Other Options...

[TeeKo]

Yes it was a Tauck Bridges Tour. Our guide was Federico. He also was excellent. We already signed up for another Tauck trip in 2019.

Did he go by Fico?

 

[carpenta]

What is "Fico"?

 

[Calfan]

What is "Fico"?

Guessing it’s a guide’s nickname....

 

[TeeKo]

What is "Fico"?

the guide’s nickname
Our ABD Costa Rica guide was also Federico but went by Fico.
I thought maybe he worked for Tauck too. He was exceptional.

 

[carpenta]

Our Federico did not refer to himself as Fico. He did say he does lead other groups but mostly a French company that caters to mostly Europeans mostly French citizens.

 

[aggiedog]

We're looking for a trip for 2020, saving up and not traveling in 2019. My plan is to bring brochures on our vacation this summer and have the kids pick where they want to go next. I'm usually the planner and tour guide, but want one trip where I just show up and let someone else do all the work. In my research, I've been thru this thread more times than I can count, and have made a list of most (surely I missed a few) companies mentioned. I've put a few notes by some of the companies. Feel free to add to my list, or pm me and I can edit them all into one post. It's in no certain order. Most offer family trips specifically. Some are definitely more "luxe," others are pretty basic. Some offer fully private tours. Some are specific to certain regions. Some have age restrictions. Don't hold me to any details, as I'm no expert. Consider this a jumping off point for your own research.

ABD
Thomson
Tauck (Bridges for families)
Nat Geo Adventures/Expeditions
G Adventures
Inside Asia - Japan, Viet Nam, Burma
Intrepid
Classic Journeys
Queenslander
Austin Adventures
REI Adventures
Road Scholar - age over 47, offers some multigenerational trips to include grandkids
Overseas Adventure Travel - age over 50
Backroads - active travel
Insider Journeys - Asia
Rick Steves - Europe
Alexander and Roberts
Quark - Arctic, Antarctica
Micato - luxury
Alluring Africa
Butterfield and Robertson
Abercrombie and Kent
Uniworld - river cruise with multigenerational trips
Zicasso - travel clearing house that seems to match your preferences to travel providers
Trafalgar
Gate 1
France Just for You - (a shout out to the awesome company that did our France planning last year)
Natural Habit Adventures
Off the Beaten Path
Wildland Adventures/Trekking

 

[Calfan]

We're looking for a trip for 2020, saving up and not traveling in 2019. My plan is to bring brochures on our vacation this summer and have the kids pick where they want to go next. I'm usually the planner and tour guide, but want one trip where I just show up and let someone else do all the work. In my research, I've been thru this thread more times than I can count, and have made a list of most (surely I missed a few) companies mentioned. I've put a few notes by some of the companies. Feel free to add to my list, or pm me and I can edit them all into one post. It's in no certain order. Most offer family trips specifically. Some are definitely more "luxe," others are pretty basic. Some offer fully private tours. Some are specific to certain regions. Some have age restrictions. Don't hold me to any details, as I'm no expert. Consider this a jumping off point for your own research.

ABD
Thomson
Tauck (Bridges for families)
Nat Geo Adventures
G Adventures
Inside Japan - Asia
Intrepid
Classic Journeys
Queenslander
Austin Adventures
REI Adventures
Road Scholar - age over 47, offers some multigenerational trips to include grandkids
Overseas Adventure Travel - age over 50
Backroads - active travel
Insider Journeys - Asia
Rick Steves - Europe
Alexander and Roberts
Quark - Arctic, Antarctica
Micato - luxury
Alluring Africa
Butterfield and Robertson
Abercrombie and Kent
Uniworld - river cruise with multigenerational trips
Zicasso - travel clearing house that seems to match your preferences to travel providers
Trafalgar
Gate 1
France Just for You - (a shout out to the awesome company that did our France planning last year)

Great list. Thanks. I'd add Natural Habit Adventures. We are doing Botswana with them, and they offer both family and regular trips. Also, for Nat Geo, I'd note that Adventures are the active trips and Exhibitions are "the rest."

