ConradMZ

Just found out friends of mine from St. Louis will be on here as well. Unfortunately, I forgot my cabin number, but I suppose when they send more detailed information, that will be included. Not a lot of chit-chat on here about this cruise so far.

I am now booked on that Alaska cruise. See the roll call thread (which no one had started yet until today when I did).

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.

No one has started a roll call on this yet? Well, then I will. Anyone else going on this cruise? There must be some, because a few of the cabin categories are booked out, though there still seems to be a fair bit of availability. This will be my third time on this cruise. Did 2009 and 2013 as well.

Now just one more week

Anyone else here going on this 14-day cruise departing Amsterdam? Probably kind of last minute if no one else has started a roll call for this yet: just five and a half more weeks...

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.

Apparently not. :(:confused:

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?

We got into FLL this afternoon and just had a great dinner at Candela's tonight. We'll go to Rosie's tomorrow night but probably won't meet anyone there since that would require coordinating a set time and it seems there's no one to coordinate with

We had some unexpected issues to deal with a couple weeks ago, so I haven't been checking in here lately. But we have also accomplished the expected, and so were packed on 27 March and crossed the Atlantic by air to New York City and then flew to Savannah on Monday, and will cross the Florida line by rental car around noon today.

If one of the locals wants to suggest a place for a pre-cruise dinner on 8 April, we are probably game for that.

We are not generally big fans of the specialty dining scene; main dining room is usually closest to what we are looking for. This time, though, it seems we will be dining in Blu, since Celebrity started offering the special prices on Aqua Class. So dining together on board might be tricky. However, meeting on the night before departure, as some have suggested, seems like a very good idea for those of us who are already there then. Any suggestions from the locals as to where we might want to meet?

As for the ports, we, too, will be pretty much playing it by ear. We have borrowed a German guidebook from friends that suggests a walking tour in Funchal. We have been to Gibraltar before, so don't have huge ambitions there -- just get off the ship and walk around. In Alicante, I have seen there are several museums which are either free or nominal admission and all in the downtown area -- nothing major, but gives us something to do. The trick is that everything closes early afternoon for siesta, so we will need to get on shore early that day.

Anyone else spending 2 weeks going from Harwich to the northern coast of Norway and back?

Being able to dine together some night would mean either choosing Celebrity Select dining, being assigned to the same table at the same seating, or visiting a specialty dining location (or the Lido Deck cafeteria)?

Where are people staying before departure in FLL? We will be at the Alcazar the two nights immediately prior to boarding. Before that, in St. Petersburg and points further north. Perhaps some might want to meet for dinner or something while still on land?

So what is our current LGBT census? The 8 mentioned in voyager's post plus howndder plus the two of us makes 11. Presumably there are more, though.

Interesting that some have made final payment. Booking in Germany, they tell me final payment is not due until one month before sailing, which is good, since it seems to take 3-4 weeks to process the Future Cruise Certificates we intend to apply. If the call center really does use the recordings of my calls for training purposes like they say on the pre-recorded announcement, the trainees are in for a course in surreal bureaucratic processes and examples of how NOT to run internal communications between departments and between RCCL and the travel agencies. My travel agent spoke to someone who said the certificates only applied to US-booked cruises (nothing like that sort of restriction is printed on the certificates, and it would be nice to know that in advance if it were true), and then I call in and get someone who says he can't understand why anyone would make such an absurd assertion and that of course the certificates are valid worldwide -- but getting my travel agent in touch with that person was not a logistically simple process, to say the least.

Assuming Celebrity properly applies the voucher credits we got while on board the Equinox a couple years ago, my partner and I will be joining you. The reservation is currently on hold, as the travel agency must send the vouchers to the Frankfurt RCCL office for the credits to be applied.

We are from Mainz, Germany (on the Rhine just west of Frankfurt), and will be taking the cruise as part of our homeward journey, continuing by rail from Civitavecchia to cross the Alps.

With a little research it seems we will be in Frihavnen (or however it is spelled) at C254

http://www.cmport.com/en-GB/Ships%20in%20Port/Calls.aspx

But HeinBlöds photos about how to get to and from local transit make it definitely worth visiting his blog as well. :-)

That leaves Talinn and the departure and arrival ports of Copenhagen and Amsterdam to be determined. And St. P, but that is in a league of its own (no wandering off on my own without a visa).

Using the search function in this forum, I was unable to locate a thread that centrally tells which piers Holland America uses in the various Baltic ports. I will be embarking in Copenhagen, visiting Tallinn, St. Petersburg, Helsinki and Stockholm, and disembarking in Amsterdam. I would like to enter the pier names into Google maps to get some idea of what my transport options are (I realize in St. P. I will probably not be on my own for visa reasons, but like to always be oriented myself, even if someone else is guiding me).