What would you do?

[bychance]

I would like to hear comments on this. We invited another couple to go on a cruise with us. We made all the plans and everything was great. We get a call a few days later telling us the couple we invited invited along another couple we do not know. Hmm, we will not meet them until we are getting on the ship. I'm thinking what if we don't like them, we would be stuck with them for ten days! :eek: So we said nothing because we were a but stunned. Then a few days after that they call to say they invited their elderly parents and two teenage girls. :mad: This was a trip I always wanted to take that just seemed to get ruined. Am I wrong thinking this other couple was rude to do this? :confused: So we are deciding to cancel or not. Instead we invited another couple to go along thinking we would see the ifrst couple once in a while and all would be fine. We explained fully what happened with couple number one that we invited. They said they would love to come along and we would get together to decide on excursions. This gets better. :cool: A few days later the second couple calls to say another couple invited themselves to go along with us. AARRGGHHH!!!!! We met this other couple. They are nice but I do not think I want to spend ten days with a Rodney Dangerfield type guy and his trophy wife. I'm sure you all get the picture. So here is the question. What would you do? Would you just cancel and let all of them go on the cruise, and book another cruise ourselves? Or, go along and grin and bear it and just make excursion plans to go by our lonesome? I basically know what I may do, just some others comments on this situation would be good to hear. Thank You! :rolleyes:

 

This is how our last cruise ended up it was great! there were enough people on the trip that you were not stuck with anyone! It was great, we made new vacation buddies! Go for it! There will be a couple 1000 other people on the ship you dont know! Just go and have fun!

[bychance]

sorry

[mumeof3]

we are going on a cruise with about 7 other couples and their kids,we all get along great and the kids enjoy each other but I know with so many people on a cruise we probably wont do everything together,we are eating together but with excursions we all like different things I am sure so we will do some together and some with just our family,I don't think you should cancell just do your own excursions and if the show up oh well,Have fun ..

[mumeof3]

I think a Disney vacation is much harder because it is a go and go and go kinda trip and can be a disaster when going with others,I know this because we did this with my inlaws and by the end of the 1st day we wanted to kill each other and decided to go off on our own,but a cruise I think is more relaxing..

[lillulu]

Sillysoul,

 

I was just wondering "Can I go too"? :D

 

All kidding aside...I would love it if I had other couples to do stuff like this with. I think it would make it nice to know that if I wanted to do something with them I could, and if not...I didn't have to.

 

There is no reason for you to feel obligated to spend your every waking moment with them. And with them inviting others along, I am sure they don't expect that either.

 

Go have fun, and think of us cruisers who would love to have friends along..then to cruise by ourselves all the time.

[SillySoul]

This is a most curious situation!

 

You don't think the couple you invited decided to make themselves "group leaders" and get a discount by inviting a lot of others along?

 

The reason I mention this . . . my Aunt once asked DH and me to go on a cruise w/ them . . . there was correspondence back and forth . . . I was very touched that my Aunt wanted to spend time w/ me . . . and then only b/c of a discussion w/ another cousin . . . did I find out my Aunt had been asking other family members (as well as her own friends and bridge partners) to go on that same cruise . . . never explaining that it was a group booking . . . and she was the group leader and getting her freebies b/c of the group bookings. Everyone was quite taken back b/c it seemed such a ruse, whereas if Auntie had just told us she was booking a group cruise - no one would have thought anything about it. As it turned out, we all felt rather "used and abused" that she would surreptitiously "invite" us when the only reason was to get her discount/freebies.

 

So please excuse my curiosity . . . but just had to ask!!!!!

 

And I have to agree w/ the earlier poster . . . seems to me if the couple you invited had really seen this as an opportunity to spend some one-on-one time w/ you and your DH, they would never have invited a lot of other people along. Or perhaps they think "the more the merrier" . . .

 

One thing about a ship . . . as others have stated, it is big and lots of variety and no reason to have to be stuck w/ any group of people.

 

At least this is not in your home, but rather on a cruise ship. We once invited out-of-town relatives to spend a long weekend w/ us at Thanksgiving, and to our horror, they brought other relatives with them. We were informed one hour b/f their arrival that instead of two people, we were going to be bombarded w/ 8 people. They thought they would "surprise" us. :eek:

I honestly do not know. I don't know how they could get discounts by inviting other people after they booked the cruise with us at the same time.

[SillySoul]

IMHO, I think it was very rude of your friends to do this without discussing it first. This is why the older i get, the less i tell others about my plans so it does not snowball. If these were good friends then i think it was thoughtless and tacky to invite all of these other people without talking about it with you first. A similiar thing happenned to me with my inlaws. My DH and I were talking about going on a fall foliage tour in Oct and before we knew it all of a sudden "it became something they always wanted to do too" even though no one in the family had ever heard them mention it before. They made their reservations for the exact date that i was thinking about! Needless to say, we did not make our reservation and told them we rethought it and decided to do something more economical! So they are going in a few weeks and we are not.:) It is an emotional issue and even though others are saying you should go, you will meet others, etc it still feels like somehow that your vacation was "stolen from you." Thats how i felt. If it really bothers u then reschedule to another week and tell your friends how u feel or just make up a reason why there is now a conflict with something else that particular week. I would not feel obligated one bit to go on a trip with your friends, whether you initiated it or not, considering they had no hesitation to do what they did! Good luck whatever you decide.

I am so glad someone feels exactly as I did. Yes, it did kind of feel like my vacation was stolen from me. We are thinking of canceling because both couples have company and we would not be abandoing them. I have not decided yet.

[SillySoul]

Sillysoul,

 

I was just wondering "Can I go too"? :D

 

All kidding aside...I would love it if I had other couples to do stuff like this with. I think it would make it nice to know that if I wanted to do something with them I could, and if not...I didn't have to.

 

There is no reason for you to feel obligated to spend your every waking moment with them. And with them inviting others along, I am sure they don't expect that either.

 

Go have fun, and think of us cruisers who would love to have friends along..then to cruise by ourselves all the time.

There is now seventeen people, I doubt one more would make a difference. LOL! My biggest problem is two things. One is we do not want to vacation with couple number one's parents. Secondly couple number two invited along very loud mouthed bullyish people that my husband dislikes a lot. So it is hard for me to decide how can I ever do anything with either couple without alienating these other people? I guess we could just make our own plans and let things take their course, but that is not why I invited them in the first place. decisions, decisions! LOL!