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new_cruiser

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  1. I the dental visit went well for you. Are you on the mend and back on the ship or heading back home?
  2. And all aboard is usually 5 PM. You should receive an email with a boarding document that has the all aboard time. When we did it, we used a private transfer from Panama City with a half day of sight seeing along the way. We went to Portobelo to see the Caribbean end of the Spanish Gold Route across Panama. The driver also took us to see the Gatun Dam which was interesting. Most of the stops are nature related (or Canal history/technology related). There is a lot of bio diversity in Panama and Costa Rica because of climate and because of the isthmus mingling North and South American species. The Windstar tours are usually not crowded and usually have quite good guides, but as a party of 6, you probably can do well booking your own tours.
  3. Travel insurance probably covers someone flying out to support you if needed. I think that's a pretty standard provision if you have someone able to do that.
  4. I expect you didn't know you were going to need a root canal when you booked your trip. Pre-existing exclusion usually applies to a condition that arose or changed within some number of days (e.g. 120 days) before you bought the insurance. Not something that happened after buying insurance. So, assuming bought the insurance some time ago, that shouldn't apply. As a matter of principle, I never buy insurance from a company I'm traveling with. I want the insurance to be independent of my travel carrier (airline, cruiseline, etc.). I had travel insurance when I had the broken arm, but they got off lightly. Kaiser covers emergency care internationally so I submitted my bills to them and they reimbursed all but the hospital copay I would have had for same treatment at home. United waived the change fee and fare difference. They even gave me the upgrade that was wait listed for my original flight.
  5. If I've added up the times correctly, you are around 6 days post root canal with pain and swelling that is getting worse and worse. I think the time for meek is over. If your cruise is 7 days, it will be almost half over by Marseille and you likely won't feel better right away. It's time to get medical attention on shore even if that means debarking early. If your cruise is longer than 7 days, you can catch back up to it when you feel better.
  6. I'm sorry to hear that you are experiencing this. Is there any possibility of an earlier stop where you could visit an endodontist or even other medical help on land? I think I would worry more about the possible damage that may be going on from an unchecked infection. Possibly intervention other than a new antibiotic and pain medication is called for such as draining the infection. If it is much worse after 36 hours on the new antibiotic, it seems like that isn't doing the trick. Do you have trip insurance? It may be time to prepare to leave the ship to get medical intervention. I broke my arm on an excursion on the penultimate day of a solo cruise (on Star Clipper, not Windstar). These decisions are difficult. We didn't know it was broken and visited a clinic that wrapped it up and I reboarded, but looking back on it, I realize there were indications that it was broken. I debarked the next day and went to a hospital that the ship had arranged. Because it was a compound fracture, I ended up having to get immediate surgery and then stay in the hospital for 3 days for IV antibiotic before heading home. I hope you get seen soon for effective treatment.
  7. That's unusual in my experience. Perhaps it helps that our most recent cruises have been cool weather ones: an unseasonably cool summer New Zealand/Australia and a fall Venice to Rome. Someone in a singlet or shorts would have been pretty cold.
  8. For our Venice to Rome cruise last fall, we spent 5 days in Venice before boarding and 5 more days in Rome after the cruise. Arrive on board with most clothes needing laundry and debark with most clothes clean ready for the rest of the adventure.
  9. They collect passports on most cruises. For my Japan to Alaska cruise they didn't collect them until after the last Japan port because Japan requires you to take the passport ashore (though mine was never checked at those port stops.
  10. If they don't give passports back as a matter of course to all passengers because some might want to do this, you can let reception know your plans and pick the passports up from them the evening before or that morning.
  11. You can get a laundry package for $19 per day per double occupancy cabin ($9.50 if solo). It has to be bought for the full cruise. Star Collectors or cruises 14 days and longer include the package without charge.
  12. In addition to GeezerCouple's suggestions, there is also and Alaska section of the forums. Look in Ports of Call for Alaska. It is best to post questions about a specific area or a specific cruise line in the part of the board dedicated to that topic. You are more likely to get responses there. If you are tendering in the bigger Alaska ports like Juneau, Skagway, Ketchikan, then it probably means that all the docks are occupied - therefore a pretty busy day for the port.
  13. There is a range for dinner. No t-shirts and no shorts. Nice jeans are allowed (not ripped ones). After more than 30 years in the tech industry, we are pretty casual - mostly polos and slacks for dinner for both of us; sometimes nice jeans on a cooler weather cruise. But plenty of people dress up more than that (perhaps more women than men). So if you would be more comfortable being around the average dressiness of others, you might go a step up from that. Depending on season and location, you might want to bring something warmer for dining on deck (BBQ, Candles and, for the Star ships, the Grill).
  14. They did fine with my silk masks when cruises resumed after COVID and my bras have come out fine. Those are the most delicate things I travel with. I did send the masks in in a separate bag with a note on the laundry tag that they were silk.
