Live B2B Mariner of the Seas - Singapore and Southeast Asia

Well, I'm not live just yet :cool:

We are getting ready to leave for the airport, will be doing our first Back 2 Back from Monday the 5th to Thursday the 15th. Singapore - Malaysia and Singapore - Vietnam - Thailand respectively.

Figured I'd start the thread a little early in case anybody had specific questions so I know what to keep an eye out for during travel, check in, etc.

We are flying non-stop from San Francisco to Singapore on United, an almost 18 hour flight :eek:

Safe travels. Long flight but worth it in the end.

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Today was pretty much the start of the trip. We live in a tiny town in Northwest Nevada, so we have to drive somewhat far to get to an airport with any decent international flights. For this trip we drove the 6 hours to Las Vegas, stayed the night last night, and then flew out to San Francisco this morning. In San Francisco we have an 8 hour layover, so we decided to leave the airport and explore the city a bit. We are now back through security and waiting for our flight, which leaves at 10:40 PM PST and lands in Singapore at 8 AM on Monday (local time). The cruise leaves Monday afternoon, so we'll pretty much go from the airport straight to the cruise terminal.

Wow! Which airline are you flying on?

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Safe travels. Bon voyage.

I'll be following along.

Keith

I am on the 3N cruise on 5 Feb. RCL has cut the price of their following 7N cruise to the same price as the 3N cruise. The longer cruise just don't sell here. Tempted to book this also but it is too long a cruise for me and I am on the Mariner every month here.

The embarkation process was incredibly quick and smooth. We landed at 8AM yesterday and were through immigration, baggage claim, and security in no time at all. We considered using a luggage valet service to take our bags from the airport for us and deliver them to the cruise port, but they were quite pricey. Instead, we opted to take the train from the airport to the cruise terminal and were going to store our luggage at the terminal so we could see some of the city. Surprisingly, when we arrived at the port at about 10AM they were already accepted checked luggage for the next cruise. We dropped off our bags and headed back into town on the train.

We decided to visit the Botanical Gardens which were absolutely stunning. They were much larger than we anticipated so we only saw about half of the gardens, but we were lucky enough to see a Clouded Monitor lizard which are apparently somewhat uncommon. The gardens were definitely nice to see, and we stopped by a local food court for lunch before heading back to the ship.

When we got back to the port there were almost no people still checking in. It was really nice to just express through the process and get on board. Normally we show up right when they start boarding and end up waiting in line after line for each step.

On board, the Mariner definitely shows her age, but she is an amazing ship. The ship is decorated for Chinese New Year, which is nice to see, and there is a lot to do. I'm not sure what the issue is, but we did notice at least two broken elevators; they have been on floor 13 and have not moved since we boarded yesterday. Also, there does not appear to be soda machines at all; every time we have ordered a soda at a bar the bartender poured the glass from a 2 liter bottle.

Dinner was excellent; the menu has a set of Asian inspired options and a set of more western dishes so there's pretty much something for anybody.

Day 2

Today is day 2. We are scheduled to dock in Penang, Malaysia from 3PM to midnight local time. We were still recovering from jetlag last night, so today was our first chance to really explore the ship. We've never been on a Voyager class ship before, but I am really liking it. There are some layout differences that take a bit for me to get used to; for one thing most of the specialty restaurants are on deck 11 near the Windjammer. The Dragon's Lair nightclub and bar looks amazing; we'll definitely have to check it out when it's later.

This morning the casino had a special where for $50 you could get $75 worth of casino vouchers. The vouchers could only be used on table games, and were given as 6 $15 vouchers. Most table games had a minimum of $15 or more. The casino has a lot of Sicbo and roulette tables, and then a handful of blackjack and various poker tables, and then a table for casino war and baccarat, although the baccarat table had a high minimum bet, $50 per hand. They heavily advertise a high roller club for only $10,000; not sure how many takers they have for that :)

I feel that the food variety in Windjammer is actually a touch above what we are used to on American cruises. I'm not sure if that's really an accurate assessment or not and don't have any actual numbers to back that up, it just feels like it. The Cafe Promenade has been very popular and is almost always quite crowded. We've noticed that a lot of places have a big line right before they open; for example Windjammer and the Dog House both open for lunch at 11:30 and starting at about 11:15 each had a long line forming. We waited until about 11:45 and by that time the line had been cleared out almost entirely.

Today's schedule is a little weird because of the late arrival and departure in Penang. Our waiter informed us last night that dinner today would be entirely My Time, even for those of us signed up for traditional dining. We are planning on staying in Penang for dinner, so it doesn't really impact us at all but was an interesting thing to note.

