TUI Cruises will once more skip Sir Bani Yas Island in favour of Bahrain and three-day Dubai port calls on its 2018/2019 Middle East cruise season aboard Mein Schiff 4.

TUI Cruises is a premium German cruise line, the German equivalent to Celebrity Cruises in the Arabian Gulf cruise market.

The line will return to Dubai for the fifth year in a row in November this year, bringing one of their biggest cruise ships, Mein Schiff 4, back to Dubai to sail a series of 7-night roundtrip cruises until the end of March.

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TUI’s Dubai cruises will visit the same ports as MSC Cruises and like MSC Cruises, they will also alternate between an eastbound and westbound Arabian Gulf itinerary, but with a key difference.

Mein Schiff 4 won’t be visiting Sir Bani Yas Island on any of her cruises. The island is a popular cruise beach destination off the coast of Abu Dhabi, visited by all the cruise ships homeporting in Dubai except the German lines (TUI and AIDA).

On the westbound itineraries, the ship will spend the first night of the cruise in port in Dubai, before visiting Abu Dhabi, Doha and Bahrain. In Abu Dhabi, the ship also spends a full day and overnight in port. On the last night of the cruise, the ship will stay overnight again in Dubai.

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On the eastbound itineraries, Mein Schiff 4 will cruise from Dubai to Khasab, Muscat and Abu Dhabi, staying overnight in Dubai on the first and last nights of the cruise.

At 99,800-gross tons, Mein Schiff 4 closely resembles a Royal Caribbean Quantum-class cruise ship (the cruise line is part-owned by Royal Caribbean), and has all the same bells and whistles one would expect from a ship of this size.

It features elegant décor and luxury service, as well as novelties such as a huge cutaway model of the ship in the Waterkant bar, showing many of the areas normally out of bounds for passengers, and the Blauer Balkong (”blue balcony”) up on deck 14.

This area is similar to the Seawalk on Princess Cruises’ Royal Princess and Regal Princess – except that the Blauer Balkong is outdoors and its floor is made entirely of glass. The Dubai Frame hasn’t got anything on TUI!