JamieLogical's Live from the Enchanted Princess 8/10

[JamieLogical]

Our plane made it safely out of Buffalo on time on its way back to Atlanta. The flight from Atlanta back to Rochester is still showing as on time and I think that one has a lower risk, because it seems like the storm should be moving on from Rochester by the time it is scheduled to arrive. Hopefully, that means our 6:43 flight from Rochester to Atlanta will be on time and we can cancel those refundable reservations for tomorrow and enjoy First Class!

 

I did check on the plane that we will be on from Atlanta to West Palm Beach as well. That one is on its way from Boston to Atlanta on time right now. Its next flight is to/from Washington DC. Reagan does have a warning that it is experiencing delays right now, but hopefully, those will be worked out by the time our plane is headed back there.

[JamieLogical]

We are physically seated on the plane! Scheduled to take off 20 minutes late, which should be fine for making our connection in Atlanta.

[Scottdalfonso]

At least you're on the plane! Hoping everything goes nice and smooth for ya!

[JamieLogical]

On the ground in Atlanta, waiting for our flight to West Palm Beach. Our plane is running 16 minutes late according to Flight Aware, but the Delta app says we are still going to be departing on time at 10:01.

[azbirdmom]

48 minutes ago, JamieLogical said:

On the ground in Atlanta, waiting for our flight to West Palm Beach. Our plane is running 16 minutes late according to Flight Aware, but the Delta app says we are still going to be departing on time at 10:01.

 

As long as there is a functioning plane at your gate you should be fine.  And you're close enough that if you had to rent a car you could make it.  Would be exhausting but you have a whole heckuva lot of options where you are now, but I know you will make it now.

[JamieLogical]

I am very grateful to be sitting in First Class for our flights this evening instead of rows 37 and 43 on our backup flights tomorrow!

[cruisebeachgirl703]

6 hours ago, JamieLogical said:

I am very grateful to be sitting in First Class for our flights this evening instead of rows 37 and 43 on our backup flights tomorrow!

That's great. Looking forward to following along!

[JamieLogical]

We made it to the hotel around 1:30am and I immediately struggled to brush my teeth and go to sleep, so I am sorry for not posting a final update last night. While onboard our flight to PBI, I was able to cancel the backup flights I had booked for this morning, so I should see the refund on my credit card within 5 business days.

 

We are staying at the Embassy Suites West Palm Beach, which is blessedly close to the airport, which made for a very short Uber ride last night.

 

This morning we have a pre-scheduled Uber arriving at 9:00am to take us down the Ft. Lauderdale.

 

It's cruise day!!!!

[EllieinNJ]

Hi Jamie.  We are doing this cruise for the second time the opposite way in November.  We booked mostly Princess excursions since we had tons of OBC to use but will follow along to see what you are doing in the ports.  Have a great time.

[kalkal]

Hi Jamie.  So glad weather cleared enough upstate.  Followed you may cruise and done it in June.  Now, we will do this cruise in November.  Really enjoyed a lot of your drink ideas.  The Clover Breezes were so good.  Give us more suggestions.  Also, any hints on things you do on islands.  Have a grand time and will follow daily.

[Honolulu Blue]

1 hour ago, JamieLogical said:

We made it to the hotel around 1:30am and I immediately struggled to brush my teeth and go to sleep, so I am sorry for not posting a final update last night. While onboard our flight to PBI, I was able to cancel the backup flights I had booked for this morning, so I should see the refund on my credit card within 5 business days.

 

We are staying at the Embassy Suites West Palm Beach, which is blessedly close to the airport, which made for a very short Uber ride last night.

 

This morning we have a pre-scheduled Uber arriving at 9:00am to take us down the Ft. Lauderdale.

 

It's cruise day!!!!

I'm glad you made it to Fort Lauderdale safe and sound. We forgive your alleged transgressions.  😇

 

Have a great cruise!

