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Odd question- have you ever done Wind Spirit Huahine motu picnic?


Petoonya
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I'm booking Wind Spirit excursions and trying to avoid the commercial type vanilla and pearl farm visits as part of the tour. The Huahine tour is run by Poetainia, and on their website the motu picnic includes such. Yet I've yet to be on a WS excursion that includes anything commercial. Anyone done it before?

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1 hour ago, susiesan said:

Are you booking them for a year from now? 

I am.

Already booked one excursion that sells out fast:)

 

Maybe absolutely nuts of me but I'm having fun with it.

 

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I just booked our Huahine Picnic for August 2021. We should be on our way to the airport tonight to the British Virgin Islands which was postponed to year end. Weird, but felt nice today to take a step in planning ahead for our Tahiti trip. 🤷🏻‍♀️


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Since I have never taken a Windstar excursion and will have $650 OBC to use, does Windstar make you prepay for excursions? Do they take it out of the OBC? If the cruise is cancelled, how do shore ex refunds work?

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Since I have never taken a Windstar excursion and will have $650 OBC to use, does Windstar make you prepay for excursions? Do they take it out of the OBC? If the cruise is cancelled, how do shore ex refunds work?


We were supposed to be on a Breeze trip to Alaska in August. A few excursions sell out quickly (zodiac at the glaciers) so I pre-booked. About $1200 total for three excursions for 2 people. We had decent OBC but it could not be used until on board.

Cruise was cancelled. Excursions rolled into “all monies paid to Windstar” and will be part of the FCC/refund. If we stick with the FCC, it’s part of the 125%, so it adds up.




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14 hours ago, susiesan said:

Since I have never taken a Windstar excursion and will have $650 OBC to use, does Windstar make you prepay for excursions? Do they take it out of the OBC? If the cruise is cancelled, how do shore ex refunds work?

Susie,

I can't remember- are you on 7 or 10 day?

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59 minutes ago, Petoonya said:

Susie,

I can't remember- are you on 7 or 10 day?

I am on a 7 day. All the Dreams of Tahiti sailings are 7 day.

 

I will wait to book onboard to use my OBC. If I do decide to book and pay for an excursion before boarding I will wait until September to see if Windstar is actually not going to be cancelling my cruise. I will take my chances with any excursions being sold out in advance as I doubt the ship will be full if the cruise is a go.

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1 hour ago, susiesan said:

I am on a 7 day. All the Dreams of Tahiti sailings are 7 day.

 

I will wait to book onboard to use my OBC. If I do decide to book and pay for an excursion before boarding I will wait until September to see if Windstar is actually not going to be cancelling my cruise. I will take my chances with any excursions being sold out in advance as I doubt the ship will be full if the cruise is a go.

I've probably said this to you before but be  sure you get Coral Gardens in Tahaa. It is superb, not only the snorkeling but the way it was run too. The best WS tour I've ever done. And you still have plenty of time to enjoy Motu Mahaea. We're on Twice the Tahiti and may end up doing Twice the Coral Gardens. Actually three times as we'll do it again with Bruno's L' Excursion Bleue from Raiatea.

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Yes, my husband and I took the Huahine motu picnic excursion thru Windstar. It was great fun. I honestly don't remember the pearl farm or the vanilla farm though. We got in on it at the last minute when our private motu picnic company didn't pick us up as promised and were pleasantly surprised at how much fun it turned out to be.

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15 hours ago, avalong said:

Yes, my husband and I took the Huahine motu picnic excursion thru Windstar. It was great fun. I honestly don't remember the pearl farm or the vanilla farm though. We got in on it at the last minute when our private motu picnic company didn't pick us up as promised and were pleasantly surprised at how much fun it turned out to be.

You've made my mind up for me Avalong. Thanks so much! 🙂

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Nancy, I was going to look at that excursion today but I can't get to my reservation on Windstar web site. It appears not to be working we'll this weekend. Do you or avalong have the name of the private company who does the Coral Garden drift snorkel excursion so I can research it?

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On 5/22/2020 at 8:53 AM, Petoonya said:

I'm booking Wind Spirit excursions and trying to avoid the commercial type vanilla and pearl farm visits as part of the tour. The Huahine tour is run by Poetainia, and on their website the motu picnic includes such. Yet I've yet to be on a WS excursion that includes anything commercial. Anyone done it before?

We did Marc's full day motu picnic.  It was a really full day.  Short vanilla farm stop, marae with a museum,. fish traps, sacred eels at Fare, short pearl farm stop--not pushy, LONG motu picnic, short snorkel stop.  We barely made it back for the last tender and I was nervous.  Probably my least favorite tour of our entire trip.  Our original tour operator cancelled, so we went with people from our roll call.  The excursion from Windstar sounds like a good plan as I wasn't impressed with Marc's!

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3 minutes ago, salmn said:

We did Marc's full day motu picnic.  It was a really full day.  Short vanilla farm stop, marae with a museum,. fish traps, sacred eels at Fare, short pearl farm stop--not pushy, LONG motu picnic, short snorkel stop.  We barely made it back for the last tender and I was nervous.  Probably my least favorite tour of our entire trip.  Our original tour operator cancelled, so we went with people from our roll call.  The excursion from Windstar sounds like a good plan as I wasn't impressed with Marc's!

