Bahamas 2019 Final Thoughts

Final Thoughts

We had a fantastic trip! Highlights included:

* First class air travel: the wider seats and better pitch was really great. The food wasn’t anything special, but we arrived at each destination feeling reasonably fresh. Boarding was a breeze, and there were zero issues finding overhead bin space. Under-seat storage was also plentiful. Wouldn’t want to pay for a full-fare 1st ticket, but given that our base fare was 100% covered by credit card points made this a welcome upgrade.

* Boarding process: Blindingly fast. In the door at the cruise terminal and on the ship in under 10 minutes!

* Cabin location: our hump cabin was physically closer to the elevator than any other cabin. That was really nice, since it made it so easy to go back to the cabin whenever we wanted to. We can’t decide whether it was better than the aft cabin we had on Radiance, as we really never got the full benefit of our balcony in Alaska.

* Drinks: After our 5th cruise we may have finally found our “go to” drinks. For a frozen drink, it’s the Coco Loco. For a cocktail, I enjoyed the Citris Rita. (E still hasn’t found her go-to cocktail.)

* Costs: So, what did we actually end up paying for? Parking, two Lyft rides, one airport shuttle ride, a dinner in Miami, plus about $25 of ship-based expenses that wasn’t covered by our OBC. In other words, our out of pocket for this entire adventure came in around only $250. AWESOME!!!

The Mariner itself wasn’t particularly notable. As a stepping stone between Vision and Radiance classes and the larger Freedom and Oasis classes it is starting to lose the small-ship feel that we like in the former classes, while still not having as many amenities as Freedom (which we hated) and Oasis (which we liked, although that may be simply because it was our first). In other words, it lacks both the charm of the small ships as well as the full variety of the large ships, so is just sort of “meh”. If it had been a 7-day cruise I think we would have found the smaller number of specialty restaurants and bars a bit limiting, but for a 4 day cruise it was just fine.

One low-light: On prior cruises we’ve had a letter in our stateroom on the first day outlining what C&A benefits were pre-loaded on our SeaPass card. This cruise we never got anything that indicated that Royal even acknowledged us as C&A members. No letter, no special invitation to the C&A trivia (which we’ve never attended), no indication of specials. I still don’t know whether there was anything on our card that we could have taken advantage of.