Mariner of the Seas Review
First Cruise with Royal Caribbean - Enjoyable and Relaxing!
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First, I must say, we only cruised once before on Golden Princess (to Alaska from Vancouver). So this is the only benchmark that I have to compare the current RCI cruise with.
Because we live in Vancouver, Canada, getting to the cruise terminal in Texas was quite a journey: flight from Vancouver to L.A. then L.A. to San Antonio, then San Antonio to Houston (overnight stay) then early mini-van ride from Houston to Galveston, our departure port. We arrived at the terminal at approx. 12:30pm and I believe we were in our stateroom by 1:15pm: embarkation was a piece of cake compared to our Alaskan cruise last year.
The Mariner of the Seas ship is beautiful and grandiose. Would be hard to say if I prefer the Golden Princess or the Mariner of the Seas: they are both beautiful and charming in their own ways. As expected, there were lots of activities on board and one can choose to be as lazy or as active as one wishes! We booked all our shore excursions on our own, and by doing so, saved significantly over the shore excursions offered by RCI. We booked a beach and snorkeling package in Roatan, Honduras ($30 pp including transportation at Bananarama Resort), a cave tubing experience in Belize ($45 pp) and a day at Chankanaab Park ($30 pp) in Cozumel, Mexico. I have already written individual reviews of these excursions on TripAdvisor so I won't repeat here.
Cabin Review
Deluxe Oceanview Stateroom with Balcony
Cabin 7690 on the Mariner. This is an AFT balcony cabin (behind the ship). I understand these aft balcony cabins are the same size inside as other balcony cabins on the ship. However, two advantages: 1) view of both port side and starboard side. 2) the balconies are much bigger: in fact, unlike other balcony staterooms, these have 2 lounge chairs in addition to the regular 2 regular chair provided! We spend a lot of time on these lounge chairs sipping wine, enjoying the view and reading our books!