Disembarkation wasn't bad. Denise and I ate breakfast in the Main Dining Room (where much like room service, they forgot some of our food. It was good otherwise, though.)
We found the place for wheelchair disembarkation and were wheeled off of the ship, only to find that the Orlando area was under a tornado warning, with heavy winds.
Our Cruise Port bus took us back to the airport, where we got the hotel shuttle to pick us up. We made it to the hotel early, but were happily given an early check-in.
We tried to lay down for a nap, but once again, Denise's back started spasming. (The mattress wasn't very firm. This matched our experience at this same hotel a week earlier, where the mattress in a completely different room was likewise very mushy.)
We spent a quiet day and night there. During the day, we learned that the combination of the winds in Florida and bad weather in much of the rest of the country was wreaking havoc at the airport. Most of the flights out of Orlando were either facing long delays or being out-and-out cancelled. We had actually booked a flight the day after our disembarkation by accident, but it turned out to be a lucky accident. In all likelihood, we wouldn't have made it home on Saturday anyway.
Because of her back, Denise had to sleep that night propped up in a chair. I felt bad for her, although surprisingly, she said that she slept better than she'd thought she would.
When we got to the airport the next day for our 5PM flight, it was still a zoo, with more cancellations, people sitting (and sleeping) on the airport floor, etc. We were very fortunate, as our flight back to New York was one of the only ones that was neither cancelled nor delayed.
The flight back was OK, and I didn't have problems with my ears on the landing this time.
When we arrived at JFK, we found it was likewise a mess there, with cancelled flights and stranded travelers everywhere. (When we got home, we saw a video from the cruise vloggers Ben and David, who were stranded in New York because their flight back to the UK had been cancelled.)
We had a little bit of an issue with the van going back to the parking lot where our car was. The van driver was on the nasty side, and the step up to get into it was so high that Denise had trouble getting into it because of her back. I had to physically give her a boost, or I think we'd still be at JFK.
We picked up our car and then headed home.
So here are my thoughts:
A. The Trip Itself:
The trip was pretty complicated, with too many moving parts for people of our age and health levels. Finding the independent parking lot, making it to JFK for our flight, staying in the hotel in Orlando for the night before embarking on the ship (and then doing the whole thing in reverse a week later) was anxiety-producing and physically exhausting. It's now Wednesday night, and I'm only just now starting to feel like myself. (And Denise is seeing a chiropractor and probably will be for the foreseeable future. But at least she's been able to sleep on the mattress in our bedroom.)
The good news is that for our next cruise in May, we're sailing out of Cape Liberty in Bayonne, so all of that flight stuff will be eliminated from the picture (and the cruise itself should be a more traditional and laid back one).
If we ever do retire to Florida, or even live there part-time like we've been talking about (I'd like to get a place near Vero Beach), it will make cruising from any of the Florida ports a hundred times simpler.
The bad news is that next year's 80's Cruise, which we're already registered on, will be sailing from Los Angeles, which will be a longer flight and an even more stressful trip. I'm going to have to think about if there are any ways to streamline it a little.
B. The Ship:
This was only my second time on a Royal Caribbean ship, and the first time was on the tiny Empress of the Seas, an older ship that Royal Caribbean bought from another cruise line rather than one they designed themselves.
Looking back, I think I was overly critical of Mariner of the Seas in my daily blogs. There were certain things I took for granted that in retrospect make me feel more fond of it than I did for much of the week that I was on it. So let me run through both the positives and negatives.
Positives
1. The size of the ship. I hadn't thought about it much while I was on it, but as a mid-size ship, Mariner was more comfortable to me than one of the larger, newer, mega-ships would have been. Even walking to the Royal Theater, which was about as far from our cabin as we regularly walked, wasn't too bad, and the Main Dining Room, Studio B and Ellington's Night Club were all right off of the nearest elevator.
2. The cabin. I spent a lot of the time in our cabin, and for the most part, it suited me really well. It had a comfortable couch that I worked from every day, a comfortable bed, and a nice balcony which I unfortunately didn't get to use as much as I'd have liked to. (This was because for the first half of the trip, on the way to St. Maarten, the water was choppy and the weather was windy, and for the second half, when the weather was nicer, we had unfortunately turned around so the sun was directly on the balcony all day. And as you know, I don't do sun.) But the cabin was pretty good, even...