 

[Ava]

We're looking for a trip for 2020, saving up and not traveling in 2019. My plan is to bring brochures on our vacation this summer and have the kids pick where they want to go next. I'm usually the planner and tour guide, but want one trip where I just show up and let someone else do all the work. In my research, I've been thru this thread more times than I can count, and have made a list of most (surely I missed a few) companies mentioned. I've put a few notes by some of the companies. Feel free to add to my list, or pm me and I can edit them all into one post. It's in no certain order. Most offer family trips specifically. Some are definitely more "luxe," others are pretty basic. Some offer fully private tours. Some are specific to certain regions. Some have age restrictions. Don't hold me to any details, as I'm no expert. Consider this a jumping off point for your own research.

ABD
Thomson
Tauck (Bridges for families)
Nat Geo Adventures/Expeditions
G Adventures
Inside Asia - Japan, Viet Nam, Burma
Intrepid
Classic Journeys
Queenslander
Austin Adventures
REI Adventures
Road Scholar - age over 47, offers some multigenerational trips to include grandkids
Overseas Adventure Travel - age over 50
Backroads - active travel
Insider Journeys - Asia
Rick Steves - Europe
Alexander and Roberts
Quark - Arctic, Antarctica
Micato - luxury
Alluring Africa
Butterfield and Robertson
Abercrombie and Kent
Uniworld - river cruise with multigenerational trips
Zicasso - travel clearing house that seems to match your preferences to travel providers
Trafalgar
Gate 1
France Just for You - (a shout out to the awesome company that did our France planning last year)
Natural Habit Adventures

I did the same while reading this thread. I have a note on my phone with a long list of tour companies to check out. A couple others I noted that look interesting are:
Off the Beaten Path (no specific family tours but kids are welcome on small group tours based on the tour/child's age, they also do custom tours)
Wildland Adventures
I also found one just now called Wildland Trekking that does hiking/backpacking trips, multi-day as well as day hikes.

I'm thinking of trying a group tour for the first time in 2020. My youngest will be 7 by then, so old enough for a good number of options. I will need to stick with the ones on the more budget end of the spectrum, though. ABD, Tauck, etc are unfortunately out of our price range.

 

[iujen94]

We're looking for a trip for 2020, saving up and not traveling in 2019. My plan is to bring brochures on our vacation this summer and have the kids pick where they want to go next. I'm usually the planner and tour guide, but want one trip where I just show up and let someone else do all the work. In my research, I've been thru this thread more times than I can count, and have made a list of most (surely I missed a few) companies mentioned. I've put a few notes by some of the companies. Feel free to add to my list, or pm me and I can edit them all into one post. It's in no certain order. Most offer family trips specifically. Some are definitely more "luxe," others are pretty basic. Some offer fully private tours. Some are specific to certain regions. Some have age restrictions. Don't hold me to any details, as I'm no expert. Consider this a jumping off point for your own research.

ABD
Thomson
Tauck (Bridges for families)
Nat Geo Adventures/Expeditions
G Adventures
Inside Asia - Japan, Viet Nam, Burma
Intrepid
Classic Journeys
Queenslander
Austin Adventures
REI Adventures
Road Scholar - age over 47, offers some multigenerational trips to include grandkids
Overseas Adventure Travel - age over 50
Backroads - active travel
Insider Journeys - Asia
Rick Steves - Europe
Alexander and Roberts
Quark - Arctic, Antarctica
Micato - luxury
Alluring Africa
Butterfield and Robertson
Abercrombie and Kent
Uniworld - river cruise with multigenerational trips
Zicasso - travel clearing house that seems to match your preferences to travel providers
Trafalgar
Gate 1
France Just for You - (a shout out to the awesome company that did our France planning last year)
Natural Habit Adventures

WOW, this is super helpful! Now, just tell me which one is perfect for my family, and I'll be all set!

