"I still see the small mic on the bottom right hand side of the screen with a slash through it. Anyone else have that?"
Yeah, that happens when you dont have any friends to talk to/friends on your team.
I got WiiSpeak today, tried it out in 2-3 matches. My voice seemed to carry over fine, but i messed around with the options quite a bit. I think more people should increase WS sensitivity and volume, decrease SFX volume, VO volume, etc.