Sep28-Oct02 Enchantment 4-day Bahamas (with Kennedy Space Center)

[dstein]

This is a log of our September 28-October 2 (2015) four-night cruise of the Bahamas on Enchantment of the Seas. We’re a family of 4 on our second cruise, having previously taken a 7 night Western Caribbean cruise on Oasis in June of 2014. My wife and I both agreed after our 2014 trip that a cruise wasn’t the “best” vacation we’d ever taken – it can’t compare to time in some place like Europe, for example, IMO – but it was definitely the most RELAXING trip we’d ever had.

 

As a result of our enjoyment of our first cruise foray, we quickly booked our 2nd cruise for Alaska in 2016 (on Radiance) as soon as bookings opened in early 2015. Later, as we looked at our sons’ school schedule we realized that we had a week off school in late September 2015 – and the idea of shoe-horning in a 3rd cruise that week with a “quick” trip sounded like a great fit, so that’s where this trip came from.

 

As mentioned, we’re a family of four: me and my wife plus our two sons (15 and 10 years old). My wife and I have realized that we have a window of only about 5 years where the boys are both at a great age for more “ambitious” travel and are both still at home, so we’ve been doing some bigger trips the last few years, including a couple of trips to Europe along with cruising. The second trip to Europe was completely unexpected – in December 2014 my brother-in-law received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry so we got to enjoy an impromptu visit to Stockholm to take part in Nobel Week, including attending the awards and white-tie banquet!

 

Our cruise left Port Canaveral on Monday afternoon, but we decided to fly into Orlando (from San Jose, CA) on Saturday, giving us a full day to fill on Sunday. We asked the boys whether they wanted to go to one of the Universal Studio theme parks or to Kennedy Space Center and the latter was the hands-down winner, so that formed the outline for our plan.

 

A few words on what follows from here. First, there are waaay more than “a few words” in what follows. Brevity may be the soul of wit, but I confess that I am not brief when writing. If you frequently reply to people with “tl;dr” then this is NOT the recap for you. Second, there won’t be a lot of photos. That’s because a) most of my photos are boring, as I simply don’t have a good “photographer’s eye”, and b) very little of what I have is unique enough to justify the bandwidth. You can find better pictures in other reviews. In fact, we are so lax about taking pictures that we didn’t take a single photo after the 3rd day of our trip! Finally, there are NO food pictures. :)

[dstein]

Saturday September 26: Getting There

 

We flew United Airlines out of SJC via DEN to MCO. We used off-site long-term parking, and on the quick shuttle drive over to the departure terminal we ran into several other families from our school district who were also taking quick trips out of town over the school vacation. One family was going to Disneyland, another to Hawaii – not sure about the others.

 

As is typically the case these days, the flights were completely full. We travelled with 3 carry-ons plus a hanging garment bag. Having skipped both formal nights on Oasis we decided that, this time, we’d actually take some nice clothes with us and experience formal night. Part of this was motivated by the desire to give the boys another opportunity to wear the suits we’d bought them for Nobel Week in Sweden before they outgrew them! If not for that we’d have taken 4 carry-on bags plus a backpack for electronics, plus a tote bag for miscellaneous stuff.

 

Given that we already had to check the garment bag in any case, when they asked for volunteers at the boarding gate to gate-check additional carry-on bags at no charge we jumped at the chance to hand over our three carry-ons and have them checked through to MCO. This was great as it completely freed us from having to stress out about finding overhead bin space once we boarded the planes on our outbound journey. This let us take our time during a quick layover at DEN and purchase some sandwiches which we ate on the 2nd leg of our flight.

 

We arrived at MCO around 7PM and, after picking up our bags, made our way to the Budget rental desk where we planned to grab our pre-reserved rental and get moving. Unfortunately, a long line greeted us. No big deal, we figured – how long can it take to get through the ten or so people in front of us? Turns out the answer was: a REALLY long time. Ridiculously long. Like an hour. We spent much of the time joking with the group behind us about the snail’s pace. Honestly, we cannot for the life of us figure out why every group in front of us was taking 10-15 minutes each to get their cars. Once we reached the desk and handed over our paperwork we were done in about 6 minutes. So why everyone else took so long is still a huge mystery.

 

So by the time we picked up the car and exited the airport (a VERY easy process) it was about 815P. Of course, this was only 515P California time, so our bodies were only just starting to get ready for dinner. As our plan was to make the drive to Port Canaveral that night we had pre-selected our dinner location to be close to the airport with quick access back to the highway. We had purposely decided to try a Cracker Barrel so we could experience first-hand what we knew to be a regional favorite. It was pretty much exactly what we expected – which is to say that it wasn’t good. We were expecting something much like Denny’s and that’s pretty much what we got. However, I can understand that if this is what you grew up with as a kid you’d likely have a soft spot in your heart for it. On our way out I tried to find a geocache that was just outside the entrance, but there were too many people around and I had to go away empty-handed. Sigh.

 

We got back into the car and headed out to the east on the toll road. The drive from the airport to our hotel took us about 50 minutes – once you hit the toll road it is pretty much a straight shot out to Port Canaveral. There were (I think) four toll booths along the way, with tolls ranging from $0.50 to $1.00. We had brought along a baggie full of quarters so were able to take advantage of the “exact change” lanes. If that hadn’t happened we’d have had to use the manned booths in order to pay cash and get change.

 

We checked into our hotel (Carlson Country Inn and Suites) where we had booked a two bedroom/one bathroom suite. The room wasn’t exactly what we had expected. I had expected two bedrooms sharing a central living room. Instead we got a large living area with a queen sized bed, one small plush chair, and a small dining table with 4 chairs, next to a doorless sleeping area with two twin beds separated from the main area by 3/4-height walls. Not the end of the world – just didn’t match the mental picture I had formed.

 

Even though it was only about 1030P Eastern (and consequently still 730P Pacific time by our body clocks) the long day of travel was catching up with us so we were happy to crawl into bed and go to sleep.

[dstein]

Sunday September 27: Kennedy Space Center

 

We had taken advantage of one of the hotel’s packages that bundled 2 discounted adult ticket to KSC into the room rate. Upon arrival the previous night we had purchased two more discounted tickets – one adult for the 15-year old son, and one child ticket for the 10-year old. (I think KSC caps “child” at 12 years old – maybe even as low as 11.) The hotel also gave us a large map of KSC that included a lot of good pointers for “must see” locations for those visiting only 1 day. Knowing that it would be best to arrive as close to the 9AM opening as possible, we went down to eat breakfast about 815AM.

 

Carlson is in the same family as Radisson. I’m normally either a Hilton or a Marriott user and it appears that the Carlson brand is very much like Hampton Inn (Hilton) or Spring Hill Suites (Marriott). This means that breakfast consists of the typical cold/hot cereal, yogurt, fruit, pastries/toast and make-it-yourself waffles every day, along with a rotating hot dish. This particular hotel had no made-to-order options. We had a scrambled egg with sausage option on Sunday, and biscuits and gravy with breaded chicken patty on Monday. As is expected from these small buffets, the best that can be said is that you can fill your stomach to start the day.

 

With breakfast completed we made the 20 minute drive out to KSC and started our day. It was obvious from the minute we stepped outside that avoiding Universal Studios was a GREAT decision given the 90+% humidity piled on top of an already hot day. Outside felt sweltering, so we were really pleased we were going to be able to spend more time inside than outside. It also turns out that late September is one of the least busy times at KSC. When we arrived at about 910AM there were only about 20-30 cars in the parking lot ahead of us, and the entire day we saw only a small handful of people – making for a GREAT, low-stress way to enjoy the exhibits.

