I happened upon Arno’s Bear Cruise purely by accident.  I was recently widowed after 20 years and was forcing myself to get out and make new friends.  My new boyfriend encouraged me to do something special for my 50th birthday, and with a Google search, found his site.  We were obviously apprehensive being our first cruise, let alone not knowing anyone else in this group.  We have been to other events with gay men, but found that due to our ages and, let’s face it, body shapes, and we would feel out of place among the younger men.   We took a leap of faith and our first Arno’s Bear Cruise was to Alaska!

Booking was a breeze.  There were no “surprise” fees, and Arno was very prompt with replying to questions and updates on excursions that he coordinated for the group.  Arno even organized to have a host hotel both pre and post boarding upon the ship.  Everyone we met was so nice and looked just like us!  My inhibitions were gone as I confidently walked shirtless to the ship’s pool to join the group at the pool.  As the cruise continued, more and more guys in the group introduced themselves to us and we even exchanged contact information.  We took a helicopter flight atop an actual glacier, visited a dog-sled encampment within the Yukon Territory, and toured the 19th century capital of Juneau where my boyfriend Michael and I purchased rings.  (These rings later turned into wedding bands). 

Upon our departure of that first cruise with Arno’s Bear Cruises, we made new friends and experienced wondrous nature while being entertained on a glamorous Royal Caribbean ship.  We decided right then that we must do another cruise the following year.

Our second cruise was with a competitor.  We felt we should try a Gay Bear Group on the West Coast, as we live in San Diego, California.  This cruise was with Princess Cruises from Los Angeles to Mexican ports.  We were disappointed overall.  Although, the group was very nice and outgoing, excursions were mainly through the ship.  The group did provide a DJ and arranged our group to have private dances; however, the other guests kept crashing our parties due to the ship keeping the other disco dark.  We were spoiled with our on board entertainment with Royal Caribbean with costumed singers in the promenade, acrobatics on bungee cords dancing above our heads, and truly funny comedians in the theater.  Our Princess Cruise entertainment consisted of the head maître d and chef joking on stage before escorting hundreds of guests through the empty cooking rooms.  A new friend we met reported to us that he witnessed a ship worker pouring cheaper liquor into expensive bottles from behind the bar at 4am.  We knew that we had to go back to Arno.

Since then, we have been with Arno's Bear Cruises to the Western Caribbean, Eastern Caribbean, Australia/New Zealand, and are currently booked to another Western Caribbean cruise through Arno and Royal Caribbean.  We feel that not only do we feel pampered on a Royal Caribbean ship, we also feel confident that everything will be organized and orderly, yet very playful and accepting with Arno and the group of men I now call friends.