I Took My Most Expensive Cruise… It Wasn’t Right for Me (Windstar’s Star Pride)

I’ve just disembarked a cruise where I spent 4 days on a luxury yacht.

We sailed out from central London in the middle of the night, and even though I’ve been cruising since I was 11 years old, this cruise was very different to anything I’d experienced before. 

I saw and did things I never normally do on a cruise and tried my best to understand why this cruise cost so much more than the others I’ve taken.

At the start, I wasn’t sure if a cruise on a ship this small would be for me; I didn’t know if there would be much entertainment; I didn’t know how dining worked; and I didn’t know if I’d like cruising on a cruise ship built in 1988.

By the end, I knew my answer and spoiler alert: the answer is no, I don’t think it’s for me necessarily. 

I’ve been curious about small ship luxury cruises for a long time, and when I saw a short itinerary that sailed under Tower Bridge in London, I knew that I had to give it a go.

Sailing out of central London is something that I’ve always wanted to do, and the short cruise price was doable.

Don’t get me wrong, it was not fun to pay 3 times what I’d normally pay per night, but I hoped that  there would be some perks of cruising on a small ship like this that would make it worth it.

It was described as a “luxury yacht” after all! 

I knew that this ship was old by cruise ship standards, but that she had been cut in half and stretched in 2021.

I wondered if I’d be able to see where that happened when I was inside, and I wanted to know why they did it. That can’t have been cheap to do. 

When I was waiting to board the ship, I could see where they added the new section.

The ship, which is Windstar’s Star Pride, looked big in the Thames, but she’s 18 times smaller than the world’s biggest cruise ship.

If you can imagine 18 of these ships stuck together, that’s how big cruise ships can be. I was really excited to see how different this tiny ship was. 

Embarkation was a little strange but it was well organised.

Our ship was docked alongside HMS Belfast, which is a warship turned museum.

We couldn’t walk through HMS Belfast to board, we had to go to the other side of the Thames to get a boat across.

They took our luggage for us and put luggage tags on with our cabin number on them, we wouldn’t see the bags again until they arrived at our room, which was nice.

We joined the line for the boat and took the shortest boat ride possible.

It was really exciting to look out to see Tower Bridge, and I couldn’t wait to sail out under it later. Our sailaway wasn’t until 1 a.m., though, so I had a long day ahead of me. 

When we got to the other side, we got off the boat, and we had to walk on HMS Belfast to board our ship.

There must be some reason why we couldn’t just walk through HMS Belfast, but it did feel like a very long detour, which could have been avoided if we could have just walked the extra few metres across the ship.

But hey, there must be a security reason or something and given that this is what we had to do, the embarkation was smooth, and the crew were all really helpful. 

I’d find out later that we pretty much had one crew member for every guest, which would explain a lot.

When we boarded we were greeted with an amazing spiral staircase right in the middle of the ship, this really reminded me of the river cruise ships I’ve been on in the past.

We were taken into the lounge that I am affectionately calling the theatre lounge. This is where they’d do the shows in the evening. 

We were checked in and given our cruise cards. This is what we’d use to open our cabin door, and we went there first to drop off our bags.

Our first impressions of the cabin and the ship were really good, it certainly looked luxurious. There were so many crew members around to help with anything we needed. They even showed us to our cabin. 

I’m used to boarding a cruise at around lunchtime, and by this point, it was around 6pm because the official boarding time was 5 pm.

I’ve got to be honest, the late embarkation didn’t feel very luxurious because we missed most of the first day.

I’m not sure if that was because this was just a little short cruise squashed between other cruises, but I was grateful that this strange little itinerary existed.

Usually, Windstar do long cruises around exotic-sounding places like French Polynesia.

Before dinner, we had to check into our safety muster station on the top deck.

That was all very easy, and this was my first time being up and out looking at the views of London from the ship; it was such a relief, and I was so excited to be there.

I walked a few laps around the top deck, and I could see the pool in the middle, and I knew that I’d have to come back for that later – and I did.

Towards the back we found a big open area with views of tower bridge and towards the front we found a bar and a grill with seats down the sides, they all looked beautiful and because the ship was so small we never had to walk very far to get anywhere. 

