We cruised on the Mariner January of 2011 and had such a wonderful time that we booked this cruise while we were on the ship.

We flew from Denver to Houston Hobby Airport on Southwest and used Z Limousine to transfer to Galveston. Z Limousine was great and is highly recommended. We stayed at the Tremont House which is a nice boutique hotel in the heart of the Strand. Very nice for short term, not sure I would want to stay long term as there was not a lot of storage or room to put things in the bathroom. We walked around the Strand -- a lot of shops. Wanted to visit an old restored home, but it was not open. Went by Bob's Groceries to get a six pack of Pepsi (much preferred by me to Coke) but they only had 12 packs. She recommended we try CVS and we hiked over there to find they also only had 12 packs. Put them in a couple of bags and went back to our hotel. Had a wonderful, if a bit noisy, dinner at Fisherman's Wharf Restaurant (recommended by our Z Limousine driver). Watched football -- being from Denver I won't say any more. In the morning we walked over to Starbucks and had coffee and a bagel. The hotel was very helpful in using their Town Car to take us to the port as the shuttle did not have an opening until 11:30 a.m.

Arrived at the port around 10:30 -- we always like to be there early. Got our sea passes and were in group #3. They did not start boarding any passengers until 11:50. We heard people complaining about dinner seating while we were waiting to board. The group next to us had four people. Three were 8:30 dinning and one was 6:00. Found out later that a lot of dining was not what people requested. Had lunch in the Windjammer and went to look at our dinner table -- we had the 6:00 time we requested. Our table was the first one as you come in the dining room. We thought that would be noisy and lined up to see the Maitre d' who changed our table. Went to our room and luggage arrived around 3:45. Met our cabin steward Yanni -- who did an excellent job all week. The cabin a D2 had plenty of storage. We did not even use all the shelves on both sides of the mirror or in the bathroom. Had muster drill where a topic of conversation among passengers was the sinking of the Costa cruise ship. Went to dinner and met two of our other four table mates and then to the show. The comedian was pretty good. Read more