JamieLogical's Live from the Enchanted Princess 5/4

[NRWPA]

I haven't read all the comments, so someone may have already given you this tip: take duct tape to put a small piece over the sensor for the "nightlight" - I can't believe anyone likes that spotlight glaring in your face when you're half awake. I do the duct tape thing every Princess cruise since they installed those lights. Also, I hope you canceled your bid if you wouldn't want to move to another cabin now. And, if you do specialty dining - Rudy's the Catch is the best seafood I've had on a ship. O'Malley's has a good casual dining menu and they've had some great Irish style entertainment in the past. I love Enchanted and will be on her twice more this year. I hope you enjoy it too!

[Torfamm]

19 minutes ago, NRWPA said:

 

I haven't read all the comments, so someone may have already given you this tip: take duct tape to put a small piece over the sensor for the "nightlight" - I can't believe anyone likes that spotlight glaring in your face when you're half awake. I do the duct tape thing every Princess cruise since they installed those lights

 

I hate those lights too. I always wrapped some painters tape around an old gift card and packed it. It works very well and is much less likely to damage surfaces than duct tape.

 

Last cruise on the Enchanted though, I put two magnetic hooks on the ceiling on either side of the closet light and used them to hold a black surgical mask in front of the sensor every night. It worked better for me since I like the light to function when we aren’t sleeping. Putting the mask up was easier for me than retaping every night.

[JamieLogical]

2 hours ago, doghog said:

I like using the showers in the mens change room in the fitness center and in the spa. Huge showers and huge shower heads. We were surprised that the Enchanted had a shower curtain instead of a door in the cabin shower. Standard balcony. Never an issue. 

 

Why were you surprised it had a shower curtain? Every Princess ship, except the brand new Sun, which is a whole new class, has shower curtains. It's one of the main reasons I was reluctant to sail the line in the first place and one of the main reasons I haven't sailed the line again until now.

[doghog]

1 hour ago, JamieLogical said:

 

Why were you surprised it had a shower curtain? Every Princess ship, except the brand new Sun, which is a whole new class, has shower curtains. It's one of the main reasons I was reluctant to sail the line in the first place and one of the main reasons I haven't sailed the line again until now.

Why, I thought, assumed being a fairly new ship (2020) Princess would have installed glass doors for their showers. As I said we adjusted. No biggie. Won't keep us from continuing to cruise with Princess.  Looking forward to our October 2025 Royal cruise. 

[kpark895]

On 4/27/2024 at 10:24 AM, JamieLogical said:

One week to go!!!! I made zero progress on cruise prep last night other than to help my husband flesh out his packing list a bit.

 

His new travel router arrived this morning. If we go on our August sailings he will need to work from the ship. His employer has a VPN that cannot be accessed from foreign IP addresses. So he would be unable to simply connect to his company's VPN from the ships's wifi. In order to do that, he basically needs to double-up on the VPN-ing. This router was recommended by his boss who travels internationally a lot. It allows him to connect to a personal VPN like Nord VPN or OpenVPN and then connect from THAT to his company's VPN. We want to test it all out on this sailing to make sure it works before making final payment on the August cruise.

 

Hi Jamie. Can you let me know a little more about this router, and once cruising, how everything works?  My daughter, who sometimes has to work while on vacation, hasn't been able to connect to her work's VPN, and their IT department (small, as this is a non-profit) doesn't seem to have a clue.  Perhaps your husband has the answer!  Thanks!

[JamieLogical]

1 hour ago, kpark895 said:

 

Hi Jamie. Can you let me know a little more about this router, and once cruising, how everything works?  My daughter, who sometimes has to work while on vacation, hasn't been able to connect to her work's VPN, and their IT department (small, as this is a non-profit) doesn't seem to have a clue.  Perhaps your husband has the answer!  Thanks!

 

He got this router: https://www.amazon.com/GL-iNet-GL-AXT1800-Pocket-Sized-Extender-Repeater/dp/B0B2J7WSDK/

 

On Saturday, he spent some time getting it set up with the VPN to just test it out with our home wifi network so that, theoretically, all he will need to do on the ship is connect it to the ship's wifi.

 

You have to subscribe to a personal VPN service like Nord VPN. He subscribed to one called Proton, which is a little cheaper. Whichever VPS service you choose must support the OpenVPN or WireGuard framework (many support both). He found that the WireGuard configuration ran much faster.

 

I won't say it was super easy to configure, but there are YouTube videos that will walk you through it. The next hurdle will be connecting it to the ship's wifi, since that uses a captive portal interface (which this router does support). Captive portal is the type of wifi connection interface that most ships and hotels have where you have to navigate to a web page to log into the wifi network. He was able to get it to connect to our home wifi just fine, but of course, that is not a captive portal.

