Mostly everyone cruises in the Persian Gulf with MSC Opera or MSC World Europa. For me this is not the best option, because I have been to Dubai and Abu Dhabi by land before. And I have been on MSC cruises 5 times already. So I was ready to sail only with a new cruise company to have at least some new impressions. And so, such chance came up. TUI cruises include tips, any alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks in the bars and very good quality food. I grabbed the cruise almost without thinking. In the end, this price lasted only 2 days and only increased further.
Even the simple route with only 3 cities: Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha did not embarrass me. But in each port the liner stayed for 2 days (and all 4 days in Dubai, if you count embarkation/disembarkation days). As I have already mentioned, the itinerary was not a priority for me.
Review of TUI Mein Schiff 6 liner
TUI is a German company, about 90% of the passengers are Germans. All announcements, inscriptions, daily newspaper, menus in restaurants – everything is in German. It does not bother me as I have already been on 2 cruises with AIDA – everything is the same there.
All the staff speak English. The crew are all the same Filipinos and other nationalities for whom German is not their mother tongue at all. Well, perhaps, the highest officers are Germans, but there is no need to communicate with them. To make an order at the bar, to address at the reception, to ask something from the roomboy – all this can be done in English, everyone understands perfectly and speaks it better than I do.
Cabin
I bought a cabin with a balcony, it was garanteed (you can’t choose a specific one). Before the start of the cruise I was assigned a specific cabin on deck 11, the topmost living deck.
The cabins on the Mein Schiff liners are spacious, both on the balconies and inside.
Alcohol
Alcoholic beverages are included in the price of the cruise. I have already shown what is included in the buffet, and the bars offer a huge number of cocktails, spirits. If you are interested, browse through the menu here. What is included is labelled with a caption inklusive.
TUI doesn’t leave one working bartender for the entire crowd, as is the case somewhere in the buffet on Costa, where there are always queues. And if you didn’t get there in time, it’s your problem. Costa’s logic is apparently simple, more standing time means less to eat (drink). I judge this from the last cruise on Venezia, where the liner was not even half full, but the queues were still huge (and half of the food outlets were simply closed).
No, TUI have time to maximise service to everyone by predicting peak hours. There were never any queues at the buffets at all. Although, no, I remembered that for bean coffee in the morning I had to stand in a queue of 2-3 people. It’s just that the machine is slow.
Interior of Mein Schiff 6
At the end I will add just photos of the liner, which were not included in other sections. There is so much more to say, but I have already spent half a day reviewing the TUI Mein Schiff 6 cruise and it is too much to cover everything.
My conclusions
You should sail with TUI if you need comfort and a large set of included services: bathrobes and coffee machine in the cabin, delicious food, drinks at any time and in any quantity.
If you are interested only in the itinerary, at the lowest price, and you consider the liner only as transport – TUI is not for you. Their cruises are not cheap. Before the pandemic, anything under 100 euros a night was considered good value. And that’s for the inside! After the pandemic there were many opportunities to cruise for cheap and one of them I took advantage of. But now there are fewer and fewer low prices and soon they will disappear altogether. That said, up to 100 euros/night I would go back to TUI (especially with a balcony, of course) – it’s definitely worth the money.
I would not recommend TUI for a first cruise – you just can’t understand anything in German, you need experience of other cruises. I don’t recommend for those who are interested in entertainment, on TUI as well as on AIDA – shows are rare and often in German.
I recommend to those who can entertain themselves. To whom comfort is important – without loud and noisy passengers, queues for food and extorting money for every sneeze.