We started by walking around the outdoor Rocket Garden, where about 7-8 different models are featured, along with mock-ups of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo capsules that provide quick photo opportunities. Again, given that less than 20 people were wandering around at the same time as us it was easy for the boys to get into the capsules without having to wait or getting elbowed aside.

 

 

 

 

 

From there we toured the exhibit on the early days of space flight, mostly killing time until the first IMAX showing at 10AM. The show was about manned space exploration, including a look ahead at the proposed Mars missions. One thing KSC does really well is put together multimedia presentations designed to inspire you with the beauty of space and the nobility of exploration. The IMAX show was excellent and should not be missed. (We didn’t see the other show, which was about the Hubble Space Telescope – I think.)

 

Leaving the IMAX we made our way over to the tour bus area and hopped onto the bus that takes you past the huge Vehicle Assembly Building,

 

 

 

through the launch pad area

 

 

 

[dstein]

...and eventually makes its way to the Apollo Space Center. This particular bus trip is included in admission. There are also 2-3 special bus trips that are available at additional fee, but for the first-time visitor the included trip seems like more than enough. We spent about 90 minutes at the Apollo exhibit, which includes two multi-media shows as you enter, plus at least one optional show once you get inside. The main hall is dominated by a Saturn V rocket suspended from the ceiling that is truly awe-inspiring. (I was 5 years old when Apollo 11 landed on the moon and remember watching on TV, so seeing this up close was particularly inspiring to me).

 

At many location throughout KSC volunteer docents are available to answer questions. All of them appear to have been affiliated with the space program in one way or another at during their careers, so one of the best questions to ask each of them is “what was your role?” – their own experiences make for some great stories!

 

After returning on the bus to the main KSC complex we made our way over to the Shuttle Atlantis exhibit.

 

 

 

As we made our way up the internal ramps that would eventually lead us into the exhibit we again felt so lucky to be here on a slow day. We were certain that during busy summer months those long ramps would be packed with people, but today we got to the top of the ramp and were the first people in line waiting for the next multimedia presentation to get started. If any of you happen to have experienced the Harry Potter Studios tour in the UK you’ll remember that the “big reveal” at the end of the short film was the Hogwarts Great Hall set. In similar fashion, the end of the film at KSC leads you into the main hall where Atlantis is dramatically displayed. Again, an awe-inspiring sight.

 

 

 

Before we knew it, we’d been at KSC for 6 hours and were starting to feel the fatigue of our early morning combined with the high temps, so we headed back to the car and made the trip back to the hotel to rest up, make use of the pool, and get ready for dinner.

 

Knowing that there was no Giovanni’s on Enchantment we opted for Italian food for dinner this night. Based on TripAdvisor ratings we decided to try Papa Vito’s, which was less than two miles from the hotel. It turns out that the hotel’s room service menu is, in fact, Papa Vito’s menu. When we had arrived the prior evening we had noticed a delivery vehicle sporting their sign outside the lobby.

 

Arriving at the restaurant we lucked into one of the few parking spaces at the front of the restaurant. I’m assuming there was more parking in the rear of the building, but we didn’t notice any obvious signage indicating additional parking. Therefore, we were happy that someone backed out of a space just as we arrived. The place was packed when we arrived as it appears to be a pretty popular local spot. Dinner was average Italian food – nothing to write home about, but nothing to run away from, either.

 

After dinner we drove another half-mile or so away from the hotel where a Publix supermarket was located. Here we picked up two bottles of wine and a few forgotten items from home (sunscreen, toothpaste) before finally heading back to the hotel for our final night on land.

[lr657]

Enjoying your review and photo's! We haven't visited KSC in years. I can see there's been several changes and we need to plan to visit again. Looking forward to the rest of your review!

[Glad Trimble]

SPOILERS!! ???

 

That sight of Atlantis was something I am glad I did NOT know about beforehand.

 

Pretty gutted to know about the Great Hall now to be honest. Glad there's no photo

[dstein]

Monday September 28: All Aboard!

 

Following breakfast we dropped our car off at Budget which was about one-half mile from the hotel. Had we chosen Hertz it would have been even faster – Hertz and the hotel basically shared the same driveway. At Budget drop off was pretty quick – we got there at about 10AM and were on the shuttle in less than 10 minutes. At the desk they asked if I had recorded the ending mileage (which I hadn’t, but that didn’t faze them in the least), whether I had filled up the tank (we had stopped at the gas station that was conveniently between the hotel and Budget), and how many people we had. We turned out to be the 11th-14th people on the shuttle, which filled it up. It sounds like they were running two shuttles – fortunately we didn’t have to wait around for the next one. If we had no rental car to deal with we could have simply taken the hotel’s shuttle instead.

 

Waiting for only the amount of time it took to put everyone’s luggage on board we were off to the cruise terminal – which was only about 5-6 minutes away. The shuttles all pull up into a special drop-off area where porters are waiting to accept all the luggage off the shuttle. They put everything into small piles for each family/group and make sure it is tagged. Since we had already put on our luggage tags all we had to do was say “yep, that’s ours and no, we don’t need to tag anything” and they directed us around the corner where we walked through the lower level of the parking garage to the main entry doors of the terminal.

 

From there we whisked through security, went up the escalator where we were directed to the Suites line (more on this later) and were standing at the desk getting our SeaPass cards printed in less than 10 minutes. By the time we got our cards they were almost done with Suites/Platinum boarding and were just about to call for Gold C&A (which is what we would have otherwise qualified for had it not been for our Grand Suite) – so we simply waltzed through check-in to be greeted with our first “Bing Bong” and started boarding. A quick stop for the obligatory group photo and then up the gangway to be greeted in the Centrum. I didn’t look at my watch, but from the time we entered the terminal to the time we got onboard was probably under 18 minutes.

 

We spent about an hour wandering around the ship, trying to get the “lay of the land”. Having experienced only Oasis previously the comparatively smaller size of Enchantment made for some entertaining contrasts. By the end of the cruise we’d all agree that the Centrum was a much nicer feature than the Promenade of Oasis. The Promenade was a more interesting place to walk THROUGH, but the Centrum was a more interesting place to STAY and spend time. The surplus of seating ringing the Centrum on multiple decks made for a great place to sit and enjoy music, people watch, or simply feel the energy emanating from everyone.

 

We made a particular point of checking out the Schooner Bar. On Oasis this had turned into our “go to” place when we wanted to relax, as the combo of piano and trivia played nicely into our interests. On Enchantment it turned out that a lot of the trivia happened in Boleros, and the piano stylings of Ronilo made for great background music but weren’t really “destination piano music”. We didn’t happen to hear the other pianist onboard, although the reviews we read about him were pretty mixed. Having said that we still managed to spend a lot of time at Schooner because it was comfortable and had some great views.

 

Around 1145A or so we headed over to Windjammer for lunch. We actually first detoured to Park Café in the Solarium to see whether they were serving or not – if they were, our oldest son really wanted one of the roast beef sandwiches. Everyone raves about those, but on Oasis I personally found them to be a big nothing – unless tough, tasteless meat qualifies as “something”. (Yes, I know this is probably a minority opinion, but that’s how I feel.) As it happened, they weren’t open, and every time we did visit throughout the cruise they were serving pork loin sandwiches. Don’t know whether they actually ever had RB or not on our cruise.

