A Blog for Gays & Lesbians Who Love To Cruise

Your Editor in the Celebrity Mercury onboard theatre

The sounds of ukuleles fades farther away as the Mercury continues toward Ensenada, Mexico. We’ve got 72 hours at sea before that happens.

Tonight is Celebrity’s version of Dancing with the Stars, and two gay guys are participating—one is our pal who owns a dance studio in Canada, the other is one of the onboard professional dancers. Unfortunately, they’re not dancing together…

We’ve continued to enjoy getting to know our new MeetMeOnBoard.com pals Mike & Joey. I think I told you that because of our MMOB pre-cruise connection, we all arranged to sit together at dinner. Nice.

Signing off…the string quartet is about to play in the Cova Café and I want to enjoy them…cruising is great. Book one—prices are super-low right now! And invite me along!!

Your Editor and Partner at Sea

It’s Christmas Eve eve, and onboard the Celebrity Mercury plenty of creatures are stirring as we finally feel Hawaiian breezes blow across the decks.

The gay guys are all having plenty of fun. Sun, gym, sublime food, dancing, connecting. Gay staffers have noticed us and are warming up. (As yet, haven’t met any lesbians).

It’s all good. In fact, it’s better than good. It’s fantastic. It’s why I continue to believe cruising is the best vacation value on earth.

We’re enjoying getting to know our MMOB pals Mike & Joey. And all the other gays we’ve met seem pretty keen on learning more about how to use the site. Perhaps they’re just a little jealous that Mike & Joey already had good dining partners lined up before the cruise.

Meanwhile…happy KwanChrisMakkuh. I’m off to find a fruity drink and flirt with a hot homo. Wish you were here. Loving this cruise!

Randall

Celebrity Mercury

Welcome aboard the M/V Celebrity Mercury! It’s 7:20 a.m. on our second morning at sea, and the ship’s position is someplace between California and Hawaii:

Within minutes of boarding the Mercury in San Diego on December 19, and during our first wander around the 1,800 passenger boat, Kevin (my partner) pointed at two guys and said, “aren’t those the guys we’ve been connecting with through MeetMeOnBoard (MMOB)?”

Voilá, we dashed across the atrium to greet Mike and Joey—a couple from Anaheim, who we had indeed already “met” through MMOB.

Hello handshakes have now been replaced with friendly hugs…even on a mainstream cruise, and we’re enjoying getting to know these new and very interesting friends.

Meanwhile, our group of 9 gay men has started wearing our matching t-shirts (The Rainbow Mounties), and people are noticing us—great ice breakers.

Last night was the first Friends of Dorothy party, and about 30 gay men showed up, all in suits and ties or tuxes—guys from all over the U.S. and as far away as Germany and England. Cool.

I’m telling them about MMOB, and perhaps you’ll meet some of them on a future cruise. This is a great website, and gay cruisers seem to instantly love the idea. Please tell your friends about it and encourage them to sign up.

Now, I’m off for a second cup of coffee…then I’ll go see if I can wake Kevin up.

Key observations thus far:

• Couples who want one bed should clearly state to their cabin attendant that they are a couple. Mike and Joey say their attendant keeps asking them if he should split the beds. Meanwhile, our attendant (Luis from Honduras) clearly knows who we are. The fact is not all cabin attendants immediately “get it.”

• Friends of Dorothy should be asked for immediately after boarding the ship. Call the Cruise Director’s office and ask if they automatically organize a FOD on your ship. If not, request it

• Bringing your own booze, while it’s officially against cruise regulations, a lot of people have successfully smuggled plenty-o-booze on board. We’ll look at how this is done in a future article. After all, who makes a cocktail better than us gays!

Howdy. Tomorrow I’ll have a true Meet Me On Board (MMOB) experience: my partner Kevin and I are connecting on the Celebrity Mercury with a couple we’ve connected with through this site. I’m very excited! We’re really looking forward to meeting Mike & Joey.

We already have a small group from “home” cruising together (several guys from all across Canada), and are looking forward to meeting gay and lesbian travelers who don’t already know about MMOB to tell them more!

Meanwhile, I’m prepping decorations for our door. Even though it’s a mainstream cruise, us homos need to be fabulous, n’est pas? I’ll post a photo of our door when I’ve got it done (and have an internet connection).

Meanwhile, happy holidays to you! If you’re sailing this holiday season, and meet someone via MeetMeOnBoard.com, we’d love to hear about it!