Wow! Which airline are you flying on?

 

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We flew in on United flight UAL1. The flight itself was kind of meh, the length actually wasn't too bad, I was able to sleep for a solid 8 hours after the first meal and then watched movies for the rest. The meals were really mediocre, especially compared to our first international flight last October on Asiana. On United it felt like the seats were more narrow and the flight attendants seemed like they really didn't want to be there. It was a world apart from flying on Asiana last year.

I am on the 3N cruise on 5 Feb. RCL has cut the price of their following 7N cruise to the same price as the 3N cruise. The longer cruise just don't sell here. Tempted to book this also but it is too long a cruise for me and I am on the Mariner every month here.

Very nice, I can see why you sail the Mariner so often. We felt like we got an excellent deal on the two cruises and are really enjoying it so far. I can see us definitely coming back to Singapore for another cruise in the future. Maybe we'll see you on board sometime today or tomorrow.

We flew in on United flight UAL1. The flight itself was kind of meh, the length actually wasn't too bad, I was able to sleep for a solid 8 hours after the first meal and then watched movies for the rest. The meals were really mediocre, especially compared to our first international flight last October on Asiana. On United it felt like the seats were more narrow and the flight attendants seemed like they really didn't want to be there. It was a world apart from flying on Asiana last year.

 

 

 

Very nice, I can see why you sail the Mariner so often. We felt like we got an excellent deal on the two cruises and are really enjoying it so far. I can see us definitely coming back to Singapore for another cruise in the future. Maybe we'll see you on board sometime today or tomorrow.

Sure. Anytime and place that is convenient for us.

Enjoying your review, and looking forward to more, as we are boarding her on April 9 for 30 days .

Helaine

Sorry, we stayed really busy yesterday and this morning, so now I'll be playing catch up a bit

Day 2: Penang

We arrived in Penang, Malaysia about 30 minutes earlier than scheduled. We got off the ship quickly and in the port area there were dozens of taxi promoters trying to sell city tours and multi-hour taxi reservations. We knew what we wanted to do but we were just looking for a one way taxi ride from the port to our destination; the botanic gardens. The taxis inside the port area were only offering tour services, not rides, so we figured we'd go out in the city away from the port and find a taxi there. No luck. All the taxi drivers were really excited when we flagged them down, but refused to take us just one way, they all wanted to sell us a city tour package for 3 or 5 hours, which we weren't interested in.

Finally we decided to just walk about 15 minutes to the bus terminal and took a bus. The Penang bus system is cheap, but it isn't super fast and they don't provide maps, so we were very glad we had researched what bus route we needed in case the taxi idea fell through. The bus to the botanic gardens is one of the less frequent routes, so we waited about a half hour for the bus to arrive at the station and then it took us about an hour to get to the gardens, but it was cheap and we got to see a lot of the city.

The gardens themselves were wonderful, and there were a ton of monkeys, just all over the place. We spent close to 2 hours at the garden and then went to wait by where we thought the bus stop was. Unfortunately, the bus just drove right past us; apparently you need to flag down the driver if he isn't already stopping to let passengers off. Thankfully a hop on hop off tour bus showed up shortly after and was able to take us to another main bus terminal downtown and told us what bus to catch for our next stop.

We grabbed dinner downtown since the ship was in port so late and caught the next bus going north of the city. There was an attraction we had heard about that's off the beaten path called the Avatar Secret Garden. It's a garden attached to a temple that is lit up at night to look like something out of the planet Pandora from James Cameron's Avatar. This was one great perk of the ship being in port so late as the garden was absolutely stunning. I'll definitely post pictures here soon.

After we saw the gardens we caught the bus back to a stop just a few minutes away from the cruise port and were back on board at about 11PM.

Day 3: At Sea

For day 3 we stayed busy enjoying everything the ship had to offer. We checked out a bunch of different bars and tried the specialty cocktails, the Skybar had an excellent British Pimm's Cup and a Spiced Rum Runner that we thoroughly enjoyed, and the Wig and Gavel Pub had a Macallan 1824 Collection scotch tasting, and then we just went around the ship getting a variety of pictures. We were given a $50 voucher towards the spa, so we took advantage of that and then just hung around the ship for a while making the most of our time.

B2B Part 2: Day 1

On turnaround day we got our passports and headed off the ship to see some more of Singapore. Today we went to the Gardens by the Bay which are just two subway stops away from the port. The gardens are amazing and while most of the gardens are free there are two conservatories that require a ticket; the Cloud Forest and the Flower Dome. While both were amazing, the Cloud Forest paid for the price of admission all by itself. The dome is 7 stories tall and each floor has it's own themed garden with a waterfall falling the entire height of the dome in the middle.

