Musings on Mariner - A slow boat from China

Thoughts and observations on the Mariner of the Seas on her semi Global Odyssey. In other words, we actually made it to the ship. More to follow soon, expect lots of pics and banter.

Thoughts and observations on the Mariner of the Seas on her semi Global Odyssey. In other words, we actually made it to the ship. More to follow soon, expect lots of pics and banter.

Hope the cruise is exceeding your expectations especially as a new Pinnacle.

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Following along. We are on her in August.

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Looking forward to the banter.:)

Looking forward to this banter as well.

Same here.

Banter away.

Following as always, enjoy yours and Laura's cruise :D

You do know its Happy Hour over here

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Switching to TapaTalk

Ok, first off, internet is awful. 900+ ping, 3.08 download, and 0.00 upload. And that's for stream. [emoji33]

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Thats ok. Plenty of banter, maybe not so many pics

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Ok, now that I've got some attention, let me fill you in on some of the details.

We booked this cruise about a year ago when it was marketed as a Singapore to Miami 3 leg reposition. We were on the Rhapsody TA and jumped on it the day it was released. Secured the same deck 9 JS for all three legs.

Leg 1 was Singapore to Dubai via Phuket, India, and Oman. Leg 2 was Dubai to Barcelona via Jordan, Suez Canal, Isreal, and Crete. Leg 3 was....well it got cancelled so who cares. Should have gone from Barcelona to Miami, but now it's going to Cadiz for drydock.

Anyway, Royal refunded our Leg 3 fare, gave us $1,000 pp airfare credit, reduced fare on legs 1 & 2 by 50%, and gave us a 25% FCC based on the cost of leg 3. So our 41 day Odyssey got shortened to 28 days and the fare went from around $9,000 to $2,250. Oh, and we also had $450 OBC from booking onboard Rhapsody.

To top it off, sometime after final payment we got a free upgrade from our JS to a GS.

Next up...the flight from hell

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Following for the banter...

Next up...the flight from hell

 

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I was wondering if you were on for both legs. Looking forward to more.

You do know its Happy Hour over here

 

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Switching to TapaTalk

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Most importantly, who is taking care of Bella?

The Suez, one of my bucket list. I look forward to it.

Most importantly, who is taking care of Bella?

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The Suez, one of my bucket list. I look forward to it.

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Ok, it's just past midnight, and Laura's in the casino, so let's carry on. I'm only including our trip to Singapore because many of you were following along on the lounge overflow thread.

We left Cocoa Beach in a mini van instead of a Town Car like I thought. I had booked Delta Comfort+ for the trip. FWIW, Delta price was cheaper than Air2Sea. Our flight was supposed to take 28 hours total and get us to Singapore around 11pm Saturday night.

I had the Marina Bay Sands booked for two nights so we could enjoy the infinity pool 600' in the air on Sunday.

It wasn't meant to be.

Ok you’ve got my interest! Let’s hear more!

I'm in!! Quite the cliff hanger...

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The flight to Atlanta was fine. Atlanta to Tokyo was looking good. Bulkhead seats next to COO of Hooters. We were planning a visit to Hooters in Phuket. Free beer and wings. [emoji16]

Then it all went to hell.

Engine problems diverted us to Detroit two hours into the flight. They told us we would change from our Boeing 777 to an Airbus A350. One little problem, no qualified crew. Duh. Apparently the A350 is a new plane for Delta.

So they started rebooking us.

Turns out nothing worked and we spent the night in the Detroit Airport Raddison. Heading back to airport at 5am for an 8am continuation of our original flight. Except the engine didn't get fixed.

So we had to wait on a part from Atlanta that might be arriving at 11:30am. Two hours to install, and if we're lucky our flight crew will still have enough time left to make the 13 hour flight. Most of us weren't lucky.

Laura and I were, though. We booked a flight to Shanghai and still had time for 1 night in Singapore. But like I said, it wasn't meant to be.

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Looking forward to reading your review, great start for me bad one for you.

Flight from hell part 2

Now the downside to booking our flight to Shanghai was we couldn't get our Comfort+ seats. In fact we barely got two seats together. So we left Detroit 26 hours later in the back of a full 777. We had a 5 hour layover in Shanghai, but due to more mechanical issues on the China Eastern plane, we ended up with a 9 hour layover and all Hope's for a Sunday arrival in Singapore vanished.

Luckily/hopefully the Sands won't charge us for our two nights with them. Plus due to Chinese laws, we received 600 Yuan ($95) each for the delay. Downside is we will arrive in Singapore around 10am.

It gets better.

Somehow half our luggage ended up going to Korea, and arrived in Singapore on Sunday, but at a different terminal. After filling out several forms and waiting 30 minutes, we got our luggage.

We then used the 1100 Yuan, yea we got screwed, to get Singapore dollars, Thai batt, and Indisn rupees. And st a horrible exchange rate, no doubt. But heck it was free.

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