February 2002 Poly Review
Written: Mar 28 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Relaxed,Fun,Tours,Food,Islands,Boat,Great Experience
Cons: Cabins,Age 50+,Not much night life & onboard activities
The Bottom Line: The Poly was a great time had by all ages. If you are younger than 50+ go on this vacation with friends and create your own fun nightlife.
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| pugger's Full Review: Windjammer Polynesia |
I looked into Windjammer Barefoot Cruises because of the television show "Love Cruise", this show aired during the fall of 2001. Watching the television show I was interested in going on a cruise like this rather than a big cruise line. I tried to research this cruise as much as possible. I did not find that many reviews on this cruise line. So that is why I decided to write a review myself for others considering taking this cruise. From the reviews I read I realized that this was a no frills cruise. I got the idea that the cabins were small and the food wasn't that great, but it was adventurous and took you to some islands that the bigger cruise lines can not go to.
So my husband and I decided to give it a try. Our ages are 28 and 32 to give you an idea of where this review will be coming from. We traveled during February 2002. We traveled to St. Marten two nights before the stow away night aboard the Poly. I booked our air on Orbitz myself. You can get air through Windjammer cruises, but it is priced fairly high. So you are better off getting the air on your own. However, we did reserve our hotel room at the Hotel Beach Plaza in Marigot, St. Marten through Windjammer cruises. Windjammer cruises only offers three hotels within the island of St. Marten to choose from. If I were to do it over again, I would also reserve a room on my own as well. Not for price reasons, but for location. Hotel Beach Plaza was on the other side of the island compared to where the Poly was docked. So it was a $20.00 cab ride. We also had to pay $20.00 from the airport to our hotel. I recommend getting a hotel over on Orient Beach. If you are going to stay in St. Marten, you might as well stay on a beautiful beach and St. Martens best beach! The beach in Marigot where we stayed was nothing special. Also the beach where the boat was docked was nothing special either. If you are considering Hotel Beach Plaza, I would really reconsider because the staff was extremely unfriendly, the rooms were nice, the food was good, the piano bar was empty every night, actually the entire hotel was pretty empty, the beach was nothing great and the hospitality rooms were really disgusting! The only good thing about Hotel Beach Plaza, was that it was in walking distance to the down town area and this is the place to wine and dine. There are a large number of great restaurants for fine dining along the marina in the downtown area. St. Marten is really for beaching it during the day and going out to dinner. Also the shopping is very French, very expensive and all designers, no native souvenirs on this island!! No partying and really no entertainment for the evenings.
Anyway, we opted for the stow away night (Sunday) aboard the Poly. I think this was an extra $55.00/person /night. Right away you could tell the staff was quite friendly. You boarded a small boat on the dock that took you over to the Poly. Once aboard they handed out welcome drinks. I would say about 90% of the people going on our cruise boarded for the stow away night. I would recommend doing so. Once aboard most people unpacked and then relaxed on the top deck and enjoyed a buffet dinner in the dining room. Most people went to bed after dinner, we thought everyone was tired from traveling, but this ended up to be the case pretty much every night.
Monday we woke up still in St. Marten. The remainder of passengers had to board the boat by noon. We got up in time for breakfast as we did every morning and then we went to the top deck for Captain Casey’s story time at 8:30am. This was helpful to find out the information on the islands we would be visiting for the day and get information on island tours or scuba diving. We opted for the morning tour of the Regatta. We sailed on the “Stars and Stripes” which won the Americas Cup in 1987. Everyone aboard the Regatta was from the Poly. Everyone got a job. It was really fun to learn how a sailboat runs and works. But the day we went it wasn't overly windy, so we really didn't go too too fast, but we raced against another sailboat and our boat won the race. It was definitely worth it, but one of the more expensive tours offered during the week. Once back to the boat, we had lunch and we set sail to our next island of St. Barths. The crew raised the sails and it was absolutely beautiful sailing in aqua blue water and in such beautiful weather. At one point the Captain stopped the boat and everyone could jump off the gangplank to go swimming. Then we sailed over to the bay at St. Barths in which we would stay over night in. Every night there were Snacks and Swizzles from 5-6pm. The snacks were really great everyday. Swizzles were rum drinks that were free but got old quick.
