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Mein Schiff 6 Western Mediterranean


Floridiana
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Our 4th cruise on a Mein Schiff, previous were 1,4, and 5 in the Baltic, Norway and Dubai. All were family cruises except the Dubai-Oman cruise.

 

Mein Schiff is the largest cruise ship we have used. The others were Ponant, Hapag-Lloyd, Oceania, Azamara, HAL, and Princess. For DH and me, I prefer smaller ships with more dedicated service and less crowded smaller ports. We always book for the ports and the itineraries.

 

Why then a large Mein Schiff?

Positives:

Food in general, good quality and wide selection, German bread and cakes, lots of fruit, ice cream, alcoholic drinks included and they are all generous. Mein Schiff 6 had a better cuisine overall than previous Mein Schiff ships, especially when it comes to fish.

Generally good organization of embarkation and land trips.

Negatives:

Often indifferent service with uncaring demeanor but still efficient. We found excellent server teams on 1 and 5 and two friendly waiters on 6, not on the same team however. Officers avoid looking at passengers when out in public.

 

Since we book for the ports, a few words about them.

In the Baltic, we booked our own tours or went out on our own. In hindsight that was an excellent choice. In Norway and the Emirates, we booked ship's tours which were generally good, so were the excursions we did on our own.

In the Mediterranean, we made the mistake of booking too many ship's tours. On our own and good: Ajaccio and Ibiza. Also good: Barcelona with shuttle and entry to Sacrada Familia, excellent guide. Then we were free to go off on our own.

In Rome the excursion was overloaded with information by an inefficient guide who refused to carry the ship's sign. The tour was advertised as 5 km of walking and turned out to be 10 km. In Aix and Marseille, we ran behind the guide. We should have booked the shuttle and used a hop on hop off bus for an overview. Pisa would have been best with a shuttle. The guide neglected to tell us that we could have gotten free timed tickets for the interior of the cathedral. We found out too late.

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Hello, Floridiana, I see you have also been following along my Europa Nice-Bilbao trip report.

 

You certainly have a lot of diverse cruising experience!

 

Is Mein Schiff mainstream or premium?

What kind of entertainment was there? Just German pop, or any classical?

 

How would solo dining be here — assigned tables, or a free for all with limited space, where a solo has to muscle her way in to awkwardly join a family wherever t here is room?

Was it allowed to take a tray back to the room if overcrowded?

Did kids take over, or did they have separate venues available?

 

All German speakers, or any others?

Any pictures?

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Hello, Floridiana, I see you have also been following along my Europa Nice-Bilbao trip report.

 

You certainly have a lot of diverse cruising experience!

 

Is Mein Schiff mainstream or premium? It is premium+ I would say.

What kind of entertainment was there? Just German pop, or any classical? No classical music.

 

How would solo dining be here — assigned tables, or a free for all with limited space, where a solo has to muscle her way in to awkwardly join a family wherever t here is room? No assigned tables, but more tables for 2 than for 4,6, and 8. The maître d' will seat you. The only time we ever joined a table in the buffet was on Mein Schiff 1 which is an older American build for warm climates with not enough indoor space on a cold weather cruise.

Was it allowed to take a tray back to the room if overcrowded? No trays available. You could take a plate and a drink back to the room, but it was never necessary. One of the small casual restaurants is open 24 hours.

Did kids take over, or did they have separate venues available? There is a kids section in the buffet. On Mein Schiff 5, they had a family section in one of the main restaurants. The smaller and shallower pool of the 2 pools tends to be taken over by kids.

 

All German speakers, or any others? The ship caters to German speakers. You may hear other languages but those groups always have members who also speak German.

Any pictures?

Pictures on FB but not many. Videos by Matthias Mohr on youtube are most helpful.

If I were you, I would probably try to travel with a friend who speaks German. Just enjoy what the ship has to offer and keep the price and service difference with H-L in mind. One thing annoyed me on H-L: I had to order and pay for water. On Mein Schiff, water in carafes will immediately be served and you can order Prosecco or Sekt or any other drink with or without alcohol as soon as you sit down. There is a wine card but we were happy with the included house wines, Prosecco, Sekt, beer, juices and soft drinks.

 

In the buffet, soft drinks, apple juice, mineral water, wine and beer are on tap (included).

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despite the difference with my favourite Europa 2 , i really do consider Mein Schiff for a one week cruise on 2019 as my first on HL for 2019 is mid June 2019

Canaries or Dubai Dubai …

i am afraid i did not like the wines on tap at all … i think they were"cheap mosel wines " not dry enough!

apple juice is something very important for Germans , they even drink it with water they call it "schorle"

i found one item strane : for some drinks free in the bars ( like a red vermouth ) there was a modest charge in some of the speciality restaurants .

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We liked the Dubai cruise very much, did the b2b with Dubai - Qatar and Dubai - Oman. They sold hop-on-hop-off bus tickets in the lobby/library/coffeeshop on the ship and their buses came to the port just for us. You don't need ship's excursions for Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

 

The quality of the included wines varies. I had an excellent rose one day and one of minor quality the following day. The wine waiter did not know that it was a different rose and tried to serve me a "different" glass. On the Ponant ship, he was able to exchange the minor French country wine for a better quality Australian one.

 

I did not like their specialty restaurants at all with the exception of the Schnitzel in the Austrian restaurant. We went there on the Dubai cruise. The Asian restaurant was awful with obvious mistakes in the preparation like soggy tempura. My lobster tail was bitter in the (surf and turf) steak restaurant.

Edited by Floridiana
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