Cheers.

Dorthy’s slippers aren’t the only ruby things around anymore. In a “ruby red” themed ceremony celebrating romance, Princess Cruises recently named its newest ship, Ruby Princess. America’s reigning reality couple, Trista and Ryan Sutter of The Bachelorette did the honors, breaking the traditional bottle of champagne to mark the ship’s launch, and their own fifth anniversary. The new godparents were surrounded by hundreds of guests decked out in ruby red-tie formal attire, and a ruby-haired singer serenaded the crowd.

During her inaugural season, the 116,000 gross ton and 3,080-passenger Ruby Princess will make 7-night sailings from Port Everglades to the Western Caribbean. Calls include Ocho Rios, Jamaica; Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands; Cozumel, Mexico and Princess Cays in the Bahamas. Next spring the ship will move to Europe for 12-night sailings in the Mediterranean and Greek Islands.

Check out more photos and read about the new Ruby Princess.

Tom Baker, owner of Aquafest Cruises (an agency that organizes gay groups on mainstream ships, among other things), was super lucky–he got to check out the brand new Celebritiy Solstice on a recent agent preview cruise.

Tom’s a shutterbug, and has a couple hundred photos posted at SmugMug, including the shot at right. Check them out.

As for Celebrity…I’m happy to say I’ll be sailing on them for the first time next week, with a small gay group. Should be a blast. Stay tuned for updates!

Your Editor and his partner did a simple door, but it got lots of comments on board an RSVP cruise.

As my partner and I prepare for our upcoming holiday cruise (I don’t think there’s any space left, but call the travel agent and maybe there’s a cancellation), we’re thinking about how to decorate our door.

If you’ve never decorated your cruise ship door, you lose a corner off your gay card! It makes for great conversation around the ship, and is a super-easy way to tell people how to find your cabin.

It doesn’t matter if you’re going on an all-gay or mainstream cruise, door decor is a hoot. You may feel more inclined to do an extra “gay” door on an all-gay trip, but there’s still plenty of fun to be had on a mainstreamer.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be posting photos of several gaily decorated cruise ship doors.

Today we start with our door from our last RSVP cruise, along with a hilarious door…if you can’t tell the gay “type” of these passengers, you lose another corner off your gay card!

There's no question who's staying in this stateroom. Yup, there be bears here!

Apparently it’s not just Walmart and retailers who will be slashing prices this Thanksgiving weekend. I just got an email from CruCon Cruise Outlet announcing their big, one-day-only, after Thanksgiving sale.

I did a quick spot comparison, and one example is the following itinerary:

Celebrity Summit, Jan 3, 2009, Caribbean from San Juan, Puerto Rico

Sky Suite Price on CruCon’s site: $1199 pp

Sky Suite on Celebrity’s own site: $1759 pp

Here’s the link to Cruise Connection’s sale page. Note: we don’t endorse them, but provide this info only for reference and to remind you that there are deals out there!

Also note that prices from site to site may not reflect apples to apples, sometimes a site may include taxes/fees, etc. Watch closely when you comparison shop! We’ll do more of this in the future to help gay & lesbian cruisers find sites that are more reliable.

http://www.crucon.com/thanksgiving2008_main.htm

Go cruising!

Gay Group Cruisers

“Group” is an interesting term in the world of cruises. Basically, a group is any bunch of people who are traveling together. But from the cruise lines’ perspective, you might start to get noticed–and perhaps some benefits–as a group when you have as few as five cabins booked.

What benefits? Well, the biggie is the “free” cruise. Basically, the cruise lines should toss in a free fare after you get enough people sailing with you. For example, on our upcoming Celebrity Mercury Hawaii cruise (for which I’m a paying passenger), we needed 8 cabins booked to get one person free, or 16 cabins booked would have landed us a free cabin for two people.

Other benefits the cruise line might toss in include a private cocktail party or other onboard benefits.

Some agencies, such as the agent I worked with for the upcoming cruise, kick back part of their commission in the form of shipboard credits for each cabin, which can be put toward booze, spa, shore excursions, etc.

The next big question is, if you get a free cabin, who gets it?

That’s totally up to you. Some say the person who organized the group should get it, but others say the price of the savings should simply be shared among all group members. In my experience, organizing a group cruise is a huge amount of work (even when working with a cruise agent), so no one in the group should deny the group organizer the free cruise if he/she chooses to take it.

