Craziest table mates you have had.

[DisneYE]

My Wife, Daughter and I dined with a very nice family on our cruise back in 2011, and were looking forward to meeting a new family when we sailed the Fantasy in February. We ended up at a table by ourselves, and actually missed not having other people to talk to.

Our normal dinner conversation encompasses what happened at work/school for each of us, but on the cruise, the question "So what did you do today?" was met with the response "Pretttttty much the exact same thing you did".

LOL.. I can relate... like you, we're also 3...
We've had so much luck on our previous MDR experiences, this latest trip we were so nervous that we would be seated alone...i even teased our DD that we would be by ourselves at a table....she literally cried and sobbed...until i told her I was joking... that's how much we enjoy meeting our new mates (while keeping our fingers crossed so as to not meet some of the crazy ones described on here...)

Reading some of the stories here make me smh....

I realise how lucky we've been...
But also, how much I would've loved to be seated with some of you who have posted and sound so cool...

 

[Arizona Rita]

I have been on 9, soon to be 10, cruises, 5 DCL, 2 NCL, and 2 Cunard (the 10th will be DCL) and consider myself extremely lucky that we havn't had a bad table mate yet. Most of the time we have been on our own, there is four of us, but we are always pleasant and friendly with the tables by us.

The very first cruise I went on was an Alaskan cruise on Cunard. My mother had just passed and I went with my "BFF". Cunard set us at a table of 8, six couples my mothers age. My friend was concerned but I told her I could handle it.
We arrived late because we didn't know all of the "rules" and they had all been seated. They all greeted us warmly and then asked where we were from. We told them Arizona and one of the older gentlemen said "Whats with your governor". We had a lot of problems with him!(Our governor!)
It was awkward at the moment but actually became one of our favorite memories.
The six older couples were great because they had all cruised a lot and ended up teaching us all about cruising!

On our Med cruise we were late coming back from a shore excursion and decided to see if we could still eat in a MDR. The servers were very accommodating and sat us at a larger table, which most likely was concierge
.The people we sat with were so nice and the elderly lady was dripping in jewels. She had a plate of chocolate covered strawberries and insisted that we shared them with her, after checking to see if we liked them. She said that she started every meal with chocolate covered strawberries!

I know this is supposed to be your craziest tablemate but these are my favorite tablemate stories. Thought I would share.

Now can someone tell me where to mind the posts about the "doll babies"?

 

[phinz]

Now can someone tell me where to mind the posts about the "doll babies"?

http://www.disboards.com/showpost.php?p=51126275&postcount=77

 

[dryvithome]

We've been very lucky because we have had some awesome table mates. Only one "strange" family, but they were nice! We were seated with another family the same size as ours: Mom, Dad and daughter. The daughter was only a few months older than mine, but the parents were considerably older. DH and I were 37/39 and the other parents were 60/61 and our daughters were both 7.

What we found strange about them was their obsessive love of Disney. Don't get me wrong, we love Disney, but they were the ultimate Disney family. Every night they came in dressed head to toe in Disney attire, covered in Disney pins. I'm talking pants, shoes, tops, hats, everything. And they each wore a Disney vest every night that had at least 100 pins on it- front and back. The only thing they would talk about was Disney- as soon as you asked them anything else like "What do you do for a living", they would say, "oh, that doesn't matter...how many times have you been to Disneyland? Do you like the Matterhorn? Have you had a turkey leg?" On an on an on....

After night 4 of this and experiencing all the MDR's, DH decided he couldn't take it anymore and we skipped the last 3 nights in the MDR.

Ah, the love of Disney! We're not quite that bad as we do sometimes carry on about Disney, but it isn't the only conversation we are willing to have. I don't want to talk about work while on vacation, so I redirect the conversations away from work too. Besides, over the years, I've learned that some people's jobs are not what I want to hear about at dinner.

It's too bad that they weren't able to talk about something else and ended up making it hard on your DH.

 

[DisneYE]

http://www.disboards.com/showpost.php?p=51126275&postcount=77

ok... i just saw that video and it´s the most depressing thing i've seen in years, other than the genocides and famines around the world.

the woman in the video should seriously at the very least seek professional help.. I'd rather see her locked up in a mental hospital. she is the ambassador of all crazies in the world.

by far she has to be the craziest person ever to set foot on the DCL.
the baby clothes and her taking them to the nursery...it seriously made me feel sick to my stomach.

i would love to have meet her tho. I would have told her to her face how deranged she is ... sorry i'm just in shock at her insanity..

 

[DWGal210]

Wow, the reborn babies.... oh my goodness. I wonder if they're people who've suffered through infertility?