[sandybeaches44]

1 hour ago, EllieinNJ said:

Hi Jamie.  We are doing this cruise for the second time the opposite way in November.  We booked mostly Princess excursions since we had tons of OBC to use but will follow along to see what you are doing in the ports.  Have a great time.

Hi Jamie, We too will be following you, Glad the weather cooperated for you. It's a beautiful day in the sunshine state today. The Southern Caribbean is one of my favorite itineraries. 

 Have an enchanting time on the Enchanted Princess.  

We will be bringing the ship back to Florida in November.

 

[Scottdalfonso]

Cruise day! 

[Maleficent's Dad]

2 hours ago, JamieLogical said:

This morning we have a pre-scheduled Uber arriving at 9:00am to take us down the Ft. Lauderdale.

Let the good times roll!  It’s cruise day and I’m looking forward to following along.

[cruisebeachgirl703]

On Board? How is your day? Check in? Days drinks?

[rhobbkf]

Look for Marvin at the Crown Grill bar (ask for his Raspberry Creme Brulee martini!) and Lorena too!  Grace in Take 5 always has a smile.  And Olga at O'Malleys.  We just got off and those were just a few of our favorite people!  Tell them Keith and MaryAnne said we miss them already!

[JamieLogical]

Will obviously do a full post about today in the morning, but we made it onboard really early, enjoyed drinks and lunch, and then a nap. We got unpacked before sail away and now we are cruising!

[avonlady6390]

Have a wonderful cruise I'll be on her in November 25 a 10 Southern😊

[JamieLogical]

For those of you who are new to my Live Blogs, this is how things usually go when I am onboard. Each morning I will type up and post a blog about the events of the previous day. I type these up in Google Docs and then copy/paste them here so that there isn't a risk of losing my connection and having Cruise Critic eat my post. When I copy/paste from Google Docs, no matter what I do, the text always comes over as bold. If I try to paste as plain text, I lose all my line breaks. So my daily blog posts will be in bold. I make one post containing my write-up and then immediately follow that with a separate post containing all my photos from the previous day. The reason I do that is because I type up my blog on my laptop, but I post all the pictures from my phone.

 

Yesterday was embarkation day! I woke up a few minutes before my alarm, which was set for 7:30. I am usually up well before that, but having not gotten into the hotel until around 1:30, we needed the extra sleep. My husband showered first while I made myself some coffee in the little brewer in the room. It wasn’t as bad as room-brewed coffee usually is. I then showered while my husband went down to breakfast.

 

We stayed in the Embassy Suites West Palm Beach and it seemed like a pretty nice hotel, though we didn’t take much advantage of what it had to offer. I honestly barely even looked at the room before crashing after we arrived. I liked that, unlike the Holiday Inn Express we stayed at in Ft. Lauderdale back in May, this hotel had lights in the bathroom, a functional shower, and adult-sized bath towels.

 

We had pre-scheduled an Uber to pick us up at 9:00. I had done a lot of research on transportation to the cruise terminal from West Palm Beach. The whole reason we flew into PBI was that it was a couple of hundred dollars cheaper than flying first class into FLL. But we didn’t want to offset all that savings with expensive ground transportation.

 

My first thought was Brightline since we were planning this trip right around the same time Princess announced its new partnership. But basic tickets from PBI to FLL would have run us about $50 each and, while there is a free shuttle from the train station to the cruise terminal at the FLL end, we still would have had to Uber/Lyft from our hotel to the train station in West Palm Beach. I also looked at Tri-rail, which would have been MUCH cheaper, but also slower and I was worried it might be a bit challenging with our extra bag. One of us would have had to manage two roller bags the whole time.

 

Ultimately, pre-booking an Uber was only going to cost $54 and had the convenience of picking us up from our hotel and dropping us off directly at the cruise terminal, so we went with that. It worked out great! Our diver arrived at 9:00 on the dot and had us dropped off with our luggage just before 10:00.

