any feedback on contiki tours?

i just found the website last night and at least initially it looks like
a good combination of organization and structure, with enough free-form
roaming to satisfy me.

anybody done a contiki tour before, and what was your experience? i'm
interested in the sorts of people that you met, whether they were
backpackers/travellers, or just college kids spending money? how much
extra money did you have to bring? seems as tho only about *half* the
meals were taken care of, which is fine. i'm looking at either a NZ
specific tour or one of the longer budget-centric european "magic"
tours.

any insight at all would be cool. thanks!
paul

In May of 2000 I did the "London to Athens", then did their cruise of the
Aegean (3 day).

I got the catalog and figured out what I wanted to do, then went to my
travel agent and booked it. My agent had to call it in, they tried to tell
her that they could not do the booking of the cruise right after the bus
trip, because they would over-lap. They would have overlapped if I had been
traveling from the US for each, but not the way I was doing this--they
advertised it that way in the catalog, but their phone rep could not figure
it out or read the catalog.

Their price sheet in the catalog was for "closed jaw" flights to Europe. So
I had to make my own estimations on how much it would be for "open jaw" (US
city-London, return: Athens-US city). The final air costs were
significantly higher than this estimate (even the non open jaw us part from
my airport to their cost basis us departure @JFK-NYC). So, it was about USD
800 more.

Before I go on, I should say that the bus trip was on their higher end
product list. it was the kind which stays in economy hotels instead of
tents. So, I guess that precluded most of the "backpackers" from the group,
though their were some on our FULL bus of 53; as far as college kids
spending money, I'm not quite sure I know what you mean, but there were some
college kids on the tour, and some of them seamed to be just doing it to
spend their parents money, and the time, but most of the people were there
to see it like I was. However, quite a lot (most) of the bus were serious
drinkers (alcoholics?), and since I rarely drink this was not fun to have to
deal with people who only were on the trip to get drunk--I still cannot
understand why they would spend all that money and go all that distance just
to get drunk for every day for three weeks. Our tour manager was great and
our driver was fantastic, our manager was quite strict, but with a group
that big, it was for the most part needed. In Lucerne, she arranged a boat
trip at night on the lake, unknown to her before hand however, was that the
boat captain was falling-down drunk before he even picked us up. we almost
crashed several times! Several of the local guides were late, or did not
include all parts of the tour they were supposed to (I got "ripped off").
The city-maps provided by Contiki for Italy were wrong. Which I guess
brings me to your remark about structure-vs.-free-form; I think that was the
thing I liked about it the most. It was my first trip abroad, and I am
enough of an independent person that seeing the cities on my own was great,
but the structure gave me lodging and transportation between cities (and
some meals). I also appreciated not having to deal with people too far out
of my age group, though I was surprised at how the age spread of even the
18-35 affected the group. The optional activities are a big plus, and
definitely worth considering. They were in many ways a highlight of the
trip. Though they definitely do cost more, they are some of the best
memories I have of the trip. Which brings me your remark about extra
money--DO NOT bring extra cash, use an ATM card, leave enough in it for USD
10 per meal on your own, plus about 80 per special activity, plus the tips
for the driver& manager, plus incidentals--I took 400 for food and tip, and
it was enough, though prices have definitely gone up since conversion to
Euro. And this does not include gift or memorabilia purchases (which they,
like any of these tour co.'s will steer you to get the commission). We met
up with a exec for them from their US office, he rode along with us for part
of the trip (our bus was already full)-he said he wanted to here about our
experiences, but when I met with him, he was quite stand-offish. On the
boat, the Contiki rep was no where to be found, and the boat was old and the
cabins smelled of mildew quite badly, though I did get a unexpected upgrade
to a cabin with a porthole.

In 2002 I went back and did the backpacker thing completely solo (rail-pass)
and loved it. I saved quite a bit of money versus the first time. But on
balance I guess it was worth it to do the Contiki tour on the first time.



"paul m" wrote in message
...
i just found the website last night and at least initially it looks like
a good combination of organization and structure, with enough free-form
roaming to satisfy me.

anybody done a contiki tour before, and what was your experience? i'm
interested in the sorts of people that you met, whether they were
backpackers/travellers, or just college kids spending money? how much
extra money did you have to bring? seems as tho only about *half* the
meals were taken care of, which is fine. i'm looking at either a NZ
specific tour or one of the longer budget-centric european "magic"
tours.

any insight at all would be cool. thanks!
paul