20 Year old single daughter concerned about making friends.

[Barnum42]

Hello

 

My wife an I are pondering booking a week-long P&O cruise over the school summer holidays (wife being a teacher, we have no choice but to holiday in the rip-off season)

 

We have in years past sailed with our daughter, who up until the age of 17 loved the independence of heading out to the teen clubs, making friends and hanging out with them. As she has dyspraxia (which is on the autism spectrum) she could have difficulty making friends, but the wide range of kids in the clubs mostly meant this was never a problem.

 

She will shortly turn 20, and has not been on a cruise since she was 17. We have asked if she'd like to come, but she is concerned about  having trouble making friends and so ending up spending most of her time in the cabin (which happened on the last trip as there were gangs of snotty little madams that ruined the club for her) . I have mentioned that there are single cruiser get togethers every day, but I've no idea about who attends these, their intentions and how successful they are. Has anyone experience of them? 

[john watson]

P&O singles daily get togethers are generally programmed as a "solo cruisers" event.   I have been to a large number of these over the years,  sometimes when I have been sailing alone and other times when sailing with my daughter as a single parent.  There is often an older age group in attendance but other times a younger set, twenties/thirties seems to be present.  It all depends on the mix and how they gel.  On one cruise a group of younger solos met daily for the coffee and they would disembark as a group to go round the port shops.  Sadly I could not go and leave daughter on board alone.  Approaching Christmas a lot of married ladies might be found sailing alone leaving husbands at home. No reason why you don't attend on your own with daughter and see how it goes.  I have known twin sisters turn up, no-one really excludes people.  It is not a dating type set up. It is more of a getting to know a few contacts who you might meet and have a chat with later and they might be able to advise on things being programmed you don't know about.  Highlighting your programme for "mustn't miss" items etc. is worth doing, particularly where the activities are requiring mixing and have been officially organised.

 

Mixing is also done through things like Trivia Quizzes where people flocculate on the day at the time into teams of six or eight whatever the maximum size is as opposed to staying in pairs or couples.  She could probably meet a few people there and pal up if you initially go as a group then leave without her if things go well.  Once these loose teams are formed quite often they like to return each day as an established team.  Some teams are never going to win but they don't care!  P&O also do a men against the women series with team captains which is interesting.  Trivia etc. is often followed by Bingo.

 

Regards John

Edited April 2, 2019 by john watson

[Clodia]

It depends on the ship. Family friendly ship in the summer holidays, there will probably be others her age onboard and the get togethers already suggested are a good way of meeting people. I have taken my daughter twice on adult only ships, at 18 and 21, and was glad we were with friends including a friend her own age whom she met on Oceana when they were 15, because there were not many 18-25s onboard. having said that, daughter and friend winkled them all out and got them to join them as a group who met every afternoon and evening for drinks and chat.

[Barnum42]

Thanks for the reply. We'd probably be going on a family friendly ship. Daughter is happy to join us exploring ports, it's just the time on board she's worried about.

 

[fimac]

I'm just off Oceana and they had organised a 20-30's get together drinks one evening. Sadly I am now to old to attend these, but I remember always requesting them in the past as I found the demographic at the morning coffee solos much older. However, if she felt confident to go to morning coffee at the start, she can meet all the entertainment team and push them to have a 20-30's social event. On this recent cruise there were a fair number of parent/grown up children - by this I mean in their 20's! The younger adult cruisers also frequented the sports competitions if she had any interest there.

[Barnum42]

Thanks again for the replies. She's decided not to cruise, she's too worried about the "what if?" aspect.

 

[grapau27]

On 4/2/2019 at 8:32 PM, Barnum42 said:

Hello

 

My wife an I are pondering booking a week-long P&O cruise over the school summer holidays (wife being a teacher, we have no choice but to holiday in the rip-off season)

 

We have in years past sailed with our daughter, who up until the age of 17 loved the independence of heading out to the teen clubs, making friends and hanging out with them. As she has dyspraxia (which is on the autism spectrum) she could have difficulty making friends, but the wide range of kids in the clubs mostly meant this was never a problem.

