Kmkub

We both (Nerd & I,) have a lot of opinions about food. Some highlights (and lowlights,) are below. I have pictures on various devices and will post them when I get them all in one spot. The old World Fresh Marketplace/buffet no longer exists, really. It’s the same thing, day after day. It’s boring, and tasteless (mostly.) Previously, we’ve both championed the buffet. It’s a great, quick alternative. Not everything was a winner, but there was always something for everyone to make some kind of perfectly agreeable breakfast or lunch, if there were time constraints or a desire for a completely informal experience. Every day I looked at the same turkey-lamb gyros meat, that resembled bad jerky more than anything else. The breakfast sausages get dry because they let the chafing dishes run out of water, which creates a burned chafing dish. The pre-printed signs have typos, like “Chicken borth,” and “mapple syrup.” I’m not kidding. Eggs; runny. Chips; stale. Bread; dry and cold. Meat; dry and overcooked. That’s the idea. The morning ham and hard boiled eggs are fine, but if you try to get a piece of bacon, you can either have eight pieces, all stuck together, or you can have a few bacon bits. It’s a bit gross. It’s incredibly disappointing. Our last trip on enchanted had us loving so many things about the buffet. It’s all gone. The one truly redeeming quality were the fresh made waffles. Delicious. They go well with the mapple syrup. The Salty Dog is also showing signs of decline. The hot dogs are too dry; the cheese for the burger is that fake “American cheese food,” crap that gets individually wrapped for use in grammar school lunches. There’s no yellow mustard for the hot dogs. The burgers are without flavor. The International Café was also a bit of a disappointment. Every day, it’s the same offerings as the previous day. Nothing changes. That’s not the IC I remember. The food here is also not very good. The salami sandwich I tried was inedible. The only thing I found worth eating was the breakfast sandwich, and only because IC was literally the only place to get food at the time. It wasn’t, however, quite as good as the famous fast food restaurant’s version of the same sandwich. The pizza from Alfredo’s is about the same as it used to be, though the lack of Parmesan cheese at the station is a puzzler. There are some weird concoctions, like pizza topped with canned tuna, and the pepperoni is not a dried meat I’ve ever tasted. Nerd still likes it, but I don’t eat it. Gigi’s was another venue that has taken a turn for the worse. It’s upcharge, now, but we were willing to pay for the veal agnolotti that we loved so much in 2022. Our first and only trip there had us extremely disappointed in the dish. It was completely dry and lacked sauce and flavor. The manager asked us how it was, and we were completely honest. She said that she’s receiving multiple reports that are the same. Corporate changed the recipe on them. I never understand why you change something delicious in favor of something dry and without flavor. It’s a head scratcher. Room service was another disappointment. My old favorite, the fish tacos with avocado cream are gone. The choices that are complimentary are severely limited, now. You can order from the specialty restaurants, for a fee. The free options are mostly limited to a burger, a hot dog, a few sandwiches and a couple of desserts. In addition, without the right package, it is a $15 one-time charge to get access to room service. The decision is either to use room service or not. Getting one thing from room service on the cruise is cost prohibitive. The saving point is that you can get alcoholic drinks delivered, even if you have the plus package. The Geletaria has great gelato. We ate there twice. There doesn’t seem to be any rotation of flavors, even though the MDR does have different flavors every day. My complaint with this venue is the inefficiency in how they serve customers. The line is long, and there is no signage to help you know what’s available. They need signs! Here’s our flavors, here’s our toppings, here’s the sauces, here’s the cost. You are basically standing behind people who have to hear what’s available when they get to the counter to order. If you are second in line, you may be able to hear the various sauce choices. This is an easy fix!! O’Malley’s is new for us. There was just a basic bar there when we were last on the ship. The food is upcharge, and is fantastic. The blue cheeseburger was delicious. I think I ate three of them (at $10/each.) Nerd loved the onion rings and fish n chips. We both tried the French onion soup with cheddar. It was delicious, and better than what they serve in MDR. It’s not as good as the black and blue soup from Crown Grill, though. ;). —To be continued