In fact, when you book a “gay group itinerary” with an agency like Pied Piper, their staff will be taking the free cruise, provided there are enough paying passengers signing up for the group through their agency (remember, it’s their job…they don’t travel “free,” they “paid” by doing a lot of work). That’s why you often see agent websites state that a representative will be aboard based on a minimum number of passengers.

Many travel agents who specialize in cruises can help set this up. In my experience, you’ll want to call a few different ones–and ask about their track record in helping you get a great deal from the cruise line, what they (the agency) generally add in, and if you don’t already have a big enough group committed, how the agent will help you find passengers to reach that magic “free cruise” number, if that’s important to you.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and/or success stories on planning group cruises.

If you’re like us, you might have a very pleasant surprise as a gay person on a ’straight’ cruise.

I never imagined I’d reveal the most unusual place I’ve had sex in front of 800 straight people. And they weren’t exactly PFLAG parents. Most of them came from “red” states.

But with the cruise director’s microphone in my face and the stage lights in my eyes, I found myself saying “the most interesting place I’ve made whoopee was in the middle of Utah, next to a natural hot spring, in broad daylight, just off I-15.”

I’m sure I heard a groan or two. Few passengers on our Royal Caribbean cruise through the Panama Canal

This gay couple is comfortably open on a straight cruise.

had planned to think about gay sex during the evening’s main stage show, Love & Marriage. But there’s little doubt they all had some sort of visual of Kevin and me humping like bunnies in the desert.

I’m quite sure they hadn’t expected to see two men kiss on stage, either. But they did.

The show was based on the classic Newlywed Game. The other two contestant couples were the most recently wed (two weeks), and the longest married (57 years). The third couple was chosen by audience popularity. If you wanted to participate, you stood up, did a little dance and shouted, “We want to play this game.”

Moments before standing up, Kevin slumped deep into his seat, started to hyperventilate, and said, “I can’t do this.” I stood, pulled him, up, and said “we’re gonna dance like crazy, get on stage, and win this game!”

Nine straight couples stood up. We stood up. And after several rounds of elimination based on audience popularity, it was clear: the majority of folks wanted the poofters on stage. Up we went. Thank god we were both wearing Banana Republic. We looked smashing. Sweat was pouring from Kevin’s brow. I’ve always been much more comfortable about being publicly gay.

I must admit I suddenly had my own self-doubts. After all, this was a very mainstream cruise line. But then again, their tag line is “Get Out There.” We were just doing as we were told.

Carly, the cruise director, did introductions with each couple, and admitted that in her many years at sea, this was a first.

She asked the “women” to go backstage to a soundproof room. Kevin sprang from his seat—to howls of laughter. This was no commentary on our preferences, it was simply a way for him to get out of the spotlight and gain some composure.

The “men” were then asked a series of questions, and when our spouses returned to the stage they tried to match our answers.

1. Who in Kevin’s immediately family would I least like to be stranded on a deserted island with.
2. Where is the most unusual place the two of you have ever made whoopee?
3. How would you describe Kevin’s cooking?

The whoopee question was certainly the most interesting, and not because of the gay couple’s answers. We turned out to be pretty tame compared to the newlyweds who had done it in just about every public and private place they could find—rental cars, his office, the front lawn. Apparently she gave it up long before the wedding night.

Everyone had a good laugh. But several thousand people—we later learned the show was repeatedly broadcast on shipboard TV—got to see just how normal a gay couple is. They learned that we are a part of each other’s families. They learned that Kevin is an amazing cook. They learned that the first thing I do in the morning is make his breakfast, not grab his ass (his answer). They learned that I was first attracted to his beautiful blue eyes. They learned that we’re really no different from them.

Suddenly, we were the most popular people on the ship. Days later, little old ladies were still asking Kevin if they can come for dinner at our house. An elderly straight guy was telling us how proud he is of his gay son. A closeted 40 year-old from the Midwest, traveling with his parents, admitted that he’s thinking more seriously about coming out. And the other gay couples we’d befriended on the ship were absolutely beaming.

The cruise director told me she hopes to see more gay couples openly participate in such events. She also told me she received a huge number of positive comments about the game, and not a single negative.

In the middle of ongoing battles over gay marriage and other rights, we proudly stood in front of thousands of strangers and said: we’re here, we’re queer, and frankly we’re just like you. We simply claimed our right to participate.

They called the game a three-way tie and gave each couple a bottle of champagne. But in front of several thousand straight people, we won a game of an entirely different kind. The game of “Get Out There.”