Post: #1

Have any of you guys ever taken a Contiki trip? I'd like to visit eastern europe this summer, but I'm not sure if any of my friends will be able to make it. Even with one friend, I thought it might be more fun to go in a bigger group. It seems like a lot of guys on here travel solo, but that just doesn't seem like as much fun to me. Thoughts?

Post: #2

I had no idea what a Contiki trip was, so I looked it up, and here is what I found:

http://contiki.com/

Looks like fun. I'm curious too now.

Mixx

Post: #3

lots of australians i know in london did a contiki when they came to europe

most of them very much enjoyed it - though i get the impression many of them were couples so i don't know if it's much of a hook up fest or not

Post: #4

I had a friend who went on a Contiki tour. I stayed with her for a night in Europe.

I think the company is nicknamed the "Come-Shag-Me" tour. It was mainly girls. The ratio was insane - maybe 3:1, girl/guy, mainly Aussie dudes, age group was early 20's. The quality of girl was not bad, but I don't remember any stunners. I'd say it's similar to the hostel crowd but with parents who have more money so they send them on this package tour.

They party every night. Hard drinking, lots of banging but then people pair up so I saw lots of couples. The problem is you can probably only slay 2-3 girls on your bus.

She did a one month tour but I'm sure you can do less. Every morning you hop on the bus and head to another city so it's a crazy schedule.

Post: #5

(05-24-2011 07:23 PM)MiXX Wrote:  I had no idea what a Contiki trip was, so I looked it up, and here is what I found:

http://contiki.com/

Looks like fun. I'm curious too now.

Mixx

I am pretty sure they have an upper age limit. I think it's 35. Not sure how strictly they enforce it though.

Post: #6

(05-25-2011 12:11 PM)Lief Wrote:  I had a friend who went on a Contiki tour. I stayed with her for a night in Europe.

I think the company is nicknamed the "Come-Shag-Me" tour. It was mainly girls. The ratio was insane - maybe 3:1, girl/guy, mainly Aussie dudes, age group was early 20's. The quality of girl was not bad, but I don't remember any stunners. I'd say it's similar to the hostel crowd but with parents who have more money so they send them on this package tour.

They party every night. Hard drinking, lots of banging but then people pair up so I saw lots of couples. The problem is you can probably only slay 2-3 girls on your bus.

She did a one month tour but I'm sure you can do less. Every morning you hop on the bus and head to another city so it's a crazy schedule.

That ratio sounds great. I'm pushing the upper age limit but am still under it. I'm thinking of doing a 10-14 day trip, so 2-3 would be fine with me. I'm sure you can break away too if you want to do your own thing. Thanks for the info.

Post: #7

People here clearly know little about Contiki trips. It's for people who are scared or too retarded to travel alone or simply have no friends. The sort of travellers that need someone to tell them where to go and when, what they can see, how long they get to spend there, when to take a shit and they'l need to put their hand up to ask when to take a piss. The busses whizz through the regions, seeing little and spending hardly any time in each place. You'll visit lots of places in a short period of time but spend so little time in each places you'll see and do next to nothing and build no solid contacts.

It's for silly young Europeans who's mummy and daddys aren't comfortable with them going away travelling alone so send them on tours instead complete with daddys credit card. Didn't think anyone on here would be into tours or this sort of experience.

Post: #8

(05-25-2011 06:51 PM)Gringo Wrote:  People here clearly know little about Contiki trips. It's for people who are scared or too retarded to travel alone or simply have no friends. The sort of travellers that need someone to tell them where to go and when, what they can see, how long they get to spend there, when to take a shit and they'l need to put their hand up to ask when to take a piss. The busses whizz through the regions, seeing little and spending hardly any time in each place. You'll visit lots of places in a short period of time but spend so little time in each places you'll see and do next to nothing and build no solid contacts.

It's for silly young Europeans who's mummy and daddys aren't comfortable with them going away travelling alone so send them on tours instead complete with daddys credit card. Didn't think anyone on here would be into tours or this sort of experience.

Have you been on a trip? or do you know someone that has?

Post: #9

Yeah thats pretty much what it's about... You're basically paying a super high premium for the company of other people as well as having people to tell you where to go. I think lots of people are already hooked up before they go on it and also you get lots of groups of friends that do it together. Pretty sure you can have a sick time but then again you can go by yourself and save a lot of cash...

