Wind Spirit Awful Experience
 

My husband and I just returned from a cruise to Greece and Turkey aboaard the Wind Spirit. We experienced the worst service and the worst food. The dinners on most nights was inedible. On the one evening they served baby lobster tails, only 1/2 was served with dinner. when we asked for a second helping we were told the kitchen was closed. This was 9 PM and the dining room full of diners. I could go on and on but you get the point. There are too many wonderful cruise lines to choose from. Avoid WindStar.

What a shame...I have been looking at this itinerary for next year. Such a beautiful area. Did you speak with any repeat WindStar cruisers on this trip & did they feel this was unusual? Were the problems mainly with the restaurant? I am sorry for your negative experience. RB

My friends were on the Wind Spirit on the Virgin islands last winter and they didn't like it either. They were not impressed with the food at all. Also, they said that the deck space is very limited, and after dinner there is cigar smoking around the pool . . . which means that all the non-smokers have to find another place to hang out. -- such as indoors! They were not happy about that.

I am so sorry to read these 2 messages about Windstar Cruises. We have been on 3 of them (last was in 2000) and they were wonderful with 70% of the passengers alumni of these ships. Can't help but wonder if Carnival Corp is just letting them go - but still charging the high prices. Sailing ships are somewhat out of their usual category. Perhaps they should sell off this line and let someone else handle it?

I think one's experience can be varied. We have been on the Windstar three times, the Windsurf twice, and have mixed reviews. Windstar is getting a bit tatty, but service and food were always good. We did have one complain one time, and wrote the management in Seattle, got no reply. However, we have had wonderful experiences also.
just depends.

See my post "Greek Isles &Istanbul" on 6/18/03. We were on the Wind Spirit 5/17/03, Istanbul to Athens. Food was very good , not great. Service was spotty, not bad. Some servers were very good , some not so good. The ship was not full. Only 98 passengers not 148, which is a full ship. If we had any more people than the 98, the deck space would have felt crowded. For the itinerary, I was glad we were on a small vessel. Would not have wanted to miss the experience.....visiting ports with a small number of people. Sorry your experience was not like ours. Mary

We were on the Spirit last month through Greece, and did not feel things were that bad. This was our second trip on the ship. The food was not as good as it was years ago, but we had no problems with service. The food staff were the best. It is difficult to keep up the quality, when they are discounting fares over 60%. My vote would be to increase fares, and along with it, quality. As for crowds, both times we were on the Spirit, it was full (150 passengers), and we never felt crowded, maybe except around the pool, but only because everyone was looking for the same shady spot.

The lack of a response to a complaint letter as noted above is a sign of poor management. it gived the impression no one really cares. I emailed Carnival after our July cruise about an issue and not only received a detailed reply but a gift for the next cruise as well.

jacketwatch- I have sent letters to Celebrity cruises also to NOT get any response...
The only way to get a real response is be persistent with multiple letters...

I even fill out those crazy forms about what went wrong on the cruise, before disembarking...and have gone back on the same line at a later date , and the same mess ups are still there- I don't think ANYONE really reads that stuff..I think it goes into File 13...

To Andy: Wow! So what happened to me was the exception, not the rule it seems. Sorry to hear that. My comment to Carnival was very serious, about a racial comment(sorry to say) made by one of there entertainers to a full audience. Maybe they could not ignore that one. I also had praise for our waiters which they responded to and said the note would be put in their file. Cheers,Larry

Here's my most recent report on Windstar (Windsurf). We did the crossing from Lisbon to Ft. Lauderdale in November 2003. Instead of 93 passengers as previously experienced, there were almost 200, many were aged and in poor health. Food was not as good as formerly (they were trying to feed us all the frozen stuff as the cruise following our was to be for a group of Hasidic Jews who brought their own cooks, food, etc, and everything had to be sterilized, ovens cleaned with blow torches, locks changed, rule books given to crew, etc.) Food was not uniformly good, (my plate of Thanksgiving Turkey was inedible). Crew were nice (many of the same people we came to know from previous cruises), then made little or no effort to entertain us (as they had done previously)., etc. All in all, my impression is that the line is going downhill--their attempts to economize are pretty obvious. However, we did enjoy ourselves, as we always do, as we had friends, and made new ones.