I have been to Sons of the Wind twice at their Loxahatchee, FL location. Once last year and again…read morethis year. I had such a great time last year that I returned this year and brought 3 friends along. ..
Unfortunately, this year's trip was not as positive as last years.
On the positive side, the facility is beautiful, and the horses are wonderful. Where things fell apart a bit this year was in the lessons. There are three instructors, Vitor (the main instructor), Maggie, and Vincent. Vincent taught one of the group lessons (3 of us) and did a wonderful job. Clear and concise instruction, well balanced, and very informative. I took lunge lessons with Maggie and they were also excellent - exhausting but well worth it. Vitor struggled a bit more with time management - especially in the group lessons. In at least 3 of the lessons, he focused 80% of the time on one of the riders while the other riders just walked around. Then they got a few minutes at the end. In another lesson, he took a student off their lesson horse to show them how to do something on that horse and then spent at least 20 minutes schooling that horse (still not getting it do really do what he was asking) before getting off and having that student get back on to just walk around the rest of the lesson (the poor horse was completely fried by then). When he is focused on you and gives instruction, it is generally very good.
That said, what really got to me was the response when I voiced my frustration with basically 30% of my lessons being pretty much a non-lesson. At the end of my last lesson, my frustration was pretty clear. When Maggie asked what was wrong, I expressed my frustration with the 3 lessons that were basically me auditing while sitting on the back of horse, the response I got was "I am sorry you feel that way" followed by "You don't need to come back". That just blew me away - instead of taking the feedback and saying "so sorry that happened, thank you for letting us know and we will work on that" - I basically get told to go find someplace else to go. That lack of concern and empathy for the people who have come here was disappointing to say the least.
While they did reimburse me for the three lessons, that wasn't the point and not what I requested. This did nothing for the other individuals who were impacted by this. Unfortunately, based on this experience, I cannot recommend them anymore.