lovecruisingtoo

Let's hope that whomever they hire comes from an upscale line and wants WS to be an upscale line. Unfortunately too many of their hires, at all levels, have come from mass marketed lines and they have no idea how to satisfy an upscale clientele.

The problems that the OP experienced somewhat mimic what we experienced on the Legend last August. We have been on WS about 9 times and the August cruise may have been our last on WS. You pay a premium for WS but lately it does not seem that they deliver a premium product.

I know if an airline changes or cancels a flight, they will normally rebook you on ANY flight that has available seats at no charge (even if you booked on points and the "new" flight does not have point availability). However, it sounds like WindStar is picking ancd choosing what cruises they will rebook people on. To me, this is not acceptable. I understand the need to cancel additional cruises after they have found out how extensive the repairs will be. But not accommodating the people on the canceled cruises is, to me, unacceptable.

With this extension of the cancellations, I would be very wary of booking ANY Pride cruise. As others once said, if there is extensive damage to the engine room and engines, they may need to scrap the ship.

OP - you have a TA and this TA should be dealing with all of this for you. You should not be doing this. This is why one uses a TA; they are the ones who earn a commission from your booking. Please see my answer to you where you posted this on the other thread.

The OP may have booked WS through the TA but booked the air directly. In this case, the TA did not earn anything on the air nor would they have direct access to any of the air cost information.

You can always file a small claims action. Do not need a lawyer and WS can not bring a lawyer (at least in the state of Calif.).

Hi Everyone!

 

Hubby and I will be on Seadream1, Cannes to Rome! So excited!

We will be staying in Cannes for three days prior to boarding Seadream.

Can anyone give us 3 of your best Hotel choices please!?

 

Also! We are thinking of renting a car. Good or bad idea for july in terms of traffic and getting around.

 

Thank you! 😊

Kathy.

Renting a car in Cannes is a great idea. Not cheap to park but well worth it. By having a car you are able to get out and see the local area (especially Grasse, Juan les Pins, Eze etc.). You will have some traffic in the city but once you are out of the city traffic should be fine.

As for hotels, any of the large hotels on the beach are great.

Possibly booked for charters?

Check the WS price without the hotel room. You may be able to book the same hotel for a significantly lower price.

The 3 "new" ships do have elevators however if they tender you might have an issue getting on or off the tender. The sailing ships do not have elevators so you would need to deal with the stairs between decks as well as getting on or off the tenders. If you are looking at the sailing ships you should look at the deck plans to see where the meals are served etc so you can judge how many stairs you will need to climb.

Here's a Star Legend review I posted on the Q&A thread with Windstar CEO. I don't understand the negative reviews of the Star Legend. That certainly wasn't the experience we enjoyed! Go for it -- book a Windstar powered yacht cruise. :)

 

We have taken 8 or 9 Windstar cruises and based on prior cruises have certain expectations for Windstar. We were on the Reykjavik to Copenhagen cruise and were very disappointed. Best example was the "fresh" fish that was served one night. The "fresh" halibut was VERY dry. We, along with some other cruisers, asked the chef what happened with the halibut. The chef said that he ALWAYS overcooks fresh fish because when you buy fresh fish overseas it does not have the quality controls that fresh fish in the US does. One restaurant owner even asked if they could sign a "waiver" in order to have the fish cooked properly. The answer was a resounding NO. Other nights in the main dining room we had to wait over 20 minutes to get served bread and butter and to have the server ask if we had questions about the menu.

Another negative thing was that the bars were not staffed much of the time. An example was the Star Bar and Yacht Club shared the same, single person, staff. This meant that if the person was tending bar, there was no one in the Yacht Club.

This is not the type of service that we were used to having on Windstar. It could be that the problems are Legend specific due to the staff that they hired for this ship. I know at least some of the senior staff came from "mass market" ships. Do hope that Windstar takes action to improve the service quality on the Legend. But in the meantime, we will be looking at other lines for our future cruises.

Hope this helps you understand why you are seeing so many negative reviews of the Legend.

Certainly a beautifully written review. We were recently on the Windsurf and found a well maintained ship and a very accessible captain who spent hours talking to us and other passengers. Does anyone know who the current Legend captain is?

Capt. James Griffiths

We are thinking about booking this next year with Windstar. For anyone who did the cruise this past year' date=' what is your review? I know the ports are different - or at least some of them. I am a little disappointed that they are not offering the Flam Railway next year.[/quote']

 

We were on the cruise and the ports themselves were very good. One thing to be aware of is that the ship's internet will not connect much of the time because you will be in the fjords and the spacecraft signal is blocked by the mountains.

