Trip Review: A Merry Mexico Christmas Cruise
Royal Caribbean - A Solid Product for Families
This is the first of hopefully many trip reviews. Please let me know if this was helpful and useful to you, and what sorts of travel stories you’d like to read about.
Cruises work. They’re not perfect, they’re not for everyone or every type of trip, but when well-executed, they’re a fantastic product. Pure, good American family fun.
At least that the experience my family and I (with a few close relatives) had over Christmas when we sailed Royal Caribbean’s Mariner of the Seas for a 5-day cruise. We largely planned, booked, and paid this trip up front, much like I described how all-inclusive type trips work in my last newsletter.
It was definitely a memorable trip where we spent much quality time with each other, especially for our kids and their cousins. They’re old enough where they could be together but away from us adults for extended periods of time, but also in the safe and secure environment of the ship. That peace of mind is one of the benefits of cruises.
A cruise can probably be broken down into three things to look at: the ship, the activities, and the ports of call.
The Ship
Mariner of the Seas is a great ship. It’s not the iconic, record-breaking massive new supership class (eponymously known as the Icon class), but it’s been updated in the last few years, and felt fresh. This was my fifth cruise ever and first non-Carnival one I’d been on, and I could see the difference in being a step up over Carnival, despite serving roughly the same “budget/middle” market segment.
The ship has a central promenade with shops and restaurants, including a near-round-the-clock pizza/snack/coffee bar that’s essentially “free” in every cruise package. The other restaurants are specialty ones where you pay extra. What was impressive is it felt more like an old-school European arcade with windows rising up on the side (yes, these are cabins that face the promenade). At the ends with the elevators, it feels like a big hotel atrium facing up to the sky, and was quite striking during our trip especially with holiday decorations.
I won’t go into the cabins much, since there is such a wide variety and price points on ships like this. Our group stuck to lower-cost interior cabins that were adjacent to each other. They were perfectly fine, with the one downside of not having a window or balcony to the outside. Much like a Hampton Inn or Courtyard Marriott, the rooms did the job, and we were not spending much time there anyways. For others, having a larger or more upscale cabin might be a priority, or even just an exterior-facing room with natural light, but it wasn’t for us. We also got to know our room attendant, and he was easily found and never had a problem getting us extra towels or ice.
Cruises mean one other big thing for many people - FOOD. Here the ship and Royal Caribbean also does great. The Windjammer Cafe is the big buffet, located on one of the upper decks, and always had plenty of options and cuisine types.
The multi-level Main Dining Room, where you go for your scheduled evening dinners, is on the lower decks. The service was impeccable, and we always felt personally taken care of with the staff. Our group had multiple food allergies and dietary restrictions, and they were always very accommodating and flexible in their menu.
We did not go to any of the specialty restaurants, largely due to the great value the Windjammer and Main Dining room offered and was already included in our booking. One thing to note is that only water, tea, and black coffee is included. Starbucks-style coffee is extra, but you can purchase a coffee card that may be worth it if you drink a couple of specialty coffees per day. Alcoholic drinks of course work similarly - they are above and beyond your booking fee, although you can easily charge them to your cruise account using your room card.
Speaking of the room card, one thing I do wish Royal Caribbean would work on is better integration of physical room card and the Royal Caribbean app. The app has one very good function of having messaging capability between guests, without having to purchase a pricey Wi-Fi package. It’s is also great at looking up, planning, and booking activities and excursions, and basic deck map, schedule, and weather information. But only the card can lock/unlock your door, and many functions like getting on/off the ship at port-of-call and purchasing drinks are also limited to the card. Something closer to a Disney MagicBands and Disney Genie cross-functional capability would be great, although that is probably a big investment they’d have to make. I just hope there are further improvements and integrations with this sort of technology.
The Activities
Like any good cruise, there are plenty of activities throughout the day, for just about any interest and age group. There are too many to list comprehensively here, but the good thing is the Royal Caribbean app makes it fairly easy to find and book. If you’re familiar with mainstream cruises, you’ll know there’s a good variety of shows, water and sport activities, games, music, and nightlife. We partook in comedy shows, ice skating shows, retro-music events in the Promenade, poolside contests, and bingo, among others. The four teenagers in our group got more into the physical activities like water slides, the fitness center, and sports.
The Royal Caribbean app really is the best way to navigate the large number of activities on board, and you can browse by day, time, and filter for categories like fitness and entertainment, and age too. It’s really critical for those activities that require advance reservation (including excursions as I’ll discuss below).
