Just booked Panama Canal

[wolverineinOH]

Took an hour and a half on the phone with my TA, but just booked Costa Rica and Panama Canal for January!  Yippee!  

[milepig]

47 minutes ago, wolverineinOH said:

Took an hour and a half on the phone with my TA, but just booked Costa Rica and Panama Canal for January!  Yippee!  

 

Congratulations. Sorry you were on the phone so long. Is this a regular TA you use repeatedly? At this point I just email mine and say "I see WS is running a sale on the 4/9 itinerary Rome/Istanbul", can you work your magic and see what you can do for us?" Later that day I get an email back with an itinerary attached for me to look at, down to the cabin he's reserved, often with a "I booked you on the port side since you'll have shore views" and "I got them to toss in xxxx." Please review and let me know, the deposit is due by xxx". I do so and have always said "perfect" and we're done. I do my own airfare and almost never book WS hotels as they're expensive and you get the junk rooms. I book shore excursions on my own later after we've had a chance to look them over. I learned that TAs don't get commission on shore excursions anyway, so he doesn't care.

 

[wolverineinOH]

There were some complications with this booking, they usually don’t take that long, but I wish they were more like yours milepig!

[Ski Mom 2]

On Captivating Caribbean I just booked a few weeks ago I called WS direct (I've never used a TA with them) and had my cruise booked in about a half an hour I think 😄

 

Sorry yours took so long.

Edited June 11, 2019 by Ski Mom 2

[Alturia]

We did the Panama Canal with Windstar and we thought the one day cruising through the Canal was worth the price of the cruise! The rest of the cruise was great too - but going through the Canal was fantastic, especially on the smaller ship. We entered the canal from the Atlantic side - Colon - and approached the first lock just was it was getting light and exited the Pacific side at dusk.

[N41EF]

We're booked in February through the Canal.  Looking forward to it.  I went through in 94 on a Submarine, and yes we did grill burgers topside on the trip through.

[new_cruiser]

I've sometimes booked directly with Windstar but more recently through a TA.

 

With the TA, it is similar to what milepig described. I send an email asking what she can do for me on a certain cruise (either asking about a specific category or asking for prices in more than one category). She gets back to me with a quote. Sometimes I ask about a couple of itineraries if we haven't decided yet. Her offer usually includes some OBC.

 

I've found booking directly with Windstar and booking through a TA about as easy. My reasons for usually using a travel agent are: when something has gone wrong with the booking Windstar seems more responsive to the TA and the TA we use usually provides OBC so it is a slightly better deal than the direct booking. 

 

One cruise we had booked directly with Windstar just at the time they were changing their booking system. Because of some glitch involved in the change over, the cabin assignment changed to one we considered less desirable. We had no luck with trying to get Windstar to do something about that, but we transferred the booking to a TA. The TA got Windstar to at least through in some OBC to compensate us for their issues. 

[OctoberKat]

If my beloved however demented husband is up for this, I am likely to book a transit voyage December-March. The trick for us will be booking an owner's suite or the next category down (classic?).

[Ski Mom 2]

56 minutes ago, OctoberKat said:

If my beloved however demented husband is up for this, I am likely to book a transit voyage December-March. The trick for us will be booking an owner's suite or the next category down (classic?).

If you book on the Wind Surf I highly recommend the Suite category versus the bridge suite. It is twice as big as the regular cabins (they use to be two rooms and they took the wall in between down). The best part of the suites is that they have 2 BATHROOMS! After cruising for 25 days last September my DH and I can both agree that saved our marriage 🙂

 

On a side note: when the Wind Surf goes in for some upgrades in November, they are putting back in many of the walls and converting many of the suites back to two rooms. You can see that on the web site.

[OctoberKat]

I should have said I am looking only at the motor yacht sailings, the Star series. The sail  yachts too small for us.

[new_cruiser]

55 minutes ago, OctoberKat said:

I should have said I am looking only at the motor yacht sailings, the Star series. The sail  yachts too small for us.

It is kind of a moot point anyway if you want a full transit. Wind Surf has one upcoming partial transit. It doesn't have any full transits scheduled.  But there are two sizes of sail yachts. The motor yachts are currently 9975 tons; Wind Surf is 14,745 tons so that sail yacht is larger than the motor yachts. Even after the stretch, I expect Wind Surf will be larger than the motor yachts. 

[OctoberKat]

But Wind Surf still, has smaller cabins than the motor yachts, yes? 312 guests on Wind Surf, 212 on The Star ships.

[new_cruiser]

2 minutes ago, OctoberKat said:

But Wind Surf still, has smaller cabins than the motor yachts, yes? 312 guests on Wind Surf, 212 on The Star ships.

The regular cabins on Wind Surf are smaller than the regular (almost all) cabins on the motor yachts. 

 

Wind Surf has a bunch of suite cabins which as Ski Mom said, are double size cabins so they are 376 square feet. 

The regular motor yacht cabins are 277 square feet. 

 

They are reducing the number of suites on Wind Surf after the renovation, but the new deck plan still shows 18 of them.

[OctoberKat]

As of now, before stretch, Star ships have owners suites between 575-645sqft, and classic suites of 400sqft.

[sb44]

After the stretch on the Star ships there will be more suite configurations so you should find something to fit your requirements.  The Wind Surf 3rd deck suites are very spacious and two bathrooms is definitely the huge plus. The Bridge Suites on the Surf are as large as some apartments and nicely appointed. Most important for us is itinerary as we spend most of our time out of our suite anyhow.

 

[bplazo]

On 7/5/2019 at 8:55 PM, OctoberKat said:

As of now, before stretch, Star ships have owners suites between 575-645sqft, and classic suites of 400sqft.

How many more cabins are they adding?

[OctoberKat]

50

[milepig]

13 hours ago, bplazo said:

How many more cabins are they adding?

 The new total is 312 pax. See:

 

https://d2xks5907lvzsh.cloudfront.net/media/yachts/deck_plans/18-0254 Legend Stretch Deck Plan.pdf