 

The WJ was, as expected, mobbed. However, we lucked into a four person table without too much trouble and chowed down. Oldest son and I both ended up with the deep-fried fish and fries as our main course, and we both enjoyed it. There are certainly worse buffets out there. I wouldn’t want to make a career out of eating at WJ – I know many cruisers here who do just that and are quite content – but as a breakfast or lunch destination I don’t have many complaints about their offerings or the quality.

 

After lunch the wife and I grabbed the Drink of the Day and we all kicked back in Schooner waiting for the staterooms to open up. Once that happened we made our way forward to deck 8 and cabins 8540 and 8539. 8540 was a Grand Suite, 8539 was an interior directly across the hallway (thereby satisfying the requirement that minor children not rooming with parents be either immediately next door or across the hallway from their parents). We decided to splurge on this trip and sample the GS – something we’d never do on a longer cruise given the premium cost. To balance things, we got the boys an interior. (On Oasis we’d done side-by-side balconies.) We knew that when not sleeping the boys would hang out in our GS so we’d all get the benefit.

 

 

 

 

 

From a layout/comfort perspective the GS is REALLY nice. The full size, L-shaped couch plus a separate chair that provides seating for 4+ is fantastic. (To me, seating is always the make/break feature of any hotel room. I HATE being limited to sitting on the bed when a lot of people are in the room.)

 

 

 

The GS has lots of seating, tons of storage (3 closets with two drawers in addition to 8 drawers in the bar area, 3 more drawers in the desk, plus 2 more in each of the bedside tables, and finally 3 more in the bathroom), and lots of room to stretch out in. The patio had 2 chairs plus two loungers. The loungers are side-by-side with no room between them, so you basically have to crawl your way onto them from the bottom.

 

 

 

 

The bathroom has a tub/shower combo – although the shower curtain still suffers from the tendency to glue itself to you while you shower, so having something to weight down the bottom of the curtain is a good idea. (We used 4 wooden clothes pins – 8 would have been better.) Our cabin attendant was Elmer – he was always present and ready to give us a welcome. The ability of the cabin and dining staff to learn and remember everyone’s name is a wonder to me!

 

There are various other benefits of a GS – but we actually didn’t make use of any of them. We had robes – but didn’t wear them. We had access to the Concierge Lounge on Deck 11 for dinner time drinks and snacks – but never made it up there. We had first shot at reserving a cabana on Coco Cay – but had no desire to do this (more later). We had an invitation waiting for us to a special reception for Suite guest on (I think) Tuesday – but we didn’t go. We also skipped the C&A Welcome Back party on Monday, and another invite for something on Thursday. We did enjoy the fruit plate that was waiting for us. I did also have the Concierge take care of changing our reservation to Chops from one night to another – but I did that mostly so I could say I’d used one of the perks of the suite. I could have just as easily done this myself.

 

Would we get a GS again? If we didn’t care about the price, of course! However, we were also quite pleased with our balcony stateroom on Oasis, and given that we aren’t particularly “high maintenance” types all the perks of the GS were mostly lost on us. There’s no denying the extra space, sofa, and upgraded bathroom are nice – but not for the price.

 

Would we recommend 8540? No. 7540, yes…but 8540, no. There’s an outdoor extension of the WJ eating area directly above 8540, and with that comes a lot of clunking and banging noises at odd times – including as early as 430AM. The room is comfortable, but NOT quiet.

 

 

While we were exploring our rooms our luggage showed up. I don’t know whether suite guests are given priority delivery treatment or not, but I’m guessing this is the case. We took advantage of the early delivery to unpack and then continued exploring our room, reading through the Compass, etc. until it was time to go down for muster drill at 3:30PM. Somewhere during this time we took a detour to Guest Services to get some extra keycards made so we could access the boys’ cabin and they could access ours. I think I read somewhere that we could have had the Concierge do this for us but we just don’t have the mindset to delegate this kind of thing to others.

 

Muster drill was very different than what we’d experienced on Oasis. On the bigger ship our muster station had been in the MDR, where we’d been invited to sit down in air-conditioned comfort and watch a video outlining the emergency processes. On Enchantment we experienced what I assume to be a more typical muster, which meant standing outside on Deck 5, packed in like sardines, waiting for everyone to get checked in before seeing a live demo of life jacket use. If I recall correctly, the drill took about 20 minutes before we were released.

 

After muster, we immediately went over to Schooner and got ourselves four drinks (two virgin drinks for the boys, grown-up drinks for the grown-ups) which we took back to the GS in order to enjoy sail-away from our balcony. It was a good thing I was paying attention as the bartender mixed the drinks. Despite his having entered a “virgin strawberry colada” into the register, at the last minute he reflexively dumped a bunch of rum into what was supposed to be our 15-year old’s drink. THAT was a surprise we weren’t prepared to spring on him, so had to have a quick re-do!

 

We were slated to leave at 500P, but were underway about 435P. We watched with fascination as the harbor pilots walked off our ship onto their Pilot chase boat. I would have liked to have seen the actual transfer – we simply inferred that they crossed between boats because one minute the deck of the chase boat was empty and the next moment two guys were walking across the front of it and into the pilothouse. The Disney <something> followed us out about 60 minutes later.

 

We had the early MDR seating at 545P so were soon making our way aft to Deck 4. (I kept getting turned around on this ship. The theater-forward/MDR-aft configuration is opposite of Oasis’s setup.) We had a table for 4 in the main well of the MDR, at the base of the staircase. Our team consisted of Joenell (waiter), Anton (assistant waiter), and Sweedon (section head waiter). I was extremely pleased to be able to give all three of these guys WOW cards by the end of the cruise – they definitely deserved them. They earned them on our first night, and simply continued to impress throughout the entire cruise.

 

How did they impress us so much on that first night? Give credit – or perhaps blame – to Mother Nature. That first night out we had a lot more rocking than is typical. It was unfortunately enough to affect our 10 year old son, who was feeling the effects of mild sea-sickness. He did NOT enjoy our first night’s dinner as he felt lousy. Joenell was first to help, bringing over some ginger ale. Anton then went the extra mile to track down some crackers, which were clearly not immediately available at the waiter stations so that meant an extra, unplanned trip to somewhere for him. (A plate of crackers also greeted us when we sat down on the 2nd night – “just in case”.) Finally, Sweedon brought over some sliced green apples for us to take back with us, and then handed us a plate of cookies as we left. (I believe that some of this extra attention was because we were suite passengers – this is something that they clearly indicated they knew about us when they came around during dinner. However, whatever their motivation was it cannot be denied that they demonstrated tremendous customer service that night.) BTW: After dinner we gave our son a kid-sized dose of Dramamine and within 30 minutes he felt fine – the rest of the night and the rest of the cruise were both great.

 

After dinner we attended the Welcome Aboard show where we “met” our cruise director, Marc Walker. We liked him very much. He had the kind of energy and sense of fun that I would think should define a good CD (not that we’re experts on this at all). We didn’t attend this show on Oasis so can’t compare but I’m assuming all Welcome Aboard shows follow a similar format: some kind of sailing theme song (ours was “Come Sail Away”…duh!) accompanied by dancers, followed by the CD coming out and giving some stats on who was sailing with us (“you’re from N countries, with the top 10 countries being <list of the top 10>”), a bit more singing/dancing, some previews of coming attractions by the CD, a plug by the shopping team to buy stuff, a quick set by the comic (in family-friendly mode), and some closing remarks by the CD. I would imagine that most seasoned cruisers probably don’t bother with this one after their first few cruises.

 

Following the show we returned to our cabins to wind down the night and enjoy some sleep.

[dstein]

Enjoying your review and photo's! We haven't visited KSC in years. I can see there's been several changes and we need to plan to visit again. Looking forward to the rest of your review!

