Royal Caribbean Cruises

First, this is our first Royal Caribbean cruise after doing 8 Disney Cruises. We were pleasantly surprised and impressed.

The Royal Caribbean Mariner of the Seas was nice. We had a good time. Our servers were great
(Donat and Gracy), the food was awesome, and the adult pool/solarium was so peaceful. The adult pool was salt water and it was nice and cool so you could cool off but not be cold. The pool was busy but there was plenty of room. The casino was not intrusive at all, which I liked a lot. You didn't even have to go near the casino if you didn't want to.

It is worth paying a little bit extra to have a room with a porthole. It was nice to see out to the ocean and the ports instead of being stuck in a completely interior cabin.

If you choose a room with a porthole or a balcony, bring an eye mask because the curtains do not block out the sun.

Our excursion on Curacao was so fun! "Historic City, Shopping, and Beach" was the excursion we chose and it was great! It's a really pretty and very cool city. We got at least 2 and a half hours on the beach with was perfect!

CocoCay, their private island, was super nice! Try to be one of the first 100 people off the ship in order to get the best spot with chairs and umbrellas. Even if you don't, though, there were a lot of chairs and umbrellas.

I highly recommend buying the soda package. They have the nice machines where there are a hundred sodas and waters. It was important to us because it's easy to get dehydrated. They had Powerade and vitamin water to keep you hydrated.

Now to the cons:

1) Absolutely do NOT stay in room #2614. It is right above the gangway and every morning at 4:30AM without fail, there was loud slamming and banging that woke us up. It was horrible. I wore ear plugs but they didn't mask the sound because whatever was being slammed would shake your whole body.

It was also very confusing to get to the room: you could not get from forward on the ship to aft on the ship. You had to go to deck 5, walk all the way across the ship, get on the aft elevators, and THEN go down to your room. Perplexing.

2) The beds in this room were legitimately like sleeping on poured concrete (which I have done). I had bruises on my hip and shoulder from sleeping on my side because the bed was so hard.

3) If you choose to do an Aruba excursion, Eagle Beach and Highlights is NOT the one to choose. The description is incredibly misleading. It was supposed to be "lighthouse and beach with shopping if time allows" but instead it was "ride around in the bus for 3 hours, shop, and go to the beach if time allows." We spent 3 and a half hours riding on the bus and got about 40 minutes on the beach. After driving around for hours being able to see the beach, it was infuriating not to be able to get on the beach.

4) There is not much access to food outside of meal times. It seems like you would be able to get a burger or hot dog whenever you want but that is not the case.

5) All the bars and restaurants cost extra. Literally everything costs extra. If you're not sure if it's included, assume that it's not included. There is only one place on the ship where you can get food outside of meal times and it's at the Promenade Cafe on deck 5. They only serve pizza and a couple small sandwiches.

6) Most of the crew do not speak English very well. Disney Cruise Line puts the people who speak the best English in the roles where they have to talk to people i.e. Guest services but not Royal Caribbean. Most of the crew have no idea what is going on nor where anything is located. This was particularly frustrating.

7) Plan to spend a lot of time at guest services because you will be randomly charged for things several times a day. Incredibly frustrating to see our drinks get charged twice or even three times.
Pay close attention to your account on the app or you will get a big bill at the end of the cruise.

8) The private island always has 2 cruise ships at the same time. This is annoying because it's not as if they have double the space for double the ships.

9) There are not very many things to do on the ship. The shows are at either 9:15PM, which was right in the middle of dinner, or at 11:15PM. There is nothing to do in that gap in time except go to a bar or go to the casino. My wife and I do not drink and we do not gamble so most of the time we just went back to the room and went to sleep. (This is either a pro or a con depending on what you want to do. If you just want to do nothing, it's great. You won't feel like you're missing out on anything but if you like to do things like trivia or watch a movie, you will be out of luck.) Disney Cruise Line is at one extreme where there is something fun to do every minute of the day and Royal Caribbean is at the other extreme where there is nothing to do. There should be a happy medium in there but not on Disney nor Royal Caribbean.

10) If you are not a drinker, be prepared. This is not a big deal to most people and it was not a big deal to us but the amount of bars is absolutely insane. There is literally a bar every 25 feet everywhere on the ship. The drinking by guests was pretty extreme too. People who had paid for the unlimited drinks package (a big majority of adults had bought this package) pretty much had to be drinking every minute of the day to get their money's worth. It was like being back in college where people just get blackout drunk all the time. I went to a "party school" so there was a ton of drinking but on the cruise it was twice as bad. Insane amounts of alcohol being consumed at every hour of every day.

11) If you cruise with Royal Caribbean, be aware of the number of "sea days" when you book because there isn't much to do besides sit around and drink.

Just went on a five day Florida to Bahamas cruise on Enchantment of the Seas with grown daughter. Overall it was fine and the private island-CoCo Cay- was the highlight of the cruise. A couple of things to be aware of, the staterooms are older and in need of refurbishment and updating. RC really pushes the drink packages-basically you would need to have 10 beers or 5 cocktails/wines each day per person to break even. The WiFi packages are also pricey so go "unplugged" and really relax. Here is the kicker-in order to print your airline boarding passes you have to pay for an hour's worth of WiFi for $15. Makes RC look so petty. The common areas of the ship are very nice, only one formal dinning room so be sure to make reservations. All of our interactions with the staff were very pleasant.