Mariner Western 3/23 Review-Long

[Atty]

Here is my review of my Mariner cruise. This was our 7th cruise (6th on RCCL and 4th on a Voyager Class).

 

March 23-30, 2008

 

Cabin 9618 (Junior Suite)

 

We arrived a day early as is our usual plan when we have to fly to the port. The ship left on a Sunday and we arrived via a red eye on Saturday morning. We immediately drove the hour or so and watched a Cleveland Indians spring training game. It was overcast and rainy but we had fun.

 

Sunday: Embark at Port Canaveral:

 

We arrived at the pier around 10:30 to 11:00. I waited at the pier while my wife returned the rental car. We were checked in an on board within 5 minutes of entering the facility and were on board by 11:30 at the very latest. The check in was very smooth. I think some of it had to do with the fact that we had priority check-in. As we were going to board, I did notice that there were other passengers who had entered before us who were in a line to check in so I think we did get a nice shortcut.

 

Once on board, we immediately go to the Spa and the specialty restaurant(s) to make reservations. One of the first things we noticed when we boarded which was VERY strange was that there were no bar people walking around with the drink of the day in the special overpriced glasses. Also, the coke card stands were not manned. We Assumed this was because we had been like one of the first 50 people on board but I did notice that for a long time (like well after one) the coke card places were not manned and I never once all week saw bar staff walking around deck with drinks to sell. The Windjammer was, well the Windjammer. The food there has never impressed me but I’m not a big “foodie” anyway so the whole RCCL **** is great vs. the whole RCCL food stinks never really mattered to me. I’ve always found the food to be acceptable and pretty tasty and this cruise was the same (at least in the dining room). Its very hard to serve top of the line food in a buffet which the Windjammer is. Anyway, after lunch, we wandered around. As this was our fourth Voyager Class (we’ve been on all except Voyager herself), we knew where everything was and just enjoyed watching others. The cabins opened at 1pm but our luggage was later than usually not arriving until after 4:00pm. We had arranged an informal meet up with some other Cruise Critic Message Board people and it was great to put a face and voice to the people from the message boards that I had been counting down to the cruise with finally.

 

The Welcome Aboard show was good. The comedy acts we had actually seen on prior cruises but were still very funny. The Captain was Captain Johnny and this was our first time sailing with him. He seemed like a very nice guy and we enjoyed his daily reports and the advice from his Chinese friend. The Cruise Director was Drew Devine who had taken over from Graham a couple of weeks earlier. Drew was energetic and a good host but I’ve never really had my cruise experience greatly enhanced or made worse by the cruise director (maybe that just means I’ve never had the absolute best).

 

Dinner was in the main dining room and I had the prime rib which was actually better than on previous cruises. I’m not much of a food person (mostly meat and potatoes) but the meal was good and we got to meet our wonderful wait staff who was the best we’ve had in our 7 cruises. Unfortunately, our tablemates were no shows the first night.

 

Monday: At Sea

 

The thing about this cruise was that it was at the tail end of Spring Break season so there were A LOT of families and children. This wasn’t a problem for my wife and I as we have 2 kids of our own (who were having a great time at home with grandma and grandpa) so we are patient and all of the kids I saw were very well behaved. However, the atmosphere on the cruise was much different than on any of our prior trips. I believe this was because there were over 1100 kids on board and it tended to alter the mood somewhat. It wasn’t bad, just different.

 

The first sea day is traditionally our first spa appointment and we both had a Lime and Ginger scrub and full body massage which was very relaxing. One very nice thing on this cruise was that the spa personnel were not overly aggressive on their sales pitch for spa products after the massage. I’ve been on cruises before where I was given the hard sell and a guilt trip for saying no, so this visit was nice. Most of the day was spent relaxing on our balcony and reading. My wife is a wine fan and she attended I believe a total of three wine tastings over the week which she said were all very good.

 

I did notice some chair hogging on the sea days and heard people complaining about how the Deck Patrol had the nerve to move their towels (even though the chairs had sat unoccupied for over an hour and the people admitted they had gone off to some other activity). The weather was overcast so it wasn’t great sunbathing weather anyway but plenty of people tried.

 

Dinner on the second night was again good, not jaw dropping, but better than my last two experiences on RCCL. Our tablemates did appear tonight (which was the first formal night). Of course this was the last we’d see of them as three (a lovely family from Brazil who didn’t speak English) moved to be with the rest of their large party from Brazil and two from the US who simply didn’t bother coming back to the dining room after the second night. In the end, my wife and I ended up as the only two at a table for seven.