 

[AquaDame]

We went with go2africa for our trip next year to East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Zambia) and am in the middle of booking transfers and guides for a week of our China trip this November (Chengdu, Xian, Beijing portions) with Catherine Lu Tours which is also highly rated. They were both willing and ready to customize every aspect and do exactly what we wanted - and offered good advice when and where we weren't sure. So far in the planning/deposit process they have been lovely and came highly reviewed.

 

[Ava]

Does anyone know of any websites for reviews of group/guided tours & tour companies, besides the companies own websites? TripAdvisor doesn’t really have a place for reviews of multi day tours. You can sometimes find mentions of group tours in the reviews of a certain location, but not often. I’d love more firsthand info, especially about some of the lower cost options like G Adventures, Intrepid, and Gate 1.

 

[pixiepirate]

Has anyone travelled with Smithsonian Journeys? I keep looking at their Classic Mystery Lover's England tour.

 

[BluesTraveler]

Does anyone know of any websites for reviews of group/guided tours & tour companies, besides the companies own websites?

They're hard to find. Some of the companies have reviews on their facebook pages. Yelp has some reviews. I've been trying to find reviews of Abercrombie & Kent family trips, as they have a couple we're interested in, but not getting much luck. Makes you appreciate how helpful this board is.

 

[aggiedog]

I've found some reviews on the TripAdvisor travel forums, particularly for the larger companies like Gate 1, etc.

 

[AquamarineSteph]

G Adventures used to have a message board. I'm not sure if they still maintain it or have switched to something else. I've done G Adventures/National Geographic tours (they have co-branded tours), but those are the only ones I've done.

 

[nemofans]

Tauck has a community forum, but not many are chatting on it.

 

[*WDW*Groupie*]

I've done G Adventures/National Geographic tours (they have co-branded tours), but those are the only ones I've done.

How do you find the co-branded tours? What were your thoughts?

 

[AquamarineSteph]

How do you find the co-branded tours? What were your thoughts?

When you go to the G Adventures website there should be a link at the top of the page that says 'travel styles' - at least, that's how it appears on a desktop or laptop page. I do not know if it appears the same on a phone, but I think it's the same for a tablet.

Anyway, under 'travel styles' you have a variety of options. Classic. National Geographic. Active. Family. Rail. Etc. Each travel style is a little different, so you'll want to have in mind if you want to go bare budget or slightly upgraded or somewhere in-between.

We've done two co-branded National Geographic tours with them. Costa Rica & Morocco. I totally loved both. Now they're very different from ABD. They're different from Tauck. You have to carry own bags. You don't always stay at four star hotels. But I fell in love with them on our Costa Rica tour, and we have one more scheduled with them later this year for Ecuador. Our Costa Rica tour was amazing. The hotels were fabulous. And Morocco is just drop dead gorgeous.

With both tours, we had a lot of local experiences. I was a little iffy about this at first, but these turned out to be some of the highlights of the tours. And what I also like is that with G Adventures you lock into the set price and then - only if you want to - there are optional activities you can pay to do. You know about these up front. I'm not always the person who wants to bungee jump, so being able to opt out of this activity without feeling like I'm wasting money I paid for a group tour is a plus in my book. But if you want to do this? They make it easy and post the price up front.

 

[laceltris3]

Tauck just came out with an app and I am checking it out. So far I am impressed. It not only has a countdown to your trip (automatically calculated when you log in) but it has your itinerary, the hotel information, and essentially everything that’s on the site in a much more easily accessible fashion. It has restaurant recommendations for the few OYO meals so you can research and make plans and I am talking 30 restaurants, plus sightseeing and nightlife spots, that also map you to it automatically. It also has information that will be available when you are on the tour as well. And it’s based against a pretty background of Irish scenery for our Ireland forever trip. It has everything in the book plus a ton more. They clearly put a lot of effort into it.

 

[carpenta]

We had that app on our Costa Rica trip over Christmas and it is really impressive. Give you a great expectation feeling before you leave and also local knowledge when you are actually on the trip. Love it.