By this point, I was getting really quite hungry, but I didn’t know how dinner worked onboard.

I knew that there were a couple of speciality restaurants that had to be booked, but I didn’t know how to do that, so I decided to go to the reception desk I’d seen when I came in.

There was no queue at all, which did feel luxurious, and the people working there were very friendly and kind.

They explained to us how everything worked and booked us the speciality restaurants for the next couple of nights. They let us know that the main dining room didn’t need to be booked and that it was just open seating. 

We decided we’d do that, so we got changed for dinner and headed to the main dining room, which is called Amphora.

Later in the cruise, I would get to take a behind-the-scenes galley tour here, which was really interesting. For now, though, I was just enjoying the food.

I was a little bit nervous that we would be asked to table share because I had read reviews from people who have, but we were given a table for two on both days we went in here with no problem at all.

The service was fantastic, and it didn’t feel like we had to wait long for anything.

The bread was so good,and if I were just given this to eat every day, I’d have been happy.

A big perk of being on a ship this small is that if you do have any allergies or intolerances, the chefs will know you by name and be able to plan meals with you. That’s much harder to do on a ship with 5000 guests. 

Things like that are definitely perks of luxury lines, but I did wonder if, for me, I’d miss the entertainment and flexibility of the big ships.

The room itself was very elegant, but it didn’t feel too stuffy or formal. It was quiet too and definitely less than half full.

There is a dress code for the dining rooms, but it’s fairly relaxed; you have to wear either something with a collar and trousers or a dress or a skirt or some sort with a blouse. 

It’s pretty normal to have a dress code like that in the main dining room of the more traditional cruise ships, but if you don’t want to get changed, you can usually go to the buffet.

The buffet on here wasn’t open for dinner though, which meant that the only informal way to get dinner was through room service.

Room service is included 24/7, but I did miss the buffet, mostly in the evenings when I might just want an extra bedtime snack, but I don’t know what I want enough to call room service.

Next, we headed back to the lounge to see the main show of the evening.

We had a show here everynight and it was usually some kind of singing show backed with a band, all of the singers were fantastic and they have lots of other jobs to do around the ship too.

My favourite show was the musical-themed show, of course, but the crew show was also a lot of fun. It was really funny, and I always like to see the crew when I take a cruise.

There was only one show a day, and the theatre lounge was normally not very busy at all.

The busiest I saw it was for the crew show. They had bar service in here, which was always really fast, and I enjoyed going to the show each day. 

They also do other talks in here, like port talks, but we only had one port on our cruise. 

After the show, we went to another lounge that I am calling the “lounge lounge,” so, so far, we have the theatre lounge and now the lounge lounge because it’s the most lounge-like venue.

There are only three lounges onboard in total, the theatre lounge, lounge lounge and the third, which I hadn’t visited yet, but that I’d call the cafe lounge. They had live music playing in here, and I tried a few cocktails off the menu. 

They’d give us snacks with our drinks, too. I’m used to perhaps a few nuts, maybe, but I’ve never been given meatballs to go with my drink before!

Listening to the other guests speak, I realised that around half were from the UK, which wasn’t what I was expecting.

Normally, Windstar has a majority of American or Canadian guests, but given how short this cruise was, I think a lot of UK travel agents joined the cruise too.

For them, it was a great way to try out a short Windstar cruise, and that was my thinking too. 

My main priority at this point was just to stay awake to watch the 1 am sailaway, and I’m happy to say I did manage it.

I had to get changed, of course, because it was so cold outside, but I wrapped myself up in one of the blankets that they had on the pool deck.

The blankets were a nice, luxurious little touch. 

It seemed odd that our sailaway was at 1 am, but I don’t think you can just demand that Tower Bridge opens whenever you want it to; it is on a schedule.

The description when I booked the cruise described it as “a convenient and breathtaking after-dark departure”.

Convenient seemed like a stretch for 1 am, but I would be staying up, of course, sailing under Tower Bridge was top of my bucket list. 

We actually sailed out under Tower Bridge backwards, and we were being guided by a little tugboat.

It was so exciting to see it open for us, and I was impressed by how fast it opened. The actual bridge opening only takes around a minute. 