Tuesday we went into town on St. Barths to walk around and shop for a bit. We grabbed lunch at Le Select which is the bar Jimmy Buffet supposedly wrote Cheeseburger in Paradise. We had the burgers and they were really great and reasonably priced as well. We then went on the afternoon tour of St. Barths. Basically, this was an old woman that whispered when she spoke and when she did speak you could not understand her because she spoke very little English. She did not offer any information on the island. It was basically just a taxi ride around the island. I would skip this tour. I would rent a car on your own, a lot of people did this and this is the safest island you visit to do so. The tour we went on took us to a beach for one hour. Nothing spectacular. Captain Casey told everyone aboard the Poly to purchase a bottle of wine to bring back to the boat for Snacks and Swizzles for a wine and cheese tasting. Everyone brought wine back and there was plenty to try. Captain Casey told us if we were interested in dining out one night, this would be the night to do so. St. Barths has many fine dining restaurants. So we chose to eat ashore. Then there was suppose to be a Poly party at Le Select, everyone was suppose to meet around 8:30, we got there around 9:30 and few crew members showed up, but a good amount of passengers from the Poly showed up. There was a band and people danced. I would say this was the second out of two fun nights during our time aboard the Poly. We took the last shuttle back to the boat at 11pm, so we didn’t get too much time at the bar.
Wednesday we woke up in St. Kitts. This island was cloudy the entire time we were there. It is a volcanic island and the clouds never leave the top of the volcano. There is not much of a town on St. Kitts, so this isn’t the place to shop. We got up early and took a cab ride over to Turtle Beach. This was a beach where you could rent chairs and towels and go swimming; they had food and drinks. The ride over to this beach is quite amazing, a lot of photo ops on the way. But the best part of this beach are the green monkeys. They visit the beach every day from 11am to 1pm. They come down from the hills to the edge of the beach and you can feed them. Really fun and lots of good photos! We only spent a half-day here because we planned a deep sea-fishing trip for the afternoon. This was the most expensive tour of the trip offered. A boat picked us up off of the Poly and we trolled all the way to Nevis for acouple of hours. We caught several Barracuda fish. Not a difficult fish to pull in, but still fun. If you catch edible fish you can actually bring them aboard the Poly and the chef will cook them for you. So this was fun, but we didn’t really catch anything too exciting.
Thursday we woke up in Nevis. We went on the Mystery Hike during the morning. This was a really fun hike through the hills of Nevis. I wore tevas; it was a really easy hike. We went to see mystery ruins in the mountains and we also went to see bats and whipping scorpions in acouple of caves. Definitely worth the trip and hike! We went back to the boat for lunch and then went back ashore to Sunshine’s Bar. Sunshine’s Bar is on the beach, directly beside the Four Seasons Resort. Sunshine’s is famous for their Killer Bees. It is a delicious drink that the Captain advised us not to drink more than three. They were really good! We saw a rainbow from the beach. We had to be back to the boat by 5pm. We set sail for Anguilla during the sunset. It was a beautiful ride. This was the funnest night of the cruise. During snacks and swizzles we had a treasure hunt. There were three teams of Poly passengers. Each team had to create a name for their team and a song to chant. Then we had certain items we had to bring forward to get points. The last thing we had to get was the most daring guy from each group. Then after they volunteered themselves, they were told they had to go to a team mates cabin and have all of the team dress them up as a woman and meet everyone back at the bar in 10-15 minutes. This was soooo funny!! The guys had a little beauty pageant. It was great. Later this night everyone had to dress up for the PPP party. Basically dress up as anything you like. People really had some great costumes. Especially the crew! Many of the men on the crew including the Captain dressed up as woman! Too funny! So this was pretty much the funnest night of the cruise!
