Cruising with the Family on board Royal Caribbean’s Mariner of the Seas – Day 3 and 4 of 4

On our last full day on board  Royal Caribbean’s Mariner of the Seas, the whole family woke up early at 7am to make it for Royal Caribbean’s character breakfast – Rise and Shine with DreamWorks, featuring the characters from the animated film, Madagascar.

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This was something we were looking forward to, exclusive only on Royal Caribbean Cruises.

The breakfast menu was characters-themed and it caught Asher’s attention. Although he cannot read yet, he was captivated enough to study the pictures on it for a moment.

Character-themed menu
Waffle with orange sauce
Banana pancakes

There are no additional charges for the character breakfast, but you need to wake up early to snag the best seats closest to the performance area.

Bread was served first
Breakfast buffet bar

The characters are introduced one by one over breakfast and each of them will do a little dance before going around taking photos with everyone. To round up the performance, the characters all appear together for a dance finale at the end.

Alex the lion was the first to appear
King Julien
Everyone’s eyes were glued on the characters
Gloria mingling with the guests
Finale performance

After breakfast, I was given the opportunity to meet up with some of the key personnel who run Mariner of the Seas, including the ship captain, hotel director, cruise director and executive chef.

The animated and very likable cruise director
The executive chef and the head of the wait staff
Hotel director
The Captain of Mariner of the Seas

The captain shared that his number one priority is to keep everyone on the ship safe. The executive chef shared that his biggest challenge is to adjust his kitchen to cater to different consumption habits in Asia, adding Asian fare to the menu. Everyday, he has to serve meals for the over 3,000 people on board, using over 10,000 eggs and 2.5 tonnes of beef for a seven-day cruise. The volume is staggering!

After meeting the key ship personnel, I went on a galley tour. I have been on the galley tour on board Legend of the Seas and was looking forward to gain insight to the kitchen operations on board Mariner of the Seas which is about twice the size of the former.

Interesting to see the main dining area empty
Entering into the huge kitchen on the Mariner of the Seas
The sous chef was the guy who brought us around the massive kitchen
Pies and pastries to go in the oven
Beautiful hand-made chocolates
Pastry section
Chocolate-coated strawberries
One of the kitchen staff hard at work
Recipes and QC station

The kitchen has to prepare food for over 1,200 people at each meal time. The volume is crazy, yet quality food is churned out of a well-oiled machine. This never fails to marvel me. Coupled with the high service standard of the waitstaff, these make dining at the Royal Caribbean restaurants a real treat.

After the tour, Rachel and I brought Asher for lunch at the main dining room:

Salad from the bar
Wrap for Rachel
Tandoori chicken for me
Lasagna for Asher
Ice cream for dessert
Strawberry puffs

After lunch, we brought Asher to check out the ice-skating performance. This is popular and there are limited seats, so do go early to avoid disappointment.

Rachel putting another shirt on Asher in the cold ice skating rink
Meet the skaters
Dazzling acrobatic displays
“Clowning around”
A short skit between a ballerina and a clown

Right after ice-skating, I brought Asher for a dip in the whirlpool while Rachel did some reading on a nearby sun chairs Asher totally loved the whirlpool. He stayed at the pool area for over an hour, shifting from one whirlpool to another while dipping into the swimming pool in between.

Asher alternating from one whirlpool to another
Asher having fun in the whirlpool
Asher did not want to climb out of the whirlpool

When it was time to leave, it took a lot of coaxing before Rachel and I managed to get him out of there. After the pool, we went to catch the last performance for the night at Savoy Theatre.

Heading down the stairs from our stateroom to Savoy Theatre
Automotive-themed artworks by the stairs
Another one composed of many small cars
Pink vintage car – Asher loves these artworks and used them as visual navigators to find our stateroom
Asher getting excited to catch a performance again for the second night

A comedic act from Vegas was on and the dude was a blast! He got Rachel and I laughing through the show. Asher did not get the jokes of course, but he still enjoyed the singing and stage effects.

Show started with celebrity impersonations
Elvis Presley
All the Royal Caribbean performers on stage for a finale song and dance item

We then went to queue to have a picture taken with Puss in Boots from Shrek. Asher was thrilled to see Puss and cried when we had to leave after taking a photo. After a long, fun-filled day for the family, we had dinner at the main dining room again.

Family picture with Puss in Boot and Gloria the Hippo

This was the last dinner for this sailing and the wait staff had prepared something special for all the guests – thank you songs and dances!

Salad from the bar
Escargots
My steak main course with baked potato
Rachel ordered beef burgers
The wait staff waving their napkins
Song and dance presented by the Royal Caribbean kitchen staff and servers
More singing and dancing
Asher was mesmerised by the performance
Everyone looks so happy
This group at the top started dancing to Psy’s Gangnam Style

Asher slept after dinner that night, tired after a long day. I went out to the Royal Promenade to catch the finale parade. It was a colourful spectacle, with all the performers and character mascots making their appearances for one last grand performance. Had Asher not fallen asleep, I would have brought him to witness this spectacle.

Puss in Boot dancing
Lots of people turned up for the parade
Characters from fairy tale books
Po from Kungfu Panda
The penguins from Madagascar
King Julien from Madagascar
Guy on stilts

Before going to sleep,  I did more reading that night on the balcony, enjoying the soothing sound of the lapping waves.

The next day, we docked at Singapore early in the morning. We went to the cafe for breakfast before getting off the ship. You will be wondering how crazy it must be to have all 1,200 guests disembarking from the ship at the same time, jamming up the exit with bulky suitcases. This is not the case. Everything is done in an orderly manner, with guests in different sections being allocated different time slots to disembark. It was a breeze checking out.

These appeared in our room in the evening, including detailed instruction on disembarking and checking out
Sunrise
Spotted a ship sailing by

Upon getting off the ship, getting out of Marina Bay Cruise Centre requires some waiting due to the long taxi queue. I spotted many cut-throat black cabs in the taxi queue as well as Mercedes cabs which have raised their metered fare, bringing them closer in pricing with the black cabs than regular ones. As most Singaporeans avoided taking these, they jammed up the queue by hogging lanes.

Unless you find these two cab types more comfortable, avoid them and just go for the regular cabs for some savings. The cabs arrive pretty fast anyway.

This post sums up by 4D3N cruise on board  Royal Caribbean’s Mariner of the Seas. 🙂

Click here to read all my blog posts on cruising with the family on board Royal Caribbean’s Mariner of the Seas.

To book a cruise with Royal Caribbeans, visit their official website to find out more. For Singaporean travelers, additional contact information are as below: 

Asia Pacific (Singapore Office)
Monday – Friday: 9:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Saturday: 9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
• Tel: 65 6305 0033
• Fax: 65 6536 2282
APACRes@rcclapac.com
alvinology

Alvin is a marketer by day and blogger by night. He is a 100% geek who spends too much time surfing the web.

View Comments

  • thanks for sharing this information and your photos, after looking through them with my husand, we decided that this was the ship for us and we have just booked a cruise on Mariner of the Sea. we are really looking forward to the experience, cheers

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