Yacht StarShip Cruises & Events — Restaurant in Tampa

DO NOT GET MARRIED HERE (full review published on Wedding Wire).

I got married at the end of December of 2023, and it has taken me until the end of March of 2024 to be able to sit down and write a review because of how upset I still am.

Despite the reviews, our coordinator was AWFUL. Not only did she have me so stressed on my wedding day I was crying, but because she was so uncoordinated, disorganized and did not communicate with us in a timely manner, nor did she communicate with our vendor (like our cake which was delivered to the wrong ship and caused our wedding ceremony to be delayed an hour), she caused me and my husband a lot of stress. She did not listen to what I wanted when setting up the decor and instead my bridal party spent a lot of time when we got on the ship setting everything up the right way (which was frustrating given I had walked our coordinator through everything at the rehearsal). Our altar that I spent so much time making, was hung incorrectly so that it was in my husband’s face (he’s 6’6”) during our ceremony. We had guest items and bubbles that we wanted handed out upon our guests’ arrival to have during the ceremony, but that never happened and they remained in their boxes. Due to her lack of preparation, we spent an hour's worth of sailing time and money sitting at the dock doing nothing waiting for our cake when we could've just moved the ceremony up and done a dockside wedding. The DJ played the wrong walk out song, and due to our coordinator not following our timeline at all, instead of our guests eating while our photos were being taken, we were delayed even further because it turns out dinner was not served until after our photos were done being taken almost 45 minutes after our ceremony ended. Due to both the delays between our cake not being delivered on time and dinner not being served on time, we did not get to do a champagne toast, a cake cutting ceremony, speeches that were prepared by my husband and myself, our best man, or my matron of honor. The tables were supposed to be released for the buffet in a certain order where our immediate families and those that had traveled out of state would eat first, but instead she dismissed them so our families and bridal/groom parties were last and barely got any food (they didn’t get any dessert either). My husband and I stressed many times about the importance of wanting to spend as much time as possible talking with and spending time with our guests - and in the end, we only got about an hour. The DJ did not follow our song list requests and my matron of honor had to ask him more than once to play the music we had specifically requested. We also had planned and wanted to do a send-off ceremony but when we pulled back up to the docks (I was on the top deck) no announcement was made and instead my guests were rushed off and my husband and I didn't get the chance to thank anyone for coming or say goodbye.

Overall, the lack of communication was awful and could have been handled way more efficiently which would have avoided a lot of stress. The crew was polite and treated us well. My guests said the food was good, but my husband and I will never step foot on Yacht Starship again, not even to celebrate our anniversary as we had hoped to do before all of this went down. I will never recommend them to any bride and groom to be, because this in the end, was the biggest waste of money. I might expect this from an amateur coordinator and venue - but not a regular host of...

We won these tickets at a charity auction and were excited for our "date night" aboard the yacht starship. This is a difficult review because there were some really great things about it, but some really lousy parts of the experience as well.

I will start with the Parking (which by the way didn't influence my rating because the company doesn't control it) but it happened to be a Lightning game night, so we were turned away from the parking in front of the ship. We then went to the garage across the street and paid $20 to only find out later (when reading our ticket) that we could have had a discount.

After walking to the venue, the lady at the registration window was extremely nice as were the couple of crew members that stayed out and greeted us before the boarding was to begin. Once the ship opened up, we went on board and were promptly shown to our table.

Our waitress, Jennifer, was quick to the table and was friendly, but we were a bit taken back that almost every other suggestion she made was an up-sell. We made our food selections and ordered a bottle of wine, which she was prompt to bring. That promptness was short lived, however as the ship got busy we saw her less and less, and ended up at one point going and finding a pitcher of water to refill our glasses ourselves.

The tomato salad with the everything bagel seasoning was actually the best part of our meal, although both myself and my wife felt the portions were small. I ordered the ribeye (Again, an $11.95 upsell) and while the texture and temperature of the meat was perfect medium rare, the steak was tough and I literally had to work so hard to cut it my wife thought I was going to knock over a glass.

After we finished our main course, in one of her few later trips to the table, Jennifer matter-of-factly told us that they were busy with other guests and we would be waiting a while to get dessert, so we might as well go upstairs. We opted to wait, and didn't see her again until around 25 minutes later when our dessert came out.

The dessert (when it finally came out) was good, I had the Reese's peanut butter pie and my wife had key lime. We then asked about our bill and was told she was too busy right then and she would find us upstairs.

Once we got upstairs, we stared enjoying the views and the music and I decided to get a cocktail. I ordered a captain morgan and diet coke, and I was told the bar was cash only. After I explained that I didn't have any cash, he finally agreed to take a card but I was charged $13 for the drink!!!!

Anyway, I really hope this was just an off night, but based on the service experience and the quality of the food, I don't think I would repeat...

We went on the murder mystery dinner cruise for our anniversary. I love murder mysteries. My hopes were high and this was a big let down. I do not recommend an won't go on another dinner theater cruise . Maybe just dinner cruise. Here's why.

First let me share the positives :

1. the food was good not great but good. They accommodated the vegan and gluten free restrictions for me for the main entree.
2. the actors were good when I could see.
3. the people at my table were really nice and made my night actually. We got along and I liked the mini social vibe we had with some laughs.

Negatives:

1. we could NOT HEAR NOR SEE the actors. When I did they were good and wished I could have enjoyed that part. The way the boat is set up there's 2 rows of maybe 6 or more tables with 10 people at each. The host with the mic is up and down the single aisle with the big speaker at the front . Now I even asked my table "hey can you guys hear" they said no and said " i wish they would put a speaker behind us " we were the last table at the back. So unless we stood up we couldn't see. Now when the host came to the back by us with her mic we could hear. So that's why I didn't want blame the actors just the set up of the boat. Hopefully this may help them change the sound for the future. I couldn't understand the plot , or understand the characters. There's the crowd of people talking, music and the host talking so it's a bit chaotic and not organized. Now if we sat at a different table maybe it would have been different. But you can't pick your table.
2. the food. I wrote ahead of time the dietary restrictions. Why was that only done for the main dish. Not the salad or dessert? So I had to fix the salad to be vegan and no dessert was specially made for me. We paid a lot to have this and it's not hard to make a dessert vegan now days. So that was sad.
3. it was our anniversary. And there was nothing special given to us or said. Now we thought we heard an announcement of happy something in the beginning over the speakers. But hey. Once again we couldn't NOT hear. So if they said happy anniversary. We wouldn't know. But being that they seated us they couldn't have put a card on the table saying happy anniversary or something.
4. the dance floor. Ok so we couldn't hear. So at least there is a dance floor upstairs where we can just go hang out right. Wrong. We'll there is a dance floor but no music. We get up there and it's just the music from the speakers down stairs ...that's not a vibe. You couldn't hear it well enough to even start dancing. It was mostly just quiet up there. so we go back to our table. Bored and tired...