This was my 67th cruise overall and my 7th with Royal Caribbean - to give you an idea of where we're coming from, we are great Celebrity and Princess fans, but have cruised pretty much everyone out there (including many that do not exist anymore). I am almost 40 and my partner is 39. We travel pretty extensively and have a lot of experience to compare our various vacation experiences to. While we appreciate the reviews from all CC members, we find that people who have only been on 10 cruises or less expect different things than we do.

As an overall impression we would say that the ship itself is a fabulous destination, but we felt more like we were on vacation on a ship rather than on a cruise; not that there was anything wrong with that. With the sheer size of the Mariner we were awed by some of the offerings, but also a little sad that we did not run into people as often as we would have liked and think that some of the true cruise experiences are lost on a vessel of this size.

We booked 2 days before the ship was to set sail through a Florida based, well known cruise agency and as we were coming in from Germany we took advantage of a good Cruise Critic tip and rented a car from Hertz which had a convenient local drop off. We dropped the luggage off at the ship first so we would not have to struggle with stuff, returned the car, and then took the courtesy shuttle back to the ship. I do not know about the other car agencies, but Hertz ran their shuttle every 10 minutes so it was very convenient. (They also picked us up the following week exactly on time and where promised.) Read more