity had style in spades, it still felt like a massive, crowded ship, which was not what we were looking for. By contrast, Windstar felt like we had chartered a yacht to take us to a few ports. We found the passengers more interesting and sociable as well, though that's of course subjective. We weren't interested in any onboard entertainment; we found the shows onboard Celebrity cringe-inducing. The food was pretty much equivalent.

At first we missed having balcony in our cabin, but as others have said, you start to think of your cabin differently when you feel like the whole ship is yours! On Celebrity the crowds were such that one's cabin was a bit of a haven from the madness, while on Windstar the cabin feels like a necessity. Don't get me wrong, it's perfectly pleasant -- the bathrooms in particular are nicely designed -- but we certainly didn't linger in them.

As for Windstar's website, though, the less said the better. :) Apparently they're in the middle of much-needed complete overhaul.

For breakfast they offer hot continental service but you have to put it on the card and hang it on your door the night before. You can also order in the morning but it's a more limited menu. There is a 24 hour room service menu with a good variety of offerings but still sort of limited - think like one soup choice, one salad, one sandwich, cheese plate, chips and dips, desserts. There is another menu available from like noonish until probably 9pm with everything on the 24 hour menu plus cheeseburgers, steak sandwiches, pizza, etc. during lunch and dinner service times you can also order anything from the Dining room menu to be delivered to your room. Late night adds some additional snacks like popcorn.

Any scanned room service menus available online? The lack of info available online is perhaps the only annoying thing about switching from Celebrity to Windstar, as we did two years ago.

Oh, and Windstar's website sucks bigtime. :p

My husband and I will be on Windstar's Baltic itinerary July 18-28. We can't wait!

Last year we were in St. Petersburg on the Windsurf. We were docked at the Lieutenant Schmidt Embankment. Windsurf's sister ship, Club Med 2, was docked next to us so I am sure that this is where you will probably dock. The tour companies get notified of where each ship is docked so don't worry, they'll find you. We used SPB Tours and they found us.

Great to have another perspective, thanks. Our tour company is much smaller than SPB, so I just thought I'd double-check.

Please be aware that WS does not have control of docking, it is up to the port authorities and the change of docking can occur at anytime. There is a cruise port website that generally has correct information but you need to email your tour company, they have a number that they can call at the last minute for correct information. This especially important in large ports. Have a great trip. Susanne

Great information, thanks. Is that generally true everywhere, or is St. Petersburg a special case?

Presumably the tour company will check the site or number you mention to know where to meet us on Wind Surf? I'll confirm with them regardless.

I'm also part of the early morning coffee crowd and it can be great. I'm first up while Mrs. Milepig snoozes, and is just stirring when I leave the cabin. Instead of dealing with coffee myself I go up on deck and chat with the other coffee dudes - they're always men. Or, if no on else shows up I do the crossword. You learn that the coffee they have in the urn is dreck but the steward will make you whatever you want and by day 2 will just bring it to you with a "good morning milepig". Quite often the ship will be entering the harbor and that's when I've taken my best pictures. There are only ever a handful of people up, and you feel like you almost have the ship to yourself. In about an hour Mrs. Milepig comes to find me and we're off to breakfast. The time I miss the balcony is afternoon, but even then we can bring a glass or bottle of wine up on deck - put it in a tote, no one cares - and find a secluded spot, or just as good we go to the bar and make some friends. We can have drinks on our own balcony at home.

This may be one of my favorite posts ever. You've captured that wonderful combination of solitude and camaraderie that defines Windstar for me. Bravo.

Does anyone know for certain which port Windstar uses in St. Petersburg, Russia? We're on the Wind Surf in a few weeks, and we're wondering if we'll land at the far-off Marine Facade Cruise Port, or one of the two infinitely more convenient ports: the Lieutenant Schmidt or the English Embankment.

We're asking mostly because we've booked a third-party tour, and I want to double-check that they're meeting us at the right place. :) But I'm also hoping Windstar doesn't use the massive out-of-town cruise port, since part of the reason we like Windstar is its supposed ability to dock close to the city center, which I haven't yet seen in practice.

