This was the 6th cruise for my wife and me; our first was on Silversea (which was very good), and our next 4 were all on Seabourn which were all superb. We chose this WindStar cruise because of its itinerary -- starting in Scotland, with stops in Norway, Denmark, Germany, and ending in Sweden. We'd been to Scandinavia before and looked forward to returning. Based on ratings and reviews of Windstar, we expected the ship and its meals and services to be close to what we experienced on Seabourn.

The itinerary did not disappoint; the ship, service and meals did. I suppose that if we had never sailed on Seabourn (or even Silversea), we might not have noticed as much; we expected Windstar to be comparable in quality to those two cruise lines, and it was not. No ONE thing on Windstar was terrible; but it was a collection of countless "little things" (our list reached 40 items) that added up to a significantly lower level of service than the likes of Seabourn offered. Although a few of the meals on Windstar were very good, most were average and a more than a couple were far below average. There were issues with cleanliness, lack of communications (such as the captain failing to announce when we were able to disembark), and poor service.

If you've never sailed with top lines such as Seabourn or Silversea, you might not notice or mind some of the Windstar issues that stood out to us. But if you have sailed on these other top-tier lines, our advice would be to prepare yourself for a significantly lower level of quality and of service when sailing with Windstar -- or, just make the decision to NOT run the risk of disappointment and stick with Seabourn. That's what we're going to do from now on.