We recently spent 5 nights aboard Mariner of the Seas with another couple and thoroughly enjoyed it. We all stayed pre-cruise at the Mandarin Orchard Hotel, ideally located for shopping on Orchard Road and a short walk to the Orchard MRT station. We checked out of our hotel on embarkation day at 11:00am and caught a taxi to the cruise terminal.

Although Sapphire of the Seas was also in port that day embarkation was very smooth. Luggage drop off point was right across from where the taxi dropped us off. We then proceeded inside and joined the relatively short queue(20 people) to check-in and receive our seapasses. We were given a grey card and told to wait until our colour was called before we could pass through immigration and board the ship. Waiting time approx. 15-20mins but by this time the queues to check-in were very, very long. We were on-board the ship before 1:00pm

This was our first RCI cruise and we had a balcony room mid-ship. The room was what we expected having cruised in balcony cabins before with Princess & Celebrity, plenty of room in the wardrobe, we even managed to store 2 suitcases in there - on our last Celebrity cruise we had to store suitcases under the bed. The shower and towels were a bit on the small size and no robes, I didn't ask the steward but maybe robes were available on request. Read more