Post: #10

I remember pulling away an Australian girl from one of these tours in Vegas (at about 4am in McDonalds actually - haha classy) and yeah, she said it pretty much sucked and that she regretted signing up for it.

Sounded super overpriced for what it was but from what I could gather pretty much everyone on the tour was hooking up with other people from the group.

Post: #11

You couldn't pay me to go one one!

Post: #12

Took similar in Scotland and a certain route in Australia.

Yes a lot of hookups happen on those tours.

These tours are good for nature trips where it's hard to get by on your own. E.g. scottish highlands - only way to travel is rent a car which is too expensive and somewhat lonely to do by yourself. So you go on this guided backpackers tour, they know their way around the highlands and it's also fun with other backpackers and naughty things happen too.

However to take these tours in 'civilization' (e.g. throughout cities and such) is a mistake imo, you can't shake the feeling of 'i'm a dumb tourist kid being led with a leash around the town with my fellow retarded tourists'. sucks. much harder to meet locals as well, which kind of defeats the purpose of your trip.

Post: #13

What’s good and what’s bad. Sights vs People and Culture.
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Right after college I did a Contiki tour. Now after having traveled both on tour and own my own, there is only one reason, I would ever do the tour and that is you have a very limited amount of time and you want to cover a lot of ground. The real negative is that you won’t really meet any locals so it’s really just a tour of sites (buildings, monuments, mountains , water). Contiki is a mainly Aussie and New Zealanders.
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Field Report: On my trip there was 3 Americans, 6 Canadians, and the rest Aus and NZ. The ratio is good about 3 to 1. But the girls were terribly ugly, especially the Aussie and NZ girls. So out of 30 girls there were only 4 doable girls. They were a 6, 6+, 7+, and one a7++ almost 8. The rest were 1 – 5s: some real beasts. Of the 4 good ones 2 were the only Americans besides me and two were Aussies . I hit on each of them in the order of quality and the only one I could get interested was the 6+ American. She had a great body but was a total geek: ugly glasses, ugly hair cut that looked like they put a bowl on her head. She would have been a point higher if she knew how to dress and use makeup. She was a virgin at 22 and I don’t think she had ever been with a guy. I hooked up with her and taught her everything, but she got scared after having sex once and wouldn’t do it again.
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Other negatives: I found the people in the group fairly boring and none of them wanted to go far from the hotels. If they could drink in the hotel, they would never go anywhere else. My group was not wild and getting drunk. The other problem I see with it, is that you won’t meet the local girls because you’ll be moving from town to town so quickly that you only get a few hours of freedom at night to go out. You can’t control your vacation such as stay longer if you meet a local girl. Hard to meet the locals because everything (eating, sight-seeing) is done with people in your tour group. There were a couple of couples in the group too. I saw another Contiki group and the girls looked extremely ugly too.
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The positives:
• you can see a lot of sights in a short period of time.
• You’ll probably get laid (quality varies greatly, but usually bad)
• You may have a lot of fun getting drunk with your tour mates
• You won’t have to travel alone
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The negatives:
• Hard to meet any locals
• You can’t control your itinerary
• You’re pretty much stuck with this group of people

Post: #14

Bump on this thread! Any other tour options? Im a lazy traveler and generally sleep in and dont get the most out when I travel. I dont mind the premium and would rather pay more to get my own room than share a room with a stranger as Contiki has it setup.

Post: #15

I'd pay money to not have to go on a Contiki tour.

Why do you want to do one? I think you're much better off traveling on your own. Stay in a hostel if you want to make friends and do tourist shit.

Post: #16

I took a Contiki tour last summer and really enjoyed it. The key is picking the right one. I did the the Greek island hopping tour, and it was perfect, as we spent 3 nights on each island. This gives you plenty of time to wander about, meeting other tourists on the islands plus locals. The trip was structured so that all activities were optional...so it was like travelling alone, but with people to hang out with if you needed one. We also had a really fun Contiki group, with cute girls. I think any "beach" Contiki tour will have better looking girls, than a bus tour.

I might shy away from a bus tour where you only spend one night in each city, since it seems too hurried.

Overall, I highly enjoyed my Contiki trip, and would recommend it.

Here are some other tour companies. If anyone has experiences with them, please chime in:

https://www.freeandeasytraveler.com/
http://www.beachtravellers.com/
https://www.topdeck.travel/

(01-03-2014 04:39 AM)kali Wrote:  Bump on this thread! Any other tour options? Im a lazy traveler and generally sleep in and dont get the most out when I travel. I dont mind the premium and would rather pay more to get my own room than share a room with a stranger as Contiki has it setup.

