Modernization of Breeze, Pride & Star

[DCCruiser57]

Windstar is spending $256 million to stretch and modernize these ships.  See the following article.

 

https://www.cruiseindustrynews.com/cruise-news/19952-windstar-to-stretch-three-ships-in-250-million-refurbishment.html

[milepig]

There’s a long thread on this already, but CC indexing is so profoundly broken that I can’t find it. 

[Host Jazzbeau]

It's Star Breeze, Star Legend, and Star Pride.

 

Here is the Cruise Critic article from November 2018 announcing it:

Windstar to Stretch and Refurbish Its Star-Class Cruise Ships

[Doh15]

New email says the new specialty restaurant will be “Cuadro 44”— eclectic Spanish from Anthony Sasso. 

[Redtravel]

Will Cuadro 44 be on all Windstar ships?  

[ridethetide]

21 minutes ago, Redtravel said:

Will Cuadro 44 be on all Windstar ships?  

All of the motor yachts after stretching will have it.

[Redtravel]

Wondering if the sailing ships will get it too?

[bplazo]

I am not excited about extending the ship.  I like the experience of smaller ships.

 

[milepig]

Has anyone found a web page where regular updates, consturction pics, etc. are being posted? I can't find much beyond the opening ceremonies. I think things maybe don't really start until October, but I'm not sure where I saw that.

[dandee2]

On 7/28/2019 at 9:08 AM, Doh15 said:

New email says the new specialty restaurant will be “Cuadro 44”— eclectic Spanish from Anthony Sasso. 

Windstar has a Twitter poll today.

 

Windstar Cruises

We just announced a brand new Cuadro 44 Restaurant by Anthony Sasso opening its doors on Star Breeze, Star Legend & Star Pride in 2020. Our 3 small ships will have 3 restaurants, one Café, 2 bars in addition to 24-hour room service. Do you think we should open another restaurant?

[Host Jazzbeau]

17 minutes ago, dandee2 said:

Windstar has a Twitter poll today.

 

Windstar Cruises

We just announced a brand new Cuadro 44 Restaurant by Anthony Sasso opening its doors on Star Breeze, Star Legend & Star Pride in 2020. Our 3 small ships will have 3 restaurants, one Café, 2 bars in addition to 24-hour room service. Do you think we should open another restaurant?

 

You didn't mention that the two possible answers are:  (a) Yes and (b) Yeeees

 

Do you think they're trying to tell us something? 

[ducklite]

While the idea is appealing, do we really want o lose more public space to another restaurant?  Or worse yet, do we want to end up like some of the big mass market ships where reservations are needed in an advance scrum for every restaurant because seating is so limited at each?  I guess I'm saying that we need to be careful what we wish for, because sometimes great things have unintended negative consequences.

[milepig]

3 hours ago, ducklite said:

While the idea is appealing, do we really want o lose more public space to another restaurant?  Or worse yet, do we want to end up like some of the big mass market ships where reservations are needed in an advance scrum for every restaurant because seating is so limited at each?  I guess I'm saying that we need to be careful what we wish for, because sometimes great things have unintended negative consequences.

 

Unless you're talking about expanding this to the sailed ships, the intention to open a new dining space on the expanded triplets was pretty much known from the beginning, and it won't really take space "away" from anything as they'll be building out all the new space they have to work with. With a bunch more pax they'll likely need this restaurant in any case, and the Surf already has three (besides Veranda.)

[Del Rio]

On 8/7/2019 at 7:50 AM, milepig said:

Has anyone found a web page where regular updates, consturction pics, etc. are being posted? I can't find much beyond the opening ceremonies. I think things maybe don't really start until October, but I'm not sure where I saw that.

Just got off the Star Legend on Friday. (review to come later, but we already miss the ship and crew).  Asked this exact question: As I now understand it, once the Star Breeze work gets started in October there will be a webcam for a lot of the construction.  Owen Taylor (the onboard sales rep for new bookings) said there will likely be a time-lapse of the overall work on each ship, available after the re-launch.

 

I would love to see a daily time-lapse. But I am a Star class groupie.

[milepig]

7 minutes ago, Del Rio said:

Just got off the Star Legend on Friday. (review to come later, but we already miss the ship and crew).  Asked this exact question: As I now understand it, once the Star Breeze work gets started in October there will be a webcam for a lot of the construction.  Owen Taylor (the onboard sales rep for new bookings) said there will likely be a time-lapse of the overall work on each ship, available after the re-launch.