 

As for the dress on formal night, I wore my tux as I always do but noticed that there were very few men in tuxedos. Again I chalk this up to the spring break nature of the cruise and the differences in the crowd as compared to prior cruises.

 

Tuesday: Labadee (partly sunny low 80s)

 

Labadee is not a great stop for us. We are not beach people and simply really don’t care to spend all day on the beach. We had been to Labadee twice before and had done all the excursions we wanted before; except for the zip line. We were both really excited to try it (although $80 is a very steep price). Unfortunately, there were headwinds and our excursion was cancelled. We sadly tendered back to the ship at 11:30am and spent the rest of the time in Labadee as a sea day. We had lunch at Johnny Rockets using our Crown and Anchor coupon. My wife had another spa appointment and we played several games of trivia throughout the day.

 

Dinner tonight was at Chops. Being a meat and potatoes guy, I know my steaks and the filet at Chops is very good. The cut was incredible and it was cooked to perfection. While we both enjoy Chops and Portofino, Chops is by far our favorite. There was not much in the way of entertainment or activities that interested us from the end of dinner until the late night adult comedy which was too bad as we ended up falling asleep early and missed the midnight comedy.

 

Wednesday: Ocho Rios (Sunny and mid 80s)

 

In our book, Jamaica gets a bad rap. We have been twice and had great experiences both times. We don’t find the people rude or pushy and have never felt anything except safe and welcome. On this trip, we did the canopy tour. Last spring we had done a treetop course in St. Maarten and loved it. The canopy tour in Ocho Rios was a straight zip line tour and was fun. I think there were nine lines we did. The area was very pretty and the views were great. We would recommend the tour to anyone. After the canopy tour, we did some shopping and returned to ship.

 

The night brought the ice show (Ice under the Big Top). Having been around skating all my life, I have a great appreciation for how hard it is for the ice cast to do what they do on such a small rink on a boat traveling 20 knots in the open sea. That being said, I enjoyed the ice show a lot but after having seen several others on other ships, the novelty is wearing off and while I’d definitely tell someone to go see it, its not longer a must do for me. Later was the Love and Marriage game show which, as always, was very funny and well worth the trip to the theater at 10:30pm.

 

Thursday: George Town Grand Cayman (Windy and Cloudy low 80s)

 

We had been to Grand Cayman before and none of the excursion possibilities struck us as must dos this time as we had done what we wanted on our prior trip. We had planned to just hang out in town and maybe do some snorkeling off the dock at Eden Rock. However, the water was choppy and the clouds and wind didn’t make it very appealing to us as we were already planning on snorkeling in Cozumel the next day. We ended up just wandering the town and enjoying the sights. We enjoy getting a little off the beaten path and seeing some things other than the main shopping streets so we had a lovely day seeing some of the side streets of George Town and the progress they are making in rebuilding after hurricane damage.

 

Alone again dinner which just made for great service for us so we didn’t mind. For whatever reason, we never made it to any of the shows in the theater except for the comedy of John Joseph and Johnny B on the second night. The production shows seemed good but they were the same we had seen on prior trips so we didn’t need to see them again.

 

Friday: Cozumel (sunny mid 80s)

 

We docked in Cozumel and as our excursion wasn’t until 1pm, we headed into town to look around and buy last minute gifts for people back home. At 1pm we headed off for power snorkeling. The concept is simple; you snorkel with a small hand held motor that propels you through the water. The “power” part of the snorkel was great and the water temperature was very comfortable even for someone like me who hates getting into anything colder than a hot tub. However, the area where the guide took us to snorkel was disappointing. I’m not sure if it was all hurricane damage or not but there just wasn’t much there. We saw some pretty fish and a few other things but nothing like we’d seen on other snorkel and scuba trips in the USVI or Grand Cayman. After the snorkel we did find a nice local restaurant which was right across the street from Agua (the tour operator). The prices were reasonable and the fajitas were very good. My wife said that her shrimp was also very tasty.

 

Dinner that night on board was the famous “lobster night.” Now called the Fisherman’s Platter it was a small lobster tail and shrimp. Not being a fan of seafood, I had the beef selection.

 

The entertainment for the evening was The Quest. I won’t go into the game as it’s a secret. However, I will say that I’ve played the game on both smaller ships (when they have it in a lounge and everyone participates) and on the bigger ships (when its in Studio B). I was a team captain one time on Navigator in Studio B and much prefer the game in the smaller ships. I understand why they have to do it in Studio B and it makes sense but I just think the game isn’t as much that way. It is however still a riot to watch and we enjoyed ourselves sitting in the back row watching the team captains go at it.

