ACCL Grande Mariner Aug. 12 to Sept. 12, 2007

[sable1]

Well, only three+more weeks til we leave. Received documents last week and packed and ready to go.

 

Anyone else on this cruise, or any segment of the three back to backs?

 

Will post a review when we return. Looking forward to seeing all the U.S. cities.

Joanne

[snowdogs]

My daughter Kate is a stewardess on the Grande Mariner. She is taking the summer off but will return in time for your last cruise.

[silvercruiser]

We're boarding a day early, Sat. Aug. 11 and getting off Aug. 18. We are Don and Priscilla Ruppe of Sarasota, Florida. See you on board!

[sable1]

Hi Snowdogs, I seem to remember that you had mentioned that your daughter worked on the ship. Looking forward to meeting her and all the crew. Several years ago we did the back to back Belize- Honduras and really had a wonderful time. Anticipating this will be as much fun.

Does she know if Andy will be the chef, who you said was great. Do they have a pizza party and ice cream sundae party? Is the ship booked full?

 

Hello, Don and Priscilla. I was beginning to think we were the only ones on the cruise. I guess the people who sail on ACCL don't post here. Have you sailed with accl before? If not, you are in for a unique cruise. If so, you know how fun they are. Look forward to meeting you.

 

Well, have a good trip to Chicago.

Joanne

[silvercruiser]

This is our first with ACCL, as you can see from our list of cruises on my last post. Just haven't gotten around to it until now. Besides all those cruises, have done many land trips all over the world. That now seems too tiring and we're sticking to boats.

[snowdogs]

Hi Joanne. As far as Kate knows, Andy is the chef :) . Pizza/ice cream parties still take place.

[sable1]

Thanks for the info on the chef and the pizza & ice cream parties. Can hardly wait.

Don & Priscilla, looks like you enjoy cruising as much as we do. See you very soon.

Joanne & John

[eandj]

Hello to all of you ACCL cruisers. My husband and I are thinking of doing one of the cruises thru the Great Lakes. Have traveled a bit by car, but he is really set on seeing the Great Lakes by water.

Please tell us about the cruiseline. Other than reading from the web and brochures, we'd like to know what it is like on a typical day. Food? Stops? Entertainment of any kind for the evenings? I don't know...anything you can offer would be much appreciated. We have only done crusie ship cruising so this would surely be a different experience. Thanks so much in advance!

Ellen

[snowdogs]

Hi this is Kate, snowdogs daughter. As my mother has mentioned before in previous posts I’m a stewardess for ACCL aboard the Grande Mariner. I see that you would like to know a little more about our ship.

Our rooms are typical single or double bed with a 3 in 1 (sink, shower, head) bathroom facilities including a mirror/medicine cabinet. Your luggage fits perfectly under your bed so it will never be in your way. There is also hanging space with hangers and a couple of drawers. We do not give out keys for your cabin. You are only able to lock your door from the inside of your cabin. We have never had any problems with doing this; we always have a duty deckhand walking the ship making sure everything is in order. Your cabins are cleaned once a day between 9am and 11am.

The ship has a very casual atmosphere, no need to dress up (unless you like to). If you bring your own alcohol we have a cooler and a rack to hold it all along with labels to put your name on it located in our lounge. Also in our lounge is where we have our live entertainment which ranges from bands to lecturers. We also play movies and play games which sometimes involve the crew while we are underway at night. There are usually tours scheduled for just about every stop we make. You can also go off on your own if you don’t want to take the tour. During the trip there are themed dinners scheduled and 2 of the nights we have complimentary cocktail nights complete with alcohol and appetizers. We serve three meals a day; breakfast is at 8am with a cold buffet and hot food family style, lunch at 12pm family style, and dinner at 6pm individually plated. Our chefs are wonderful, some of the best food I’ve eaten (crew gets served the same meals as passengers). We have coffee and snacks available 24 hours a day, our asst. chef makes fresh pastry everyday.

I hope this was helpful to you and I hope to see you both onboard someday. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask.:D

[sable1]

Well, I just want to advise anyone going on the ACCL ships that we had a very unpleasant experience while aboard. We were told that we had to leave the boat between the two cruises in Chicago, We asked if we could just sleep onboard, no meals, no cabin service, just sleep. The answer was no and to add to the deal we had to pack all our things back in the suitcases, We were only taking a small carry on off the boat and had to pack all our belongings, leave the 2 suitcases in the cabin, unpack everything when we reboarded 3 days later. This packing/unpacking was repeated in Warren before we boarded today.

So, my question is, why did we have to pack? We got an answer about possilbly having a bomb in the cabin.. Give me a break. How silly.

 

So, I really can't recommend ACCL any more. And I think they lost a customer.

The chef was excellent, the food was good, the staff worked very hard. No problem onboard.

Thanks for letting me vent.

Joanne

[LHT28]

So, my question is, why did we have to pack? We got an answer about possilbly having a bomb in the cabin.. Give me a break. How silly.

Joanne

They are not very customer friendly

A bomb would on improve the cabin IMO

I did a review on our trip last year

http://www.cruisecritic.com/memberreviews/memberreview.cfm?EntryID=20471

I do agree Andy is the best cook but wasted on ACCL

[silvercruiser]

I totally agreee with every single negative comment. And we were up in one of the "best" cabins. The whole ship was just plain shabby and for this we were paying $350 a day, per person.

That's more than twice as much per day as we pay for a large balconey cabin on Princess or Holland America on lovelyl ships with great ports of call.

We took the Great Lakes Aug. 12-18, 2007, and thought it was a complete ripoff. Some of the passengers who've never been on a 'real' ship, but "just know they're awful" seemed to think ACCL was great. We tried to just stay quiet and not announce where all we've travelled.

A week from today we fly to Venice, Italy to board the new Emerald Princess and that's the knowledge that sustained me during our awful week on Grand Mariner.

I somehow feel that Capt. Blount and I wouldn't like each other if ever we met.