Mariner Day2Day - 11/30-12/7 - Western

[SliderNc]

I had tried to do a live thread, but due to complications with being able to get a connection to the wireless, even in public areas, I just decided to scrap it and instead, do a day-by-day recap of my cruise and experiences onboard the Mariner of the Seas.

 

A little about myself and this will be done in spurts, with hopefully some pictures for everyone to enjoy. My name is Gerald and this is my first cruise since 1995. My family has worked in the cruise industry for many years and I've been lucky to cruise through some of the Caribbean, Europe and Asia. I've been on some old great ships, but haven't been on a cruise in the past 13 years or so. I'm new to the true mass market cruise lines as well. My parents have continued to cruise while I went away to college and then joined the working class citizens brigade.

 

A few things:

 

I've never had a balcony cabin before.

I've rarely have eaten off of the main menu due my godfather being a head chef on most of the ships I've sailed.

I've never paid an advertised price for a cruise due to my family's involvement in the industry for many years

 

Times have changed. My godfather retired back in 2000 after a 5 year run as an executive chef for Princess. My father retired in 2002 after 50 years of being a port engineer/agent in NY and Florida for multiple cruise lines over the years. I still hadn't cruised in a balcony cabin.

 

Leading up to the cruise, I booked through a deal I saw from a TA and received $100 OBC and originally was assinged 1238 on Deck 10. Using some tools to see open cabins which are mentioned all over the site, I was able to switch to 1610 about 2 months out when it opened up, right next to the Royal Suite.

 

So here we go with day one, actually being 11/28, two days before the cruise. Some of you reading this have probably sailed out of PC before and know the routine. For others who will be in the future, I hope to give you a good perspective as to what we went through and our whole trip.

[SliderNc]

11/28 - The Vacation Begins

 

After spending the holiday with my girlfriend's family (Jenn), we headed out from Mount Airy, NC around 8:30AM for the short drive back to Cornelius, NC. The excitement was starting to build as I knew we were almost ready to go and just had to switch out suitcases from our stay with her family and get back on the road. What we had to look forward to when we got to PC was warmer weather and a cruise in two days. The drive from Cornelius/Charlotte area took about 8.5 hours with a few stops for gas/food. We pulled in around 8:30PM to the Residence Inn by Marriott which is about 5 minutes from the port.

 

We chose the Residence Inn for many reasons. For one, both Jenn and I travel for business and we're able to rack up some points/miles in a few months. Jenn happened to have more Marriott points than I did this year so we cashed hers in for 2 nights at the Residence Inn, which for that weekend was 15000/night. Check-in was seamless. The customer service representative at the front desk told us about the area, good places to eat and where we would get a discount on our meals if we showed our room keycards to the waitress when we were getting out checks. They were very helpful about pointing out shopping in the area as well since in the car we had discovered that we had forgotten a few things at home.

 

Once we had our keycards, we decided to unload the truck and bring all of our belongings into the hotel. We had a few bags (6 total including small carryons) so it took two trips. Since we had been on the road all day and ate McD's at 1:30PM that day, we decided that we should go eat. We drove off in search of the wharf where the CSR at the hotel had pointed out the 4 best places to eat in the area. We decided on Fishlips since we knew we would be at Grills the following night for the sailaway party and the pre-meet and mingle.

 

Fishlips is a pretty nice place with some good food. There is an enclosed resturaunt on the first floor and then on the second floor is a sports bar, an open air area and then the outdoor patio. Food is your standard pub grub/island fare. Bars looked to have most of anything you could want as well. We sat outside and enjoyed the warm weather and ate. There were a bunch of locals there and it looked like a good party was working up, but we were tired from the drive down and decided to call it a night. I would recommend this place to anyone who is coming into town a day or two early. If you stay at the Residence Inn, you can get a discount there of 10% off your bill. Staff was really friendly as well and always around if you needed something.

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Jenn and I hadn't really made any plans for Saturday before the cruise. Both us thought that if anything, we would find the beach and lay there for a bit until our Pre-Meet and Mingle at Grills that evening at 4PM with the roll call group.

 

Sidenote: This was my first cruise with the power of the internet and the wealth of knowledge here at Cruise Critic and the great people from our roll call. I can't thank them enough for the knowledge they passed along and to all the people in the main threads with the wealth of information.

 

One thing I forgot to mention in the previous thread was that the Residence Inn has a free hot breakfast and another surprise that I will mention later in this post. The breakfast has your standard fare of eggs, breakfast meat, pancakes, french toast, potatoes, etc. There was also cereals, breads, fruit, oatmeal as well. There were 3 juices and some really good coffees and the coffee was available 24 hours a day. After breakfast, I hit up my niece who lives up I-95 about an hour or so and wanted to know if she wanted to have lunch. After a few texts, we were on the road heading back up the coast to have lunch. So much for the beach idea, but I knew we'd spend a few port days on the beach so I wasn't too worried.

