Are we in the minority regarding cruising/travelling with other couples?

[SelectSys]

My wife and I have come to the conclusion that we aren't really all that good traveling with other people.  It seems most times that we travel with others our schedules and interests tend to diverge if we travel with others.  This includes friends that we spend time and socialize with on a regular basis at home   

 

Are we in the minority?  How do you get along with others during cruises and trips?  We have a cruise of 15 days coming up at the start of 2025 with another couple where are daily routine and interests are somewhat different.  

 

BTW - our rule for traveling with our kids, now all adults, is simply that everyone simply needs to show up for dinner.  I may try to extend that rule to traveling with another couple on our upcoming cruise.

 

[Kristelle]

I only travel on longer trips with my own husband - I don't think it would work for us travelling with other people for longer - as in friends from home.

 

I travel on small group tours with people I dont know,  but that is different.

 

Short trips, not cruise, I have occasionally done with friends or family - couple of days. They have been good.

I wouldn't do 15 days.

If you do, I think you all need to be on same page beforehand of how much you expect to do together or apart

[cruisegal40]

We are at the point that I don't want to spend cruises with other folks.  We use to.  With friends and kids that went to HS together and family members. Done with that.  It works for some, not so much for others.

[SbbquilterUT]

I am not a group person except family with the proviso of dinner together.  They need their vacation time even more than we do.  

[SelectSys]

34 minutes ago, Kristelle said:

I wouldn't do 15 days.

If you do, I think you all need to be on same page beforehand

We are committed to go.  We didn't really think about it too much before agreeing.  You are correct on the need to establish "ground rules" before we go.

[CDNPolar]

We have cruised as a couple, but we most often cruise with others.  We have a couple that we have cruised with many times, and we also have cruised with family and friends.  Of the 4 future booked cruises we have, all of them are with others.

 

We have very clear "rules" that we set out and we set them out boldly when we cruise with others.

 

First is we don't coordinate the same excursions.  We research and book our own excursions.  Sometimes they cross and most often they do not.  Sometimes we are on the same excursion but on a different bus.  We don't even try to get together on the same bus.

 

The days are our own, and if we cross we cross.  The only thing we do is commit to having dinner together, going to the show, or not, and then perhaps to the lounge after dinner.

 

Evenings are for catching up and sharing our stories of the day.  Often we don't see the ones we are cruising with any day until dinner.

 

This works for us because I never want to feel that I have to conform to someone else's plan.

Edited April 15 by CDNPolar

[margeecruiser]

We always make a point to let everyone know to each his/her own during the day and then meet up for dinner.  We might even skip dinner in the MDR and do a Specialty if we want.  We are all adults and don't have to stick together like high schoolers.

 

I agree that you don't really know another person/couple until you've traveled with them.

[CDNPolar]

1 minute ago, margeecruiser said:

We always make a point to let everyone know to each his/her own during the day and then meet up for dinner.  We might even skip dinner in the MDR and do a Specialty if we want.  We are all adults and don't have to stick together like high schoolers.

 

I agree that you don't really know another person/couple until you've traveled with them.

 

I have seen a few friendships go on the rocks after travelling together, but these were two singles sharing a cabin.

[ldubs]

We travel with others all the time.  Sometimes another couple and sometimes a large group of family and friends.  For the most part our interests mesh. Where they don't a little flexibility helps.  No one is expected to join in for any activity except for the group dinner.  Though in practice, most will end up doing about the same thing.    

 

If I didn't know someone very well, I would be hesitant to go on a joint vacation.  

[olemissreb]

I'll be traveling next year with my sister and her BF. Sis and I learned long ago that we can vacation together, but just not stay in the same condo. We've got a couple ports where we'll do things together, but other than that, my BF and I will do our thing and they'll do theirs. Maybe we'll end up having dinner together and maybe not, but we'll definitely meet up at some point to "compare" our days.

 

I can't wait.

Edited April 15 by olemissreb

[SelectSys]

13 minutes ago, CDNPolar said:

First is we don't coordinate the same excursions.  We research and book our own excursions.  Sometimes they cross and most often they do not.

That is something I think we will need to do.  We like to explore much more than our friends and tend to be more active.

 

15 minutes ago, CDNPolar said:

This works for us because I never want to feel that I have to conform to someone else's plan

Exactly!  We went on a vacation once where we sacrificed our plans somewhat to conform to others desires.

 

16 minutes ago, margeecruiser said:

I agree that you don't really know another person/couple until you've traveled with them

Probably true as it is the closest you can come to living with another person/couple.

 

15 minutes ago, CDNPolar said:

I have seen a few friendships go on the rocks after travelling together

That's something we don't want to have happen.

 

 

[NotADopey1]

We’ve traveled both with and without others.  My husband and I enjoy each others company the most.  We like the freedom of not having to plan where and when to meet for everything.  We can also cancel excursions, activities and meals at a moments notice. 

[ldubs]

When we have a family/friend group cruise, people will generally share their excursion interests.  Folks are welcome to join or not.   

[leaveitallbehind]

We travel both ways and they are equally enjoyable to us. We have cruised with several couples at once as well as well as with one or two couples together.  But we have one couple that we cruise with rather frequently (in fact we met them on a cruise a number of years ago and became good friends on land as well). When we occasionally have different interests in port they do their thing and we do ours.  But we always get together for dinner and our evening activities. The rest of the time we cruise by ourselves. We have four cruises planned (three booked) between now and October '25, two with them and two alone.

Edited April 16 by leaveitallbehind

[clo]

1 hour ago, CDNPolar said:

We have cruised as a couple, but we most often cruise with others.  We have a couple that we have cruised with many times, and we also have cruised with family and friends.  Of the 4 future booked cruises we have, all of them are with others.

