HaveDogWillTravel

I have 322 days with Princess over 200 just since the restart. I sailed Oceania O class 10 days and Windstar Star Legend 10 days last year. Liked O but simply fell in love with WS. 3 more booked with WS, 2 more booked with O. I do have the sky suite booked for the Eclipse cruise on Discovery and 2 more Princess cruises after that. Moving forward I will only be sailing Princess out of SF as it’s just so convenient and my friends & family sail out of there. If I travel to a port it will be Windstar first choice every time. This October I have an O sailing Barcelona to Rome on Vista and 2 weeks later I have Wind Spirit Rome back to Barcelona. Guess which one I am most excited to do? I’m happy to hear such positive reports from recent WS passengers!

Google What to do in port ……….(fill in the port stop). Read the posts on CC for Mediterranean sailings. Get some Rick Steves, Let’s Go or Frommer travel books. Go the websites of those companies and read the blogs. You need to do some research and then ask specific questions on the appropriate forum. Planning is half the fun.

@niftrip thank you so much for coming back and posting those pictures and answering questions. I love that layout! Adam can’t do the front of the ship unfortunately ughh. So I’ll never get to have it.

@LAFFNVEGAS thank you so much for those pictures of the water sports. That crew,ember looks like the Maytag repair man 😆. I am even more excited for our 17 days in Tahiti now. I don’t like swimming with the fishes but I do love lounging on the water while Adam does! Win win. Great job with all your pictures and thoughts. I am so happy to wake up every morning to this read. I would have ordered either the scallops or the grouper. That raspberry trifle would have been an indulgence shared with Adam. I’ve never been on HAL. I’ve sailed Cunard, Oceania, Celebrity and a lot of Princess (they are pretty much the only game out of my home port of SF ). Compared to those lines WS is my hands down favorite. But since that love is only based on one sailing, I am looking forward to my next 3 on WS and hoping it holds. Fingers crossed 🤞

We sailed thru the Greek Islands and often had reception on the ship. We were so engaged with our surroundings that we never missed the internet. We did all our research on the sights we were going to before embarking. When we needed it for changes to tours or in our case new research into Lemnos, which was added after one of our ports was cancelled we were close enough to land that we had reception. It just worked out for us.

You’re welcome. The wonderful thing about WS is that bottled water, soda, juices, mocktails and all specialty tea & coffees are free. There’s carafes of filtered water in your room and the barista made delicious coffees. The barista opened at 6 am. Your cabin also comes equipped with high quality stemware. Thin lipped wine glasses, cocktail glasses water glasses…. The all in package is $100 pp/day if purchased on board or $90 if bought a week or more before sailing. Gratuities are $16 day/person and I don’t know what internet costs. Fill in that blank and add up what you’d spend on drinks and there you go. Then you will know if the package makes sense for you. I found this on the web from WS for travel gents. It explains that not all passengers in the same cabin have to buy the all in package. https://advisorhub.windstarcruises.com/Cruising-Transformed

Thanks for reading my review. I’m so happy to see more live froms on the Windstar page. We were on a very port intensive itinerary. Our T-Mobile plan worked on our iPhones everywhere. We did not need the internet and didn’t miss it at all. I am picky about my wine so brought on some very lovely wines we purchased quite reasonably in Istanbul. I think I posted the prices for bottles/glasses of wine and bars drinks and beers. My goodness what a great selection and great prices. So you’ll just have to evaluate your drinking habits. Do the math using those prices and see if it’s more or less expensive than getting the package. FWI if you click on the bar and wine menus the picture gets much clearer making the prices easier to read. We drank as much as wanted whenever we wanted and found that it was way less expensive for us to have no package. It all comes down to your drinking habits & internet needs and only you know that.

We sailed Oceania for the first time in March of 2023 on an O class. That statement summarizes our take away. We have 2 more bookings that we made while on board (before SM) so we will give Oceania 2 more tries at it. I just got done booking our ships excursions for a port intensive 10 Barcelona to Rome sailing. There were only 2 that were of any interest to us. The excursion portion of SM is definitely not worth it to us. The included SM alcoholic beverages are not worth to us either. We have 1 (on occasion 2) drinks a day and they are not ones that are offered in that package nor do we want them during meals. Like you we had a mix of experiences from really? That’s never happened before to simply excellent. Enough good to get us booking again for now. But at their price point our future sailings will have to be more of the excellent and less of the Really? In my opinion Windstar is a competitor to Oceania. We sailed them last year as well for the first time. WS made a 99.9% excellent impression. We have 3 more WS booked. One is also this October taking us Rome back to Barcelona. It will be interesting to see if WS continues to impress at the same level.

@LAFFNVEGAS thank you so much for taking time during your vacation to share your trip. I am loving all the information and pictures. And very happy to hear how it feels under sail. We are sailing Wind Spirit this October Rome to Barcelona. It’s a much smaller sailing vessel so I know it will not be exactly the same. But still great to get some thoughts on the larger sailing ship. If you can by any chance get pictures of the gear they use for the water-sports deck it would be appreciated. Even better would be pictures of people using it. We have only one water sports day on the October sailing but we have 10 days of water sports on our 2026 Tahiti sailing. We are really curious about this experience from a passenger point of view. Thank you in advance.

Thank you very much for that information. It is much appreciated.

@oakridger thanks! and wow! This doesn’t seem like a charter!

