Mariner of the Seas Review
Rating by category
Additional details
I never learn do I?
For my first cruise in July I made the mistake of going on the cruise review and news sites of which this one is a leading light, and reading the reviews of the cruise I was about to take. My concerns after reading the reviews for my July cruise were proven once again to be utterly unfounded. Despite this, having read the reviews I arrived in Singapore on the 21st of December convinced I’d made a huge mistake. Mariner Of The Seas was, apparently, a rusty and wholly impractical antique, cramped and buckling under the weight of all the terrible food and useless features. A festering, cigarette-reeking pit of poor service, rude passengers, tatty upholstery and the like. I was reminded of a British Rail ferry trip I took more than three decades ago.
Imagine my surprise then, to rock up (grumpy, intolerant and sore-headed after a big night in Clarke Quay the previous evening) at the lovely new cruise terminal and to see MOTS gleaming there in white looking anything but grubby or antique.
Cabin Review
Deluxe Oceanview Stateroom with Balcony
My cabin – 8226 on the starboard side, about ten metres abaft of the Bridge - was similar in size to the roughly equivalent balcony cabin I took on Royal Princess in July but with much more stowage space. Carpets and linen were clean and bright, there was no cigarette smell as had been suggested might be prevalent on some of the past reviews, perhaps due to the ship’s now predominantly Asian clientele. The bathroom was small as you’d expect but practical and there seemed to have been more of an effort to make it look nicer than the rather spartan and minimalist offering on Princess. The TV screen was outdated and could do with replacing with something bigger and more HD but I didn’t watch TV so it wasn’t an issue for me. Might have been an issue on a cruise longer than a week though. Unlike sisters Voyager, Explorer and Adventure of the Seas, Mariner and her sister Navigator are slightly different in that they have glass-wall balconies that aren’t recessed into the superstructure like the later near-sister Freedom Class, which makes for a larger and more useful balcony space and I spent some time out there watching the world go by, even if it was a little too humid to do this for long periods at a time. Certainly the MOTS balcony area was larger than that found on Royal Princess although both were fine in size for me.
Port Reviews
Singapore
Singapore Cruise Terminal is nice. It is very well designed and its architecture evokes ocean waves breaking on the shore. It handles thousands of passengers with ease and is unfussy and uncluttered. We managed kerb to ships’ rail in less than 40 minutes and most of that was the queue for immigration.