The Ports of Call
Most cruises have one or more stops at ports of call, depending on the length. These are a great opportunity to stretch out, and see and try different things. These experiences can be fairly curated, especially if you book excursions through the cruise, but they will be safer and with less risk. And the mainstream cruise ports will often have at least somewhat “tourist trap” environments in terms of restaurants and gift shops, but honestly that is part of the deal with a Royal Caribbean or similar cruise.
Some cruise lines like Carnival, Royal Caribbean, and Disney have their own private islands where their ships dock for a day and have a variety of activities and experiences exclusive for their guests. Royal does have one, marketed as “Perfect Day at CocoCay”, but our cruise did not stop there.
Our 5-day cruise had two stops on Mexico’s Yucatan coast: Costa Maya, and Cozumel.
Costa Maya
Costa Maya appeared to be a much newer tourist development, with a small retail complex upon disembarking. If you’ve been to any recently-developed (or re-developed) small Caribbean island cruise port, you’d probably get a similar vibe here. A fairly unspoiled, lush green backdrop with a similarly clean beach, with a cluster of shops and small restaurants as you disembark. Otherwise, it was pleasant if relatively predictable. If you wanted a decent snack or souvenir, it did the job perfectly fine.
Costa Maya Excursion
One of the major attractions near Costa Maya is (not surprisingly), Mayan ruins at a site called Chachoben. It’s not as prominent, large, or popular as Chichen Itza further to the north, typically accessed by tourists via Cancun or Tulum, but it was a very interesting site to visit. It was about an hour drive each way via coach bus from the Costa Maya cruise port. The site itself is a Mayan “town” settlement with modest-sized pyramids and some public and private spaces preserved.
We booked this excursion via the Royal Caribbean app for our entire group while on the cruise. Note that booking this late seems to entail higher costs, but the trade-off versus booking well in advance is that you don’t have to worry about weather derailing your plans, and overall you have more optionality in what you end up doing.
What made this excursion very worthwhile was our excellent tour guide, who provided very detailed history of the site’s initial discovery and excavation, and Mayan culture and civilization overall. She spoke nearly the entire time on the coach bus as well, showing us books and artwork along the way. This really made the otherwise smallish site come to life, as we could picture what Mayan life and history was like several hundred years ago.
At the end of the day we definitely felt we were taken care of and were happy to provide a generous gratuity. On that note, it’s definitely a good idea to keep a decent amount of cash handy on excursions, not just for food and shopping, but for showing thanks to good, hard-working excursion staff.
Cozumel
Unlike Costa Maya, Cozumel has a large, long-established, and well-developed cruise port. In fact the island of Cozumel is more broadly a big tourist destination, with its own airport and many resorts and tourist attractions, much like Cancun. The port itself is quite a contrast with Costa Maya - the feel of almost a city rather than a small town. It’s definitely more “tourist trap” for lack of a better word. In fact as we were walking down the pier off the ship, I could see a Señor Frog's on one side and a Margaritaville on the other. It might as well have felt like a “Mexican Myrtle Beach”.
It was still good fun regardless - the shopping and restaurants were pleasant enough, if laid out in a fairly convoluted manner. There was street corn and tequila-infused watermelon-shaped jello, giving it some local flavor.
Cozumel Excursions
We ended splitting into two groups during our stay in Cozumel. Four of us went snorkeling for a few hours near the shore & cruise port, booked through the cruise. The rest went on a shopping, tequila-tasting, and smaller snorkeling trip, not organized through the cruise, but a port-based excursion kiosk. Both groups had lots of fun. Our snorkeling excursion did require some level of health, swimming skills, and physical stamina, even though they had life vests on us for us the entire time.
The snorkeling excursion itself was fantastic with great, energetic, and attentive hosts, reminiscent of our Costa Maya Chachoben excursion. We saw tons of beautiful fish and many interesting features on the sea floor, including sunken materials and coral. Assuming you have the energy to do, it is well worth it.
As we had some time before re-boarding, we did explore the port area and had street corn and the watermelon tequila jello shots (well the adults did).
One thing to remember during excursions is to make sure everyone has proper documents, including passports and cruise ID cards (which in this case double as room keys), especially if groups are breaking up. You might also want to consider having an international plan to communicate via cell phone, because otherwise you’ll only be able to communicate via the cruise app and only if you are on the ship.
Would I do it again?
The cruise was absolutely worth it. As an extended family we made great memories, and the facilities, staff, and excursions were all wonderful. What I really like is this is a great “middle American” vacation experience that is well-executed, something that always doesn’t get communicated in national media publications or Instagram feeds. The peace of mind of up-front booking and minimal thinking for any subsequent planning is a big plus. There are trips where unpredictable excitement might be better, but this one did well for what its supposed to do.