The bridge actually isn’t as old as you’d expect. It was built in 1883, which might seem old, but when you compare it to the Tower of London, which is built beside, that was built 500 years ago. 

In the 50s, a bus actually jumped across the gap on the bridge as it was opening.

The bus had passengers onboard and everybody was okay.

Turns out somebody forgot to put the rope across to say that the bridge was closed, and by the time that the bus driver realised the bridge was going up, he either had to put his foot down and try to jump across, or he could have rolled backwards, but might have toppled into the river.

He made the right call it sounds like, all was okay, and it hasn’t happened since. No buses tried to jump over us, I’m happy to report. 

I’ll never, ever forget this sail-away; it was fantastic. I would have preferred to have done it in the daytime, but it was worth staying up for. 

If it was the day time, I’d have liked to have stayed outside as we sailed all the way along the Thames, but we lasted about an hour then went back inside.

There weren’t many of us out on the top deck watching the sail away, and I think we were the last guests out there at one point.

I was a bit surprised that Windstar didn’t make this an event at all, there was no party or drinks handed out or anything.

Perhaps they didn’t want to highlight that it was at 1am and thought that most people wouldn’t wait up. The cruise before mine sailed in during the day.

It reminded me of the cruise I took where we were looking for the northern lights, we spent a lot of time standing around in the cold but it was very much an event for everybody. I was so lucky on that trip, and I saw them twice.

Have a look at that amazing trip here:

I know that Windstar usually do sailaway parties and BBQs on the top deck, but because of the short cruise we were on, we missed out on a few things.

This very much felt like a taster cruise and not the full Windstar experience, they have a little watersports platform that comes out of the back but we didn’t get to use that on this cruise.

Something we didn’t miss out on, though, was a sea day. We had two on our cruise and one day in the port of St Malo in France. 

Because of the late night, we decided to skip breakfast, and when we woke up, we went straight to lunch.

We decided to head to the buffet, and this area turns into “Candles”, a speciality steakhouse in the evenings.

I had Candles booked for tomorrow, and the restaurant “Basil and Bamboo”, booked for dinner on the first sea day.

In the buffet, there were lots of options, and you could also order food off of the menu.

Even the burgers had the Windstar logo on them, and all of the food that we had here was really good.

The quality was fantastic, definitely some of the best food I’ve ever had at sea. It was always perfectly hot, there was a lot of choice given how few passengers there were.

It didn’t take me very long to spot the cookies. They were also 10/10 fantastic.

There were always lots of fresh fruit and vegetable options, and I was really impressed with all of the food.

I’m sure somebody is more of a foodie would appreciate it even more than me.

I love food, but I don’t always appreciate luxurious things in the same way as other people do.

I can’t tell you what is a good wine pairing for a meal for example, I don’t like wine even at the best of times.

I do like cider, though, but there wasn’t any at all on the ship on any of the menus. That was a bit of a shame, but I understand it’s a small ship with limited capacity for storing drinks.

I mostly just drank cocktails or soft drinks, and that was good. It is a Coke ship, sadly, no Pepsi. Pepsi is more luxurious.

We never had to show our cruise card to get a drink or to sign for anything; they just asked us for our room number, and some of the crew even remembered it by the end of the cruise.

Because the ship was so small, there was a real chance to get to know the crew, and I saw plenty of guests who clearly knew the crew members well and had cruised with them before.

The crew all had the time to stop and chat, and the service was always really fast wherever we were. 

We’d often bump into the crew on the stairs and would always say hello and chat.

There is one spiral staircase and two regular sets of stairs. Considering how small the ship is, that really is a lot.

It isn’t unusual for the big cruise ships to have just three sets of stairs, they’ll just be much further apart.

The spiral staircase really was the heart of the ship, and you’d go clockwise to go up and anticlockwise to go down. 

Although this ship holds a maximum of 312 guests, we only had 150 on our cruise, so it really did feel as though there were as many crew members as guests.

When I looked confused for a couple of seconds at the buffet, two crew members both came to help from either side, and they got me exactly what I needed.

I was just looking for a little plate for my cookie and I could only see big plates or bowls. On another line, no problem, I’d just get a big plate or a bowl, but that 2 seconds of confusion was enough for help to come and for them to bring me the right-sized plate. 