 

She will shortly turn 20, and has not been on a cruise since she was 17. We have asked if she'd like to come, but she is concerned about  having trouble making friends and so ending up spending most of her time in the cabin (which happened on the last trip as there were gangs of snotty little madams that ruined the club for her) . I have mentioned that there are single cruiser get togethers every day, but I've no idea about who attends these, their intentions and how successful they are. Has anyone experience of them? 

A friend of my wife has dyspraxia and she said Royal Caribbean was more suitable to her than P&O.

She is in her 30s and she said the single groups on P&O were much older than the ones on RC.

[Barnum42]

2 minutes ago, grapau27 said:

A friend of my wife has dyspraxia and she said Royal Caribbean was more suitable to her than P&O.

She is in her 30s and she said the single groups on P&O were much older than the ones on RC.

We have cruised on Royal Caribbean, and she enjoyed the teen clubs there - they had the advantage that they were open all through the day, P&O closed theirs for staff breaks.

Main problem with Royal Carribbean is that they seem to permanently have "limited time free booze" offers. As none of us are drinkers, it's not worth the hundreds of pounds each that Royal put on their fares to cover the "free" booze.

 

[grapau27]

11 minutes ago, Barnum42 said:

We have cruised on Royal Caribbean, and she enjoyed the teen clubs there - they had the advantage that they were open all through the day, P&O closed theirs for staff breaks.

Main problem with Royal Carribbean is that they seem to permanently have "limited time free booze" offers. As none of us are drinkers, it's not worth the hundreds of pounds each that Royal put on their fares to cover the "free" booze.

 

As a D+ RC member we can get free drinks for 3.5 hours a night if we want and those free drinks packages we avoid because as you rightly say the price of the cruise is inflated to pay for them.

We try to book early when the prices and cabin availability is better.

The short cruises up to 5 nights usually don't qualify for the free drinks packages and are excellent value.

Best wishes.

Graham.

 

[Meka3256]

On 4/2/2019 at 9:26 PM, john watson said:

P&O singles daily get togethers are generally programmed as a "solo cruisers" event.   I have been to a large number of these over the years,  sometimes when I have been sailing alone and other times when sailing with my daughter as a single parent.  There is often an older age group in attendance but other times a younger set, twenties/thirties seems to be present.  It all depends on the mix and how they gel.  On one cruise a group of younger solos met daily for the coffee and they would disembark as a group to go round the port shops.  Sadly I could not go and leave daughter on board alone.  Approaching Christmas a lot of married ladies might be found sailing alone leaving husbands at home. No reason why you don't attend on your own with daughter and see how it goes.  I have known twin sisters turn up, no-one really excludes people.  It is not a dating type set up. It is more of a getting to know a few contacts who you might meet and have a chat with later and they might be able to advise on things being programmed you don't know about.  Highlighting your programme for "mustn't miss" items etc. is worth doing, particularly where the activities are requiring mixing and have been officially organised.

 

Mixing is also done through things like Trivia Quizzes where people flocculate on the day at the time into teams of six or eight whatever the maximum size is as opposed to staying in pairs or couples.  She could probably meet a few people there and pal up if you initially go as a group then leave without her if things go well.  Once these loose teams are formed quite often they like to return each day as an established team.  Some teams are never going to win but they don't care!  P&O also do a men against the women series with team captains which is interesting.  Trivia etc. is often followed by Bingo.

 

Regards John

 

Agree with everything on here - I've done 5 cruises, and 4 were solo.  Always found people to chat to, and spend time with if needed.  I would say your daughter might need to have an open mind about the age range, but sometimes there are younger people around.  I'm currently 36, and am always one of the younger ones.

 

Also I would add that meeting people at meal times is really good.  So if she feels a bit awkward, having a meal to talk about can take away the pressure of thinking of small talk topics

[laticmon]

When we sailed with Celebrity last summer they had regular 18-23ish meet-ups planned in the daily listings. P&O should follow suit.