Star Legend cruise shared with 100 passengers from a group

I was on that cruise too. The Tauck guests liked to eat in large groups. They were loud. Luckily, I was on Glitter and Glam after it. Glitter and Glam was ideal. It didn't have any big group. It was so much more relaxed and quieter than the cruise with the big group.

I was on that cruise too. The Tauck guests liked to eat in large groups. They were loud. Luckily, I was on Glitter and Glam after it. Glitter and Glam was ideal. It didn't have any big group. It was so much more relaxed and quieter than the cruise with the big group.

Either we are less sensitive to the noise or we were more lucky in where and when we sat in Amphora. I didn't notice any excessive noise and we could easily carry on a conversation. Overall, I found the ship pretty quiet and laid back. Sometimes I wondered where all the guests were since it was supposed to be a full ship.

On the half sea day on the way to Gibralter and on the sea day, I played trivia and there were barely enough people to do it - 3 or 4 teams. (My team won both times.)

I see groups like Tauck differently. But I am a travel agent and I often book very high-end travelers. The average Tauck group guest is just like the average Windstar guest. Otherwise the experience would be very bad for Tauck, if their clients did not feel like they fit in too.

I have found family groups, of about 15-25, to be more difficult as fellow travelers because very often an older family member paid for the cruise for everyone. Travelers traveling "on someone else's dime" are often the least considerate. Or if they did pay their own fare, they are just not traveling in a style of their choice. "I'd rather be on Carnival, but grandpa wanted Windstar. God this is boring!"

If you are on a cruise with a large group that is negatively effecting your experience, find out who the group leader is and talk to them. The last thing the group company needs is to worry about the reputation they will get with Windstar or 100 "potential clients"...who post of CC.

And for the record, even though I am a travel agent; I seldom book groups.

I will add my 2cents on this topic. Just returned yesterday from a Windstar cruise in Spain. We had a large Tauck group onboard. (I think I heard 80-100). They were all mature nice people, no problem there. The one problem we found was with excursions. One excursion we booked was cancelled, "not enough people signed up". I heard others onboard concerned that other excursions were going to be cancelled too. When you take so many people out of the "sign up" that can be a problem. There were also times when the ship seemed pretty empty though that really didn't bother me at all. The Tauck people seem to stick to themselves and have their own lectures and excursions so you don't seem to meet as many people.