 

[MAJPLO]

Hi, I'm a longtime lurker, seldom poster but I just had to reply to this thread. A few years back when DD was 7, my daughter and I took a 3 night cruise on the Wonder. I am a single mother and it was just the two of us. On the first night, we arrived in the main dining and found out we were sitting with a married couple, probably in their early 30's at a four person table. I can usually manage to talk to anybody so I tried to engage this couple in conversation. I found out that they were from the midwest and that they had a four year old child that they had not brought on the cruise. I didn't find out much else from them. They weren't really interested in talking to me but they were very interested in talking to my daughter. I had an uneasy feeling but I shrugged it off until they told me that they really liked my daughter and would love to take her to Castaway Cay and let me have some alone time to myself. Of course, alarms started sounding but I was polite and told them that the point of our cruise was for mom and daughter bonding time. They persisted but finally let it go. I thought that would be the end of it but it wasn't. The next night was the "Golden Mickeys" show and practically from the point we sat down, they started saying that they would love to take my daughter to the show. At this point, I had had enough. I looked the wife in the eye and said--bluntly--"I don't know you and there is no way in h--- that I would ever entrust my child to a stranger." We couldn't get out of the dining room fast enough. On the third night, I was pretty hesitant about sitting with the couple again but we did it. They still weren't done. They told my daughter that they had seen her on the video screen of the pre-show for the Golden Mickeys and thought that she was adorable. So they went and bought her a Golden Mickey for a souvenir. My daughter, being completely unaware of the undercurrents going on around her, was delighted and I didn't see a polite way to make her give the thing back. But as soon as dessert was over, I got her out of there.

I didn't know that you could request a different table. Knowing that now, I wouldn't hesitate to do it if ever in a similar situation.

yikes I don't think I would have been able to be as polite as you were.

 

[pfuentes1098]

Sometimes I think DCL has an entire team of private investigators that collect background info on passengers and use it to set up table mates. They are usually really good at finding similarities and putting people together. It is so cool that you were able to help the table communicate with your signing skills.

I think you're right. On our first cruise, our table mates, a very nice family of three, had the same wedding anniversary as us!

 

[Leighbert]

Looking back on it, I shouldn't have been so polite and should have really told them off. But, you know, we were on vacation and I really didn't want to make a scene. I guess I hoped that the couple would figure out how creepy they were coming off and that they would back off. I didn't want DD and I to miss out on the experience of the dining rooms and our waiters.

 

[becca1976]

What a fun thread! I'm both scared and excited about who we will share a table with on our Sept. Alaskan cruise! Some of these stories are just down right scary! It seems like the majority of the time people have good experiences, so the odds are in our favor!

 

[Zeppelin]

this thread is a keeper!!

our last three cruises we had no tablemates....our second cruise we had a nice mother/2 daughter team who only came to dinner two nights but we had a pleasant time...

our initial cruise in 2007 was different...it was a mother with a girl, about 7YO (my daughter was 4YO at the time)...the girl was ill behaved- a real brat to be honest...at one point in time she told my daughter "my mom said i can;t be friends with you" (which was not true and hurt my daughters feelings)....

the mother allowed the kid to act out of control as this was there "mommy/daughter" trip....final night of the cruise we saw the girl is passed out sleeping in one of the non-kids clubs as the mother was traipsing about...

 

[Nike4000]

Four DCL cruises in and we've yet to have a bad experience with table mates. Now I'm worried for #5!

It's always a fun part of the trip to meet your new dinner friends. We enjoy hearing about their experiences, especially when it comes to excursions.

 

[conandrob240]

I hate being seated with others. I always request a table alone. The one time we were seated with others was when I traveled alone with my then 9 yr old nephew and we were seated with a woman and a similarly aged daughter. First, we weren't allowed to have the bread or spread on the table because girl was allergic to nuts. Then, mother commented rudely when I ordered a bottle of wine- " omg, she's going to drink a whole bottle of wine by herself!" To her daughter. Final straw was when my nephew ordered duck and the little girl started crying about how cruel it was to eat a duck. We stopped talking to them quickly and made sure we were seated elsewhere the rest of the cruise. Never again!