 

Sorry that is a lot of technical info. I don't think this sort of setup will be very useful for people who aren't tech-savvy enough to handle all the configuration that goes into it.

 

 

[JamieLogical]

Five days to go! Honestly didn't do much cruise prep over the weekends at all. As mentioned above, my husband worked on configuring his travel router so he will be able to test that out on this sailing. We cleaned the house and did our last grocery trip over the weekend as well. I have a growing (not shrinking) list of things I need to do before Friday. I am hoping to start some packing tonight. I was supposed to go to the bank on my lunch break today to get cash out for tips and such, but ran out of time, so that will have to wait until tomorrow.

 

Work is going to be incredibly hectic through Wednesday and I may need to work late tomorrow night, so that's another wrinkle in trying to get all my cruise prep done.

[JamieLogical]

Four days to go! I managed to get a few cruise prep tasks accomplished last night. I charged up my Kindle and downloaded my latest books. I ran Windows Updates on my Microsoft Surface, which I only use when I travel, so it hadn't been updated since my last cruise in February. And, I packed all my medications and the toiletries that I could. I still have some toiletries that will need to be packed at the last minute.

 

Today I plan to get to the bank to get cash out, since I didn't accomplish that yesterday. I also need to buy my Princess Gift Cards from AARP to use for my casino spending. I want to buy them today, since it's the last day of the month and I will need to buy more to make final payment on our August cruise if we intend to go on that. You can only buy five per month, so I want to save my May five for that sailing.

 

We have trivia tonight, so I don't imagine I will get much more done tonight. I will really have to kick it into high gear tomorrow!

[suzyed]

On 4/27/2024 at 12:42 PM, JamieLogical said:

 

Why were you surprised it had a shower curtain? Every Princess ship, except the brand new Sun, which is a whole new class, has shower curtains. It's one of the main reasons I was reluctant to sail the line in the first place and one of the main reasons I haven't sailed the line again until now.

Reluctant because it has a shower curtain?

[JamieLogical]

3 minutes ago, suzyed said:

Reluctant because it has a shower curtain?

 

Yeah, if you go back and read my earlier posts in this thread and my Live Blog from the Emerald Princess, you will see that I have a long and turbulent past with Princess shower curtains.

[suzyed]

On 4/25/2024 at 5:49 AM, happy42cruise said:

I read on a different thread that the bed has a hard side & a soft side so it can be flipped over if you don't care for the side it is currently on.  I've never had an issue with the beds so I can't speak from experience.  I think you can also ask for a topper if you find it's too hard.

I think the beds are VERY comfortable! The only one better is ours at home!

[Honolulu Blue]

52 minutes ago, JamieLogical said:

We have trivia tonight, so I don't imagine I will get much more done tonight.

This intrigues me... trivia as in going down to the local pub and competing with the locals, or staying at home and breaking out the box of Trivial Pursuit?  Either way, I think I'll give you a wide berth if I see you on my ship.  Then again, I'm only good at trivia in a few categories. 🙂

[Torfamm]

2 hours ago, JamieLogical said:

Four days to go! I managed to get a few cruise prep tasks accomplished last night. I charged up my Kindle and downloaded my latest books. I ran Windows Updates on my Microsoft Surface, which I only use when I travel, so it hadn't been updated since my last cruise in February. And, I packed all my medications and the toiletries that I could. I still have some toiletries that will need to be packed at the last minute.

 

Today I plan to get to the bank to get cash out, since I didn't accomplish that yesterday. I also need to buy my Princess Gift Cards from AARP to use for my casino spending. I want to buy them today, since it's the last day of the month and I will need to buy more to make final payment on our August cruise if we intend to go on that. You can only buy five per month, so I want to save my May five for that sailing.

 

We have trivia tonight, so I don't imagine I will get much more done tonight. I will really have to kick it into high gear tomorrow!

In case you hadn’t thought of it, your husband can also buy five gift cards each month.

[JamieLogical]

31 minutes ago, Torfamm said:

In case you hadn’t thought of it, your husband can also buy five gift cards each month.

 

Oh, that is an excellent point. I tend to handle all the financials and travel planning, so it didn't even occur to me that we could do some of it in his name/account!

[JamieLogical]

Three days to go! As predicted, I didn't have time to do anything last night due to trivia (we tied for first!), but I did get a few things done during the day. I got my pet-sitting instructions/schedule updated, I went to the bank to get cash for tips, and I ordered my AARP gift cards, confirmed their balances, and printed them out.

