Initial Observations of Expanded Breeze

[Barrycat]

We are now 12 days in to an extended cruise on the Breeze from Auckland to Bali and I wanted to share some initial impressions of the expanded ship considering that we have sailed on all Windstar ships excluding the Surf.

 

We like: 

The redone suites especially the bathrooms. I’m not wild about the bed next to window placement but my wife is so there. The new in room audio visual system is terrific, loads of information and entertainment.

The new Star Grill is a good addition. I don’t see it so much as a grilling speciality venue but rather just another restaurant.

As always, the staff is terrific and working harder than ever.

The food in Amphora is consistently good, not great, good.

We like the new pool setup, and the spa facilities are great, especially the free ones.

 

What we don’t like:

This ship is full, apparently every cabin is booked so these may be negatives specific to this situation.

We have 100 additional passengers as a result of the stretching however The Yacht Club, the Lounge and the Compass Rose are no larger than they were. Amphora is minimally larger as is The Veranda. Despite the new dining venues, Amphora and The Veranda are much tighter than they were and the staff seems perpetually rushed and rattled in both.

We were not thrilled with the environment of the Spanish restaurant. It had kind of a contrived layout probably because it was shoved in to the space of the old shop. We thought the food was good.

Not sure if the crew guest ratio has changed or the fact that the crew has 100 new faces to remember, maybe both, but my wife feels that the crew is a bit less likely to greet you by name than in the past. Still great but maybe a bit less smiley.

 

Still glad we are on board and enjoying the experience but we may pay more attention to how many fellow passengers are booked before we make the final payment in the future, and… there are always the sailing ships.

[marinaro44]

My reaction to the expanded Pride, as well.  Public rooms are crowded when more than 250 passengers are onboard.  Seating in Veranda can be hard to get at breakfast and lunch.

[schmidlapp]

We were on the legend over new year's,  Miami to Panama. 

160+ passengers. No venues seemed crowded ever. Bar staff was over the top excellent. Most of the wait staff was excellent as well. Was not impressed with Star Grill. When they were open, much of the bbq was overcooked and dried out. They were rarely open for dinner. 

Cuadro was nice for 1 night.

We had good food in Candles, ate there 3 times.  Amphora was mostly very good, however many items came out barely warm, sometimes cold. We really enjoyed deck bbq.

Past cruises the chef was everywhere checking on everything. Chef was rarely seen on this cruise. Consensus from many other past passengers was food not as good as on previous trips.

[bebtwice]

We will be on Legend in a couple of weeks - our first Windstar cruise. The comments about crew and food are consistent with what we have read from other passengers on other cruise lines and what we experienced on our one cruise in April, which is the only cruise that we did in 2022 that was with the same cruise line as pre-Covid. Seems like getting and keeping crew has been a problem and of course the world-wide supply chain issues have affected cruise lines' ability to get supplies, especially certain foods. Heck, every time I go to the supermarket, there's items I can't get. Supplying a ship for the length of a cruise has got to be difficult, especially on itineraries where you don't stop at large ports. 

[3kidslater]

Our experience on the Pride this past October was pretty much the same as described by Barrycat.

I felt there was a shortage of staff, but it was obvious there was also not quite enough room in the dining venues. Short of having our TA contact WS to see how full a specific cruise is, how can we find out how booked a specific cruise is? 

[r&rd]

We had the same experience on the Breeze earlier this year, did not have that experience on the Legend for some reason. We thought the staffing was more than adequate. We will be going back on the Legend in a few week and did call to see how full the sailing was. We were told it is about 60% but capped at 80% which I thought was interesting. I have only been able to get numbers by calling. Occasionally the chat feature will give me that information as well but those are the less trained people who answer simple questions but then tell you to call when it is more complicated. Don’t know that I trust their estimates as much.

[Misty Morning]

The Yachts are really more geared to warm weather cruising.  That's why I am reluctant to take any of these ships anywhere cold (Scandinavia, Iceland. New England, Alaska).  There are  definitely space issues if you can't use the outdoor decks. We were on the Pride for 16 fays in November (in the Carribbean).  The first 9 days there were 270 people, the second week 160.  Yes is was busier the first leg especially around the Star Bar as it rained quite a bit in the first few days but never really had to wait for dinner (we're late diners, never before 8pm) nor breakfast (always had a table outside) and felt the staff was always on top of things.  Understand the chef from Star Pride is now on the Legend to train kitchen crew.  We felt the food on the Pride was excellent for the 16 days and everyone in our group (6 of us) agreed the food was as good as it was before covid