Advice regarding organised tours

[munruben]

Has anyone had any experien a European tour, taking in several countries. My better half has seen a tour offered by a mob called Cosmos and she is all fired up for us to go on one next March visiting 8 countries in all. It all sounds good to me but I wondered if any of you guys or gals have been on one of these things and would like to hear your opinion on it.
Are they worth the money or are they a waste of time. We will be going to the UK and the tour starts from there. Any information you can give would help us make up our minds..
We have never done an organised tour before, always done our own thing.

[johnc]

As a general rule you will pack more in and see more, they are fine although every tour probably has one moaner but they tend to be easy to ignore. We tend to do our own thing as well, with only a couple of tours under our belt, mixing with others has it's benefits. Go onto the Lonely Planets Thorntree link, you might pick up a few comments that help.

[Scott]

Hi John,

I've done two organised tours and many other self-guided trips and 'doing your own thing' wins out everytime for me. Most, if not all, organised tours in Europe tend to push you towards pre-organised shops and give lip service to sight seeing. Then you have to get up at pre-organised times etc etc. And finally you may/may not get along with others on the tour.

I recently (at 47) went to Europe with no destination in mind and stayed at hostels. Before you poo poo the idea, hostels are for all types of people and charge roughly $20-$40 a night. We moved from place to place on a whim using rail and had a ball. Usually we booked a hostel the night before on the net. Europe rail passes are reasonable. this way you get to do what you want, when you want and save a stack of money compared to organised tours. The key to doing it this way though is research, get an idea of what you want to do before leaving.

Hope this helps.

[powderpost]

G'day John,
We have done six tours now, 1 three week tour of British Isles, one 10 day tour of Italy and one 12 day tour of Greece. The other two were in America.
For...
No driving and parking problems
Accommodation all sorted and paid for
Priority access to venues and most points of interest
No queuing for tickets
Problem solver in attendance
Access to a font of local information
Luggage taken care of (depending on tour and company)
Usually two nights in one place about every 5 days (dependant on tour and company)
You will find some new "friends"
Often some"Free" nights and half days to explore and try local cuisine

Against
Not all tour directors are good, some are a pita
Usually early starts
Pretty much locked into a narrow "tourist" track
Many of the "recommended" retail outlets are over priced
It is not a holiday, We were often told, "You are on a tour, not a holiday". It can be hard work.
Many offer "optional" extra trips, that are often not good value

Summary, we will do tours again in preference to "do it yourself". We did do 11 weeks diy in Europe in 1980, but we were 30 odd years younger. Just my thoughts for what it is worth.

Also have some thoughts about companies, but that might be better done privately.... :wink:

Jim

[Chesand]

Jim has summed it up pretty well.

We always do our own thing in the UK but have done several tours in Europe.
The tour director can make or break the trip. We have only had one poor one who was not really interested as it was his last tour with the company so needless to say he got very little in tips. On the other hand we had a brilliant guy on our tour of Russia. It was his 100th trip into Russia so what he did not know was not worth knowing.
Cosmos and Globus are owned by the same parent company and the difference is mainly in the quality of hotels used. Cosmos are often a little further out of town.
Insight and Trafalgar are owned by their same parent company. The difference there is similar in that Insight have a maximum of 40 people on their coaches and therefore there is more leg room and comfort.

We have used all 4 companies and our preference in order would be
Insight
Trafalgar
Globus
Cosmos
but all have been satisfactory
They all do similar tours just in different variations and the cost is probably in the same order as above with Insight at the top rung.

I suggest that you search all of them on the internet where all their itineraries are available.

Hope that helps

[munruben]

Wow! you guys are really on the ball. These are very helpful answers to my question and I am pleased with the responses so far. Any further comments are welcome. It will help us make up our minds one way or the other.

We were also wondering as to the age groups that use these tours. We don't want to be the odd ones out and thrown in with a group of teenagers or singles etc. Not that I have anything against the younger generation but we may spoil their fun and we wouldn't want to do that.
I'm sure if I was in my twenties or a teenager I wouldn't want to be mixed in with an elderly couple of old fuddy duddies. :)

[wheelinround]

John although I have never done OS tours a mate was a driver for Cosmos and Top Deck (almost went OS myself for this as driver 30+ yrs ago) and a few others. All that has been said is pretty right. Not much different to tours done anywhere even here.

In out get them moving time constraints etc etc.

Hope it a good trip then come home to relax seriously:roll:

[Chesand]

We were also wondering as to the age groups that use these tours. We don't want to be the odd ones out and thrown in with a group of teenagers or singles etc. Not that I have anything against the younger generation but we may spoil their fun and we wouldn't want to do that.
I'm sure if I was in my twenties or a teenager I wouldn't want to be mixed in with an elderly couple of old fuddy duddies. :)

We are in the same age group as you are and all the companies mentioned are not really geared towards the teenagers. We have had people of all ages from 20s up and have never really had a problem.
Unfortunately it only takes one or two who are constantly late or are loudmouthed to dampen the group but you soon learn to steer clear of them.
A good tour director should be able to pull them into line.
The best directors we have had have been able to control the group without you realising that you are being controlled. The director in Turkey in Aug/Sept this year let us have plenty of time at stops by telling us 15 minutes but in reality we never left inside 20 minutes and often longer. Our group responded accordingly but then it was mostly Aussies and Canadians who always get on well.

Be aware that over 70 involves a loading on travel insurance but do not let that stop you going as the history over there is amazing. It makes you realise that as individuals we are insignificant.

[damian]

Most has been said. I'll add 2 comments as someone who's not done this:

Wise friend once suggested the first time you do europe take a tour and then go back and see the bits you liked in detail. The tour takes care of the unknowns and gives you a quick taste of everything.

I have some friends early 50's who did 6 months on their bike. Shipped it over toured and shipped it back. The bike thing wasn't sensible as it would have been cheaper to buy over there and resell. Apart from that, despite them haveing no foreign languages as far as I know, they managed quite nicely and have since been back travelling more conventionally. They did a lot of the east and russia particularly and had very few problems. They stayed at cheap places, camped as I recall, and it was all affordable and good. Peter (who lives round the corner from you) is a tad under 6' and apparently quite scary looking (apparently people in the east kept saluting him) and Tania is a tad over 6', so maybe it wouldn't be as easy for others.

Me I wouldn't tour eastern europe on my own or with the boss. I'd want a tour to sus out the place first.

I think they run seperate tours for us oldies and those young people, because lets face it the interests are probably a bit different. I am sure at 20 I would be far more interested in skinny girls and signifigant quantities of alcohol and rather less in gothic architecture and comfy matresses..:)

I wonder if there is anything on tripadvisor about the company you mentioned ?

2c

[munruben]

Thanks everyone for your input. we have carefully considered all the pros and cons of the situation and have decided to wing it and go to the UK first off and book tours or arrange short breaks in Europe from there. Having come from the UK originally (1962) we will feel at home there and I understand there are specials on offer at the travel agents at reasonable cost at the time of year we are going. (late Feb or early March) We will be staying in motels/hotels about 6 weeks during our stay and moving on as we feel we need to or want to.
Being locked into an organised tour for the whole trip is not really us at the moment but we will be looking at short breaks for sure once we get to the UK.
We are hoping for some reasonable priced "specials" for the flight to London after the Christmas break at our local travel agent.