it was a blast -- you got a week of "free" travel w/ your SO (because it was just once a year, they paid for your SO to come with you).

i loved it, because it was a time to get together, have some drinks, chitchat and do some super productive work.

That’s more rhetorical than anything and is a roundabout way of saying: most organized team building events are just…boring.

It’s also just a preference though: getting together and just hanging out without the pressure to talk shop or participate in some kind of coordinated, planned and overly-orchestrated activity is just as engaging for me as “escape rooms” or “games” or other “activities”.

Maybe I'm just too bitter. Maybe if I stayed for the afterparty I'd get the kind of interaction I want. But late night carousing isn't my kind of thing generally.