3. The bathroom. Yes, it was tiny, but for a non-handicapped room, it was laid out nicely. The toilet wasn't too low and the shower was rounded, so I fit in there reasonably comfortably.
4. Most of the crew. They were very polite, and I hope I didn't make it seem as if I had any problems with our cabin steward Daniel. We were at cross purposes a lot, but that wasn't his fault - he was trying to do his job and was very pleasant and professional about it.
5. Studio B and Ellington's Night Club. Studio B was a comfortable place to see a show, and I'd love to see one of their regular ice skating shows there. As for Ellington's, the room was wonderful, and I suspect mostly empty during the day most days. Next year, if Navigator has a similar space, I'll probably be making more use of it, especially as next year we'll have a smaller cabin without a couch to work from (although there will be a soft chair).
6. The Internet. I had good internet all week, better than I had expected. It took a little while to send out the emails with my completed work sometimes, but all in all, it gave me everything I needed.
Negatives
I've already told you about most of them.
1. The Royal Theater. Ridiculously uncomfortable for the larger traveler. Do better, Royal.
2. The food. As I said, it was hit and miss. The Main Dining Room wasn't bad. I ate seven dinners there plus one lunch and a breakfast. Of the seven dinners, five of them were pretty good, one (the chicken cordon bleu) was lousy, and one (the beef stroganoff) was mediocre. The lunch was good, and so was the breakfast, except for that little matter of them forgetting a bunch of our breakfast order. The Windjammer food I saw (and ate) was consistently uninspiring, the food at the Cafe Promenade was nothing great (except for the pizza, which I had once), and the Room Service food was inconsistent in quality and disorganized, as they kept forgetting items we'd ordered.
3. The crew. I felt like they were sometimes confused, e.g., for the muster drill. And that's not even talking about the one or two who were a little rude. I think a lot of the confusion came from the fact that this wasn't their typical cruise. This one (and the one before it, ECP's Star Trek Cruise) were charter cruises, sailing with full capacities (which these ships haven't had for a couple of years), entirely different entertainment, etc. And unlike a regular cruise, where you sit at the same table in the Main Dining Room and have the same wait staff every night, on this cruise, you sat somewhere different and had different waiters every time.
4. The design of the ship. Like I said earlier, I prefer the design of the Carnival ships I've sailed on, gaudy though they can sometimes be. Maybe it's just because I sailed on Carnival first. I don't think so, though.
5. Electrical Outlets. This is a small one, but as an older ship, there were only two usable outlets in our cabin. So basically Denise got one and I got one, and I had to juggle recharging my phone, recharging my laptop and plugging in my music player.
C: ECP
I've got to give them high marks. They put together a solid lineup of entertainment, and I'm not just talking about the entertainment at night. There were things going on all afternoon featuring members of the various bands, even though I was too busy with work to take advantage of many of them. There were also '80s DJ's and silent dance parties at night that I likewise didn't choose to take advantage of. But there was more than enough entertainment to be had from early morning through late at night.
So that about wraps it up. As I said, we're scheduled to sail on the 2023 80's Cruise next March. Will it happen? Who can say? It's a scary world out there, and even now when it seems like the COVID virus is finally becoming manageable, there are other things going on. It's hard for me to believe that if Putin (or somebody else) drops a nuke somewhere, we'll be sailing the Pacific Ocean a year from now watching a bunch of guys with flower pots on their heads singing "Whip It." So we'll see.
This cruise was kind of my re-entering the world party, and while I don't intend to be out there like I used to, I'll have some things once in awhile to write to you about. I bought myself a ticket to see Colin Hay on April 1 at The Patchogue Theater, and at some point in June, I notice that Head Over Heels, the Go-Go's musical, is playing at the Gateway Playhouse, so I'll probably see that as well.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed coming along with us (in spirit) on this trip of ours. In spite of all my griping, I'm glad I went. (And I know that in spite of Denise's back issues right now, she wouldn't have missed it for the world.)
So stay safe out there, and I'll write something for you soon.