 

Saturday: At Sea

 

Second sea day was very similar to the first. We played trivia and I had a second spa appointment as my wife went off to wine tasting number 3 and wine tasting number 4. One thing we had talked about doing on prior cruises but never did was the backstage tour of the theater. This time we made it a point to go and enjoyed the tour. Its really pretty cool how they manage to do everything thy do with such a small backstage area. While the singers and dancers sometimes get a bad rap for not being very good, I’ve always thought they were very good especially since they don’t get a ton of practice time and their facilities, while nice, are very small.

 

We attended the farewell show and while it was entertaining, I’ve come to the conclusion that RCCL needs to come up with new “Top 10” questions asked of the CD during the cruise. After the show, it was off to our last dinner in the dining room. Again we had the table to ourselves but were asked by two other tables of friends we had met during the week to join up with them. Unfortunately, it being the last night, no one wanted to miss the last night with their waiters. One tradition my wife and I have is that if we get along well with out tablemates, we like to buy at least one bottle of Champagne for the table on the last night to celebrate another wonderful vacation. Since we had no tablemates this cruise, we instead bought a bottle to share with some friends a couple of tables over as well as the Brazilian family we had originally had at our table. After dinner it was off to do some quick final packing and then back to the Schooner Bar for some piano bar entertainment and then to the English Pub for some guitar entertainment before sleep and our departure the next day.

 

Sunday: Disembark at Port Canaveral

 

Just as we like to fly in a day early, we like to fly out a day late so that we don’t go directly from vacation to the stress of whether we’re going to make our flight. As a consequence, we turned in our luggage tags and got tags for the last group to disembark (Pink 2). We were called about 10am and were off the ship by 11 and on our way to the Kennedy Space Center.

 

Overall Impressions:

 

Overall, this was a very nice and relaxing cruise. It differed from our prior cruises in that we didn’t do as many excursions and spent a lot more time on our cabin balcony just relaxing and enjoying the sound of the water and the Caribbean Sea. It was very nice to get away from all the hustle and bustle of everyday life and just sit and be able to enjoy the sea air, the wind, the sun, and the calmness that a good vacation can bring.

 

While there were LOTS of children on the cruise, they were all well behaved and they didn’t have a bad impact at all. The ONLY bad thing about having so many kids on board for me was that I love the self serve ice cream by the pool but the line was always super long.

 

The food on this cruise was much improved from our last two cruises and far and away superior to our last Voyager class sailing. The service was great and the crew were some of the friendliest we’ve had yet.

 

A couple of things did bother me. The selection of items in the shops on board was dramatically reduced. There were entire shelves that were bare in some stores and in the logo shop, it was not uncommon to find they only had T-Shirts in sizes like small and XXL. In the jewelry shop, they were out of stock on a few of the watches and the overall selection just seemed to be lacking. Unlike some people on other ships that noticed they ran out of things, I never noticed that they ran out of beer or anything. One other thing I noticed and am not sure if its just me being weird or if it’s a cost saving thing. I drink a lot of soda. I drink soda instead of coffee and usually instead of alcohol. When I would order a coke, I would never get a straw unless I asked for it or got it myself. On prior cruises, they just automatically put a straw in.

 

One last irksome thing. My wife likes to have a Black and Tan every now and then. One would think that if you have an English Pub on board, they would know how to make it and would have the ales on tap like any real English Pub would. They didn’t. My wife basically had to teach them how to make the Black and Tan and then we would get charged for two full beers because they had to use the canned Guinness and the bottled Bass to make the drink. Not a big deal, just something I found a bit odd.

 

Overall, another great vacation and I wouldn’t hesitate to go on Mariner again and again. Since she is come to my coast soon, I will hopefully be able to sail on her a lot.

[minnie00]

Great review. We stayed in 9618 back in Sept....GREAT ROOM !!!;)

[pmfan]

I love reading reviews. Especially on the Mariner. Thanks.

[kittymom65]

Thanks for posting your review, great job with it.

[jakenashleysmom]

We also were surprised to not have Guinness on tap in the pub, then we realized............its not an IRISH pub! We were glad to make due with a nice brown ale that was on tap. It was a nice little pub wasn't it!

 

I believe, "black and tan" refers to the Irish paramilitary during the Irish War of Independance. You'd be more likely to have a half and half, or black and tan with Guinness and Harp, or Smithwicks in an Irish Pub.