 

I would love to see a daily time-lapse. But I am a Star class groupie.

 

You had an onboard sales rep for new bookings? I haven’t seen one of those in years!

[Del Rio]

3 hours ago, milepig said:

 

You had an onboard sales rep for new bookings? I haven’t seen one of those in years!

I believe Windstar started doing this last Fall.  Reduced deposit, extra discount off current fare, onboard credit for new booking, 100% refundable deposit until final payment, and you can move the new booking to another cruise date; if you change your mind about your selection.

The rep had people waiting to talk with him all the time, especially during the last 3 days of the sailing.

[ducklite]

9 hours ago, Del Rio said:

I believe Windstar started doing this last Fall.  Reduced deposit, extra discount off current fare, onboard credit for new booking, 100% refundable deposit until final payment, and you can move the new booking to another cruise date; if you change your mind about your selection.

The rep had people waiting to talk with him all the time, especially during the last 3 days of the sailing.

 

This is very interesting.  We really hope that they will have the Baltic schedules for 2022 out when we sail in September 2020, as we are ready to book that as soon as it comes out--as long as we can get the extra discounts.  Otherwise we'll probably hold off on that and book Nat Geo/Linblad for Galapagos and Macchu Pichu and wait until 2024 or 2025 for the Baltics.

[new_cruiser]

11 hours ago, Del Rio said:

I believe Windstar started doing this last Fall.  Reduced deposit, extra discount off current fare, onboard credit for new booking, 100% refundable deposit until final payment, and you can move the new booking to another cruise date; if you change your mind about your selection.

The rep had people waiting to talk with him all the time, especially during the last 3 days of the sailing.

Maybe only on the larger ships? They had announced last year that they were going to start doing it, but there wasn't on on our Wind Star sailing this January.

 

We got the Welcome Home discount (5%) by booking a cruise shortly after we returned from the January cruise.

[Strenz]

We had rep on with us on the early January cruise I asked about a cruise going to Malta on the Surf in 2020. She said she did not know of any but would call Seattle and they said there was none and they were not going in 2020. I was heart broken because I could not go this year. Voila after the 60 day reservation deadline for my cruise, the cruise appeared. I reserved it but did not get the extra 5% off. Aggravated but I really want to go on this cruise and have for years and I wanted the sailing ship. Over the years typical of  Seattle wrong info. Happy we are going would have appreciated the extra 5% off because it is expensive.

[Ski Mom 2]

There was a rep on board Wind Surf last September helping folks book their next cruise. Our friends were looking at Asia at the time. I'm sorry I can't remember his name but he was very fun and outgoing. If we had known what our next trip would have been at the time we would have booked on board for the extra savings.

[Del Rio]

27 minutes ago, Ski Mom 2 said:

There was a rep on board Wind Surf last September helping folks book their next cruise. Our friends were looking at Asia at the time. I'm sorry I can't remember his name but he was very fun and outgoing. If we had known what our next trip would have been at the time we would have booked on board for the extra savings.

My understanding from the rep on Star Legend was that you can book with the discount for any sailing, then move the deposit to another sailing if you change your mind.  AND if you decide to just cancel, you will get 100% of your deposit refunded (up until time of final payment).

[Redtravel]

On 8/7/2019 at 9:41 AM, bplazo said:

I am not excited about extending the ship.  I like the experience of smaller ships.

 

I love the ships with 210 guests. I hope that the expanded ships are nice. As soon as we learned that the ships were increasing size, we booked 4 cruises on the yachts before the change. 

[bplazo]

23 hours ago, Redtravel said:

I love the ships with 210 guests. I hope that the expanded ships are nice. As soon as we learned that the ships were increasing size, we booked 4 cruises on the yachts before the change. 

We will not cruise with them again if they increase passenger capacity.  We did Star Clippers and they held only 100 passengers.

[milepig]

19 minutes ago, bplazo said:

We will not cruise with them again if they increase passenger capacity.  We did Star Clippers and they held only 100 passengers.

Well. They are so that ship has sailed (so to speak). So we’ll give them a chance. The triplets will still be smaller than the surf. 

[Redtravel]

We plan to wait and see how the expanded ships are reviewed. There are so many factors that need to work in order to make the expanded ship a success. I am anxious to see the new ships.