Gay cruise holidays, lines to treat with caution

Of course, not everything suits everybody, and not everybody is welcome everywhere – if you want a relaxed, gay-friendly cruise holiday there are some lines that you might feel it better to avoid, unless you want to act as a militant front for gay lib. Foremost amongst these is the Disney Cruise Line, which isn’t so much unwelcoming as just not designed to cater for the gay community, having as it does a totally traditional ‘nuclear family’ focus. There have been reports of gay nuclear families being asked to explain their relationship by crew members, who clearly expected to hear men or women travelling together were siblings rather than partners. Some small European cruise lines also struggle to cater to the gay community and this is in part because they don’t offer so much variety of entertainment as the larger seagoing lines and partly because their customer base tends to be older (and in cruise terms that means more like 70 plus) and more conservative than the ocean liner passenger. There's no reason not to book with either, but be aware you may be more the focus of attention than you would on other cruises.