We could order drinks in the buffet too, and everything is served to you.

I did find it a bit weird not being able to just get my own water from the machine or a cup of tea, but that’s luxury cruising for you, you don’t have to lift a finger. 

Another massive perk of luxury cruising is just how much space you have per person. Outside of the buffet was this beautiful area, and I could have had 20 seats here to myself if I wanted, even on a sea day. 

I loved all of the cushions, blankets and the little touches. It looked very welcoming but was quite chilly on this first sea day. I hoped that it would get warmer so I could spend some time outside.

As it was cold, we decided to head up to the yacht club lounge, which I called the cafe lounge because there was a little cafe in the corner.

At one point on the sea day, this lounge was full, but every other time that I came here, there were only a few people here. I could definitely convince myself that I was on my own yacht when I was in this room.

The design I love, and there were lots of books and puzzles around. They had a daily puzzle here, and I liked to do the Sudoku. I only did the easy one, but it still kept me entertained for an hour or so.

There was a little cafe in here where they’d serve tea and coffee, they had snacks here too, and this is where we would come if we were hungry outside of meal times.

The snacks here disappeared at around dinner time, and then for the rest of the evening, it was just room service that was available or the main dining rooms.

It would have been nice if this lounge was open in the evenings. We came back here in the evening and played a game of Scrabble, but the bar part was closed.

That wasn’t a problem, though, because the outside bar was almost always open, so we’d go there to get a drink, and we’d bring it back to the cafe lounge. 

There was a grill out there too, which was open for lunch. 

I could also drink the drinks in my minibar because I had the drinks package. 

Sometimes they did close the blinds in this lounge, though, which was a shame. There was a nice little outside space.

I definitely found the opening times of the bars and restaurants more restrictive than they would be on most big ocean cruise ships, but it is to be expected when the ship is so small.

I’m not used to being able to just call room service anytime I want something, but I do think for me, I prefer to just get things myself.

Even if I have to walk a long way to get a drink or a cup of tea, I would prefer that to somebody else bringing it to me. 

That’s one of the main reasons why I don’t think ships of this size are necessarily for me, but I still had a lot of exploring to do. 

I saw something on the deck plan that I’d not been to yet, and that was a whirlpool. Heading along the corridor, I wasn’t sure if it would really be there, but I was happy to walk through the heavy door to find this part of the ship.

Nobody was sunbathing, and that was probably to do with the fact that they might have blown away if they’d tried.

I imagine that if you were sailing in Alaska, the Norwegian Fjords, or somewhere picturesque, this would be beautiful. 

For dinner, we went to a restaurant called Basil and Bamboo, which is an Asian and Mediterranean fusion.

That seems like big parts of the world to fuse, but the food was great.

Again, the service was really good, and I tried the lychee cocktail. A lychee is a fruit for those who don’t know, I know it looks like a little slug or something, it isn’t I promise. 

Even though this was a speciality restaurant, it doesn’t cost any extra.

There is no extra charge for food onboard at all, and when you are done with the meal, you just get up and leave.

Given how much I paid for the cruise at the start, though, I’m glad. I’ll let you know at the end how much I spent on everything during the cruise. 

When we visited St Malo, we were tendering instead of being docked.

That meant that we used the ships lifeboats to get to land and when we were ready to tender we went down to the main dining room to wait.

It was 25 minutes before the tender was ready, and the ride probably took around 15 minutes. 

The tender wasn’t full, and exploring the town with just a few hundred cruise passengers instead of thousands was really nice.

We had a long day in port, too, and didn’t have to worry about rushing back. Our sail away again would be late at night.

I’m very used to disembarking a ship, and every other person in the place is a cruise passenger, sometimes even more, but it really felt like we were seeing the city as it normally would be.

We were only 150 extra people in a city that has 50,000 people.

St Malo is the most amazing walled city, and we walked up and around the walls. It was busy inside the town with people enjoying meals and shopping. 

We walked across the beach too, and this is definitely somewhere I’d like to come back to.

The big cruise ships don’t come here.  We were in port until late in the evening, but I had a booking at Candles, and I knew that there was some local entertainment coming onboard.