  15. I don't understand the comments saying the tender stairs are rickety. I find them solid enough. They are metal stairs that can be collapsed and stowed when not in use but they are sturdy. I was on Wind Surf last October/November and we tendered at a couple of ports. Yes, they always do there best to make tendering efficient, but it gets challenging when the sea is a bit rougher. On our last cruise, there was one port where they kept having to pause loading or unloading because of the swell - late October in the Mediterranean. Most of the time it has been smoother than that so it's not common but it happens.
  16. What I like best about Wind Surf is the excellent deck space. That's an advantage over the Star ships which have good deck space but not as much as on Wind Surf. Of course, when it goes under sail with no motors, that's magical - though on many cruises it doesn't have the right conditions to do that. I don't find the cabins on Wind Surf cramped. My husband and I weren't having difficulty running into each other while getting ready to go out. But for a long cruise, it is nice having the sitting area in the room that the Star ships have. So, for 15 days or longer, I'd lean more heavily toward a Star ship. A suite on Wind Surf would also do that, but you still have port holes instead of a window. I slightly prefer the Ocean View rooms on the Star ships over the Balcony rooms, especially since the refit. The balcony windows have frames around the doors that get in the way of the view. I think the old door frames weren't as thick. I like the nice uninterrupted view from the Ocean View windows.
  17. The Bon Voyage email has a subject like: Fwd: Bon Voyage! Here are your travel documents for your upcoming Windstar Cruises trip, Booking <booking number> It has a pdf of the boarding document titled GTB Ticket.pdf You could search your email for it. You don't need it to board, but info in it can be convenient to have because it has the departure terminal in case you are sailing from a city with multiple cruise terminals.
  18. The article says that Wind Surf will be done in two phases, first in 2024 and then in 2026. So you will have the first set of renovations. If it is done the same as for Wind Star's two phases, the first is the public spaces other than the dining rooms and the second is dining rooms and staterooms. We were on Wind Surf in October-November and had no issues with it's current condition.
  19. Actually, the Cruise Collectors (Windstar name for B2B cruises that are sold under a single fare) always include free laundry. Almost all of them are 14 days or longer anyway, but even if one was under 14 days, they have free laundry.
  20. Our full transit was from Colon, Panama to Puerto Caldera on Windstar Wind Star - no dreary ports involved. (Well, Colon itself isn't delightful but we flew into Panama City and had a lovely private transfer with site seeing along the way.) Obviously, flights were needed at both ends. They also have full transits that go between the Caribbean and Puerto Fuentes (Panama City) since that has opened as a embarkation port.
  21. There are actually a lot more than a couple but they are all quite small ships, I think only one is more than 100 passengers. Most are between 40 and 100. It's a different kind of cruise experience. The fares are a lot higher than mass market lines. Alaskan Dream Cruise, UnCruise, and Lindblad Expeditions all offer these cruises. It's on my bucket list to do one.
  22. On a partial transit of the Canal from the East Coast, you miss going through the Culebra Cut - interesting because it's huge and building it was the biggest barrier to completing the Canal. So if one is taking the cruise in part to admire the engineering feat of building the canal, the partial transit misses a major part of that. We did a full transit in 2019 on and then did a partial transit in 2020. We didn't book the cruise for the partial; it was part of a 31-day cruise from Barbados to Cancun that was visiting a lot of ports we hadn't been to. I wouldn't want it for my only Panama Canal cruise but it was fun going through the locks again - especially because the ship, Windstar Wind Surf, has excellent deck space for viewing on decks 4, 5 & 6. Her masts are too high to exit the Pacific side so that trip was the only time she's been in the Canal.
  23. My cruise was a round trip from Phuket, Thailand, 1998 IIRC. Most stops were beaches of National Park islands 🏝. So a very beachy laid back cruise. They don't currently have any Asian itineraries on their schedule. They have cruises in the Mediterranean, Caribbean, and Central America with some of each on the zero solo supplement list.
  24. Some small ship cruise lines have cruises with reduced or zero solo supplements. Star Clippers usually has at least a couple dozen with no solo supplement. From their main page go to specials and look for solo ones. Windstar has a list of cruises with free or reduced solo supplement. Their regular supplement is 75%; the ones on the reduced solo supplement list have a solo supplement between 0 and 50%. In both cases, the deal applies across cabin categories and it isn't just last minute sailings on the list. When I did one on Star Clippers, there weren't any solo gatherings but there wasn't any need for them. There were so many solos amongst the small number of passengers, that you met them without needing a gathering. And the couples socialized fine with the solos. Windstar has started having solo meet-ups; I noticed them in the daily program on a recent cruise but wasn't solo that trip so I don't know if they were well attended. When I've been solo on the line, other passengers were sociable and I didn't feel a need for solo gatherings.
  25. That seems like a good idea for the Barcelona end, but a night in Rome e is much more desirable than a night in Citivecchia so not attractive.
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