 

Thank you! KSC was a tremendous experience, filled with surprises. One of the volunteers at the Atlantis exhibit had worked on the shuttle program as...wait for it...a hand stitcher. Talk about an unexpected job description! She and team sewed (using stainless steel thread, if I recall correctly) some of the heat-resistant fabric pieces that made up rings around the base of the orbiter engine nozzles.

[dstein]

SPOILERS!! ???

 

That sight of Atlantis was something I am glad I did NOT know about beforehand.

 

Pretty gutted to know about the Great Hall now to be honest. Glad there's no photo

 

Oh, dear. You'll have to trust me that actual experience isn't diminished in any way by knowing what might be coming. :)

[Glad Trimble]

Oh, dear. You'll have to trust me that actual experience isn't diminished in any way by knowing what might be coming. :)

 

 

Great, thank you! I'm sure it'll be amazing still

 

Thanks for your review :)

[jayblue]

Great and detailed review!

[scopewest]

Loving your review with all the details. Thanks for posting!

[dstein]

Tuesday, September 29: Coco Cay

 

Following a mildly rolling night, Day 2 of the cruise dawned bright, hot, and calm with us anchored off Coco Cay. First we headed to the WJ for breakfast. This morning we discovered the inside “dining annex” on the port side of the WJ, leading out to the pool deck. It seems that most people never got around to discovering this area, as it became our daily place to find a selection of tables we could eat at without any worries that we’d be left standing around. (It was also the place where they had a small selection of Indian dishes during lunch and – I assume - dinner.)

 

Following breakfast we changed into our beach gear and around 10AM we stopped off in the Centrum at Deck 4 to grab beach towels and (buy) bottles of water, then hoofed it down to Deck 1 to get on the next tender. A digression re: stairs and elevators. On Oasis we used the elevators to get everywhere – there were often 7-8 decks between you and your destination, to say nothing of a possible fore/aft hike at the start or end. On Enchantment I believe we got on the elevator less than 5 times during the entire trip. The ship is so much more walkable than Oasis that taking stairs up/down a few levels was no big deal.

 

Tendering at 10AM was no problem. We exited the ship, climbed up to the exposed top deck (the bottom, shaded deck already being full) and found the last few remaining seats. Within about 2 minutes we were underway. No idea how long the first passengers had to wait while the tender filled up – but within 10 minutes of boarding we were debarking on Coco Cay.

 

Having never been here before we quickly looked for an island map, ala Labadee. None was obvious, however, so we were limited to the signposts. Of course, we had no idea what the different areas were like so we simply walked straight past the straw market and plopped down at the first beach area we saw. This was a large open beach with some palm trees just in front of the snorkel rental hut. We actually don’t care about the beauty of the lounger area – for us, a lounger is simply a place to put your towel while sitting in the shallow water, not a place to occupy. I see from other reviews that there are other beaches with more tree coverage and perhaps more privacy, but we were more than content with where we landed.

 

As suite guests, we had received an email from the Concierge on Friday before leaving home welcoming us aboard and (among other things) offering us priority to rent one of the 13-15 cabanas on Coco Cay. While this is not something that would ever interest us, the location of the cabanas here seemed to us to be hugely unattractive. The cabanas are located inland, in a private section that is basically a large concrete pad with small cabanas ringing it. It didn’t look like you could step outside and into water without taking a bit of a hike. I definitely didn’t understand what the attraction to these could be.

 

Lunch is a BBQ buffet with several separate areas all of which have the same layout and food choices. The best that can be said about the beach BBQ is that it is better than starving. Having said that, I’m not sure what you could do to make it better, given that you (the cruise line) are tendering food for 2000 people from the ship to shore and therefore your menu has to be able to survive the trip and be setup/served with minimal fuss. So the variety is minimal (primarily burgers, dogs, chicken, pork ribs, mac and cheese, potato salad, green salad, fruit, and cookies) and mostly without flavor. Water and weak fruit juice are served up in small plastic cups. I imagine there must have been some vegetarian-friendly main dish there, but as this isn’t relevant to us we didn’t pay attention.

 

Following lunch our oldest son said he really wanted to try snorkeling, which none of us had ever done before. Unfortunately our 10 year old isn’t a confident swimmer so we couldn’t do this as a full family, so oldest son and I went to the rental shack and got 2 sets of masks/fins/vests for about $70 total. (That’s for a full day if you’re so inclined.) We waded into the water and set out. It took us about 15 minutes to get comfortable, which is also about how long it took us to get out far enough from shore that visibility cleared up. The water is very shallow (5-7’ deep) for most of the way, so if all you had was a mask you’d be OK. Apparently there’s a couple of staged “wrecks” – one of a ship, another of an airplane – that lots of fish congregate at, but he and I didn’t reach either one. We still saw a lot of fish, however, even in such shallow water. Later, when he and my wife went out they did find the ship. While I’ve never snorkeled before this trip I suspect that what we did was VERY much “beginner” type stuff – which made for a perfect introduction for us. Definitely something I think we’d like to try again.

 

We finally packed things up and returned to the ship around 230P. We were again on the upper deck of the tender, and (again) didn’t have long to wait after boarding before we set off to the ship. We returned our towels on Deck 1 (rather than Deck 4 where we’d picked them up) and headed up to our cabins to shower before visiting Park Café and the Solarium Bar for snacks and pre-dinner drinks which we brought back to our balcony. We spent time relaxing and then got dressed up to report to the MDR for a formal night dinner.

 

This was our first formal dinner and we had a great time. If I had to guess I’d say about 65-70% of diners dressed up. I didn’t see any tuxes, but the men were wearing suits or ties or open neck shirts with sports jackets. The women seemed to be wearing mostly cocktail style Little Black Dresses and/or “sparkles”. (OK – I’m not a fashion expert.)

 

After dinner we made tracks to our cabin in order to change back into shorts. Getting back to our cabins from the MDR took us through the Centrum, and we stopped and enjoyed the live music by the house band (Rockport) for about 20 minutes. We were hanging over the railing on Deck 8 for this, both listening to the music as well as watching those doing similar things on the other decks. Again, the energy of the Centrum was really fun!

 

Following dinner we went to the production show, entitled “Can’t Stop the Rock”. The Orpheum Theater is a pretty comfortable venue – the balcony seating off Deck 6, where we sat every time we went, is mostly a series of cushy 2-person couches. The center balcony section (where we sat for the Welcome Aboard show) is pretty cramped for legroom, but the side sections were quite roomy and become our preferred location for the rest of the cruise. There’s also less heads in your way on the sides, which for our 10-year old was a particular attraction of these locations. Colors on the video screens was a bit washed out from the sides, but that basically only impacts the pre-show presentations going on. CD Marc made a pre-show appearance to confirm that the prior night’s rough seas were quite unusual and that we could expect much smoother sailing the remainder of the cruise.

 

My wife and I met through theater, where we both were involved with technical aspects (costuming for her, lighting design for me), so we tend to look upon shows pretty critically. From a technical perspective, the show’s production values were excellent. Good lighting design, simple but creative sets, nice wigs and costumes (which also included a lot of tough costume quick-changes, which the cast is obviously skilled in pulling off). Artistically, the show was less successful. It was good, but not great. Vocally, there were some pretty big clunkers from the 4 singers and some odd harmonies. The dancers were energetic but suffered some meltdowns, including a throw that ended up with two dancers on the ground. But given that we were quite prepared to enjoy ourselves the blemishes were minor compared to the fun we were having. Theater is always fun – and when you realize you’re sitting in a theater on a ship floating in the middle of nowhere there’s an extra thrill. Marc made a post-show appearance to tease the next day’s activities and, with that, our evening came to an end.

