Star Breeze Reno delayed therefore Feb 2020 sailings cancelled

[CanadianKate]

5 minutes ago, dandee2 said:

Speculating about the cause will not answer people inquiries about refunds, itinerary changes, etc. WS probably knows by now that this issue is now talked about publicly. Give them a few days to come up with an "official" explanation instead of us getting bits and bites of simili-answer by TA's or unofficial channel.

 

It won't take that long. My travel agent said last night a formal statement would be coming out today. Her call late last evening was to give me a heads up so I didn't hear about it in the press and that extra time helped me recover a winter vacation. 

[dandee2]

If it is what I think, many actors are involved in this and probably none of them can openly discuss it at this time. It is what it is. I'm sorry for your travel plan and $$ involved (I would be p..d too)

I would not fear travelling with WS if the price is right (me Canadian talking LOL )

Dan

[milepig]

18 minutes ago, dandee2 said:

Speculating about the cause will not answer people inquiries about refunds, itinerary changes, etc. WS probably knows by now that this issue is now talked about publicly. Give them a few days to come up with an "official" explanation instead of us getting bits and bites of simili-answer by TA's or unofficial channel.

 

The LINK I posted above is not speculation - it's an actual news report that I thought would be of interest.

[CanadianKate]

13 minutes ago, dandee2 said:

I would not fear travelling with WS if the price is right (me Canadian talking LOL )

Dan

 

I'll come out of this roughly even assuming all non-refundable are covered, which they should be since I rebooked. 

So aside from leaving 3 weeks earlier on our trip, this is going to work for us. Again, between an early heads-up from the TA and www.windstarwizard.com I was able to recover with just about 5 hours of lost sleep and 8 hours of planning time as my cost. That's not bad at all. 

[avalon1025]

The news is correct, its asbestos related.  On my call with Windstar today there was very little new news other than "read the email".   I feel sorry for this independent cruise line, but took risky to book 2020 on any of these motor ships.   Oh, and their response on reimbursing for insurance was "too bad", luckily the insurance carrier is open to moving or refunding based on the cancellation

Edited December 20, 2019 by avalon1025

[dandee2]

30 minutes ago, milepig said:

 

The LINK I posted above is not speculation - it's an actual news report that I thought would be of interest.

 I missed your post !!! I purposly did not included the news in my posts.

I knew (and it was known since early Nov.) They had to stop work on the ship (don't know how long), then reach out to the proper italian gov dealing with asbestos, get contractor, then probably groups who will/are representing workers who were involved in the construction of the 3 ships, then reach out to the on-board crew to see if anyone had been daffected. Big headache. I'm sure work had stopped for a long time until this was/is sorted out. 

https://palermo.gds.it/articoli/cronaca/2019/11/06/la-star-breeze-a-palermo-trovato-amianto-sulla-nave-da-crociera-38ebde14-1673-46ac-bda0-bff247d9cc80/

Edited December 20, 2019 by dandee2

[LewiLewi]

1 hour ago, CanadianKate said:

 

Sorry about that! I was on the phone for about an hour. Approximately 15 - 20 minute wait to get off hold and then a wonderful customer service experience with J. 

 

I'm now booked on the Legend from San Juan to Lisbon so I'll get my Trans-Atlantic although it will be 14 hours shorter (eastbound has 23 hour days vs 25 hour days on when westbound), on the old ship, and in a comparable cabin but with an obstructed view. That downside is offset by a real balcony. My booking class on the Breeze doesn't exist on the old ships but this cabin is comparable and they are applying the cancelled cruise fare as payment in full (quite the price adjustment compared to rack rate.)

 

I've cancelled the second cruise booked (Barcelona to Lisbon) and the credit is being applied to my credit card fairly quickly. I could have had a cheque but she said the credit card refund would be about a week faster. 

 

I still have to book my flights (and the second half of the vacation which will now take place on land.) And rebook medical appointments and haircuts, but we are well into recovery mode now. 

 

My travel agent will handle the recovery on non-refundable expenses in January. In the meantime, I'm cancelling what I can from here but the biggest ticket item will be the trip insurance. 