 

Lunch was nice with my niece and she filled me in on what had been going on with the other part of my family that doesn't talk to me that much. It was a little stressful at times because I don't agree with how my brother does things, but that's another story and not for this place. Back in the truck and we head back to PC to meet up with the rollcall group at Grills. We could see the Carnival Glory heading down the channel as we were coming over the bridges. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me to snap some photos. It seemed that when I wanted to snap photos, I could never find it and when I didn't it was staring at me.

 

We pulled into the parking lot and walked into Grills. For those of you who have never been there, it's a similar setup to Fishlips with the indoor/outdoor areas. Our group, in true Salty Mariner fashion, were gathered around the outside tiki bar and had already filled up one large round table and were working on the other two or three next to them. About the time that we got our first drink, we got to watch the Disney Magic sail out down the channel. This was the official start to our vacation. The alcohol was flowing and everyone was having a great time. All-in-all, I think there had to be about 20-25 of us who showed up and talked for awhile.

 

Around 8PM, the night ended for us and most of the people headed back to the hotels. Jenn and I were in the party mood, as well as some of our Salty Mariners who were staying at the Residence Inn. So we headed back to the hotel and jumped in the hot tub. The best thing about this hot tub: It was about 100 feet away from an outside bar. :) Just what we needed. Some more drinks, relaxing and talking to the Japanese ISS (Space Station) Engineers who were staying at the hotel and we were done. I figured the combined IQ's of the people in the hot tub equaled about one of the 5 guys who was there. After they got up and left, another woman and her daughter joined us in the hot tub and she worked for NASA as well and was conducting experiments on the crew when they landed, if they landed at Cape Canaveral.

 

We said our goodbye until the next morning, when we would all meet for breakfast and get ready for the trip over to the Mariner of the Seas.

[shaggyofwv]

Sounds good so far.. My wife and I love the Mariner. We have sailed her twice and we are sad to see that she will be leaving for the west coast very soon.

 

Thanks for the ongoing review..

[SliderNc]

Sunday morning came early for me. I usually try to sleep late on the weekends, but the excitement of my first cruise in so many years had built up and had me up around 6:30AM. Unfortunately, our room faced the pool area at the hotel and not the port so I could not look out the window of the ships coming in. Instead, I just laid there wondering how long it would take Jenn to get up after her night of LI iced teas and rum. :)

 

Around 7:30, I got restless so I got up and went and got coffee and tea from the breakfast area. All I could think about was getting on the ship and exploring. I know that Jenn would not be up when I got back, so I took a quick walk outside and looked towards the port and could see the "crown" and stack from the Mariner down the road. The excitement started builing because in less than 4 hours, we'd be walking across the gangway and onto the Mariner of the Seas. Back inside, I could see the breakfast area was getting crowded with people leaving on the others ships in port that day, the Disney Wonder and Carnival Sensation. Back upstairs to room with a cup of coffee and a cup of tea for Jenn since I figured she would need it from her long night last night. The rule for us though is that there is no sympathy for self-inflicted pain, ie hangovers. However, on this day I was willing to make an exception for Jenn.

 

After some showers and our cups of caffiene, Jenn and I walked back down to breakfast. The shuttle for the ship from the hotel leaves at 11:30AM, so we had about 2 hours to kill before we left. At this point, I had no hangover or issues from the night before, however, Jenn was not doing well. She barely ate anything at breakfast and ended up going back up to the room while I shovelled down some waffles (they have a waffle maker at the hotel). I came back up with another cup of tea for Jenn and started to pack up our stuff and put aside things that we wouldn't need for the ship (cold weather clothes, etc). Jenn slept through most of this trying to shake off the effects from the night before. Around 11AM, we headed down to the lobby to check out and get on the shuttle.

 

Down in the lobby, there was a small group of people, waiting to get onto the shuttle. The hotel uses a 3rd party called TravelLynx. The shuttle was a medium sized shuttle bus that you would commonly find at airports for rental car and hotel pickups and had a trailer behind it for luggage. Looking into the window of the bus, I could see that it was almost full. I moved our luggage around back where the driver was loading the trailer up and handed him a few bucks for loading our luggage, then joined Jenn on the bus. The shuttle is $6 round trip per person and they give you a copy of your receipt for the return trip from the port. By the time we had everyone and their luggage loaded, it was close to 12PM. The short ride to the terminal provided some nice views of the ships in port.

 

One thing that I should have done is pre-printed/laminated our luggage tag that was provided when I received my e-docs. The porter filled out some tags for me when we were unloading the luggage and I put them on our bags. I gave him a few dollars as well for his help.

 

The first impression of Port Canaveral is that it looks to be pretty well organized. They had a good traffic flow control going on and were able to move people around pretty quick. There are two main doors through which passengers can enter the terminal, on the right and left sides of it. The line on the right was really long, however, a port representative was pointing people down to the left hand side which when we arrived had almost no people on it. We waited about 15 minutes to get through the security check point, which is very similar to an airport security checkpoint, without the removal of the shoes.