Thanks!

Thanks for sharing - we just saved $300 per person! Called our travel agent and she got us the new pricing. Yay!

Congrats! Ours is just the opposite: $1,100/pp more now than when we booked -- plus we got two free hotel nights, 35,000 United miles, and a $200 rebate -- so we're feeling OK about the price we paid. :)

Still, I've heard Wind Surf has more suites than typically get booked, so I won't be shy about asking about a reduced price upgrade at the terminal.

i just hung up the phone with Wind Star and I'm one happy cruiser! Our Classic Yachtsman cruise for January 30, 2016 is now discounted even more than when we booked and I just saved around $800 per person!

 

So if you are more than 90 days out from your cruise, call today to see if your cruise has a new price! I'm not sure all choices will have a sale but ours did :)

Nice! But I'm confused now: your original post specifically asked about upgrades, not price matching. Regardless, that's great news.

I'm hoping to score a low-price upgrade to a suite on Wind Surf at the terminal, since apparently they still have some empty for my sailing in a three weeks. Fingers crossed!

Edit: Just realized this latest post was from someone different, not the OP of this thread. :)

Hi, as I am new to windstar, I was wondering if upgrades are ever offered and how that typically occurs? I booked sometime ago and noticed that some of the prices have dropped. Is it worth calling and asking about upgrades? Our rate did include the precruise hotel and the transfers. We are sailing in late October. Anyway, just curious.

I've been told that the only place upgrades are possible is at the terminal at check-in, and even then they're generally paid, unless you've cruised with Windstar before.

Allow me to second the ship's laundry service -- at roughly $15/day for the entire cabin, the unlimited package is a phenomenal value. You can ensure that you always have clean clothes while spending your time enjoying the cruise, not cooped up in a laundry room. :)

Thanks for starting this thread! My husband and I are counting the days until our Baltic Sea departure on Wind Surf on July 18, 2015. We'd previously tried Celebrity and I hated the size, the queues, the noise, everything. Even the fact that the ship was big enough to have a dozen other gay couples proved to be a negative: it was like being back in high school again, surrounded by "mean girls"! And since we're both in our early 40s, we're way too old for that. :p

By contrast, trying Windstar was like coming home. There were plenty of other young couples -- albeit straight ones -- on our Aegean itinerary, and after a while those of us under 50 got a reputation as being the "cool kids"! Quite a step up from our Celebrity experience. ;)

The ships were exactly what we were looking for: no cheesy entertainment, no jostling for expensive reservations at mediocre onboard specialty restaurants, no fights for a deck chair by the pool. Admittedly the cabins are tight and the portholes small, but because the ship is so cosy and welcoming, we find we spend much less time in our cabin than we did aboard Celebrity.

We'd definitely consider the new all-suites Windstar ships once the reviews are a little better. It sounds as if they may still be working out the kinks though.

Excellent! I guess there's a market for those cabins after all. I'm just glad I found out about their peculiarities on this board. If I had been shown that balcony when we checked into our cabin, I would've been one unhappy camper.

It does seem Celebrity would be wise to state the distinguishing features of each cabin when you book it. We booked ages ago, and 2117 was the cabin we were originally offered by the system. I naïvely assumed the website was offering us the best available in our cabin class, the way ticket vendors do.

That balcony does indeed look huge! But just so I know what I'm seeing, is that a roof-like overhang covering 90% of it in the photo? Seems like it would make the room awfully dark!

As shown in this photo, most of the cabins and suites on deck 12 suffer from a rather prominent overhang, shrouding the balconies in perpetual shadow. Deck 12 is the one you can barely see in the photo linked below, behind the white diagonal struts.

http://www.motorship.com/__data/assets/image/0008/768959/Celebrity-Reflection.jpg

Ouch.

We just swapped Aqua Suite 2117 for 2157 for our sailing on the Reflection March 9, since the suites midship apparently get lots and lots of sun. :)

Great review. My partner and I are booked into an Aqua Suite on Reflection in a few weeks; I hope the room service is markedly better than yours was, since I plan on doing a lot of nesting while he's at the spa. :)