Thanks @Ski Mom 2for sharing your experience. @mwike. I book my airfare the minute it comes out as I’ve found that business class lie flat seats have the best prices and selection early. So I am also very curious if WS has cancelled after airfare was available to purchase and if so how did they handle the expense the passenger would have faced. Of course I have travel insurance but it would be one less thing I have to do if WS took care of any change fees.

I’m really enjoying your posts thanks for taking time to do this! We are on the Wind Spirit at the end of October Rome to Barcelona Med Island Medley. So while that sailing doesn’t take us to Marseille, our Oceania Vista sailing in the beginning of the month Barcelona to Rome does. It’s our first time to this region and debated exploring Marseille or venturing out and decided there was enough to see in Marseille that we’d stay local. I’m good for about 6-7 miles of walking (hills & uneven ground are of no issue). I read that bus 60 will take you up to Notre Dame cathedral. Did you by any chance use that? Are there taxis or Ubers as an alternative? Thanks in advance😀

Thanks for posting this. I’m new to WS and have the 17 day Twice the Tahiti booked for 2026. (As well as 2 others before that). It had not occurred to me that this could happen but I guess it makes sense that with such small ships charters would happen. I would really be interested in other folks experiences with this. A year in advance is horrible and the options seem fair enough (but still incredibly disappointing to have to change plans). But has WS ever done this closer to sailing I wonder?

I have a rule….if I can’t get up to get my drink I don’t get to have one. I really hated it before that rule was implemented and I’d stand up and immediately face plant. Gots to keep tabs on how drunk I’m getting.

A729 & Panama Canal in January.

The corner suite.

Given the mobility issues be aware that the corner aloha suite balcony is bi level. There’s a step down just after the corner. The side deck usability is complete up to which way the wind is blowing. It is very, very rare that the aft facing balcony is windy. On slow scenic cruising days or port days you can easily use the side balcony but you’ll probably get far more use out of the aft facing. I’ll try and post pictures. @Crystabelwe went over my Birthday Jan 8, 2017. Its was very hot.

We did an Alaskan cruise in the corner suite A727 with the wrap around deck in 2016. We sailed in the middle aft facing suite A729 for the Panama Canal cruise in 2017. We sailed 14 days for the North and South bound Voyage of the Glaciers cruise in A729 again in 2018. We visited the Lido deck cabins as well. We did not like how narrow the Lido deck cabins were and the room layout on the Lido corner suites was awkward and chopped up. We loved the full wrap around balcony on the Aloha corner suite for the scenic cruising days in Alaska. However having to access the wind free aft deck by braving the very cold and very windy side deck while under sail was a deal breaker for us. That is why we only booked A729 (A728 would have been identical) for our next sailings. This is the best bang for the buck full suite. Being a vista suite puts it at a nice price point and the deck is the largest S6 in the fleet. @cactusroseyou are correct, the Panama sailing is extremely hot. While we did have views out the back door we still wanted to be on the balcony. It was just amazing to be directly above the locks looking down at them. I worried we didn’t have side views when I booked but it turned out that didn’t matter to us. Like Alaska when sailing Panama you just need to be out on all decks for awhile. The Island has a great promenade in the shade for side and forward viewing. Once the locks are closing behind the ship you can go back to the cabin and watch it. I wrapped a wet bath towel around my shoulders to stay cool. And yes you have to just not care that the Lido deck people can see you. Our Lido deck neighbors were very nice. That’s how we got to visit those cabins.

I really hope she turns things around. I’m on for 13 days starting March 31 (in suites). I really abhor complaining. I hate spending any energy on it. That said I will go up the ladder as needed and ask for whatever issue I’m having to be taken care of. But if it doesn’t happen I just move on. After my less than experience in the Grand Suite on Diamond last year if this sailing is also less than I’ll save my suite money for other lines and stick to balconies on Princess. It looks like you had a great time regardless, but I am sorry Princess fell so short on this sailing for you. Thanks for all the great posts!

Email me. It’s in my signature

Maybe on the eclipse cruise you can join me and Adam in the sky suite and we will order that. 8

@Steelers0854 great review. Thank you taking the time to write it. Like you I’ve decided to branch out and have sailed Oceania and Windstar last year. I like O but fell in love with WS. Both lines have better food than Princess but WS wins hands down over O. Both of these lines have the same all included feel as VV with just a few exceptions. Room service menus are quite extensive in both with no room service charges. They both also include fresh pressed juices and specialty coffees. Both lines don’t care how much wine, beer or booze you carry on. I don’t know if VV has such a lenient policy or not. That’s something I’d have to look into if I booked them. O has one night where the captain buys all the drinks for a couple of hours and O has two 2 for 1 happy hours daily. WS has a captains reception where they serve free drinks and WS had a 5 star white glove dinner in the ruins of Ephesus with all wine included. While kids are not excluded on either line I didn’t see any. I really don’t think WS (O for that matter) is a line that would attract them as there is literally nothing onboard for them to do. Unless they like to do what adults do. WS star has no casino and the sad lonely aft deck smoking area never got used. WS just doesn’t seem like a good fit for smokers. Neither of those lines includes gratuities I have looked at VV but their itineraries didn’t excite me at the time. I’ll keep them on my radar and if they offer something interesting to me I’ll certainly consider it. I have 3 WS, 2 O and 3 Princess sailings booked thru 2026. I think in general folks who have sailed mostly on one line are branching out and trying new lines. It’s a good thing. Thanks again for a great perspective on VV.

Thank you. I appreciate the answer.

@HBCcruiserthanks for the great live from. I saw your suite was stocked with glassware. Are those wine glasses the nice thin lipped kind by any chance?