 

Once through the security checkpoint, you head up an escalator. At the top, we were greeted by a woman from RCL who asked us what deck our room is on. I told her the deck and she directed us to the Priority Check-In/Diamond line. Now, I understand that Deck 10 has most of the suites but we had room 1610, which is a balcony cabin on the front of the hump. I was a little confused, but noticed that the line had no one on it so at that point, I wasn't going to say anything. So we hurried to the end and got sent to the next available agent to check us in. I handed her Jenn's and my passport, our Set Sail passes I had printed online and my credit card. In about 2 minutes, we had a set sail cards and were on our way onto the ship. We got our pictures taken, then again at the ship security check point and we walked onto the ship. We entered on Deck 4, towards the bow of the ship right by the Schooner bar.

 

More to come from embarkation day later...

[il_traveler]

Great review - lots of good info for planning future Port Canaveral departures! Looking forward to reading the rest of your trip.

[SliderNc]

Sorry for the delay on this, but so much has happened the past month and half that I just haven't been able to get to writing this. Here is part 2 of embarkation day:

 

You walk in on Deck 4 of the ship, either towards either end depending on what side of the terminal you are told to check in on. If you go to the right, you’re at the bow of the ship. Right when we walked on, we were greeted by a few of the crew. Being that this is my first cruise on a ship this large, I was really in awe of the sheer size of the Mariner. She looks very clean and well taken care of from the outside and the inside of the ship is no different. We walked into what would be the Schooner bar and the front end of the Promenade was right above our head. Going into embarkation day, I had read a bunch about when the cabins are available, what to do, etc. Being the first time on this ship, Jenn and I were eager to explore. But we had a bulky carry on that was weighing us down and we did want to get rid of it, however, the cabins wouldn’t be ready until 1PM.

 

It was roughly 12:30PM at this point, so we decided to go up on flight and hit the Promenade. This is the first time I’ve sailed on a ship this big, as well as one with a mini-mall smack in the middle of it. I was quite impressed with the different stores, bars and the promenade café. We spent some time looking into the stores (none were open due to being in port) and then taking a gander at the duty free stuff, which we definitely made good use of this trip. We stopped at the excursion desk and booked the wave runner tour for Labadee, which was one of the only ship tours we booked. All of our other tours were booked ahead of time and I will go into more detail in the next few days.

 

It was about 12:50PM now and I was getting hungry and wanted to get rid of the bags we were carrying. So I figured we had nothing to lose and we would see if the cabin steward guarding the bulkhead door to the cabins would let us into the cabin for 2 minutes to drop off our bags. So we went up to Deck 10 and walked towards the steward. I explained to him what cabin we were in and he nodded at me and said, “Sure thing. Your cabin is all set so I can let you in real quick to drop off your bags.” I didn’t catch his name and he wasn’t our cabin steward for the week, but he was nice and showed us to our room and let us drop our bags off. As I’ve never had a balcony cabin before, you can imagine how impressed I was with it. The size of the cabin was perfect where Jenn and I never felt crowded or cramped. I’m a pretty large guy (6’2”, 300 lbs) so room is always a nice feature anywhere. We dropped the bags off and headed upstairs to the Windjammer.

 

I’m not a big fan of buffets or lines. I hate waiting in lines for food. However, even with this being embarkation day, I found I had a tray of food (yes, I did have the honey stung chicken) and a table in no time. We had a view out the back of the ship looking at the Disney ship that was in port that day as well. As the weather was starting to deteriorate, I was happy we got on the ship when we did. We ate and started planning out the rest of the day of exploration. For the most part and throughout the week when we did eat lunch in the Windjammer, the food was OK. It wasn’t great, it wasn’t bad, it was OK and considering it was a buffet, I didn’t expect it to be anything but edible. I did like the Asian inspired dishes that they had each day and the egg station was perfect to get a good omelet. Finding a table was never a problem and even before we would get seated, someone was always there to get us some drinks.

 

After lunch, we started exploring the ship from the top decks and working out way down. We had late seating for dinner so we had a bunch of time to kill. We also wanted to meet up for sailaway with our CC Meet and Mingle people as well. It took us about 2 hours or so to see the places we really wanted to see and walk around the decks of the ship. Not much was open at that time, but that was okay as we would have all week to explore. Jenn took the spa tour while I talked with the Scuba guys about getting my certification. In no time, we had killed almost 3 hours and it was getting close to sailaway, so we headed back to the cabin to grab our stuff and back up to the pool deck bars to meet up with everyone.

 

Prior to us setting sail, the Disney ship had an incident in the inclement weather and their departure which had broken the gangway going onto the ship. As we sailed out, past Fishlips and Grills, the Disney ship was docked in one of the slips on the left and a crew of people were looking at that side of the ship where the gangways fell off. It didn’t look like there was any damage done, but I’m sure they were being extra careful about it. In no time, we were behind the Carnival Sensation and then passing it out at sea. We watched the Pilot chatting with Captain Per and once they were outside the channel, we watched him jump onto the pilot boat along side. If you’ve never seen this, it’s pretty interesting, especially in 2-4m seas. At this point, Jenn and I decide to grab a cocktail to go and head back to the cabin to start getting ready for dinner.