Is there a better way to code this text adventure game?
A couple things. First of all, you should abstract the function that exits the game:

def exitGame():
    print 'That\'s a shame...'
    print 'Exiting program in 5 seconds:'
    for i in range(5):
        time.sleep(1)
        print(i+1)
    sys.exit('Exiting Game...')


Second, I would probably push Cabins, retries, etc. into arrays.

DECISIONS = []
CABINS = []
CONTINUES = []


Third, I would define the first level as a function so you can do the gracefully exit:

EXIT_MESSAGE = 'Exiting Game...'
#First level loop
while True:
    try: firstLevel()
    except SystemExit as e:
        print(str(e))
        break


One last thing. Use print as a function and not a statement. And maybe it's personal preference, but I find string formatting strongly preferable:

print('Nice to meet you, %s. Are you ready for your adventure?' % name)