[Anita Latte]

I'm really enjoying your review. We sailed the week prior to you...so I can perfectly picture what you are saying. I'm enjoying another perspective on the same cruise so much. I do like your words too...WJ Annex is perfect to describe that space.

 

Completely agree with your assessment of Oasis Promenade vs. Enchantment Centrum. I sailed Allure (not Oasis) on the cruise I took previous to Enchantment...never cared much for the Promenade, but spent so much time in the Centrum.

 

And also the cabanas? I saw those and also wondered at the attraction?

 

Too bad about the mishap on the stage. For our performances, the young man (later learned he was 18) was so "on" in the dancing...his ballet training was evident, and I didn't see any mishaps (didn't mean they didn't happen). But I also was so impressed with the production aspect that you called out. Nice to see my not-as-knowledgeable thoughts echoed here.

 

Looking forward to your continuation...

[Summerknight]

Love your review. Great story telling. Thank you!

[dstein]

I'm really enjoying your review. We sailed the week prior to you...so I can perfectly picture what you are saying. I'm enjoying another perspective on the same cruise so much. I do like your words too...WJ Annex is perfect to describe that space.

 

Completely agree with your assessment of Oasis Promenade vs. Enchantment Centrum. I sailed Allure (not Oasis) on the cruise I took previous to Enchantment...never cared much for the Promenade, but spent so much time in the Centrum.

 

And also the cabanas? I saw those and also wondered at the attraction?

 

Too bad about the mishap on the stage. For our performances, the young man (later learned he was 18) was so "on" in the dancing...his ballet training was evident, and I didn't see any mishaps (didn't mean they didn't happen). But I also was so impressed with the production aspect that you called out. Nice to see my not-as-knowledgeable thoughts echoed here.

 

Looking forward to your continuation...

 

Thanks so much! I have been enjoying your review, too. I had a moment where I thought to myself that perhaps the world didn't need yet another trip report, but I realized that I've learned something new from every single report I've read so I figured someone would get something from me that was unique. For me, the value of writing this up is that it help ME remember what we did!

 

I've read many postings where people expressed more love for the smaller ships than the larger ones...and now we finally understand why. We enjoyed our time on Oasis, but we found the Enchantment to be so much more intimate and "alive" than Oasis. REALLY looking forward to Radiance next year, both because it means we'll be in Alaska (my dream vacation for the decades) and because I'm really looking forward to experiencing that class of ship.

 

Finally, the stage mishap is one of those things that make live theater so much fun. You're never quite sure what will happen. I'm told that I apparently made one of the more memorable paging calls during a show I stage managed several years ago, during which I paged "Costumers to the stage...with pins" during a performance. I was initially worried that one of the actors, for reasons I couldn't fathom, had turned his back to the audience in order to grope himself obscenely...until I finally realized that his elastic waistband had broken and he was trying to yank his pants up to avoid turning our family-friendly show into something entirely different! :D

[dstein]

Love your review. Great story telling. Thank you!

 

Thank you for the nice compliment!

[dstein]

Wednesday, September 30: Nassau

 

Nassau represented a bit of a problem for us. The port struck us as somewhat similar to Jamaica on our Oasis trip: a place that we would never have selected as a destination for a self-planned trip. Given that level of disinterest as our starting point, it was hard to get excited about the various suggestions for tourists, whether they came from ship-sponsored excursions or from looking at things like TripAdvisor for independent ideas. Places like Atlantis just seemed horrendously overpriced, none of the city tours sounded interesting, and (most definitely) we are NOT shoppers, so wandering around shops looking for things to buy is our idea of hell.

 

After a lot of reading on the CC boards about this port we had settled on heading over to Melia for a day pass to lounge on the beach and/or around the pools. However, after a day at Coco Cay the boys had had their fill of sitting around the beach so (like Jamaica) we called an audible and turned this a “Ship Day”. (I did have a couple of backup options to Melia, including the Pirate Museum and a possible city tour, but these were resoundingly pooh-poohed by the boys when I offered them. Since my wife and I had no objection to sitting on our butts, relaxing with drinks in our hands, we weren’t inclined to push it ;) )

 

We started this day with breakfast in the WJ. Nothing spectacular to report here – other than the constant barrage of overhead announcements as the crew was practicing lifeboat drill. Might have been annoying if you were trying to sleep in, but otherwise not a big deal. After finishing (around 10AM) we decided that we’d at stretch our legs and take a quick stroll off-ship so we could at least say we’d set foot on Nassau. Who knows? Maybe we’d find ourselves pleasantly surprised once we got on shore?

 

Yeah. Nope. The walk along the pier is nice, looking at the other ships tied up in port along with Enchantment. But once we cleared the secure area the constant barrage of taxi drivers trying to get you to take a city tour with them is REALLY annoying. I find nothing “quaint” about being shoulder-to-shoulder in a confined space as I’m trying to cover 100’ of sidewalk and being accosted 15-20 times in that distance.

 

Once we got across the street fronting the pier area and into the shopfronts things calmed down. But there’s no denying the fact that the shopping area that defines the 6-10 square blocks nearest the port is nothing more than an ugly sprawl of over-priced crap. (I know – to some it is a paradise of wonderful merchandise that sends them into paroxysms of joy…but as I said before, this is just hell on earth to us.) So we blew through this area as quickly as we could and – since we had no real objective to our trip onshore other than to say that we’d been to Nassau – quickly returned to the ship for the rest of the day. The 88 degree/high humidity weather was another motivation for returning to air-conditioned bliss.

 

BTW: It was here at Nassau that I first experienced the camera lens fogging up due to the high humidity. You need to give your lens a few minutes with the lens cap off (or clamshell lens cover open) in order to get pictures. I had planned to get some shots of the neighboring ships in port and some of the pier activity when out or balcony in the morning but was defeated by fogging (and impatience). It was at this point that I pretty much stopped taking pictures for the rest of the trip. We are NOT camera junkies so any excuse – however weak – to not take a picture is one that we’ll latch onto! :)

 

Back onboard we made our way up to Deck 10 portside and indulged in a bit of impromptu shuffleboard. The professional shuffleboard circuit is most definitely not in our future, but that didn’t stop us from having a good time. The boys thrashed the wife and me repeatedly.

 

Following our sporting humiliation we finally made it to our first trivia event, this one down in Boleros on Deck 5. There were about 20 people grouped into 6-7 teams for this one, with the topic being “Food and Spirits”. Only 10 total questions, and we were out in less than 15 minutes, which seemed a bit abrupt.

 

From there we were off to the covered outdoor seating outside the WJ to enjoy yogurt cones. While sitting there a 10 minute random rain storm arrived and everyone jumped up to slide the windows closed. We used the rain as our excuse to head into the WJ for lunch. After lunch we decided to go upstairs, change for the pool, and then come back down with our books/tablets to mix reading and swimming. As we re-entered the outdoor pool deck the rain decided to start again, which caused everyone to scatter to the covered seating once again, this time leaving us nowhere to secret ourselves. At this point we gave up on the idea of swimming and heading back to our suite to relax there until our next trivia event.

