Mariner Eastern Caribbean 5/27 - 6/3 Review. Well I am back from the Mariner, so I figured I would write a review to help out other cruisers since everyone else's reviews have helped me. I took about 80 pages of notes, so here is the "short" version. I tried to categorize everything rather than do it on a day by day basis. Lots of detail about questions I had asked in the past.

Embarkation We used the RC shuttle transfer service to and from the Orlando airport. I went back and forth between using their shuttle, a private shuttle, or renting a car. Nice thing about the RC shuttle is you pretty much don't have to deal with your luggage once you leave the Orlando airport. It made getting on the ship very easy. So we land and head to baggage claim and as soon as we got down the escalator, an RC rep was there to meet us. We went over to her and she told us to get our bags and then come back to her and she will check us in. After that she sends you to another RC rep down the hall and he makes sure you have your RC luggage tags on. He sends you down the elevator and another rep meets you and takes you to the RC desk where you actually check in and show your shuttle vouchers. You get a numbered boarding pass and then you sit in the waiting area. The bus shows up pretty much every hour on the hour. It took about 20 minutes to load the bus and all of the luggage. There were about 50-55 people on our bus. We left at 11:20am. Ride to the airport was 45-50 minutes. You get to the port terminal and another RC rep gets on the bus to give you some instructions. That was the 6th RC rep we dealt with before even getting off of the bus. Service and organization was impressive so far. You will need to have your Bahamas Immigration card filled out at this point. So they start unloading your luggage from underneath the bus and the bags with RC luggage tags get put in the big luggage crates to be loaded on the ship. IMPORTANT...do not put RC luggage tags on your carry on bags or they will load them in the big luggage cages and you will not get to carry them on. They will show up in your stateroom with everything else. The bags with no RC tags on them were put off to the side so you could pick them up when you get off of the bus. We did not tip anyone and no one approached us for a tip either. It was about 12:20 at this point.

Headed into the terminal. Had our passports, Set Sail printout, credit card for our Sea Pass account, and Bahamas cards all ready. We walked through security really quickly. You get to the main check in area and you get in a line specific to your stateroom deck. It was very well organized. They must have had 25 -30 agents working the desks to check people in. We were at the counter within 5 minutes of getting there. Took about 5-10 minutes at the desk, but only b/c they had to register my wife's green card. Still fast though. Got our SeaPass cards and then headed down a hallway for our Welcome Aboard picture. You can skip this if you want to, but it only took a minute and this was our first cruise ever, so we did it. After that we went down some other hallway and up and escalator where they take an ID picture to match up with your SeaPass card. This took 5 seconds. Around another corner and there was the gangway and an RC rep to greet us! The process was unbelievably efficient. We were on the ship by 12:45. Very impressed so far. Read more