 

Today will be a much bigger day. I plan to get my laundry done, pack my backpack, pack the stuff that's going into our shared checked bag, and paint my toenails. Tomorrow night the plan is to pack my bundle, clean, and get everything situated with the pets. Our flight leaves at 4:43pm on Friday and I will be working all day, so I won't really have any time to do anything on Friday except last-minute toiletries and such before work.

[kpark895]

Jamie, thanks for all of the info on the travel router/VPNs.  Forwarded to my daughter and she will have to decide whether it's something she wants to/can tackle.

[richsea]

Thanks for doing this live from! Looking forward to following along. 
 

Have fun!

[JGmf]

4 hours ago, JamieLogical said:

I went to the bank to get cash for tips

 

Ha!  I did the same for my trip on the Enchanted last week....then I ran out of the singles and fives by Wednesday....way quicker than I thought I would....and had to go to guest services for more change.  The casino cashier, yes, is an option, but would only give me 5 singles at a time.

 

I do wish Princess had the bill breaker in the casino like on NCL ships instead of that little bodega ATM they have...

[JamieLogical]

Two days to go!!!! Made a lot of progress last night. First I did all of my laundry and while that was running, my husband and I sat down to go over our packing lists and determine if we need to bring a checked bag. On our most recent cruises, we have flown first class and got checked bags for free, so have been sharing a checked bag. However, this time we are not flying first class and this is a shorter cruise (we have been doing a lot of 11-12 day cruises), so we would like to avoid checking a bag, if possible.

 

So, we reviewed our lists and decided to give it a shot. Another factor is that I had to downsize to a smaller backpack since we aren't in first class. The backpack I've been traveling with lately is huge and may not qualify as a "personal item" on Jet Blue. It hasn't been an issue when we've been flying first class, because I had just been checking my roller bag and only carrying on my backpack, in which case it was counting as my carry-on and I've been putting it in the overhead bin. Since I will actually be carrying on my carry-on-sized roller bag, I don't know if I can get away with bringing my big backpack as my personal item. So, last night I tried squeezing all of my backpack stuff into a normal school-sized backpack. It was a VERY tight fit and some stuff is just going to have to squeeze into my roller bag with my bundle tonight.

 

We'll see how things go with packing our roller bags. If we can't get everything to fit, I am just going to transfer everything into my bigger backpack and risk being forced to pay to gate check my roller bag. I have no issues gate checking my roller bag for free and might offer that when I get to the gate tomorrow, but not every airline lets you do that for every flight.

 

In other cruise prep progress, I painted my toenails last night. That is always a big production that I hate very much, but I endure it so as to avoid causing my fellow passengers to vomit if/when I wear sandals around the ship.

 

The big tasks for tonight are to pack our bundles and clean the house a bit. I also need to stop by the grocery store quickly to get fresh salad fixin's for our lizards. Then all that will be left for tomorrow morning are last-minute toiletries, running the dishwasher, and feeding the pets.

 

I guess I will go ahead and leave my usual PSA about the wonder of bundle packing here. If you don't know what bundle packing is, watch this video. It will change your life!

 

 

[avonlady6390]

There is no way I could go on a 7 day cruise with a small carry on and back pack or tote bag I just think I have to take more clothes than I really need!😀

[JamieLogical]

30 minutes ago, avonlady6390 said:

There is no way I could go on a 7 day cruise with a small carry on and back pack or tote bag I just think I have to take more clothes than I really need!😀

 

Watch that bundle packing video I linked! You would be amazed how much you can fit in a roller bag carry-on with that method.

[Nattyg1723]

4 hours ago, JamieLogical said:

In other cruise prep progress, I painted my toenails last night. That is always a big production that I hate very much, but I endure it so as to avoid causing my fellow passengers to vomit if/when I wear sandals around the ship.

This made me laugh so hard 🤣 

 

I totally get it, I am the same way, I never want someone to become incapacitated should they lay eyes on my ghastly clodhoppers 🤣🤣

[F355c5]

Day 2 is formal night, yes.?

[JamieLogical]

1 hour ago, F355c5 said:

Day 2 is formal night, yes.?

 

That would be my best guess. Not sure when they will do the second formal night, since the only other sea day is the last day of the sailing and they don't like to do it the last night due to people needing to pack and get their luggage put out.

[F355c5]

2 minutes ago, JamieLogical said:

 

That would be my best guess. Not sure when they will do the second formal night, since the only other sea day is the last day of the sailing and they don't like to do it the last night due to people needing to pack and get their luggage put out.

Thank you