HUGE GROUPS: How to avoid?

[jayz]

Many times I have seen published group cruises that could possibly occupy half the ship if not the whole ship. These could be religious groups,gay and lesbian groups, special interest groups etc. You would think that most of these groups are well behaved? Any advice on whether or not one should investigate whether or not their cruise will be occupied by Texan hog callers convention?

[SC_Sam]

First of all, I don't know how you'd go about obtaining that information. I think most of the time, the cruiselines won't reveal group booking info. Sometimes close to the cruise, there may be info that appears on the Roll Call for that cruise that tells you of a trip. (I learned there that our Enchantment sailing last January would have several hundred Ford Motor Company master mechanics and their familiies aboard. We partied with some of them and had a great time.

 

As far as behavior of groups, we've been on cruises with groups (of which we were not a part) as large as over a thousand. We've never found any problems particular to the groups. In fact, sometimes it can work to the rest of the passengers' benefit, because they have meetings or group activities to attend, leaving the rest of the ship less crowded.

 

All in all, I don't worry about it too much.

[jayz]

Sam

 

Good point. I now remember a few land holidays where there were larger groups and they do have their own functions leaving the place empty at times. I shall remain an optimist.

[Globaliser]

One way of trying to find out is just to Google the date of your cruise, trying it in combination with a few obvious key words (such as the name of your ship). This might throw up a website which is advertising to any group that's booked, and then you'd have an idea about what sort of group is going to be on board. This is obviously not a sure-fire method, and you may have to try a few dozen combinations to be reasonably confident that you'd get a hit on anything that is out there, but it's a start.

[FloridaLaura]

On another thread someone suggested googling the ship and dates you are sailing if there is a large group it may show up on their website (if they have one) you may have to enter the dates different wats ie: 4-29-07 or April 29 2007 etc.

[FloridaLaura]

Globilizer You beat me to it, posted at the same minute :)

 

Great minds think alike :p

[KVR]

I can relate to your question. On our Carnival cruise there was a group of approx 300 singles. For a married couple this was not a "fun" cruise. We meet several people who were rude, obnoxious, drunk and displayed very inappropriate behavior. We reported incidents several times, to no avail.

 

I now check the roll call boards for group cruises on several cruise message boards. Though they won't be relative to all group bookings.