 

[Zeppelin]

On our first cruise (on the Magic) we were seated at the large oval table in the center of the room with several other families of 3 - while the kids were all the same age (8ish) the others were little girls. We always had 2 empty seats every night tho. Everybody seemed pretty nice but we could tell that there was something a little off about one family. It was 2 women and a young girl - but they didn't appear to be a couple. They just seemed to be traveling together. Meanwhile, we often ran into one of the women around the ship, the older one and she was always by herself. We saw her by the pool, in the lounges etc. Finally, one night near the end of the cruise the younger woman came to dinner by herself and BOY was she ready to talk!! She filled us all in on the whole story. Turned out the other woman had had an affair with her DAD 8 years ago and she got pregnant and so the young girl on the cruise was her daughter from that affair - and therefore THIS woman's half sister!! They had JUST MET for the first time (the Dad had recently passed)!! The cruise was their way to let the new-found sisters get to know each other and bond (that's why the other woman just left them alone all the time). OH and to top off the story they were all sharing the same cabin. So here she was sharing a cabin with total strangers - one was her Dad's mistress and the other her "new" sister!!! She was anxious to have some alone time that night. It was prettttttty wild. OH and then on the last morning the 2 missing people showed up for the last breakfast - it was a woman with her son - who was about DS's age. There was his missing playmate that skipped all of the dinners!!

The other 2 families at the table were both pretty nice and "normal" but one family was habitually 20 or 30 minutes late every night and the woman ALWAYS, without fail sent all of her meals back and requested a change once she got them. Every single night she did this.

my head hurts from reading this one....i'm still confused...

 

[Zeppelin]

I've been assigned to a table with less than desirable tablemates on probably 20% of my cruises. The absolute worst was when I took my mother and we sat with an otherwise nice couple. [COLOR="Red"]The woman flossed her teeth at the table before dessert every night![/COLOR] Sorry, but it was disgusting, unsanitary and shocking! Bits of food came out of her teeth and landed on the table. There was no polite way to say anything, so we had to cringe and bear it.

its at this point in time when you fart out loud and say, "oh- sorry about that".....eventually they'll get the idea...

 

[Zeppelin]

Not bad table mates but interesting We have 6 kids and travel with my dad, so the only time we have had table mates was when DH and I did a grown-ups cruise two years ago. We were seated at an 8 top and there were two other couples when we sat down. We were all wondering about who the 4th couple would be when we see a couple being led to our table- suddenly the wife realizes that she is going to GASP be seated with others! She literally stops in her tracks and begins sobbing!! The CMs are trying to comfort her and she is having none of it, she runs out the MDR. Our table was a little shocked and we all agreed that we were happy miss crazy wasn't sat with us!

what were you wearing??? that could've been it...

 

[alaskanabbott]

what were you wearing??? that could've been it...

Oh zeppelin.... I'm an Alaska girl, I know my bait

 

[jimsubry]

Ditto! I would think it would be more harmful than healing. Kind of refusing to accept the reality.
Stuffed animals, Duffy, even these dolls, being owned and carried around by adults, would make me raise an eyebrow but think different strokes for different folks.
However, if they were at my table and ordered food and made the servers treat them like real children, after awhile of being socially polite I would probably start to unleash my crazy! If they want to make us accept their realness then I would call them out on everything they are doing that you would never do with real children!
"You can't feed that to a baby! You have to cut it smaller! Babies can't drink that! EWWW! You should really go change his diaper! It's pretty stinky! Perhaps you should take him for a walk to calm him down. He's crying pretty loudly! Are you sure he's ok? It's ok, I won't let them take your plate away. It might be cold but it will still be here when you get back. Welcome to motherhood! Many years of cold meals!"…..etc. etc. etc.!!!!
Perhaps they would be the ones to ask to be moved to another table! to which I would say ……mission accomplished and thanks for all the great stories I'm going to tell when I get home!!

I was curious so I watched the video. Felt really sad for that woman. Was there a husband there too? I can't imagine a man going along with the doll thing. Wonder if they pay the fare for those dolls as well? They must, if they have a bed, and seats at dinner? It does seem as though she has a childlike view of what taking care of a baby is like...all dressing them up and pretend feeding and bathing, none of the crying and spitting up and crawling away and getting into everything and making a mess. Just sitting there quietly all the time in one place, "coloring" and "playing" with the toys by jiggling them back and forth. It's almost like watching one of those horror movies from the '70s where the crazy old lady has the skeleton of her dead child dressed up for a tea party.

 

[jdb in AZ]

What a fun thread! I'm both scared and excited about who we will share a table with on our Sept. Alaskan cruise! Some of these stories are just down right scary! It seems like the majority of the time people have good experiences, so the odds are in our favor!

There's a quote Alaskans like to use about the abundance of men, when women go North to Alaska to find a man. "The odds are good, but the goods are odd."

I hope your good odds (of finding fun table mates) don't turn into odd goods.

 

[alaskanabbott]

There's a quote Alaskans like to use about the abundance of men, when women go North to Alaska to find a man. "The odds are good, but the goods are odd." I hope your good odds (of finding fun table mates) don't turn into odd goods.

I like that better than the actual quote I hear up here often "You don't lose your girl, you just lose your turn" I always hated that one!!!