For better or worse, plenty of groups plan cruises aboard Royal Caribbean cruises. These group cruises range from just a few cabins to enough people to actually charter an entire cruise ship. On any given cruise, there may be a few groups onboard with you and often our readers ask how to find out which groups are cruising with you.
To be clear, groups that cruise are not organized by Royal Caribbean but are instead third-party groups. As an example, this web site is organizing a Royal Caribbean Blog Group Cruise on Quantum of the Seas and very much organizing things on our own. Groups can be centered around sports teams, affiliations, professions, lifestyles and more.
Larger groups can cause some of the public venues to be closed to the rest of the passengers at different times because they've rented it out. Large groups can congregate in areas, making access difficult for others and they can be loud. These are generalizations and more often they do not cause issues that you will likely notice.
Regardless of which group is cruising, some people want to know about this ahead of time because there may be a personal conflict. As an example, if a Red Sox fans group cruise was being organized on the same sailing that you're going on and you happen to be a Yankees fan, then perhaps you'd prefer to avoid a cruise with a hundred Red Sox fans. Alternatively, you'd like to know so you can order Derek Jeter banners to post on your stateroom door.
How to find groups on your cruise
Royal Caribbean does not list nor will they divulge groups sailing on any itinerary. It's a matter of privacy in the same way you may not want Royal Caribbean telling others when you are sailing.
Thanks to the Internet, there are ways to find out which groups are sailing or at least most groups sailing. Doing an internet search will do the trick and here's how.
Go to Google and search for a few different search strings related to your sailing. Here is the syntax of a few search strings worth trying.
"SHIP NAME" "DATE"
"SHIP NAME" "DATE" group
"Royal Caribbean" "DATE"
The quotes around the words tell google to search for that phrase. So if your ship is Allure of the Seas, it will search for "Allure of the Seas" as one term rather than the words Allure, of, the, and seas.
Example
Let's use my upcoming Navigator of the Seas cruise as an example. I'm sailing on February 9, 2014 and this is a good way to figure out who else is going.
I did searches for
- "Navigator of the Seas" "February 9"
- "Navigator of the Seas" "February 9" 2014
- "Navigator of the Seas" "February 9" group
- "Royal Caribbean" "February 9"
You will find a lot of results, most of which aren't relevant but within about five minutes I found 4 groups on our cruise.
- Nik L Beer Band
- 2014 Tex Mex Fandango
- Hemmings Car Lover's Cruise
- Medical seminar: “Medical Errors in Primary Care: Can an Error Reporting System Increase Patient Safety?”
None of the groups listed here indicate how many people are in each group but certain group cruises do mention how many people attended last year or how many they expect this year.
I also found some other travel agent listings for my cruise but nothing that really looked like an organized group of any substantial size would be there. You may point out not every group has a web site but groups that have enough people attending to make it fairly large usually do have a website for getting important information out there and generating sales leads.
The fact is most groups on cruises are tame and everyone, regardless of group, is subject to the same rules Royal Caribbean institutes for all of its guests. Groups traveling on a cruise isn't limited to just Royal Caribbean cruise line or even cruises in general. Since some people want to know, now you know how.