 

As for a full review, if you look at the Legend reviews you will see a couple reviews of this cruise. I do hope that Windstar solves some of its staffing and quality problems before your cruise.

We were on the same cruise as "luvtocruise123" (who posted a review of the cruise) and agree with the vast majority of his comments. We have also been on 8 Windstar cruises and have always loved Windstar - in fact we have previously just made reservations on Windstar and not looked at other cruise lines. We do believe that Windstar has had an issue with doubling the number of ships and keeping the same quality as prior years. It appears they hired many people from the "mass market" lines and that has caused the service and food to take a step down - at least on the new ships. What is acceptable on a mass market ship is not the standard that most Windstar alumni are used to. It very well could be that the small ships have the great service and food as prior years and that Windstar is just having an issue with the new ships. All I know is that the service and food on the Legend was not up to the standards of prior years. I would rate the Legend as 3 stars rather than the 4 stars that we previously considered Windstar to be. Is it new staff or a new management philosophy that is causing the issue? No one knows and time will tell if Windstar management takes the comments of alumni to heart and does something to improve the situation.

I really do hope Windstar can get their act together and provide the quality of food and service that they provided previously. As "luvtocruise123" said, we will be considering other cruise lines in the future rather than just looking at Windstar.

On our cruise, the 5% discount for booking within 60 days was only mentioned at the last "port talk". If you were not at that talk, or got to the talk late, you did not hear about it.

I think this expansion has put a lot of strain on Windstar which is causing a lot of inconsistencies and poor service.

sb44, I would send an email to both Windstar customer service and to Hans Berkholz (hans.birkholz@windstarcruises.com) expressing your frustration. Windstar relies on its alumni for a significant percentage of its bookings. Something like this will add to the list of Windstar negatives (just look at the Legend reviews).

PPT has a luggage storage facility which is inexpensive. May be best to store your luggage there and pick it up before going to the ship.

Room service is basically always available. Don't worry, you will not go hungry.

 

In this particular case with Windstar and the tenders, I would never have guessed that a small ship such as Star Breeze would have itineraries where most POC are tendered.

Tendering is one of the nice things about Windstar. There is normally not a long line to get on the tender. In addition, when they tender they are, for the most part, able to put down the sports deck. If you are docked, they normally can not do that.

In the future, you might want to put a more descriptive title on your post. Just saying "Is there a way" does not motivate people to look at, and respond to your question.

That being said, just call WindStar.

Lobes1, It appears that you have a number of Crystal cruises booked. From your prior posts, it appears that you had decided, prior to this cruise that Windstar was not for you and you enjoyed Crystal much more. Windstar and Crystal do not compete with each other - the each appeal to different crowds.

I had read that the "new" ships would have a "counter current" pool. Did not know where they were going to put it. Looks nice from the picture.

Could be a couple of issues working here. First, Windstar is needing to staff 3 new ships - basically doubling the number of staff members. This is being done in a very short period of time. Whenever you need to increase staff to that extent, it will take time to sort out the "good" staff from the one's that just want a job and are not up to Windstar standards.

Second, I see that you have already booked 5 Crystal cruises. Since you have booked that many Crystal cruises (and none on Windstar), maybe you had already come to that conclusion before the cruise? Windstar is not in the same category as Crystal.

LTC Dan, I hope it was the cable that died and not the cat!

i use a web site that you put your cruise and date into. Then online travel agents come back with the quotes. I have done this for the last 5 years and it allways the same one thar gives me the best quote. They have allways been very good to me. But I will still use the same web site to get the different quotes but I

will still use the usual agency unless some beats them by a fair amount

I think we probably use the same agency. They are great and really worked with me and Windstar when Windstar raised the price before I booked.

We also book everything ourselves. We do the research and know what cruise and cabin category that we want. We use FF miles for air and hotel points for our stays. Based on this, we always book early. Have found on online agency that gives very good discounts on Windstar cruises. Just to double check our agents prices, we do tend to compete the price so we know we are getting the best price. Only once did we get into a minor situation where a fuller service agency would have been a benefit. That was when there was a taxi strike in Athens. The strike should have been over by the time we got to Athens but the strike was extended at the last minute. We managed to work through it by directly contacting Windstar and adding ground transportation at the last minute.

Some people need hand holding to coordinate their reservations and for those people a full service agency is probably the best.