I was just looking at a thread about the worst travel experiences people have had while vacationing with friends/relatives.

I guess that because I have never wanted to travel with anyone but my immediate family (husband and/or kids) it's hard for me to understand why other people need to bring along an entourage on a trip.

Comments would be appreciated from anyone who's done this. Thanks!

With all DH and mine travels we never have anyone with. Just creates problems. We would want to do one thing and they would want something else. We would want to eat chinese and they probably would want something else. On and On. Just asking for trouble by inviting family/friends with. Never would have considered it.

Different circumstances for different people.

We've done this twice, and both were just sort of serendipitous. Once we realized after everyone had booked their tickets that another couple we knew would be flying out of the same airport in Europe the same day we were. We were traveling in different areas, but we decided to spend our last few days together before the flight. The other trip coincided with my husband's break in grad school, so when we realized that one his classmates and her boyfriend also wanted to go to the same place we did we all just decided to go together.

I love hooking up with friends for an evening while on vacation. I've had great experiences doing that. But an entire vacation with friends isn't as alluring to me due to scheduling issues. We do visit and stay with friends at their out-of-town homes for the weekend, but that's different because in those instances our friends plan everything. Just as we plan everything when they come to visit us.

IF the group is compatible it can be fun. When we travel with our friends, the guys go play golf and then us gals have someone to go do something with...usually something that the guys aren't interested in anyway.
Once a group of 4 couples went on a cruise. There was always someone to do something with. Same for a large family group in Vegas...lots of choices for what to do and who to do it with. Luckily there were no "I'm upset because you don't want to do what I want to do" whiners. That would not work. But then I'm very vocal and just tell people my thoughts on that sort of thing. I don't tolerate it.

Some years ago, my we lived on Maui and my husband worked as the manager of a condominium resort. We would see people come with friends and couples with other couples. When they would first arrived, they would be so happy and seemed to be having a good time, but by check-out many of these friends would barely be speaking to each other.
I guess in some cases, it could work nicely, but after what we saw so many times, we always have gone ourselves with the exception of bringing our daughter and son-in-law with us back to Maui, which worked out nicely.

People have such different expectations and that makes it hard to travel with anyone else.

I don't mind travelling with others as long as we're not expected to do everything together. I like meeting up for dinner or meeting for drinks before dinner. But I don't expect anyone to conform to my schedule nor do I want to conform to anyone else's schedule.

I am going on a trip june 07 with my husband, my two best friends from highschool and their husbands. The three of us girls have always gotten along great. We are all going to a wedding for another highschool friend and decided, "Hey lets go on vacation afterwards!".
Hopefully it will be fun. They wanted to go on a 10 day cruise. But I vetoed - thinking that is too long! So we are going for 7 days.

We have great friends who we travel and get on very well with. We are going to New Zealand for 4 weeks with them so that will be our longest holiday together. We always joke that one of these days we will fall out or run out of things to speak about. I suppose we have the same interests and that helps. We spend most of the holiday time together. Just been to Norway for a weekend with them and had a great time.
Works out good when you split the cost 4 ways instead of 2 when hiring a car,taking a taxi or hiring a car and driver for a tour when doing a cruise.
We girls feel safer out at night in some places in a group of 4.
Its nice to be just the 2 of us for some of our trips away, but the bulk of our holidays is with them.
I just think we are really lucky to have been holidaying with them since 1996.
We went on a trip with my husbands sister and brother in law back in the 80s and I was depressed!!! The one time I was glad to get back home!

Totally depends on the people. I've done college/grad school trips with friends that were great and some that were a disaster. Since then, thought maybe travelling with friends is just a bad idea. Have been pleasantly surprised!

Went to Vegas for a friend's birthday and had a good time. Went to Italy with same friend and her parents and had a marvelous time! If everyone is easygoing and has no expectations of anyone else, it can work and really enhance the experience. I love that I can share memories of the places we saw and things we experienced. Of course, I've known this woman since I was 10....

It's not so much bringing an entourage, as it is wanting to experience new and unfamiliar things with people you know and love.

I guess that because I have never wanted to travel with anyone but my immediate family (husband and/or kids)



well...maybe some of us don't have an immediate family and don't like going solo?

Jagirl,

That is a completely different circumstance. I was referring to couples who travel with other couples; or families with other families.

We have done a couple of long weekends with my wifes large family...5 families with a total of 10-12 kids. 3 nights is usually enough and there time to do some of your own thing.