Friday we woke up in Anguilla. Basically the only thing to do in Anguilla is to go to the beach. We decided to take the bus for $10.00/person to the beach for the day, it was perfect since we had done a tour every other day, so it was nice to just relax. The beach was the most beautiful beach I have ever seen. The water was aqua and the sand was white. We walked to a little bar/restaurant where you could rent chairs and umbrellas. They made the best frozen drinks. The passion fruit daquiri was the best! So this day was just for relaxing. We had to be back to the boat by 5 again.
Saturday we were back at St. Marten. Many people had to get up early for early flights. We were allowed to stay on the boat until 1:00 and have lunch. But once we got up and packed we departed the boat and returned to the Hotel Beach Plaza for our last night of vacation.
To give you some more details of the cruise. There are four levels of the boat. The top deck is just a deck where you can hang out and even sleep at night if you want. This is where Story time and Snacks and Swizzles take place. The next deck down has the open air bar. This is where you have to purchase all of your drinks. And you have to buy dubloons. Which is a piece of paper that has 20 dots and costs $10.00 Every drink you get has a number of dots that will be punched out on your dubloon. And that is the way you purchase drinks. You can charge these dubloons to your cabin or just pay cash for them. Also on this deck is where the dining room is. The dining room is inside. This deck also has the kitchen and about 10 passenger cabins. These are the only cabins that have windows. Then the next two decks below are all passenger and crew cabins. None of these cabins have windows. We stayed on the lowest deck on an end cabin. The cabin was very small and very dark when there were no lights. So we kept the bathroom light on through the night. My husband and I shared the lower berth, which was equivalent to a twin size bed, if not smaller. The upper berth had our luggage and clothes and souvinears on it. There was a small closet and shelve space to store items. Then the bathroom had a small sink, toilet and a drain in the floor. The shower head came out of the wall. We had hot water everyday. The crew cleaned our room every day. You can lock your cabin when you are inside, but you can not lock it when you leave. There are no keys for cabins. This felt weird, but it was nice not having to carry a key around.
The cruise we went on was probably 75% full. When you think about it, full capacity would have 3 people in our cabin. I would not advise putting 3 people in these cabins! Way too small! The average age of passenger on our cruise was around 50 years +. A lot of people in their 40’s, 60’s and 70’s, but mostly everyone was in there 50’s. No children on our cruise and we were one of a few couples younger than 40. The passengers were fun no matter what the age. But the nightlife was definitely lacking. Everyone went to bed really really early. And the crew really did not do too much to make after dinner time fun. The only fun night was Thursday during the treasure hunt and the PPP party and it was all crammed into one night.
The food on the boat was really good. It is not fine dining or an 8 course meal, but the food was really good. Every meal differed every day, so you did not eat the same thing everyday. Breakfast and Dinners revolved from being served to buffet. The two dinners we went to where we were served we had options of salmon or lamb and prime rib or mahi mahi. I had the salmon and mahi mahi, both were delicious. There was free wine served with dinner, but it really was not drinkable.
The Poly has what they call Treasure Chest hours, where you can purchase t-shirts, towels, etc.. You can charge these to your cabin as well as all of your tours. You pay your tab on Friday. We spent a lot in tours. Plus the Poly recommends giving a $60.00 tip per passenger at the end of the week. The crew was really great so they definitely deserved that if not more. They work real hard.
The dress on the Poly is very relaxed. Nobody got dressed up at all on our cruise. Most people are barefoot all of the time. I would recommend bringing a sweatshirt and a pair of pants for windy nights aboard the boat. And a hat or visor to block the sun during the day.
Recommended:
Yes
Best Suited For: Seniors
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Epinions.com ID:
pugger
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Reviews written: 1
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