Mariner of the Seas Review

4.5 / 5.0
1,328 reviews

Will Not Sail with Royal Caribbean again

Review for Trans-Ocean Cruise on Mariner of the Seas
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HHSHermit
2-5 Cruises • Age 70s

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Additional details

Sail Date: Apr 2018
Cabin: Ocean View Balcony

Chose this cruise for its repositioning itinerary. Prior to this cruise, the ship had been on short (3-4 day) gambling junkets out of Singapore targeted at Chinese passengers. Senior staff appeared not to have adapted policies and procedures for a longer cruise (15-30 days). (Some food items ran out early; insufficient recorded movies for the duration, daily charges were more appropriate for short rather than longer cruises, etc.)

Their business model is to take advantage of their monopoly situation to soak passengers for everything aboard. $12 for a glass of wine; $15/day for poor internet service; charges for in cabin movies; no self serve laundry - we spent over $200 having 4 laundries done on our 30 day cruise. For their shore excursions into very hot climate (30 to 40 degrees C) we were warned to stay hydrated, and we could buy $3 bottles of water if we wanted. [Why would such a safety item not be included in the excursion cost?] On board tours (free on other lines) were expensive ($90 each for 2 hours).

Although this cruise had been marketed to us as a sail from Singapore to Barcelona, Royal Carribean treated it as 2 cruises- Singapore to Dubai and Dubai to Barcelona. Perhaps this made sense to them, but it seriously inconvenienced passengers going the full way. We had to essentially "disembark" and "reembark" at Dubai, including clearing our account balance. In addition, hundreds of passengers (I heard 600 cabins) had to pack up and move to other cabins, some just a cabin or two away. This was despite pleas to just let everyone who wished to stay in their first cabins. To add insult to injury, we were required to line up at 5:30 AM for a half hour to provide credit card information for the second "cruise" - something we had already done 3 times!

Cabin Review

Ocean View Balcony

Balcony cabin was very nice and cabin steward was excellent.

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