Jerri Pringle and her husband pulled their next vacation destination out of a cup.
The couple, who live near Bentonville, Arkansas, takes one big trip a year. But for 2025, they took a new approach to planning.
Pringle and her husband scrawled 10 options on pieces of paper on New Year’s Day, ranging from New York City to Key West and Dry Tortugas National Park to a Virgin Voyages cruise. They took turns drawing them from a plastic cup, agreeing to visit whichever was last.
“I was a little nervous pulling them out, just because I very much believe in fate, and I was like, ‘This is where I’m gonna go,’ ” the 31-year-old told USA TODAY. “Like, ‘I’m gonna follow through with this.’ ” She initially harbored leanings toward a cruise, but that came and went along with others, leaving Michigan’s Mackinac Island as the winner.
Pringle, an engineer, uploaded a nearly two-minute video of the process to TikTok. The clip has amassed more than 235,000 views as of Tuesday. “We just decided to kind of just leave it up to fate and let the universe decide for us,” she said.
They’re not the only ones. Travelers have been sharing their versions of “vacation roulette” on social media, making trip planning into a multi-player game of chance. Here’s why.
‘It definitely took the pressure off’
After Ella Fernandez and a group of four friends took a trip to Hawaii together last summer, they decided to make it an annual tradition. They had seen “vacation roulette” on TikTok and decided to give it a try in November, dropping in varied proposals such as Barcelona, Spain; Costa Rica; and even Camden, New Jersey.
“We decided that was a fair way to choose, and … it definitely took the pressure off of being decisive and finding a place that pleased everyone,” said the 23-year-old, who lives in Northern Virginia.
Fernandez and her friends recently graduated college, and some have moved away to different cities. “We’ve been friends for so long, but we wanted to make sure we still spend time together,” she said. The destination was less important.
“We honestly didn’t care where we went next because, I mean, we want to travel just anywhere,” she said. “Especially just as, like, young kids, we want to go anywhere.” They landed on Croatia, and are planning to visit sometime in the summer.
Ella Fernandez, center, with friends during a trip to Hawaii last year.
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Pringle, similarly, said the strategy felt equitable because she and her husband agreed on all the options ahead of time. The strategy also allowed them to prioritize places they wanted to go without worrying about other variables.
“A lot of times, especially in the past, we’ve let budget or maybe we go with friends or something … even, like, family members also wanting to go on a vacation, we’ve had a lot of that decide our vacations in the past,” she said.
‘That just made it more fun’
Bobby Peterson and his wife surprised their three daughters with a vacation shortly after Christmas in 2023. But they chose the destination as a family.
Their oldest was 17 at the time. “So, we figured it might be our chance at our big, last full-family vacation before she goes off and, you know, becomes a young adult, does her own thing, and may not always be available,” said Peterson, 43.
His wife had seen “vacation roulette” videos on TikTok, and with some criteria in mind – the place had to be in the contiguous U.S., for instance – they all pitched in around their dining table.
He chose Torch Lake, Michigan, where his wife had always wanted to go. “She chose Yellowstone, and those were the first two that were pulled, so really quickly, it just came down to the girls’ choices,” he recalled. “And that wasn’t done on purpose, but for the spirit of it, it kind of worked out well.”
The method was not only amusing but also “took a lot of the potential arguing and bickering out of it from the kids,” he said. Jackson, Wyoming, won out – a selection his middle daughter made after a Google search for family vacations.
“It wasn’t a place she was, like, desperate to go to or excited about,” Peterson, who works in banking and lives near Dayton, Ohio, said. “She just picked something because she was running out of time.”
Even so, the summer trip exceeded expectations. Over the course of five nights, the family went horseback riding, took a boat ride on Jenny Lake, and rode side-by-sides in the mountains. They also tacked on a bonus entry from the game by driving through Yellowstone National Park.
“I think because it was such an out-of-left-field destination, that just made it more fun,” he said of the trip.
How to play ‘vacation roulette’
The specifics of the game can vary, but there are a couple of constants: participants usually write options on pieces of paper and take turns drawing them one by one from a container until they reach the final – and winning – piece.
While Pringle used a plastic cup, Fernandez and Peterson opted for bowls.
Some players make their own rules. Fernandez and her friends, for example, each got four picks but could nominate the same place twice, giving it better odds of winning. They also made sure no other participants saw their entries.
Jerri Pringle took a different approach to vacation planning this year.
Peterson and his family got 10 minutes to research and write down options and had to pick somewhere that they hadn’t been before. “We said no Disney just cause I had no interest in that,” he added.
Pringle and her husband, meanwhile, intentionally avoided doing too much research beforehand. They didn’t even know where they would stay on Mackinac Island.
After posting the video, many people with ties to the area reached out with suggestions – an “insider perspective” Pringle was thrilled to get – and the pair plans to visit in July.
“So it really just left a lot of stuff up in the air, and I think that is just going to lead to more adventure for us this year,” she said.
Nathan Diller is a consumer travel reporter for USA TODAY based in Nashville. You can reach him at ndiller@usatoday.com.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why these travelers picked a destination through ‘vacation roulette’