 

This was “Where in the World” at Boleros. Instead of being asked questions, we were given a 12 question worksheet and had to fill-in answers to the clues written down. That means it felt a bit more like a school quiz and less like a social event. Perhaps I’m being influenced by the fact that we did HORRIBLY on this one! (Note to self: 10 year old son should NOT be over-ruled. We would have had 2 more points if we'd accepted his correct answers instead of insisting on our own incorrect ones.) We consoled ourselves by (once again) swinging through to Park Café for some quick snacks, followed by the Solarium Bar and then enjoying some quiet time on our balcony.

 

Nassau looks to have pier space to host up to 5 cruise ships at once – it’s a veritable ship parking lot! IIRC, it was at Nassau 1-2 years ago that an RCCL Ship – I assume it was Enchantment – was trying to maneuver into or out of its berth during high winds and was pushed into its neighbor, with both vessels suffering damage. We could definitely see how this could happen with so many ships so close together. We were there with NCL Sky and Carnival Sunshine. Our balcony looked out to Carnival, so later in the day we got to watch them sail away when they left at 5PM. When they blasted their horn on the way out it really got the blood pumping! Enchantment is apparently the guest that keeps hanging around the door while you’re trying to get them to go away, leaving around 1130PM or so. At that time of night she lets off a couple of dainty toots rather than the big ‘ole bellow that the earlier departures used.

 

One nature note: Once the Sunshine left we were able to see the pier she’d been docked at. From our balcony we watched in fascination as the seagulls wheeled about and then, for reasons that we couldn’t fathom, began to land in a small section on the pier across from our berth. Seagulls were arriving from all points of the compass and – somehow – all decided that it was time to congregate. Over the course of about 15 minutes I’d guess that about 300 birds all landed in a 15’ x 15’ section of the dock. It was marvelous to see each bird cruise in and execute a pinpoint landing in a small space in the midst of all the other birds, and it was amazing that, once grounded, each bird pretty much stayed immobile in their selected spot. When they all responded to yet another unknown stimulus and all took flight at once that, too, was wonderful to behold.

 

This is probably a good place to mention a surprise at the bars. On the Oasis we bought all our drinks at Schooner, and on the tables there were reasonably comprehensive drink menus. On Enchantment each venue that we were at (Boleros, Schooner, R Bar, and Solarium Bar) had their own private drink menus, showing only a subset of the entire set of offerings. So while you could pretty much order any drink at any bar, if you needed to rely on the menu for a reminder you could find yourself out of luck if the local bar didn’t include your desired drink as part of “their” list. As to pricing, we sampled virgin drinks for the boys (all USD $4), a couple drinks of the day ($7.75), and several non-premium mixed and/or frozen drinks ($10). I personally never found my "go-to" drink, not that I didn't enjoy the attempt – although I’m starting to believe a lot of that is due to the low-end rum, etc. of the $10 drinks. (I used to think premium alcohol was just a lot of marketing hype…until my senior year in college when my roommate and I tried to economize by buying bottom-of-the-shelf “Aggie Vodka” rather than Absolut. I became a true believer that the extra cost can make a HUGE difference!! J )

 

One of the perks of having a suite is that each evening the cabin attendant would leave us a copy of the following day’s dinner menu. You can, of course, find the daily menu displayed outside the MDR each day and get your information this way, but there’s no denying the convenience of having it delivered to your stateroom each day.

 

It should be noted that the printed menus we got in our stateroom were NOT 100% faithful reproductions of the actual MDR menu – I’d guess that there usually were 2-3 items available each night in the MDR that were NOT on our menus (and conversely 2-3 items on our menus not being served in the MDR). As they’ve tweaked the current MDR menus it doesn’t appear that they’ve bothered to reprint the room menus. For example, the MDR menus correctly reflected escargot, while the in-room menus showed the scallop-based version of the same dish.

 

Based on what we were seeing we all independently concluded that tonight’s Pomodoro menu offerings weren’t particularly appealing to any of us. So earlier in the morning I’d made our one and only use of the Concierge and had him change our pre-booked night 4 reservation at Chops to night 3 – i.e. tonight. So off we went to Chops, once again pausing along our way to enjoy the live music coming from the Centrum.

 

We had gone to Chops on Oasis and enjoyed it. However, the reason we enjoyed it had absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the steaks (which we consider to be pretty unremarkable) or the quality of the sides (ditto). Rather, we simply find the idea of eating at a dedicated steakhouse onboard a ship to be an fun, quirky novelty. The experience, not the cuisine, is the attraction. If we were on land I wouldn’t go to Chops – it isn’t worth it IMO. But tonight the novelty factor won. I was disappointed to find out that they were NOT offering the au poivre sauce option shown on the menu. I had planned to get the 9 oz filet (a cut of meat that I generally find to be tasteless, but the 9oz size was right where my appetite was that night) and make it palatable by adding a pepper sauce. Instead I went with the 12 oz NY strip, medium rare. (My wife’s and the boys’ attempts to order the smaller cuts turned out not to matter – the waiter said he’d being the larger cut anyway. Since we weren’t paying any extra for different size cuts there was no particular reason not to allow this to happen…so meat-fest ensued.) My steak was actually delivered rare rather than medium rare, but not so rare that it was worth sending back. We also didn’t have to make any decisions about which of the six sides to order – they simply brought us all six to share. We enjoyed chatting that night with our waiter, who was from India. As I was about to head out to Bangalore on business he gave us some stories of his home country.

 

We once again stopped off in the Centrum to enjoy live music on our way back to our cabin to change. My wife and I prefer to wear “work casual” for dinner, and we make sure the boys wear nice jeans rather than their normal choice of shorts. Amusingly, our 15 year old son had forgotten to pack ANY casual pants. Fortunately, his inseam is close enough to mine that he was able to make up the 6 inch difference in our waist sizes with some serious belt action – and so he was able to wear my blue jeans for dinner. (After the first night’s dinner he actually decided he preferred to wear his dress pants for dinner rather than dad’s baggy jeans.)

 

Once changed it was back to the Orpheum Theater for the late show from the headliner, Jeff the Juggler. Jeff was a very skilled juggler and entertaining. His tricks are all pretty standard, although his opening piece involving ping pong balls and paddles was a new variation. At one point he spoke about “The Art of Juggling” and then performed a joke-free routine accompanied by music that was, in fact, quite beautiful.

 

We then sent the boys off to bed while the wife and I stayed for the Love and Marriage game show. We hadn’t caught this on Oasis, so this was our first experience with it. For the small subset of folks not aware of what this is, the game is simply “The Newlywed Game”, with the three couples representing those married 0-5 year, 6-24 years, and 25+ years. The prospective (100% volunteer) contestants were asked by CD Marc to perform a nonsense chant while “selling” themselves in some entertaining way, after which the audience voted on the couple they wanted to see come up on stage for the game. The 3rd couple (married “43-ish” years) were, I assume, veterans of many prior cruises because they clearly “got it” and seemed to know exactly what was expected of them in terms of how they responded – with the end result being that they consistently kept the audience entertained and eventually won by going 6 for 6 in their responses – for which they won matching his/hers watches from the onboard watch store, by the way. The husband of the 0-5 year couple was entertaining in a “can’t tear your eyes away from this slow-motion car crash” kind of way. He seemed to be pretty drunk (fortunately not in a sloppy way - mostly a dopey way) when he came up on stage, and then proceeded to place three more beer orders from stage. This show is not vulgar (at least, not to us, but your mileage may vary)…but neither is it kid-friendly. So while they don’t specifically list it as being for 18+ year olds, parents are best advised to treat it this way.

 

At the end of the show CD Marc did his normal end-of-day wrap-up, and also mentioned that we might have some extra rocking and rolling of the ship that night because we were running away from Tropical Storm Joaquim – a storm that would prevent the cruise that was starting right after ours from attempting Nassau (substituting Freeport instead), and also cause that cruise to miss Coco Cay due to wind. In fact, Nassau would end up taking a huge pounding from the storm.

