Group takeover

[tortigabby]

Just read a post regarding "Bikers" on board. I'm Diamond on RCL and Elite on Princess, so I'm not new to cruising. I have, however, on some other lines, found large groups controlling entire areas. One church group took over the passenger talent show and "saved" the audience several times!

After reading about the "Bikers" on board, I'm wondering just how one can avoid this problem. Apparently travel agents and cruiseline personnel will not or can not tell prospective guests about their fellow cruisers. I'm sure I'd have a "ROYAL" fit if this occured on my 1/20/13 RCL Freedom of the Seas cruise.

Anyone have success at finding out about "take overs" beforehand?

Tortigabby:)

[deladypilot]

You can try to google the cruise with the ship & date and the word charter to see if anything comes up. All those "chartered" cruises usually have websites and it will take you to them.

[kitty9]

Unfortunately, there's no real way to find out. But I do know that this biker group will be back on Freedom in November 2013.

 

I have tried googling the name of my ship and the date I'm sailing, and infrequently I've found a group or two who were going to be on board, but its not a fool proof method.

 

The only time a group impacts a cruise is if its a really big group. I was on Navigator of the Seas with my college group, but we only had 99 people so we didn't impact the cruise for anyone. But I was on board a ship where we had 700 Ford dealers from Mexico and it did negatively impact the cruise because they took over many of the public venues, both day and night.

 

We're supposed to have a big group on my upcoming cruise. To be honest, I'm not looking forward to that.

[cruzeluver]

The Google approach can be useful, but unfortunately there is no sure-fire guaranteed way to find out about all groups that may be on your sailing. Regardless of the type of group, I would not want to be on any sailing where they were the vast majority. There are groups of various sizes on all cruises and for the most part there shouldn't be an issue. On my next cruise I discovered there will be a group of about 400 on board (the ship is very large, holds over 4,000) so I'm not concerned about it.

 

I completely understand folks not wanting to sail wit large groups or maybe even certain groups, but I also appreciate why the cruise lines will not give up that information.

[cello56]

While not fool proof, I have found this website helpful.

 

http://themecruisefinder.com/CruiseAds/

[Ashland]

We once sailed with the group "Hogs on the High Seas"...We had no idea until we saw them off loading their motorcycles at our first port stop...and really that was the only time we did.

[PennyAgain]

We sailed on a cruise several years ago that was 11 or so days long. The ship was dominated by a large group who had booked together and had gotten great rates.

 

They all wore name tags and didn't want to talk with anyone who wasn't in their group.

 

We oblidged them in leaving them alone.

 

That was about it for bother.

[SeaTeach]

While not fool proof, I have found this website helpful.

 

http://themecruisefinder.com/CruiseAds/

Great site!! I had no idea there were sooo many theme cruises. Thanks for sharing.

[cruiseco]

Also:

 

http://www.groupsahoy.com