Written by Sally Fain

Planning A Family Reunion Cruise

Choosing to hold your family reunion on board ship has a great many things going for it. For a start, although you may not think so, a cruise can often be cheaper for a large group event over several days than a land-based event. They also require a lot less logistical planning, and provoke fewer arguments over what to do/where to go on each day of the reunion. Not to mention the fact that a cruise is exciting, and a lot of fun! However, it can take a bit of planning during the early stages. Here are a few tips to help you plan a family reunion cruise:

Start Planning Early

This goes for all family reunions, but it’s worth restating at the outset nonetheless! Remember, there is no way that you’re going to please 100% of your family members 100% of the time, but with a little compromise and negotiation, you can come up with something that will please the majority. However, in order to achieve this nice result and have a great event, you need to start talking to people and planning the kind of things you’d like fairly early on. On a financial level, getting your plans together and booking early can mean considerable discounts from cruise lines, so it’s worth getting started about a year or so before you actually set sail! Of course, there are some things you can’t really work out until you’ve booked or are close to booking – quite how you’re going to get everyone to the port, for example – but putting in the majority of the ground work early will pay off in the long term!

Choose Your Reunion Cruise Well

The majority of cruise companies offer pretty good deals for large groups, some even with things like cover-all insurance etc included as part of the deal. Others will expect you to provide certain things on your own initiative. Both of these formats have advantages and disadvantages – the all-inclusive nature of many cruises means that you have far less of a headache organizing things like meals and entertainment, while the more self-driven option allows you more freedom of choice when covering yourself and your events, and choosing things to do/eat. In general, the nature of a cruise means that reunion event planning is an awful lot easier, logistically speaking, as you’re all on the one boat, and mealtimes, entertainment etc can be co-ordinated by the cruise company themselves. However, different cruises offer different kinds of things, and will provide different incentives for large groups. If families will be part of your plans, choose a cruise that caters to children with activities and entertainment to their liking. It’s well worth doing your research properly in order to get the best deal for you. You’re not going to please everyone, but you can make your cruise get as close as possible to the majority desire with a little research.

Get A Reunion Cruise Team Together

You can’t do this alone! Pick a couple of family members whose skills compliment your own (and each other’s) to help you out. It’s essential that at least one of you is good at communicating with the group at large. You’re likely to have a lot of generational differences and a range of interests in your family group, so it’s important to have someone on the organizational side of things who can take on board the varying needs and desires of your group. If you’ve got someone who’s got at website management then that’s fantastic – setting up a website (or even just a social media page) can be a fantastic way of getting your ideas together, keeping everyone up to date, and making people feel involved.

Negotiate

As a reunion cruise involves a lot less logistical planning than most other kinds of reunion, the major work you’ll have to do is that of negotiating. Negotiating with your family, negotiating with cruise providers…it may sound arduous, but it’s worth doing! You can get quite a lot of good deals and incentives if you’re prepared to communicate with the cruise lines. They’ll be happier than you might think to modify their structures and routines for the benefit of your family reunion – it’s just a case of asking them! Negotiating with the cruise companies will also be good practice for negotiating with your family – who are all bound to have different opinions on the kind of thing they want, and the best way in which to conduct the event. Good luck!