We purchased a pass for The Enclave . I spent somewhere between 20-25 hours in there; getting therapy from the thalassotherapy pool, hanging in one of the saunas, or reading from the heated stone beds. I love it in there. The pool has powerful jets that pound on sore muscles; some bubble stalls for increasing circulation, a spring shower and metal beds with additional bubblers. This is one of the best places on the ship. That said, it was fairly inconsistent, in terms of temperature. Some days it was really nice and hot and other days it was cooler; sometimes so cool as to be useless. They also had the usual cucumber or lemon water available for about half the voyage disappear mid-cruise. No real good reason as to why was provided; just shoulder shrugs. Kind of a stinky cost cutting measure. You can get thirsty in there. So boo on that. I wouldn’t dissuade someone who enjoys these types of spas, though, just based on that. The temperature variation is the biggest concern. Why the rapid and dramatic temperature changes? No two days were the same. Football/NFL has it’s own in-cabin channel, now, so we got to see a lot of football. Since we started in Rome, some of the Sunday/Monday night games didn’t start until Tuesday morning, so we weren’t up to see the end of a lot of those games. Spread the news, though – Yes, you will see your games on Princess. For the Sunday games, they added a second channel, so two games were available for each time slot. MUTS showed several games, but didn’t cover all the available time slots. For one game that we wanted to see, we specifically asked guest services if it would be shown, and the answer was yes. What they actually showed, though, was “80 for Brady.” The service desk; Loyalty, Future cruise and excursion hours are awful. Not enough hours in the day and long lines every time they are open. If this is a cost cutting measure, it’s a terrible one. They need more hours and/or more people. I talked to one lady who had been waiting an hour to ask a question. Retail stores have their own little strip mall, just off the front elevators on deck 7. I don’t get how these shops make money. With the ability to look up everything online and price compare, you’d think people would opt for the less expensive price at home, even with the duty free. My at-home, walk out the door price for Hennessy XO is $30 less than what the Princess shop was offering. Sheesh. We also didn’t like the yard sale feel of the area, as they bring out temporary tables and offer “sales.” A $435 cloth tote bag is now only $289. Yikes. Funny story – one of these yard sale offerings was buy 4 fanny packs and get the 5th free. LMAO. Who needs that many fanny packs? There’s high pressure, sometimes, just for having the audacity to want to browse and see what’s for sale. There are deals to be had; I saw a few blouses in the $20 range, which is very reasonable. —To be continued (food is next.)

This is a review of the Enchanted Princess, which was host to our first Transatlantic cruise. The first half of this 15-day adventure was basically a regular 7-day with ports. The second half was nothing but sea days… aka pure bliss. I don’t have names of people I’ll mention and won’t remember many food dish names. I let myself off the hook from taking copious amounts of notes this trip. Feel free to ask me any questions and I’ll do my best to answer them. *** Hands down, this was our favorite cruise to date. For reference, we started in ’08 and now have 15 behind us; 10 of those are Princess. This was our second time on the Enchanted. I gave them a glowing, practically gushing, review in January 2022. This one is more negative, but where we ran into negatives, we just found workarounds. We don’t let this or that thing ruin our cruise. It was our favorite cruise due to all the sea days. On a seven day, it’s wonderful, but it’s not a ton of relaxation, with all the ports. The second half with nothing but sea days allowed us to truly get out of the chaos and stress from our everyday lives. We were able to process and think and discuss without all the noise. It was a huge positive for us, in that regard. As to the ship itself, all the amazing food we had on our last enchanted cruise, brought us back again. Now, it seems unlikely that we’ll return to this particular ship, because the food is no longer a draw, and the new piazza layout isn’t conducive for, say, quiet dining at Sabatini’s or enjoying a martini at Crooner’s. There is also a fair amount of venue to venue spillover that may spoil a drink at Crown Grill. There’s a lot of firsts for us, so I’ve opinions I’ve never had before. First, we’ve never given the cruise director much notice, before. I never saw them as integral to the experience. Jayson convinced me I was wrong. His “Wake Show,” was interesting and informative, and he was out and about more than other CDs (on any cruise line.) I got to speak to him very briefly on three separate occasions, at completely random times. He was just present, as was his staff. Another first for us was attending some of the lectures offered in the theater. We attended lectures called “Behind the Seas,” which gave insight into how the ship runs. Both lectures we attended were very interesting. We also attended an interactive lesson on seeing the stars. This was on deck 19, at night. The ship turned off all the lights up there, so we could study the sky in complete darkness. It was amazing. We had to leave early, since my neck can’t handle too much looking straight up, but it was fun. The Piazza is too busy, IMO. It’s definitely busier than when we sailed in January, 22. Exercise, line dancing classes, strange games (like getting ping pong balls out of a box attached to your butt,) are ever-present. The calm, peaceful place it used to be is now non-existent. Everything is too much, too loud, too crowded, etc. It was just overkill. Bring back the string duos that create a peaceful atmosphere. In addition to that, Crooners is no longer a piano bar. With all the noise coming from deck 5 that wafts through decks 6 & 7, anything in that area is just about hearing what’s going on on the piazza floor. Sabatinis, which used to be nicely tucked away all the way aft on the Grand Class, is now a recipient of this noise as well. The entertainment was mostly bleh. I don’t know their names, but two ladies who played violin and cello were fantastic, and anytime we were in Crown Grill when they were there, we’d stay until their performance was over; even when there was noise spillover from Princess Live. The same goes for the two gentlemen who performed in O’Malley’s. The rest were just bad. Two were so quiet you could barely hear them sing, and couldn’t hear them talk, at all. One riffed on songs so much that they were mostly unrecognizable. We wanted to see Rock Opera, but, unfortunately, they showed it on the first full day, so we completely missed it. I had no idea they would only perform it once on a 15-day. We didn’t see any other production shows; though we peered into several to see if we wanted to go sit down. We didn’t. —To be continued