 

A huge thank you from me to the Cruise Critic member who created WindstarWizard.com. I could not have had such a successful outcome without your website. I knew exactly what I wanted, right down to which cabin, and your information was accurate so the rep was able to quickly make the booking for me. 

 

We are also booked on the Legend from San Juan to Lisbon, 25 days, and planned to tour Portugal and then take the Breeze home to Miami. Plans have changed. We will still sail on the Legend and tour Portugal, but will have to fly home. Problem is my husband has a really bad back and an economy flight from Portugal will be 9  1/2 hours of torture for him. Don’t know what else to do.

 

[CanadianKate]

24 minutes ago, dandee2 said:

https://palermo.gds.it/articoli/cronaca/2019/11/06/la-star-breeze-a-palermo-trovato-amianto-sulla-nave-da-crociera-38ebde14-1673-46ac-bda0-bff247d9cc80/

 

Nov 6. My agent was told on November 16 or 17 everything was on schedule. 

 

That's a deliberate mistruth. They either deliberately didn't tell their agents that there would likely be delays OR they did and instructed the agents to lie when asked. 

 

Either way, their compensation offer is looking less and less fair. They took my money  for full payment while knowing my trip would not happen.

[minidonuts85]

I think at this point we are going to wait it out until the decision deadline (1/17) and see what else happens between now and then. Luckily the only money we have invested in this so far is the deposit.

 

 

[dandee2]

12 minutes ago, CanadianKate said:

 

Nov 6. My agent was told on November 16 or 17 everything was on schedule. 

 

That's a deliberate mistruth. They either deliberately didn't tell their agents that there would likely be delays OR they did and instructed the agents to lie when asked. 

 

Either way, their compensation offer is looking less and less fair. They took my money  for full payment while knowing my trip would not happen.

Maybe they where told otherwise by the contractor. If so, they did not lie. There is always some sort of scheduled delays built into the construction timeline in case of unexpected issue. I think they needed a firm completion date before cancelling. 

[Host Jazzbeau]

If you aren’t claiming against the Trip Insurance, you should be able to move the policy to another trip. 

[Kiwi Brenda]

@CanadianKate thanks for your message. We leave NZ on 8 May and head to Toronto for a few days before a land tour of Canada ending Vancouver 23/05, Amtrak Cascades to Seattle for 3 nights, fly to Anchorage 26/05, train to Seward 27/05 for our now cancelled cruise which ended in Vancouver with 2 extra nights until we fly home 8th June. We too tried to find a replacement cruise that suits but couldn’t keep my eyes open and didn’t sleep well. Off to our travel agent this morning for help but fear we will lose a lot of money on this once in a lifetime trip and it’s certainly killed off my excitement! Glad you’ve found an alternative and wonderful that you love our little corner of the world 

[milepig]

16 minutes ago, Kiwi Brenda said:

@CanadianKate thanks for your message. We leave NZ on 8 May and head to Toronto for a few days before a land tour of Canada ending Vancouver 23/05, Amtrak Cascades to Seattle for 3 nights, fly to Anchorage 26/05, train to Seward 27/05 for our now cancelled cruise which ended in Vancouver with 2 extra nights until we fly home 8th June. We too tried to find a replacement cruise that suits but couldn’t keep my eyes open and didn’t sleep well. Off to our travel agent this morning for help but fear we will lose a lot of money on this once in a lifetime trip and it’s certainly killed off my excitement! Glad you’ve found an alternative and wonderful that you love our little corner of the world 

 

We're in the midst or rejiggering a similar itin but later in June. I had a good call with my TA this noon and  we have a plan a for an itin on a different cruise line that works withing the constraints of our original dates and then hopefully using option 1 to rebook another WS later, but that's a bit outside the letter of the terms, so we're waiting to hear, and I'll catch you all up when things are finalized.

 

Meanwhile, our TA pointed out a problem with the airfare reimbursement - WS needs both your old and new booking details by January 17th,  so they can calculate the difference, but the offer is good until the end of 2021 and you can only book airfare 331 days out. Oops.

[CanadianKate]

5 hours ago, milepig said:

Meanwhile, our TA pointed out a problem with the airfare reimbursement - WS needs both your old and new booking details by January 17th,  so they can calculate the difference, but the offer is good until the end of 2021 and you can only book airfare 331 days out. Oops.