I was fully prepared for this to be some kind of interactive local dance, so I sat as far to the back as I could.

It wasn’t, though it was two French musicians who played us some songs.

That part was nice, but my favourite part, I’ve got to be honest, was this table with lots and lots of local food and cheese on it.

I ate a lot of cheese while watching them perform and tried the recommended drink too. I can’t tell you what it is because I was more focused on the cheese, but it was nice.

I thought it was a nice touch that they brought a local act onboard, and local food is something most cruise lines don’t really do.

I’ve been on big cruises in Japan or Alaska where the food served is exactly the same as it would be in the UK or in the Caribbean. 

To me, this was the kind of luxury touch that I really noticed.

On a more mainstream cruise line, they might do something like this, but they might charge you for it as a “local food” tasting experience.

On this cruise, all the entertainment onboard was included. Excursions in the ports aren’t included with Windstar, but I didn’t do any in our one port. 

Candles, the steakhouse, was also included in the cruise fare, although you can pay extra if you want something really big.

I ordered creamed corn as a side because I’ve never had that before and I wondered what it was, it was just like the name suggests, corn in cream. I definitely prefer my corn left alone, but I’m glad I tried it.

Everybody on a Windstar cruise is able to go to each speciality restaurant at least once, but if there is extra space, they will let you book in again.

Given how our cruise ship was at half capacity, I don’t think that would have been a problem. 

The ship generally felt very quiet; if we were at trivia or at the shows, we could have had multiple seats.

On the top deck, we could have had 5 sun loungers each if we wanted, and I even used one to dry off my Windstar robe.

I’d never ever ever normally do this, but there was so much space and so few guests that even my robe got its own chair. 

Having the robe was a nice touch, and I wore it when I went swimming.

The whirlpool was definitely nicer than the big pool because the big one was chilly, it also cut my legs off when my brother took any photos or videos of me.

Don’t worry, this is just an illusion caused by the thick glass edge of the pool; my legs and body are totally fine.

This pool was added when they cut the ship in half and stretched it, before that there was a just a tiny little pool as you can see here.

See that process in my full ship video here, thanks to Gary from Tips for Travellers for the video clips used:

It’s also through Gary at tipsfortravellers.com that I know about the spa and the gym, which I didn’t use during my cruise. I could have – they’re both included and meant to be really good, but it’s just not my thing.

This 4-night cruise cost £1287 per person. That’s around $1700 USD and is based on two people sharing an oceanview cabin. We both paid that price. The total price for the cabin was £2574.

When I booked, there was a drinks package promotion on, so my cruise fare included the drinks package.

I definitely wouldn’t have bought it if it wasn’t included because I don’t drink a lot, but it was nice to be able to try all the different drinks.

Windstar usually only include soft drinks, and you can buy a drinks package or pay as you go for the drinks.

That price also included the WiFi as part of the package, and it was the fastest WiFi I’ve ever had on a cruise anywhere.

This is 10x faster than what I’d usually say is good for a cruise ship and 100x better than what I’m very used to experiencing on a cruise.

For reference, if the wifi speed goes above 2, I’ll do a live stream, and it often hovers around there. I had 120 at one point, and it never really dropped out. 

Find out more about that here:

The Best Cruise Wi-Fi I’ve Ever Used Wasn’t On A Mega Ship

The cruise was 4 nights long, but given that we boarded at 5 pm and left at 8 am, I’m counting this as a three-day and a bit cruise.

In those three days I never really managed to find out where the ship was actually stretched because they’d done an amazing job of blending that part in.

From looking at the deck plans I am pretty sure that my cabin was one of the new ones added into the middle.

I stayed in cabin 432, which was an oceanview suite. I say “suite” because Windstar calls all of their cabins “suites”.

To find out if that actually means anything or if it is just a name, keep watching, and I’ll show you around in this video next. 

Before You Go

Have a look at the cheapest cabin onboard a luxury river ship below; the decor had to be seen to be believed!

I Booked The Cheapest Cabin on a LUXURY River Cruise Ship

Have a look at the nine luxury touches I noticed when I took a Viking Ocean Cruise here:

9 Tiny Luxury Touches I Noticed on My Last Cruise (You Won’t Find These in the Brochure