The Marina is a beautiful ship with large open areas. Even when the ship is completely full, as it was for us, you do not feel crowded anywhere. On the top of the ship is a running track and below it and above the pool another walking area. Unfortunately, both are without cover and provide the only options for walking outside since there is no promenade deck on this ship. Also, on the top deck you will find an 18 hole putting course, a golf driving net and a very nice coquet and shuffleboard courts. The showroom is lovely, but aside from 4 good ship company singers, the shows were not exceptional. The ship has one pool which could be larger for the number of passengers Marina carries, 1200. Unfortunately for us, this ship had no photo department nor any photographers to take pictures other than your own. Had it not been for a crew member loaning us a camera cord, we might have been very restricted in the number of digital pictures we could take and not download to our laptop.

There are seven different restaurants; five are specialty which require reservations. Only one of the five, La Reserve, requires an additional charge; the rest are included in your cruise fare. The Grand Dining room and Terrace Café are both dine at any time restaurants. The Terrace Café, being the ships buffet restaurant, had a good selection most days and most selections were changed daily except there is little change at breakfast. A good and different experience was his ship's staff serve you at the buffet rather than each passenger serving themselves. We like the fact that several hundred people do not touch serving utensils but instead the ship's staff do with hands in protective gloves. Added to this protection is this ship has more than the usual number of antibacterial dispensers.

Of the four specialty restaurants that do not charge extra, the Red Ginger is the only one that is not located on the ship's perimeter; it is an inside restaurant. It, like the other specialty restaurants, is nicely decorated to match the restaurant's theme which in this case is Asian. It is not a Chinese restaurant. Jacques is not a French restaurant either but it does have French dishes on the menu. The Polo Grill has the lamb, steak and some seafood items you would expect. It was very good but the meat was not cooked to order twice. Toscana, the Italian restaurant was great, and like 4 other restaurants on the ship, has many tables for two along the window walls - very romantic. The Grand Dining room was our favorite and had good menu selections almost every day. Service in all restaurants was the best we have had on any ship to date. And we enjoyed the fact that restaurants were not loud; you could even hear the overhead music. One evening we did have a couple of issues in the Grand Dining room, aside from another steak that was not cooked to order. The supervisory staff handled and resolved the problems very quickly and did more than we expected. Again, it was great service. But the food was not to that level. We found the entrées at times with little taste. The bread and deserts were exceptional, however. Read more