Mariner of the Seas Review

4.5 / 5.0
1,332 reviews

A bit hit and miss

Review for the Eastern Mediterranean Cruise on Mariner of the Seas
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Sue
10+ Cruises • Age 20s

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Sail Date: Apr 2011
Cabin: Deluxe Oceanview Stateroom with Balcony
Traveled with children

We've just come back from a lovely 11 night cruise round the med on "Mariner of the seas". Though we had a lovely time there were some significant problems on the ship which do need to be dealt with if RCL want to keep their position in the "cruise polls"I'll deal with the good bits first....1. The cabins are large, clean and well maintained, the balconies are nice, if compact. 2. The cabin and waiting staff are lovely.3. The shows were fairly good from an entertainment point of view and very good indeed from a technical point of view. Hubby has an interest in stage lighting and sound and was very impressed indeed with these.4. The food is good and plentiful...as ever.5. The children's facilities were also very good, even if our teenagers preferred to lurk around in gangs rather than use them for a lot of the time. Our youngest son had a ball with the 6-8 year olds.6. The tours were pretty good, obviously local guides vary from port to port but they were well organised.Now for the not so good bits....1. The pools were unusable as they were so cold (22 deg c) . We are seasoned cruisers and have never known such cold pools. Even on winter cruises there is normally one kept warm enough to use. Mind you, all other ships we have used have at least one fully covered pool. MOTS has none. Most passengers didn't even get their costumes out on this cruise.2. There are 6 Jacuzzis on board, but never more than 3 open at one time...the others were forever either roped off or empty. Surely they could be cleaned overnight? On one sea day (coolish but calm) all pools and all Jacuzzis were closed....purely for "cleaning" Guest services weren't interested.3. The internet services have not been upgrade for years and cannot cope with the modern volume of traffic from customers. There were also a number of viruses on the onboard computers.4. The library was advertised in the brochure as having "over 3000" books. It was more like 300.....and the majority were in other languages. There was one atlas...locked away behind glass doors!. Most of the shelves were actually empty. Neither the internet cafe nor the library is staffed.5. RCL is one of the companies who do not pay their waiting or cabin staff. They are totally dependant on tips. I was disgusted with this policy. 6. The pay-per-view film service is faulty. If you have paid for a film you supposed to be able to switch it off and still have access to come back later...this does not work. We were refunded without a problem but the desk staff say this is a long term problem.7. On a similar note the "adult" movies titles are accessible by default in the cabin. You need to "opt out" rather than "opt in" or your kids will be able to see the (very dodgy) titles very easily. (Out of interest the film we were watching in point 6 was Harry Potter!!).8. We were charged for cabin minibar items used by the people who had our cabin before us. Again, this was refunded without quibble....but shouldn't have happened.9. Cabin baggage delivery was very slow indeed.10. Shops, spas, hairdresser, trips etc were all the most expensive we have encountered.11. The climbing wall and ice rink were great....but hardly ever open. There were 2 days when the rink was closed for rehearsals for the ice show, but that does not excuse only 3 days for public use on an 11 day cruise.12. Cabin keys wipe if ever in contact with a mobile phone!!!13. Hubby wrote a pleasant note to the Purser with some questions....He never even replied! We did have a lovely time, but it was somewhat "in spite of" rather than "because of" the facilities on the ship.

Cabin Review

Deluxe Oceanview Stateroom with Balcony

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