This was the third Royal Caribbean cruise for my fiance and I. We've sailed on Oasis of the Seas and Enchantment of the Seas, and thought Mariner would be a good in-between. Since the cruise was short, this was a precursor to a Disney trip we took after disembarking.

We chose Mariner because it was recently updated and appeared to have great night life. We flew into Miami the evening before and stayed at the Ramada airport hotel. It was our second stay there, and we love it. Very cheap, but clean and the attached pub is really good. The following morning we took an Uber to the port. The terminal is brand new and beautifully designed. When we arrived at check-in, we were surprised to see someone with just an iPad. The employee took our photos on the iPad, checked our documents and sent us through security. We received a paper with boarding info an a bar code, but no Sea Pass cards, which we were confused by. It turned out that the paper we received was our temporary sea pass until we got our rooms at 1pm. I found this to be super strange and inconvenient, as paper gets wet when trying to get bartenders to scan it on the pool deck. Several people were confused about this as well, I'm not sure when they stopped printing Sea Pass cards at check-in.

When we boarded, none of the bars on board were ready, and most locations on top deck were still being cleaned. We did find one bar open but they were out of several items. It was strangely quiet compared to when we boarded our other cruises. No music, not a ton of crew members around. We did go on the bow a few times, and it's SO cool. Definitely check that out if you can, we didn't have access on our other cruises. Read more