After a few hours seeing most of the gardens we grabbed lunch and headed back to the ship for a 3:30 all aboard. Getting back on board as a consecutive cruiser was really quick, although we did have to do quite a bit once we got on board. Our credit card didn't transfer to the second cruise even though we set it up during online check-in, we had to get our pictures retaken, and we weren't given the stickers to show we had the Ultimate Package or a new internet access code. One quick stop at guest services got all our issues resolved and we were good to go.

One thing we noticed on this cruise compared to the previous 3 day cruise is there is a large demographic change. On the 3 day cruise it seemed like about 95% of the cruisers were Asian. We met a lot of families from Singapore, Malaysia, China, and India, and saw relatively few people from Europe, Australia, or the Americas. We also noticed a lot fewer people than what we normally see at bars and at the pools.

On this 7 day cruise, we've noticed a significantly larger European and Australian population, and while we have only been on board for about 2 hours, the bars have all been extremely full the entire time. On the first 3 night cruise we didn't visit any bars on the first day, so we'll see if this trend continues throughout the 7 nights or not.

One of the two broken elevators have been fixed, so that is a plus. Soda is still being served out of 2 liter bottles, so if the bars do stay as popular as they are right now that will be interesting to see.

We have also noticed a lot of uncertainty from some of the staff. The staff collecting passports when we were boarding told us that since we were going to overnight in Bangkok we would need to visit guest services and request to be put on the list of guests staying the night on shore so we can get our passports and then return them to guest services the next day. When we went to guest services they told us that there is no list and the copies of our passports that we were given would be sufficient for the hotel. I'm a little uneasy with that so I plan on speaking with a guest services supervisor before our Bangkok port day just to double check what the actual policy is.

Hmm, tried to add photos but the forums app is telling me that the forum has disabled media sharing. I'll have to upload the photos later and share

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We are getting ready to go ashore in Vietnam, since I'm still having trouble with photos I'll at least link to my favorite one on Instagram.

This is at the Avatar Secret Garden in Penang. It's designed to look like something out of Pandora from the Avatar movie

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Hi

Enjoying you review.

Since the ship was asianized, do us plugs work, or do we need adapters?

Thanks

Helaine

Hi

Enjoying you review.

Since the ship was asianized, do us plugs work, or do we need adapters?

Thanks

Helaine

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The plugs are the American style so they will work without an adapter. We do have an adapter and we use it to charge more items. We were only able to find two plugs in our interior room, and our adapter has two USB ports and an American plug, so we were able to plug it in to one of the outlets and charge three devices.

 

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Thanks!

Back to playing catch up

Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnam

We did the Saigon on your Own tour through Royal Caribbean. This was a bus ride from the port at Phu My to downtown Saigon or Ho Chi Minh city. The bus ride took just over an hour and a half and let us off at the Bitexco Tower. Our guide escorted a group of us to a currency exchange booth where we got some Dong, since it was not available on board or in Singapore. He also gave us a bunch of suggestions of what to do, and recommended that we walk everywhere and avoid taxis.

We started out with a walk to the Ben Thahn market which is a large indoor space filled with booths selling everything from food to "luxury" handbags and watches and local souvenirs. There was a lot of grabbing and hawking trying to get us to enter the various booths so after a little while we decided it was time to head to the next destination.

From the market we headed to the Reunification Palace since it closes everyday from 11 until 1. The palace is a beautiful sight and the interior is still set in the mid 1970s. It was also really interesting to see the war from a different perspective, since to the Communist Vietnamese the Americans were the aggressive invaders and the North Vietnamese were the ones fighting for peace and unification of their country.

After the palace we headed to Notre Dame Cathedral, which was under construction, but still offered some amazing picture opportunities. From there we went across the street to the post office, which may not seem like a tourist destination but it offers some absolutely stunning architecture.

From the post office we went to the Hard Rock Cafe looking for lunch, but found that the Hard Rock was inside a shopping center with two stories filled with a variety of food choices. We settled on a Thai restaurant that was excellent, and after lunch walked down Dong Khoi back to the Bitexco Tower. The tower has a sky deck that offers amazing 360 degree views of Saigon and was a wonderful way to end our day before the bus arrived to take us back to Phu My.

