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Mein Schiff 5 Dubai - Dubai Nov/Dec 2017


Floridiana
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Itinerary:

Dubai - Qatar - Bahrain - Abu Dhabi - Dubai - Khasab, Oman - Muscat, Oman - Abu Dhabi - Dubai

It is a back to back cruise sold as 2 segments or 1 cruise. I like that the itinerary includes Qatar which is not on Aida's nor on Hapag-Lloyd's itinerary in this region. Maybe it is on the Celebrity Constellation who does the same itinerary.

 

I liked all the ports for various reasons and actually booked the cruise for the ports. Most other passengers were from Germany, Switzerland, Austria and looked like they booked for the sunshine and warm temperatures. The decks around the pool were packed, sardines came to mind.

 

Public space: Lots of space indoors, even Anckelman Platz had seats which was not the case on the old Mein Schiff 1. Pleasant and airy décor everywhere.

 

Food: Ranging from ok to excellent in the included restaurants.

 

We bought the gourmet package for the three pay restaurants and came to the conclusion that it is not worth it. The Asian restaurant Hanami pretends to be Japanese. Some relishes were sweet - not salty-sweet-sour. The breading of the calamari was soaked in oil, a preparation mistake.

Surf and Turf: Filet steaks were fine, my lobster tail was bitter and still had the black thread of intestines in it.

Schmankerl, the Austrian restaurant is open all day. One of my dishes was almost inedible, but the Schnitzel was good. All portions were huge. Next time, we will return to this restaurant, order certain dishes and share them.

 

Service: Service in the 3 pay restaurants was excellent and ok in the other restaurants where it depended on individual servers. We tried to avoid the sour faced servers and often wound up in the same corner with 2 Turkish and one Asian waiter.

 

Cabin: Efficient storage space. We used only half of the drawers. Bring your own water bottle to fill up at the water fountain near the elevators. On this trip, all excursion busses provided chilled water bottles.

 

Excursions: Most were good, the one to Al Ain needs some improvement. All guides spoke excellent German and came from Germany, Egypt, Tunisia and Oman. Of course, we would have been fine with English. Traffic tends to be heavy in most areas due to construction. Bahrain was the worst on a Thursday afternoon. If you go to Bahrain, book a morning excursion.

 

Entertainment: We only went to the show that followed the crew introduction and to the captain's question hour. The stage is huge and has fancy equipment. I wish they would hire a better choreographer. Two of the dancers had cirque de soleil acrobatic qualities but were not adequately highlighted. My husband and I both felt that the dance show was disjointed and included too much hopping around.

 

Overall assessment:

We enjoyed all our Mein Schiff cruises - previous were Norway and Baltics. We have one Mediterranean cruise booked for 2018. Of course, there is no comparison in the size of the ship, the luxury of the cabin, the quality of the service and the passenger - crew ratio with Europa 2. No officer on Mein Schiff will greet you in the hallways and they rarely acknowledge your greeting including the captain who ate in the clearly visible public restaurant Tag und Nacht where he overlooked the staircase. On other occasions he was funny and entertaining.

 

A huge negative on German ships: Smoking is permitted on the balconies. Before, it didn't bother us because our neighbors never smoked. On the first segment of this cruise, our direct neighbors were cigarillo (!!!) chain smokers. Started at 7 am, ended around 10 pm, luckily with interruptions during the day. The nasty cigarillo smell was accompanied by a deep loud cough.

 

Judging from the excursions where pople rarely used the breaks for smoking and the fact that nobody else smoked on the balconies around us, smokers are a minority. I hope that Mein Schiff comes to its senses and stops smoking on the balconies. I sure wrote that in my review for the ship..

 

Since the line markets to German speakers only, one in your party should speak and understand the language sufficiently.

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