Clearly our experience was different to that of Gilbert, Appleby Magna. For this holiday we travelled to Costa Rica on a package, with all flights, transfers and pre- and post-cruise accommodation included. This was unusual, since Star Clippers [SC] normally only want to sell you a cruise and you’re on your own regarding the rest of your holiday. But very occasionally - as here - they package up their cruises with some or all of the rest of what you need. Being somewhat cynical, this is probably because they are struggling to fill a cruise, and they regard this as a way of tempting the stragglers on board, which obviously worked in our case as we jumped at this package. Nevertheless the ship sailed less than half full, suggesting that their efforts at packaging the holiday were therefore too little, too late. But we can attest that when SC does offer such a package, and more importantly the ‘glue’ that binds all the elements of a holiday together, it does this very well, thus it is a shame that this isn’t the norm. Buying a holiday as a total package certainly comes into its own when things go awry, as this holiday did, but more of that later...
As an aside, SC also e-mailed us a few years ago with a cruise from Balboa (Panama) to Barbados over one Christmas: the itinerary was great, but when we asked about flights, transfers etc, they basically said “That’s your problem”. Given how far ahead the holiday was, flight timings and costs had not yet been released by the airlines, but since we were not prepared to commit to the cruise without having any clue as to flight costs, we hesitated. By the time these were released the ship was full and we were therefore pretty fed up with SC’s business model. Yet another package SC offered us featured a 7-day cruise from Singapore to Phuket, packaged up with a trip on the Eastern & Oriental luxury train from Bangkok to Singapore. Again, on paper this was a very attractive proposition, but when you investigated further, SC weren’t offering a vital internal flight to complete the package, thus we didn’t proceed further. What is it with them?
We flew from Birmingham (our local airport, which was great) via Newark (which wasn't). I asked SC whether we would need to go landside at Newark, or whether we would would be like transit passengers in virtually every other country on the planet, and I was assured that we would not need to technically enter the USA, with all that that entails. On arrival at Newark we are forced through immigration (with fingerprint and retina scans), to collect our luggage and to wheel this miles around the airport, then be processed once again through security etc for the next leg down to San Jose.
We arrived quite late at the Intercontinental, where I am handed an information pack which I initially propose to leave until the morning to read. We plan to have a lie-in and a leisurely breakfast, since we have been told in advance that we will be transferred to our coastal hotel on check-out. However I open the information pack before we turn in, which tells me we are being collected at 06:30 to transfer to the Hotel Parador at Quepos.
This is far too early, and was presumably to miss the horrendous rush hour traffic. Our driver thinks he's Rubens Barrichello and we arrive at the Parador at about 10:30 and thus can't have our room for several hours. Nevertheless this was a great place to stay and we would recommend it to anyone. It beats the hell out of anything in San Jose, which these days has little to recommend it.
After a few days at the Parador we are picked up at about noon for the drive to the port. Another F1 driver and we are in danger of arriving way too early so he tries to persuade us to break our (short) journey. Now way, Jose, and we press on to the port arriving there before just about everybody else. We are made to wait around for hours, since SC clearly can't do the turnaround in under 6 hours; quite why we could not have had another couple of hours round the pool is a mystery.
Once on board we find our cabin, which has to be the worst cabin in the entire SC fleet. OK, it is the cabin grade we booked, but we've travelled with SC before, the ship is probably 55-60% empty, and ALL the empty cabins will be better than this. We were told when we booked that the bed was one metre off the floor, but I'm 5'10" and it came up to my chest - nor were we aware of how low the ceiling would be (see photos).
To summarise, would we rush to travel on the Star Flyer again? Er, No. There are three primary factors for this:
1) we’ve been to Costa Rica before, and have cruised some of the same places;
2) we’ve been on SC’s Royal Clipper, which was an altogether more professionally organised and pleasurable, even privileged, experience;
3) we’ve been on other cruise ships, especially at Christmas
thus we have a benchmark for all these things. But when you consider these other shortcomings...
a) there was virtually nowhere to escape from smokers (except on the aft deck*); basically people lit up on most of the top deck, and this was not policed
b) bar drinks were expensive, at 10.60 euros for a G&T or similar
c) the ship was less than half full (SC were too tight-fisted to lower prices by much, thus cutting off their nose to spite their face), which dented the atmosphere that you would have expected on a full ship eg. the restaurant was half empty for dinner
d) SC could therefore have repaid our custom and upgraded many passengers, starting with its returning customers, at no cost to themselves, but instead presumably only upgraded passengers that were prepared to pay extra
e) the itinerary was a joke (although we knew this in advance); we didn’t really sail anywhere, we just pottered up and down a short stretch of coast. Here’s the numbers: travelling time 95h30, distance travelled 439 NMiles, average speed therefore 4.5 knots. Wow!
f) the food was not bad, but was somewhat variable. If you advertise foie gras, then this is what you should provide, not bog standard paté
g) there’s really no excuse for the state of the towels in the room, which were virtually threadbare
h) the aft pool had been emptied on several occasions when we could really have done with cooling off
i) the cruise director, Ximena, while charming, was fairly young, and many of her team were very young, leading to a certain pandering to the ‘youth’ element. NB not everyone is going to agree with this.
j) not once did they put up all the sails, as far as we know
k) nor did they manage to organise a single photo tender, promised for Christmas Day
l) they could/should have laid on a free bar for Christmas lunch
..then you can see why this cruise doesn’t figure as one of our best.
*the aft deck was proscribed because of the marine diesel etc stored there. This store was in fact a small deck above the aft deck, shrouded in tarpaulin, behind which you could see numerous drums of God knows what. And also, on occasion, the purser, Yuliya, having a cigarette. So if the purser smokes, and specifically in a place that has been described as hazardous, then is it any wonder that the ship’s overall attitude to limiting where people can smoke is going to be a bit lax?
But if I had to single out just one reason why we won't be travelling with SC again it was asking for two Bloody Marys on Christmas Day. The best they could manage was a plastic cup with loads of ice, a nip of vodka, topped up with tomato juice. “That’ll be 10.60 euros” — the same price as a properly served mixed drink back on board. Is it just me, but given that the ship is less than half full and that 78 people have invested a not inconsiderable sum (and travelled, in our case, around 7,000 miles) to be here, could they not have have managed to provide a free bar for an hour?
But to counter-balance this otherwise rather negative review, I have to congratulate SC for how they behaved when things went pear-shaped on our last day (December 27th) in San Jose. We were collected at the ungodly hour of 05:45 for our 09:00 flight. San José airport is pandemonium and we soon learn why: numerous flights (especially those into the NE United States) have been cancelled and they can’t get us to Birmingham before the 30th. A protracted series of expensive calls to and from SC in Florida and Ipswich later, and we are told that we’re booked back into the Intercontinental for three nights. I had to pick up the tab for the taxi and the three nights extra accommodation, meals etc, but SC eventually reimbursed us our hotel and incidental costs. One very good reason for buying this type of holiday as a package.
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.jpg_thumb.jpg "Santorini sunset")
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