I don't know enough about the Sanctuary to get the details, but, yes, it's the hurry up and run for reservations part of the cruise. I think that's especially true in The Caribbean.

Just off a 15-day TA on The Enchanted. We had two formal nights and one dress to impress night. Hard to tell them apart from any other night in the dining room, except a few people who truly did go formal. (We went semi-formal; no tux, but nice suit and fancy dress.) On our last formal night, we were overdressed in our section. We don’t care, though. What others wear is none of our business. So, don’t worry about it.

Okay. That’s a completely different question than what you asked in the thread title. There’s a cancellation pro rate schedule you should have in your confirmation details. If your final payment is still 4 months away, you may be at 100%refund, but only you can look at your paperwork to know. You may have a non refundable deposit.

The Enclave is wonderful. We just did 15-days on The Enchanted and I probably spent 20 hours in there. The pounding jets are wonderful for sore muscles and all the various bubblers are great for circulation. Relaxing on the heated stone beds while reading was a favorite. It’s so quiet in there, even when the jets are on. (It’s a different type of quiet.)

You are talking about two different areas. The Enclave is a thermal suite that includes warm stone beds. The Sanctuary is an area for relaxing that includes private/reserved loungers and reservable cabanas. Two different areas of the ship.

I95 wasn't closed for us. We were off ship by 7:30 and home by 8:30. Getting a porter is the way to go. They have their own lane. We breezed through customs in 10 minutes.

I’ve seen dogs once, getting off the ship in port. Never when boarding. In which ports do you usually see dogs?

I'm loving it!

It will take away some of the sting of being home. We should be walking through our front door by 9 a.m. Friday

@LACruiser88 Are the cucumber and citrus waters still available in the Sanctuary? They've disappeared from the enclave. Bummer.

We watched it from the balcony. It was interesting to watch the rain like that then poof, it was gone.

Hands down, my favorite way to sleep.

Fantastic Journey. It was $30 for one portion but we each had at least one of everything.

Here's a pic of us at The Catch, blown away by the size of this upcharge app. This is one person's portion.

Yes.

This was addressed on The Wake Show a few days ago by Jayson. They have no decorations on board. Decorating will be done during the first cruise out of Port Everglades.

We went tonight. It exceeded expectations in spectacular fashion. Wow

Snark aside, five days seems excessive.

I don’t like this. Has this been done before ?

It was handled well. We decided to opt out of fixed time voluntarily, but we weren’t asked to do so. The first week has resembled a port intensive 7 day so far. Lol. Next week should be amazing. Sea days are the best reason to cruise. We have two massages scheduled to ensure a soft landing when we get home.

Yes. We departed at 9:30 pm due to a repair, I believe.

They refused to discuss until tomorrow. It is what it is. Getting a dedicated table for 2 seems unlikely. Oh why oh why didn't I take a screenshot last week. Lol.