 

We have very clear "rules" that we set out and we set them out boldly when we cruise with others.

 

First is we don't coordinate the same excursions.  We research and book our own excursions.  Sometimes they cross and most often they do not.  Sometimes we are on the same excursion but on a different bus.  We don't even try to get together on the same bus.

 

The days are our own, and if we cross we cross.  The only thing we do is commit to having dinner together, going to the show, or not, and then perhaps to the lounge after dinner.

 

Evenings are for catching up and sharing our stories of the day.  Often we don't see the ones we are cruising with any day until dinner.

 

This works for us because I never want to feel that I have to conform to someone else's plan.

This sounds perfect and I'd like to know if anyone disagrees and why.

[clo]

36 minutes ago, leaveitallbehind said:

We travel both ways and they are equally enjoyable to us. We have cruised with several couples at once as well as well as with one or two couples together.  But we have one couple that we cruise with rather frequently (in fact we met them on a cruise a number of years ago and became good friends on land as well). When we occasionally have different interests in port they do their thing and we do ours.  But we always get together for dinner and our evening activities. The rest of the time we cruise by ourselves. We have four cruises planned (three booked) between now and October '25, two with them and two alone.

Four cruises in six months????? When you're at home are you more solitary?

[leaveitallbehind]

1 minute ago, clo said:

Four cruises in six months????? When you're at home are you more solitary?

I believe you misread - four between now and October '25 - that would be four cruises in eighteen months.  And we are rather social at home.

[clo]

9 minutes ago, leaveitallbehind said:

I believe you misread - four between now and October '25 - that would be four cruises in eighteen months.  And we are rather social at home.

I did! I thought you were saying October 25TH! And it did cross my mind why you were being that specific 🙂 Have fun everywhere.

 

[leaveitallbehind]

22 minutes ago, clo said:

I did! I thought you were saying October 25TH! And it did cross my mind why you were being that specific 🙂 Have fun everywhere.

 

We do enjoy cruising and travel, but four in six months would be a bit of a stretch!  Enjoy yourself as well.

[GTO-Girl]

We have some friends that we occasionally sail with but we prefer cruises where it’s just the two of us.

 

We call our style of cruising “love ‘em and leave ‘em”.  We love meeting people and having short chats but then we can walk away and do our own thing and not feel guilty….

 

I am so glad to see we are not the only ones…..😂😂

[frantic36]

 

2 hours ago, ldubs said:

 No one is expected to join in for any activity except for the group dinner.

 

1 hour ago, leaveitallbehind said:

But we always get together for dinner and our evening activities.

 

3 hours ago, CDNPolar said:

The only thing we do is commit to having dinner together, going to the show, or not, and then perhaps to the lounge after dinner.

 

This is interesting to me as I mainly travel just with my husband and only twice travelled specifically with another couple and it ruined our friendship. I didn't realise how many people expect when you travel with others it is expected to have dinner together every night. That was the deal breaker for us as that I thought it was understood we would do some things together and have a few meals together but they expected most if not all dinners together. I want to be able to have date nights with my husband and dinner with others on the cruise.

 

Now when we cruise we often learn others from previous cruises are onboard so that is wonderful as we can catch up with friends for an occasional meal or even excursion but no expectations to do so.

[clo]

9 minutes ago, GTO-Girl said:

We have some friends that we occasionally sail with but we prefer cruises where it’s just the two of us.

 

We call our style of cruising “love ‘em and leave ‘em”.  We love meeting people and having short chats but then we can walk away and do our own thing and not feel guilty….

 

I am so glad to see we are not the only ones…..😂😂

I'm not remotely judgmental when people post here about friends they've made over the years. But not even !% of what we would want.

[wcook]

That has always been our rule when traveling with others (usually family). Dinner is mandatory. Everything else is optional. 

[GaryAndJennGoPlaces]

We just recently got back from going on a cruise with 8 others couples. We tried to hang out with everyone as much as possible, but really, with that many people we all pretty much did our own thing most of the time, and it worked out well. I don't think anyone got upset, and everybody had a blast. We all scheduled one night for dinner with everyone, but for the most part we all stayed in smaller groups and just ran into each other through out the cruise.

[Honolulu Blue]

10 hours ago, SelectSys said:

My wife and I have come to the conclusion that we aren't really all that good traveling with other people.  It seems most times that we travel with others our schedules and interests tend to diverge if we travel with others.  This includes friends that we spend time and socialize with on a regular basis at home   

 

Are we in the minority?  How do you get along with others during cruises and trips?  We have a cruise of 15 days coming up at the start of 2025 with another couple where are daily routine and interests are somewhat different.  

 

BTW - our rule for traveling with our kids, now all adults, is simply that everyone simply needs to show up for dinner.  I may try to extend that rule to traveling with another couple on our upcoming cruise.

 

What groups travel on cruises is can interesting question that I should ask a CLIA rep sometime. My suspicion is that the majority of cruisers travel as a single couple. The rest of the rankings I suspect would be:

 

Family groups

Friends and unrelated cruisers traveling together

Solo travelers

 

I'm in the latter group, mostly by design. I've handed out a few soft invitations for others to join me - soft as in, I'm going on this cruise at this date and you can join me or not. No takers so far, but if I do get someone to join me like this, I suspect the arrangements would be very loose. 

 

7 hours ago, clo said:

Four cruises in six months????? When you're at home are you more solitary?

 

7 hours ago, leaveitallbehind said:

We do enjoy cruising and travel, but four in six months would be a bit of a stretch!  

I just finished a group of four in three months, all on different cruise lines. And next year I will have a cluster of three cruises in six weeks.