Post: #17

3 nights on each island sounds much better than the 3 countries, 7 cities in 9 days bus tours I remembered them being.

Post: #18

I highly recommend the right contiki tour based on what you want to do and see. I went on a 5 week hotel based tour (no hostels) back in July 2001. Was amazing. You meet a tonne of people and at times certain contiki groups from other trips are in the same city or place as you are.

Why I liked it. When I went we started off in London then did a loop down to France, Spain, Italy, week in Mykonos Greece (midpoint) then Austria, Switzerland, Germany Netherlands and end in London. When you spend 2-3 days in each main city you get to see the most important tourist stuff with a tour guide, a bus and special tours organized by the company. It's pretty much hands free. The bus brings you right to your hotel and takes you where you need to go. Then you can always return to cities and places you liked and want to explore more.

Now to go about it on your own is more difficult. Finding your hotel or lodging can be difficult at times, not knowing the local language, being ripped off by taxis. Risking getting robbed etc.

Now to each their own, but having the ability to see so many cities without having to worry about transport, tours and lodging is a luxury. From that trip I know where I would not want to visit again and where I would like to stay longer.

Highly recommended!!!!

Post: #19

I went on a contiki tour in Europe. There was tons of hooking up, drinking and getting rowdy in the group. Even one of our tour guides was banging regularly in different cities. We were borderline kicked out of a few hotels, and two guys ended up paying $2,000 for forcing open an automatic opening/closing door at a hotel when they were drunk at 4am. I estimate that our tour was 60% girls and 40% guys. It's safe to say that we were downright despised at a few places we went.

My experience was the following: very quickly a heirarchy developed within the guys of the group. There were a few seasoned players who banged multiple chicks (I was not one of them as I was all fucked up mentally and really should not have even gone on the trip at that time). As aloof as I was, even then a half german/half chinese chick still made a move on me by coming to my room with shorts but no underwear to watch a movie with me on my laptop. The bottom 1/2 of guys didn't get any play at all, I suspect.

No doubt there was a huge underlying subtext of girls wanting to get crazy and what happens on contiki stays in contiki.

In my opinion, the contiki tour creates a sort of sub-society mentality. For a short period of time, the only tangible world to the girls in the group ends up being the rest of the group. As others mentioned, almost nobody wanted to venture out away from the tour to do anything alone. We linked up with a few other contiki tours that were ridiculously high percentage of aussi. The aussi girls were a mixed-bag looks wise, but were among the drunkest, loudest, and most talkative girls I had ever seen to that point. I can't remember if any from our group banged the aussies.

I definitely agree with others who bemoan the cookie-cutter nature of the sightseeing and touristy activities. However, for players with at least medium-game, there is definitely an opportunity to bang like crazy. In sum, I see it as a decent option for people who want to party the same old way, in a "safe" environment but in different surroundings. Also, as tomtud mentioned, the trip is set up down to the last detail so really there is almost nothing to worry about, which can certainly be a huge plus to many.

I don't see myself doing one again, but I suppose everything has its proper place and I can see how some can see value in it.

Post: #20

I've done a couple of contiki tours, they are hit and miss. My last one was great fun, only 1 fattie and the girls got loose most nights, i recommend European tours in the summer that are around 10 days long.

Post: #21

Contiki is a great way to start off your travel adventures - wouldn't do it for too long though. Oh ya there is a reason it is referred to as a "whorehouse on wheels"

Post: #22

I did a 10 day Europe tour while I was at university. The 'tour' itself is thin on the culture side, so if you're into exploring the cracks of the cities you probably won't get too much in. If you haven't travelled alone much it can be a cool way to meet some friends and party. I did mine probably 7 or 8 years ago now and I'm still in touch with many of the people I went with. Interestingly I was one of the only Aussies on my tour.

One problem I remember is people party way too hard and eventually someone gets sick. Then everyone gets sick. I was only touring for just over a week, and by the end of it quite a few people were coming down with coughs and shit. Had the tour gone on any longer we would have all been sick and irritable after a few more days I think. For that reason alone, I would avoid the 1 month+ tours.

To answer your Q, I had fun.

Post: #23

Has anyone tried the asia packages for contiki? (I am keen to try the Thailand or Vietnam one), or are the Europe tours the best?