Plus it makes for good discussion on the way home about how the others are not as good of parents as we are or were at their younger stages. ;-)

I have not done the friend thing but I see it in our future as the kids move on.

I have a friend that I have traveled with quite a bit over the years and it works. We have similar styles, like to do the same things so we always had fun. I had another friend that was NOT quite as easy to be with, but basically it worked. I'm pretty easy going so I would let her pretty much take the lead. However, she would NOT be my FIRST choice.

I was on a tour, with my brother, my first trip to Europe and there were..trying to remember..either three or four couples that were traveling together. They had know each other from high school I think..all were I would say mid to late 40's. Every year they did some kind of trip together as a group. They were just having the greatest time together.

I don't think it's anything you can really plan for. There have been other threads about this and even if it's someone you know well, and sometimes even family..it's a crap shoot..when it works it can be great..when it doesn't...well, lesson learned and back to the drawing board.

It really doesn't appeal to me - I like the freedom to change my mind at the drop of a hat and it's always seemed like enough to accommodate the wants, needs, and desires of a spouse - let alone extended family and friends.

I would try it on a cruise where there is time and space to be together, yet be apart as much as one wants. Road trips would be a nightmare, in my opinion.

I've enjoyed travelling with friends and sometimes meeting up with family while on vacations but every time we've done this we've always gone our own way during the day and just shared accommodation (a cottage in Wales, a gite in France for examples) and eaten meals together some evenings.

It was great to travel with another couple when my son was small and they had a daughter of the same age. We took it in turns to cook for 6 and also each couple had an 'evening off' while the other babysat. The first and last nights of the vacation we all ate out together somewhere casual where the kids could be kids.

But, I've always chosen my travelling companions carefully....there are some friends I love but would never travel with because I know it wouldn't work!

Just like there are introverts and non-introvert personalities, there are different styles to having "fun" and that goes for vacation fun too. I have been happily surprised at how much of an adventure a group travel CAN be. It can also be a disaster.

As much as I prefer to travel in 2 or 3 at the most, or even solo -(you get to be a spoiled brat and do EXACTLY what you want- EXACTLY when you want for the most part), I found the best short trip I myself ever experienced was a 9 person "let's go to Milwaukee" thing. Which, by the way, was totally unplanned, totally not pre-ordered by any kind of ticket or reservation and occurred with 2 babies, 1 pregnant woman and 3 totally unrelatived males in their very young 20's in 3 cars/vans.

We had a ball. So you never know.

Also some kinds of trips, like at least 7 or 8 we have done with ski clubs, predispose a group to pricing and activities that you couldn't fully realize in a smaller number. The ski clubs got condos and racing set ups that individuals couldn't. Not some peoples' cup of tea, but very much others- the activities of the GROUP- like racing or 30 people separate room pizza parties etc.

Over the last dozen years, my husband and I have taken at least one sailing charter in the islands per year. While we've done about half of those trips just by ourselves (and those are the best, by far), we have also taken these trips with friends or family.

It's always great to have extra hands on deck, and extra hands in the galley. And there's something so very convivial about happy hour rolling into dinner rolling into the night with friends when you're tucked into a beautiful island anchorage and you have nowhere to go but down the companionway steps to get to your bunk. Or going to great beach bars with nothing more than a quick dinghy ride back to your boat. In fact, we find ourselves doing a lot of that on our boat at home -- rafting with friends for a collaborative dinner and evening of conversation and music.

For the most part, our experiences have been wonderful and served to deepen friendships. There have been a number of crews from Hades, and ironically those have been people whom we knew well or relatives. Some of the best trips have been with people we didn't know for as long, or as intimately as you might think you'd want to spend time in close quarters.

Of course, we make a point of taking one long, and many short, trips every year, just by ourselves. That way, we don't deny ourselves the benefit of each other's undivided attention. (Though I will note, that, interestingly, when we travel as a pair, we are more likely to befriend -- or be befriended by -- strangers and end up hanging out with them.)

One more thing.

All the bigger families I know have a longer wait, less easy time by far, getting in/out of dining or logistics- but they adjust. And sometimes there are perks.

This is just MY opinion, but circa 2006, so many people are from small families now that they are far more used to getting their way in travel or anything else with a more perfect and quick self-gratification level that they definitely have less patience waiting for anyone else or their dithers.

But for others the entourage IS the fun and the negatives are paltry in comparison.