TUI mein Schiff

[ConradMZ]

I just booked a cruise with TUI Mein Schiff 3. There is not a lot of discussion on Cruise Critic (gay or straight) about a ship catering to a German-speaking clientele, since this is an English-speaking site, but I discovered a German-speaking forum about cruising that has a lot more information about those ships. Unfortunately, there is not the equivalent of the "special interest" boards over there. While I doubt we will end up being "the only gays in the village" on board, I haven't been able to find anything on the roll call to confirm this, nor anything discussing any experiences with that cruise brand from an LGBT perspective. And when I use the search function on the other forum to search for "lesbisch" there are 0 results, while when I do "schwul" (which is German for gay), it turns up a lot of results for "schwül" (which is German for humid) because the search engine can't recognize the umlaut and the sweltering humidity of the Caribbean is something Germans like to write about in their trip reports. When I searched for "gay" there turned up one discussion among heterosexuals about a gay charter cruise on a TUI ship this coming summer in Scandinavia, where they noticed it didn't seem booked out well, and one surmised that perhaps the German gay market didn't like being in a "ghetto" or that maybe the target market did not like taking cruises. Searching for "friend of dorothy" turned up one result, where one gay cruiser (from my home town even!) remarked that he hoped TUI would introduce FOD meetings (this remark was about 5 years old, but I did not find any follow-up posts or responses to this). Other than just keeping my eyes peeled and being observant while on board, I don't really know what else I can do to research either a) the LGBT perspective on cruising with TUI or b) how many other gay people might be on board my particular cruise. Perhaps someone else on this forum here has some insight into the matter?

[ConradMZ]

Apparently not. :(:confused:

[Stefan_Varong]

Hi Conrad,

 

I've never sailed Mein Schiff, because when travelling solo it is weird expensive. But I'm sure you won't be alone. On every ship I've met gays yet, although FOD is more English / American than continental European. Also on Italian ships without any organisation of meetings. I'm booked now on Costa and got in touch with someone on a straight Roll Call, just remembered the name from a comment within the gay section. Have a great cruise!

[ConradMZ]

From just observing who was dining with whom or which people tended to sit next to each other in the theater and such, it seems that maybe about 1-2% of the ship passengers were gay. Gaydar suggests that a higher proportion of the crew would qualify, but that never was an explicit part of discussions with crew members.

 

As far as the attitudes of the cruise company were concerned, it was just like any other cruise I had been on -- everything was generally fine, but some of the comments of the cruise director or other aspects of the entertainment seemed occasionally a bit heteronormative (we were on the cruise on Valentine's Day, and the cruise director implied that men needed reminding of this more than women; the lecturer who talked about our destinations said that for Omani men, one of their chief decorations was the traditional Omani dagger, while for German men it was women/wives who fulfilled this role). Again, that is pretty much what one would expect from any other cruise company, whether American or European.

 

It proved to be rather difficult, however, to make contact with other people on the cruise (gay or straight). There were one or two gay couples traveling with another gay couple apparently, and they would hang around with each other. One guy I started talking to in the sauna went out for drinks with us after the show one night and we would say hi when we would meet by chance around the ship, but he was more into dining in the buffet, and we were more into the restaurants downstairs. The only time we ever got into casual conversation was with heterosexual couples we were seated with at 4-top tables -- two nights we got lucky and had some really nice people, the other nights were so-so. Occasionally the hosts would try to seat us (two males) with two females -- one time one of the women saw a windowside table for two open up and requested being reseated there before anyone was handed a menu, and the other time the women (who were a couple courses further on than we were) just ignored us and spoke to each other in their strong Austrian dialect.

 

In general, a German-speaking ship tends to attract Germans who have trouble speaking other languages, which might slant the demographics a little bit more toward older, slightly less cosmopolitan people -- there was an occasional look of surprise when my travel partner and I would walk on the outdoor promenade past the window of the 24-hour-cafe where an elderly gentleman might be eating, but that was more his problem than ours. Otherwise, I did enjoy having less chatty waiters, no ice in the water served at the table, and all-inclusive beverage package in the price of the cruise, rather than as an extra add-on. Having Broadway songs translated into German was not such a good thing, but they also did some indigenously German musical numbers which we wouldn't have gotten on other ships, and the bed linens were German-style duvets, rather than the sheet-and-blanket thing, making the turn-down service somewhat different.

[Stefan_Varong]

...for Omani men, one of their chief decorations was the traditional Omani dagger, while for German men it was women/wives who fulfilled this role...

 

 

 

Thank you for sharing your experience. I understand you are much more disappointed by the other guests than by the service you’ve got by TUI in general. It is quite expectable that on a ship designed for the German market you won‘t find a wide mixture of nationalities. There is a cruise line just for the Spanish market and I‘d never book them, as I don‘t speak the language at all. A pure British offer I already booked - although I was quite an exotic guest aboard. But no problem even as solo traveller, as I didn‘t found those situations others even didn‘t want to communicate with strangers. Talking about not wanting to have contact to others at all is weird indeed. I wouldn‘t say it‘s typical German as I sat on a cruise at a table with three solo travelling German ladies and we spent good evenings together. But I know how annoying it can be, last year I sat together with a group of Italians without speaking anything else but Italian and I just can read an Italian menu - more or less. Luckily it happened just once. Whether it is a reason to book Mein Schiff for free drinks it is up to you. I book a cruise if I like to go to the places visited and the price is acceptable for me. I don‘t care if it is just one price or three different prices, the grand total I can calculate myself and I am not surprised any more that there is not always everything included in a cruise.