Day 5 - Bangkok Overnight

Now we get to the one thing so far this cruise that I feel Royal Caribbean dropped the ball a bit. Before the cruise the only information we had was the scheduled arrival and departure times, which were arriving at 7AM and departing at 1PM the following day. Based on previous cruise experiences we add a half hour on either end to get the immigration clearance and all aboard time respectively. We scheduled a car service through a company called Oriental Escapes and scheduled a 7:30 Pick Up and to give ourselves a bit of wiggle room in case of traffic, a 9AM return the next day. Depending on traffic, the expected travel time to and from the Port to Bangkok was 1:30 to 2:30.

When the cruise started and they collected our passports we asked about overnighting and the employee collecting passports told us Guest Services had a list of customers staying overnight, all we had to do was add our names to the list and we'd get our passports back to take with us to Bangkok. We went to Guest Services and they didn't know anything about any list; instead they told us we would just take a copy of our passport ashore, and that would be fine for the hotel.

We were uneasy with this based on past experiences with intentional hotels, so we asked again when we picked up the passports for the face to face immigration and those employees put us on the list and gave us some paperwork that said while the all aboard time was officially 12:30 PM, those staying overnight had to be back before 11 AM for immigration and passport collection. We were also told that the time we could get off the ship would depend on our muster station. Our muster station was scheduled to deboard at 8:30, with the last station not scheduled until 9:45.

I really wish all of this info would have been available pre-cruise so we could plan the car service appropriately. We ended up going down at 7:45 anyway to see if we could get off early and weren't stopped, so we were able to get to the car service and get into Bangkok early. We were also able to tell the driver that we needed an earlier pickup time, and scheduled an 8 AM pickup and return to the ship.

In Bangkok

We started our day in Bangkok taking the Sky Train to Central Pier where we were able to take a boat down the river to the Grand Palace. One thing we did not find out from our research was that shorts and sleeveless shirts are not allowed inside the Grand Palace. Thankfully there were vendors around the Palace area who sold pants for about 150 Baht we could put on over our shorts to get in to the Palace.

The Palace itself was very crowded, but picturesque, and in the same area there were two temples; Wat Pho or the Reclining Buddha Temple, and Wat Arun, or the Temple of Dawn. We didn't go inside either of these temples, but did get some great pictures from around the perimeter.

We took the boat and then the train back towards the Sukhumvit district and got lunch, and then went to the Jim Thompson house. Jim Thompson was an American who fell in love with Thailand while stationed there in World War 2, and moved back to work as a silk trader after the war. His house is now a museum and foundation dedicated to Thailand culture and antiques, and displays dedicated to the silk trade. There are no bags allowed, including purses, and the tour is guided. There were a few people in our group that tried to fight to keep their camera bags and purses, but the signs at the ticket booth are clear and security absolutely forbids bags of any types inside the house. The tour itself took about 30 minutes, and then we were free to walk the surrounding gardens on our own. It was really interesting to see the mix of ancient and modern Thai traditions, combined with Jim Thompson's European and American background.

By this point it was starting to get a little late, so we grabbed dinner and were going to go to a rooftop bar. The top rated rooftop bar is Vertigo at the Banyan Tree hotel, but they have a strict dress code of closed toe shoes and long pants, so we ended up trying another rooftop bar, Above Eleven, which has a looser dress code; only requiring closed toe shoes. Unfortunately, there was a private event the night we were in town and the bar was closed, so we didn't get to see it.

We spent the night at our hotel, and woke up early for breakfast and to meet our car for the drive back to the port. Into Bangkok it took us about 2:30, the return trip took just under 2 hours. There were a bunch of local vendors setup at the pier by the ship, so we bought a couple of nice looking shirts to spend some of our leftover Thai Bhat.

We were back on board by 10:30 and handed our passports back to the agent who was handling immigration procedures.

For night 5 while we were in Bangkok there was no scheduled seating in the dining room for dinner, since most of the ship was expected to be ashore during the normal dinner time. Instead it was basically all just first come first serve for those who were on board.

Day 6 (today) is the second formal night of the cruise. We were a bit surprised by this, since our last Asia cruise did not have any formal nights, and when we asked here before the cruise we were told that the Singapore cruises also didn't do formal nights. The 3 night cruise to Penang had 1 formal night (on night 3) and this 7 night cruise had 2 formal nights; first on Day 2 (a sea day) and then today on Day 6 (half sea day since we leave Bangkok relatively early)

Great review. I have a question though.

On this cruise, you are required to turn over your passport to guest services?

Great review. I have a question though.

 

On this cruise, you are required to turn over your passport to guest services?

For Thailand everybody picked up their passports to go through immigration, and then gave the passports back to Royal. Since we were overnighting we were allowed to keep them in Thailand, but had to turn them over to Royal before we were allowed to reboard

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