Thanks Salmn- that's exactly what I needed to know and will skip it. Really appreciate your input.

Who was you original tour operator that canceled? Was it the sailing boat Huahine Voile?

I'm feeling a little "meh" about the excursions from WS as both seem to just have one snorkel stop too. The motu picnic on Huahine seems a lot like Motu Mahaea and I got a little bored with that the second time around especially. There's another snorkel tour with Mahana Dive on Huahine and then there's a day stay at Le Mahana a hotel on Huahine Iti. Supposed to have decent snorkeling....

What did you do on your second day in Huahine?

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1 hour ago, Petoonya said:

Thanks Salmn- that's exactly what I needed to know and will skip it. Really appreciate your input.

Who was you original tour operator that canceled? Was it the sailing boat Huahine Voile?

I'm feeling a little "meh" about the excursions from WS as both seem to just have one snorkel stop too. The motu picnic on Huahine seems a lot like Motu Mahaea and I got a little bored with that the second time around especially. There's another snorkel tour with Mahana Dive on Huahine and then there's a day stay at Le Mahana a hotel on Huahine Iti. Supposed to have decent snorkeling....

What did you do on your second day in Huahine?

The first visit, we just used the sports platform and took a day off from tours.  It sounds to me like the Mahana Dive snorkel or the day at Le Mahana might be a better fit for you than any of the motu picnics.  We only had about 15 min. snorkeling on a full day tour with  Huahine Nautique--Marc's combo.  The first operator was Huahine Dream tours.  He said that they do not take WS passengers any longer because of a problem with WS policies---not sure what that was about.

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14 minutes ago, salmn said:

The first visit, we just used the sports platform and took a day off from tours.  It sounds to me like the Mahana Dive snorkel or the day at Le Mahana might be a better fit for you than any of the motu picnics.  We only had about 15 min. snorkeling on a full day tour with  Huahine Nautique--Marc's combo.  The first operator was Huahine Dream tours.  He said that they do not take WS passengers any longer because of a problem with WS policies---not sure what that was about.

Thanks so much. You're just the person I needed to talk to about Marc's and so glad I did. Yes, will see about Le Mahana- their package sounds very nice and they offer transport too. Haven't heard back from the dive shop yet but guessing they will want 4-6 more passengers to do a snorkel tour. I found another hotel that's right in Fare with decent snorkeling that might be an option. But all else fails we're always happy to spend a couple extra days on the sports platform. Thanks for reminding me.

 

Can I ask a couple more things....what did you do on Moorea? And do you have a link to your review?  Thanks.

🙂

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2 hours ago, Petoonya said:

Thanks so much. You're just the person I needed to talk to about Marc's and so glad I did. Yes, will see about Le Mahana- their package sounds very nice and they offer transport too. Haven't heard back from the dive shop yet but guessing they will want 4-6 more passengers to do a snorkel tour. I found another hotel that's right in Fare with decent snorkeling that might be an option. But all else fails we're always happy to spend a couple extra days on the sports platform. Thanks for reminding me.

 

Can I ask a couple more things....what did you do on Moorea? And do you have a link to your review?  Thanks.

🙂

I did not do a full review, just a quick trip report on this board.

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2715949-twice-the-tahiti-trip-report/

 

The first stop in Moorea, we did a land tour with Safari Mario, which I booked on Viator. It was a good day and a good intro to the island. (our first time in FP). The second time, we had a flight out that night so were planning to take the ferry over to Tahiti in the afternoon until the gal in customer service assured us that we would be docked in Papeeete by 9pm and could make our midnight flight.  It worked out perfect. She had a taxi waiting  at the pier for us and another couple. The down side was that we hadn't booked a tour so we just packed and then used the sports platform again.

 

Hoping to go back some day.  The prices for next year look enticing, but we had a trip for May that was cancelled so will be doing that trip  in May, 2021.  Too many places to go!  Good luck on your next  Wind Spirit cruise.  Hope everything opens up for you.

 

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14 minutes ago, salmn said:

I did not do a full review, just a quick trip report on this board.

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2715949-twice-the-tahiti-trip-report/

 

The first stop in Moorea, we did a land tour with Safari Mario, which I booked on Viator. It was a good day and a good intro to the island. (our first time in FP). The second time, we had a flight out that night so were planning to take the ferry over to Tahiti in the afternoon until the gal in customer service assured us that we would be docked in Papeeete by 9pm and could make our midnight flight.  It worked out perfect. She had a taxi waiting  at the pier for us and another couple. The down side was that we hadn't booked a tour so we just packed and then used the sports platform again.

 

Hoping to go back some day.  The prices for next year look enticing, but we had a trip for May that was cancelled so will be doing that trip  in May, 2021.  Too many places to go!  Good luck on your next  Wind Spirit cruise.  Hope everything opens up for you.

 

Thanks so much Salmn. Wish that we were visiting FP with you! The prices are really nice but it's the shore excursions that are the killers on the budget as you know. Always nice chatting with you- hope your trip next May is wonderful too. Always the big "if" tho.....

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