 

Good catch. 

 

It took me a minute to realize what your problem is. You are worried flights will be more in 2021 than what you've already booked for 2020. 

 

I didn't think of that. 

 

My new airline bookings will be my responsibility. It turns out to be roughly the same to get to the beginning of the cruise as it was to get home from the end before. The end of the cruise I won't be able to get home on reward miles (rewards are gone now) but I found a way home that isn't a lot more money than the taxes were on my reward flight to the beginning of the cruise. This flight is not refundable so if they pull the same cancellation on my rebooked cruise, they'll end up owing me more money. 

 

 

[milepig]

4 minutes ago, CanadianKate said:

 

Good catch. 

 

It took me a minute to realize what your problem is. You are worried flights will be more in 2021 than what you've already booked for 2020. 

 

I didn't think of that. 

 

My new airline bookings will be my responsibility. It turns out to be roughly the same to get to the beginning of the cruise as it was to get home from the end before. The end of the cruise I won't be able to get home on reward miles (rewards are gone now) but I found a way home that isn't a lot more money than the taxes were on my reward flight to the beginning of the cruise. This flight is not refundable so if they pull the same cancellation on my rebooked cruise, they'll end up owing me more money. 

 

 

Not quite. You need to turn in your old and new airfare receipts by 1/17/20. But you can only book air  331 days out. The rebooking can be done for itins  through 2021 but by 1/17/20 you can only book airfare for dates through more or less the end of 2020, meaning you can’t ask for the airfare credit for any cruise during 2021. 

[ridethetide]

10 minutes ago, milepig said:

Not quite. You need to turn in your old and new airfare receipts by 1/17/20. But you can only book air  331 days out. The rebooking can be done for itins  through 2021 but by 1/17/20 you can only book airfare for dates through more or less the end of 2020, meaning you can’t ask for the airfare credit for any cruise during 2021. 

Option 1 that WS offers states that they will refund travel in full.  You do not need to have a rebooked airfare.  They are not comparing new and old airfares.  They are simply fully refunding the old airfare.  That is the way it was explained to my TA.

[milepig]

1 minute ago, ridethetide said:

Option 1 that WS offers states that they will refund travel in full.  You do not need to have a rebooked airfare.  They are not comparing new and old airfares.  They are simply fully refunding the old airfare.  That is the way it was explained to my TA.

Hmmm. That’s not what my TA said.

[Kiwi Brenda]

So we have found three (more expensive) options for cruises within our limited time window - Silverseas, Lindblad or Uncruise. Any thoughts?

[CanadianKate]

That's part of the reason I rebooked was to make sure all expenses were covered in full. I get my non-refundable flights covered in full as well as the cancellation fee on my other flights. And my flight cities are different so there's no comparison of flights. One was business class to Europe, the other is economy to the US. 

 

In my case, though, I had two cruises cancelled so I got the best of both worlds. The rebooking covered all expenses but I'll get money back from 1/3 of the planned holiday so can use that to cover a different sort of holiday at the end of the cruise. Plus one 10% FCC and one 20% FCC.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 21, 2019 by CanadianKate

[milepig]

47 minutes ago, ridethetide said:

Option 1 that WS offers states that they will refund travel in full.  You do not need to have a rebooked airfare.  They are not comparing new and old airfares.  They are simply fully refunding the old airfare.  That is the way it was explained to my TA.

let me try again. Generally they’ll want to see what the true cost to you is. They normally want to see the cost of canceling.  Even non-refundable tickets can be changed with a relatively modest change fee and sometimes the new flight costs less. So if you paid $1500 and the change fee is $200 and the new flight is $1300 they’d owe you nothing. This is how it’s always worked for me in the past. 

[milepig]

11 minutes ago, Kiwi Brenda said:

So we have found three (more expensive) options for cruises within our limited time window - Silverseas, Lindblad or Uncruise. Any thoughts?

we have a similar situation. We went with Silversea. When we factored in all the inclusions that we were paying WS for and the various Silversea incentives we’ll come out almost even and we’ll get to see how the other half lives. But the real reason was that the Silversea fit within our original dates. Holland America did as well but it made my stomach hurt. 