 

 

And what is the lesson you learned aboard? If you don‘t like a woman as status symbol, do it as Omani men: just buy a dagger…

[ThomasZ]

Hello,

 

i am German :D And we did six cruises with AIDA cruises, none with Mein Schiff. But several of our friends did it. In general to be gay is no problem in Germany or on board of one of these ships. Most of the fellow cruisers are quite interested and asking questions. I had no negative experience on Board or on land. But many positive experiences.

 

AIDA and Mein Schiff are products for german speaking guests. There are usually no international guests (only Germans, Swiss and Austrian people) on board.

[ConradMZ]

Just for the record, I did another TUI cruise this past Christmas/New Year's to the Caribbean. I chose it because of the itinerary -- originating in Barbados was a nice thing (they had it optional of starting there, which about 1/3 of the passengers did, or in La Romana, Dominican Republic, which about 2/3 of the passengers did), and the German ship stopped at some ports I had not been to on Celebrity (the only other line I have been to the Caribbean with) -- including Guadaloupe and Martinique. Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao were new to me as well as the Dominican Republic. I also revisited Barbados, Dominica, Grenada and St. Lucia, where I had been before with Celebrity. It was nice to have someone else making the arrangements for Christmas and New Year's celebrations, and the two-week itinerary was also good, given that coming from Europe, the flight is so long that you don't want to just do a week and then go back home.

 

Based on my previous experience, this was pretty much the same. TUI provides a pretty uniform, upscale product, though there were times when some of their standard procedures of operation were a bit annoying (long line returning from shore excursion in Dominican Republic because two planeloads of new passengers had just arrived, hassle with TUI's luggage procedures at disembarkation). Generally, the food was top-notch, though surprisingly their Schnitzel was quite bad, but there are plenty of other things to order.

 

The mix of fellow passengers was a bit different than the Emirates-to-India cruise, mostly because over the holidays there were a lot of multi-generational families and quite a few kids (some of whom liked playing in the stairwells, which was amusing when passing them). I don't think we ended up meeting any of our fellow passengers, really -- we pretty much just kept to ourselves and did our own thing, which was fine. No LGBT-meetups organized by the cruise line, nor any Cruise Critic meetups either. Again, there were a few other gay couples on board, but I think the LGBT visibility on the whole was kind of like in a small-to-medium-size town away from major metropolitan areas. Due to the more mixed age range of the crowd (lower proportion of elderly), we did not cause any eyebrows to be raised by being together, either. There were a couple of Asian families on board who did not speak German, but they were able to get by using English.

[oskidunker]

Is there a roll call?

[Rotterdam]

Why dont you just go on a gay cruise, join a gay group on a cruise  or go to a gay resort???

You come across a bit snarky in your expectations.  It's easy enough to research (whatever) groups that are onboard or focused on.

You did research & came up empty...just because you didnt find the results you wanted doesnt quantify your remarks. 2 men together anywhere should not cause distraction...unless they are all over each other & tongue swabbing all over the ship.  That goes for any gender....

My partner I travel to spend time together & if we meet interesting people all the better...gay, staight..it doesn't matter.   Of course on longer crises there is an older demographic and going to exotic destinations tend to attract more affluent & well travelled passengers.  In the USA  a gallop poll has 4.5 % of the population as gay...so on a ship that would be the max I imagine.  I / we don't go to FID meets, or any other organized activities & yet we've met lots of fun interesting people.  

Sounds like you need to open up to those onboard whatever the situation..HELL would be a shop full of drunk queens..no matter where.

 

[Sailaway1706]

On 1/28/2017 at 1:26 PM, ConradMZ said:

I just booked a cruise with TUI Mein Schiff 3. There is not a lot of discussion on Cruise Critic (gay or straight) about a ship catering to a German-speaking clientele, since this is an English-speaking site, but I discovered a German-speaking forum about cruising that has a lot more information about those ships. Unfortunately, there is not the equivalent of the "special interest" boards over there. While I doubt we will end up being "the only gays in the village" on board, I haven't been able to find anything on the roll call to confirm this, nor anything discussing any experiences with that cruise brand from an LGBT perspective. And when I use the search function on the other forum to search for "lesbisch" there are 0 results, while when I do "schwul" (which is German for gay), it turns up a lot of results for "schwül" (which is German for humid) because the search engine can't recognize the umlaut and the sweltering humidity of the Caribbean is something Germans like to write about in their trip reports. When I searched for "gay" there turned up one discussion among heterosexuals about a gay charter cruise on a TUI ship this coming summer in Scandinavia, where they noticed it didn't seem booked out well, and one surmised that perhaps the German gay market didn't like being in a "ghetto" or that maybe the target market did not like taking cruises. Searching for "friend of dorothy" turned up one result, where one gay cruiser (from my home town even!) remarked that he hoped TUI would introduce FOD meetings (this remark was about 5 years old, but I did not find any follow-up posts or responses to this). Other than just keeping my eyes peeled and being observant while on board, I don't really know what else I can do to research either a) the LGBT perspective on cruising with TUI or b) how many other gay people might be on board my particular cruise. Perhaps someone else on this forum here has some insight into the matter?

Frage: wie war es auf „Mein Schiff“? Habe gerade zum ersten Mal eine Reise bei TUI Cruises wegen der Reiseroute gebucht.