[crusinthrough]

Great detailed review.. thanks for taking the time to share.

[dstein]

Thursday, October 1: Sea Day

 

Our final full day started in the MDR for a more formal breakfast. The MDR was staying open an extra 30 minutes today (closing at 930AM instead of the 900AM of prior days) which made the difference for us as we generally couldn’t get moving in time to make the 900AM deadline. My oldest son and I both opted for Eggs Benedict (with a side of bacon because…well, just because :)) while my wife went with the pancakes and the youngest opted for granola and yogurt. The EB was OK – about the best one can expect from mass-produced hollandaise and poached eggs that no doubt remained soaking in a low-temp water bath all morning. We both remembered to order hash browns on the side – we should have thought about asking for a 3rd muffin half, too. (When I make it at home we both eat 3 eggs worth of EB.)

 

We finished up breakfast a little after 10AM and went straight over to Schooner Bar for “Morning Trivia”. We had a different host at each trivia event that we went to, but “Isaac….from Spain” is the only one who made enough of an impression for us to remember him. He was a hoot, and engaged in a lot of interaction with the audience. The fact that we won this round also helped us remember it! We actually won a 3-team playoff by correctly guessing the color of Isaac’s underwear. (Black, that particular day, for those wondering.) We walked out with priceless RCCL pens for our efforts. Oooh….ahhhh!

 

The next three hours included mostly relaxing in our stateroom, interrupted by lunch. In the cabin, the kids enjoyed the in-house TV channels, and there was some fun stuff featuring CD Marc and a prior Activities Director (I assume) playing various games involving different candies from the UK that they particularly liked.

 

Mid-afternoon we grabbed some window seats in the Centrum on Deck 6 and listened to the 200PM “80s & 90s Tune Trivia” being played on Centrum Deck 4. Good thing we didn’t attempt to enter this competition – we STUNK at ID’ing the theme songs. We got something like 5 out of 20. We then stayed on and listened to the Q&A of the production show singers and dancers at 230PM.

 

The next trivia was the 315PM Harry Potter Trivia down in Schooner, which was PACKED. Given that we like hanging in the Schooner we’d moved over from the Centrum at 245PM and therefore had seats, but this was the first (and only) time we saw people sitting on the floor. We also saw the highest concentration of kids here – overall, this cruise didn’t appear to have a large percentage of kids. Not surprising given that most kids probably didn’t have the luxury of a school vacation like we did. However, there were still a large number of “adult-only” teams there. Lots of passion about the Potterverse in the room! This is apparently a pretty new trivia topic and they are still tweaking the questions – I’d say that close to 80% of the teams scored at least 20 of 25 points. There were really only 2 questions that weren’t universally known and therefore acted as the main differentiators. We had 23 of 25 right…which wasn’t enough to make the 3 team playoff made from those teams who got 24 of 25.

 

We finally made a visit to the photo gallery pre-dinner, mostly to say that we’d been there. Buying the available photos isn’t generally something we’d do. Most pictures were $10-$20 each which is over-priced…but IIRC this may have been a bargain compared to Oasis. For some reason I feel like the cheapest photo on Oasis was $30. Probably wrong, as I would assume pricing is pretty standardized across the fleet…but, all the same, I didn’t have the same feeling of “huge ripoff” as I recall having on Oasis.

 

Our final MDR dinner was next and included the (new) standard parade of staff down the grand staircase. Because the staff all have to assemble in order to march, this dinner took longer than prior evenings because there was a long gap between dinner and dessert. Not a problem, just an observation. We fall firmly in the camp of passengers who do NOT want to be expected to sing/applaud/dance on command, so the lower-key ceremony compared to last year’s Oasis trip was much appreciated by us.

 

Post-dinner we were disappointed that there was no live music in the Centrum this evening. There was a demo of martini mixology instead, so we repaired to Schooner Bar once more to listen to Ronilo on the piano while we waited for the Farewell Production Show. While in Schooner we saw the Adventure Ocean Pirate Parade pass by the doorway, so we wandered back to the Centrum to watch a few minutes of the kids performing before making our final trip back to the Orpheum. I assume that this farewell show also follows a predictable formula, including a pre-show video recap of onboard events of the past days and what is – I assume – a standard “thanks for cruising with us” song to close out the show. From here it was back to our cabin to pack up. Once again, we didn’t have the energy to stay awake for The Quest – so seeing that for the first time will have to wait!

[kusuriurikun]

Saturday September 26: Getting There

 

(snip)

 

We arrived at MCO around 7PM and, after picking up our bags, made our way to the Budget rental desk where we planned to grab our pre-reserved rental and get moving. Unfortunately, a long line greeted us. No big deal, we figured – how long can it take to get through the ten or so people in front of us? Turns out the answer was: a REALLY long time. Ridiculously long. Like an hour. We spent much of the time joking with the group behind us about the snail’s pace. Honestly, we cannot for the life of us figure out why every group in front of us was taking 10-15 minutes each to get their cars. Once we reached the desk and handed over our paperwork we were done in about 6 minutes. So why everyone else took so long is still a huge mystery.

 

We also ran into this with our pickup of our car back in September (we did a similar "KSC and Enchantment" thing). In our case, the flight we were on from Midway arrived some 20 minutes early and thus there was a mix of Sudden Unexpected Flood of People from Southwest Flight, Half Budget Crew on Dinner Break, and A Ludicrous Number Of Folks Who Were Apparently Unfamiliar With The Concept Of Actually Pre-Reserving A Car and thus whom were reserving on site (which is the 15min process).

 

The ensuing failstorm pretty much delayed us an hour (so much for getting there early lol)--and yes, this was roughly the same arrival time as yours (around 8:00ish) so this may be a problem more with later arrivals. Dunno.

[dstein]

A Ludicrous Number Of Folks Who Were Apparently Unfamiliar With The Concept Of Actually Pre-Reserving A Car.

 

Hey, we saw that show, too! :) One of the things we joked about with the folks behind us was that they should get out chairs because we planned to engage the agents in discussions about opening up our own Budget franchise, and/or renting every remaining car in stock. Seemed like that was the only kind of discussion that could justify the length of time it was taking everyone in front of us.

[dstein]

Thursday, October 1: Sea Day

 

Our final full day started in the MDR for a more formal breakfast. The MDR was staying open an extra 30 minutes today (closing at 930AM instead of the 900AM of prior days) which made the difference for us as we generally couldn’t get moving in time to make the 900AM deadline. My oldest son and I both opted for Eggs Benedict (with a side of bacon because…well, just because J) while my wife went with the pancakes and the youngest opted for granola and yogurt. The EB was OK – about the best one can expect from mass-produced hollandaise and poached eggs that no doubt remained soaking in a low-temp water bath all morning. We both remembered to order hash browns on the side – we should have thought about asking for a 3rd muffin half, too. (When I make it at home we both eat 3 eggs worth of EB.)

 

We finished up breakfast a little after 10AM and went straight over to Schooner Bar for “Morning Trivia”. We had a different host at each trivia event that we went to, but “Isaac….from Spain” is the only one who made enough of an impression for us to remember him. He was a hoot, and engaged in a lot of interaction with the audience. The fact that we won this round also helped us remember it! We actually won a 3-team playoff by correctly guessing the color of Isaac’s underwear. (Black, that particular day, for those wondering.) We walked out with priceless RCCL pens for our efforts. Oooh….ahhhh!