[new_cruiser]

3 hours ago, milepig said:

Hmmm. That’s not what my TA said.

It's possible that the options are different booking from different countries (e.g. Canada & US).

[new_cruiser]

3 hours ago, Kiwi Brenda said:

So we have found three (more expensive) options for cruises within our limited time window - Silverseas, Lindblad or Uncruise. Any thoughts?

If it was me, I'd do Lindblad or Uncruise. Silversea will be more luxury including large rooms, but bigger ship with more passengers and more formal evening dress requirements. Lindblad and Uncruise are small ships, very informal,  with naturalists and lots of included activities (e.g, kayaks, hikes) - more of an adventure with Alaska up-close in small ports & wilderness areas, but the cabins are a lot smaller than what you would have had on Windstar. I'd sacrifice cabin size for the small expedition ship experience.

 

Have you checked Crystal? We did an Alaska cruise with them before Windstar was going there. The fare was less than Windstar Alaska prices. It's a bigger ship so not my ideal, but not huge ~1000 passengers. We enjoyed the trip and cost was a lot less than Lindblad & UnCruise.

[CanadianKate]

I've done Silversea Alaska on the Shadow and we have over 120 days on Silversea.

 

If this is a family vacation, don't do Silversea. While there were kids on our Alaskan cruise, they are not the norm on Silversea. 

 

Silversea has open seating for dinner which the number one 'amenity' as far as I'm concerned and why I was thrilled to book on Windstar which also offers open seating. We really love dining over long meals with tables full of really interesting people.

 

We are international travelers and so while our wealth doesn't compare to SS clientele, our life experiences do and we love meeting people so it works for us. There are two times that stick out as illustrating the difference between us and the others: a debate at dinner over which automatic gates across driveways work best in the snow (they thought we'd know, being Canadian!) and another debate over which is better, Mercedes or BMW (we drive a Prius and we only own one car.) On the other hand we've made ongoing friendships with many of the people we've met on the ship, including staying in their homes when in their cities for work. 

 

The ships were more formal than any other part of our lives (I haven't been on for over 5 years and know they are becoming less formal.) We have a closet of gowns and tuxes for our cruises and when we sailed on Crystal, noted it was much less formal. Our river cruise (using Tauck) was even less formal and we were out of place there.  Building time into the day to get dressed for dinner is something many people don't like. We work from home, work in person with others only internationally so don't socialize much during our regular lives, don't dine (honestly, we eat, we don't dine), we don't drink alcohol, and we don't do fancy stuff like galas. Our charity is literally hands on working with those in need, not writing cheques.  So life on Silversea is a complete break from our normal lives which makes it more of a holiday for us. It would be hell for others.  

 

Holland America was wonderful the only time we took them. Our first cruise was on Norwegian and we swore off cruising forever because it was so terrible when stuff went wrong (and it did.) We only returned to try another cruise because of work (a conference held on a HA ship) and after 10 days, I would have signed up to go for another 10 days immediately. The same challenges were present on that cruise as on the Norwegian one, but the way the HA handled them made all the difference. When we start cruising with our grandchildren, we'll try HA first. 

 

[CanadianKate]

I have to chuckle when Windstar regulars talk about 'big' ships. (And worrying about how the atmosphere of the ship will change when the Stars are stretched to 300 people.) 

I'm used to SS, so 300 to 700. The ships seem small when I think of the amenities offered on the big lines. They seem tiny when next to one of the big ships in port!

 

On the other hand, for the last segment of circumnavigating the world, we had to use Crystal. Still a 'small' ship (about 1000) but way more amenities. Lots of sea days so we loved having all the entertainment, a book club, a guest choir, and other really fun activities. 

 

What I missed, and why I won't go back, is the feeling of being on a ship. I love watching us come into port, standing over the maneuvering bridge listening to the pilot and captain talk as we come into port. I love watching the 'pilot jump' as they come onto the ship (I'm the daughter of a sea captain.) I love the feel of the ocean. 

 

On Silversea those things, which I suspect you all love about Windstar, are still present. And smaller ships allow you to get to know many people better, especially because of the open dining. But don't worry, you'll find these things on 'large' ships, as long as you can stay under 700 passengers.