 

The next three hours included mostly relaxing in our stateroom, interrupted by lunch. In the cabin, the kids enjoyed the in-house TV channels, and there was some fun stuff featuring CD Marc and a prior Activities Director (I assume) playing various games involving different candies from the UK that they particularly liked.

 

Mid-afternoon we grabbed some window seats in the Centrum on Deck 6 and listened to the 200PM “80s & 90s Tune Trivia” being played on Centrum Deck 4. Good thing we didn’t attempt to enter this competition – we STUNK at ID’ing the theme songs. We got something like 5 out of 20. We then stayed on and listened to the Q&A of the production show singers and dancers at 230PM.

 

The next trivia was the 315PM Harry Potter Trivia down in Schooner, which was PACKED. Given that we like hanging in the Schooner we’d moved over from the Centrum at 245PM and therefore had seats, but this was the first (and only) time we saw people sitting on the floor. We also saw the highest concentration of kids here – overall, this cruise didn’t appear to have a large percentage of kids. Not surprising given that most kids probably didn’t have the luxury of a school vacation like we did. However, there were still a large number of “adult-only” teams there. Lots of passion about the Potterverse in the room! This is apparently a pretty new trivia topic and they are still tweaking the questions – I’d say that close to 80% of the teams scored at least 20 of 25 points. There was really only 2 questions that weren’t universally known and therefore acted as the main differentiators. We had 23 of 25 right…which wasn’t enough to make the 3 team playoff made out of those who got 24 of 25.

 

We finally made a visit to the photo gallery pre-dinner, mostly to say that we’d been there. Buying the available photos isn’t generally something we’d do. Most pictures were $10-$20 each which is over-priced…but IIRC this may have been a bargain compared to Oasis. For some reason I feel like the cheapest photo on Oasis was $30. Probably wrong, as I would assume pricing is pretty standardized across the fleet…but, all the same, I didn’t have the same feeling of “huge ripoff” as I recall having on Oasis.

 

Our final MDR dinner was next and included the (new) standard parade of staff down the grand staircase. Because the staff all have to assemble in order to march, this dinner took longer than prior evenings because there was a long gap between dinner and dessert. Not a problem, just an observation. We fall firmly in the camp of passengers who do NOT want to be expected to sing/applaud/dance on command, so the lower-key ceremony compared to last year’s Oasis trip was much appreciated by us.

 

Post-dinner we were disappointed that there was no live music in the Centrum this evening. There was a demo of martini mixology instead, so we repaired to Schooner Bar once more to listen to Ronilo on the piano while we waited for the Farewell Production Show. While in Schooner we saw the Adventure Ocean Pirate Parade pass by the doorway, so we wandered back to the Centrum to watch a few minutes of the kids performing before making our final trip back to the Orpheum. I assume that this farewell show also follows a predictable formula, including a pre-show video recap of onboard events of the past days and what is – I assume – a standard “thanks for cruising with us” song to close out the show. From here it was back to our cabin to pack up. Once again, we didn’t have the energy to stay awake for The Quest – so seeing that for the first time will have to wait!

[dstein]

Friday, October 2: Escape!

 

We had opted for self-carry exit, which allowed us to debark any time between 720AM-830AM. Had we chosen to remain for standard departure, as Suite guests we would have gathered at R Bar on Centrum Deck 4 for an 830AM departure. (Suite guests and disabled guests were the only ones assigned to the Centrum.)

 

Since we were renting a car to get back to Orlando and had a lot of time to kill before our 345PM flight, our original plan had been to skip breakfast onboard, exit the ship around 815AM, and grab something after we had the car. With no particular need to rush, we could have slept in until about 715AM. Despite that, we still set our alarms for 530AM because we had learned during our trip to KSC at the start of the week that a rocket launch was scheduled for 600AM! On embarkation day our starboard side cabin was facing Cape Canaveral so we knew if we returned in the same orientation we’d have a front row seat.

 

We were still pulling into Port Canaveral at 550AM when we passed an electronic signboard in the channel that warned that a rocket launch was scheduled. We were tied up at the pier around 600AM, once again facing the Cape. Suddenly around 610AM there was a very bright light in the distance that rapidly rose into the air, leaving a smoke trail that was visible even in the blackness of the morning – and then came the rolling thunder. One of the tidbits we’d learned at KSC was that, on the launch pad, most of the billowing “smoke” you see is actually steam, caused by them emptying the contents of the pad’s water tower into the blast tunnels moments before the rockets fire. The reason for this is to dampen the sound. If they didn’t do this, apparently the sonic waves from something like an Apollo or shuttle launch would have broken windows in four counties! Seeing a rocket launch was a personal bucket list item for me – but one I frankly NEVER expected to actually experience. An incredible experience, and icing on top of our cruise cake!

 

Now wide awake and with over 90 minutes before our intended departure we decided we’d go ahead and have one last breakfast in WJ instead of waiting. It wasn’t the crazy zoo we expected – maybe the fact that we were there by 630AM helped us miss later risers? Back to the cabin to relax, and perform double/triple/quadruple checks of all drawers and closets to make sure we had everything, and then down to Deck 4 to self-exit at about 815AM. They had told us to expect to be out of the terminal within 5 minutes of exiting the ship and they weren’t lying. An RCCL employee was outside and pointed out where we’d find the Budget shuttle – which was just pulling in at that exact moment. On the shuttle and at Budget in another 6 minutes, and in our car about 3 minutes after that. Easy!

 

So, our cruise was officially over, but there was still one more act to our vacation. As mentioned, our flight out wasn’t until 345PM, so even allowing time to drive to Orlando, fit in lunch, and get to the airport in time to return the car and get through security…well, we were still going to have 2-3 hours to kill. So how best to fill time?

 

I was really excited to discover that Orlando has several different “Room Escape Games” available. I love these on the computer (google “Room Escape Game”) but trying a live-action version sounded like a lot of fun. Basically, your group is locked into a room and has 60 minutes to solve a series of puzzles in order to get out. The goal in most cases is to find keys or codes to various locks. We did “Pandemic” as found at http://americasescapegame.com/. They were located about 20 minutes away from the airport – so adding up the arrival window, the 60 minute game itself, and then travel to the airport, this detour helped us kill about 2 hours of time. More importantly, we had a blast! We didn’t manage to escape in the 60 minute time limit, but that was more than OK with us. (The staff told us that we’d gotten closer than most, but upon hearing what we still had left to do I think it would have taken us another 30 minutes to get to the end.)

 

A quick note about rental car return in Orlando. We expected that we’d run across a gas station after taking the airport exit, but it turns out that you are routed into the airport almost immediately after exiting the freeway. So if you intend to fill up your rental car tank before drop-off, you apparently need to take the airport exit, BUT THEN GO IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION, away from the airport, in order to find a gas station. We didn’t obsess over this – we just dropped the car knowing that Budget would charge us their per-gallon price to complete the fill-up of our tank. Given that we live the San Francisco Bay Area with some of the most expensive gas prices in the US, we felt like the $2.15/gallon fee was a bargain. (In San Jose on the same date, our gas was $3.07/gallon.)

 

From there it was all anti-climax. An uneventful flight with a 45 minute delay on our connection in Denver, gathering of luggage back in San Jose (and sharing the parking shuttle with one of the families we’d driven in with at the start of the trip!), and finally walking back into our house about 930PM calm, happy, and ready for our Alaskan adventure next summer!

 

 

Thanks for sticking through to the end of the trip report. Hope you found something of value that you can use to enjoy your next cruise!