 

There was already a decent-sized lineup outside the terminal. Fortunately, it was cooler than it had been when we were in the same line in May, so we weren’t as miserable waiting outside. The line began moving shortly after we joined it. We joined the line at 9:57 and we entered the interior of the terminal at 10:13. We were through security at 10:18 and had to wait VERY briefly in a short line in the green lane (one couple ahead of us). We had our medallions at 10:21. We were walking onto the ship at 10:23. So very smooth process overall.

 

Once onboard, the very first thing we saw was a table to purchase/upgrade your package. As you may recall, I spent over three hours trying to do this via chat and over the phone to disastrous results, so it was pretty funny when I was able to do it in under five seconds onboard. They showed me that the total cost would be $560 as we expected, instead of the $1512 I almost ended up having to pay with the whole chat/phone debacle.

 

We headed down to Good Spirits for our first cruise drinks. I traditionally like to go with a mojito for my first cruise drink, even though I know it is a hassle for the bartenders to make. All the girls at Good Spirits were the same ones who had been working there back in May and they recognized us. We had a great chat with a couple who sat down next to us who had also been on that same May sailing as us, though we didn’t recognize them.

 

We ended up staying for a round of Kraken & Cokes after I spied that they had Kraken, which is my favorite mixing rum. I don’t remember there being Kraken onboard in May, but I might have to go back and check my blog.

 

We watched the safety video on our phones while we enjoyed our drinks. After we finished our drinks, we went searching for our muster station. The app said it was at Crooners, but we couldn’t find anyone stationed there to scan our medallions. We ended up asking someone and they had the station set up across the piazza from Crooners in front of one of the shops. We swiped our medallions and then headed to Gigi’s for lunch.

 

I was a little disappointed to see that the maitre d and our favorite server from the May sailing weren’t there, but we still had a pleasant experience. We shared the antipasto (sorry I took the pic when it was half eaten!), a pepperoni pizza (sorry, forgot to take a pic altogether!), and the tiramisu. I had a glass of champagne because I could.

 

After we finished lunch, it was exactly noon and we decided to go see if our room was ready early and at least drop off my giant backpack that I was getting tired of lugging around. We gave up on the mid-ship elevators as there were a million people trying to use them. So even though our room is right next to the mid-ship elevators, we went to the forward elevators. It was fortuitous that we did, because right as we turned down our hallway, we spotted three of our four bags sitting right there. We went ahead and grabbed them and took them to our room with us.

 

Our room was ready. My husband had had some yellow roses delivered, so that was a very pleasant sight. I took all my usual stateroom pics and then we decided to put on the do not disturb and take a nap. Well apparently the do not disturb is worthless, because as we were both sound asleep, someone, presumably our steward, knocked and then just came right in. He said “sorry” and left. I never even saw him. But when we woke up from our nap, our other bag and some footrests for our balcony were in the hallway outside our door.

 

It was already 2:30 when we woke up from our nap so we groggily headed down to the International Cafe for some coffee. I was surprised to see no line at all there. We sat in the piazza and listened to the string duo, LA Strings (I think?) try to play and get interrupted by announcements three times in rapid succession. First, an announcement from the cruise director saying that our departure was going to be delayed because they were still bringing supplies onboard, then an announcement that 600 people still hadn’t completed the muster drill, then another announcement from the Captain about the delayed departure. I felt so bad for the performers. They would get three bars into a song and then get interrupted again.

 

While were were having our coffee, we checked the MDR menu for dinner and decided we didn’t need anything from it. Instead, we planned to have dinner at O’Malley’s. Since we had an hour until sailaway, we headed back to our room to get unpacked. I got changed into my cruise uniform, and then we headed up on deck to watch sailaway. First, we went up to deck 17, but I forgot that you have to go through the Fitness Center to get to the aft of the ship there. That was awkward and I was surprised to see quite a few people in there working out for sailaway. Then once we got to the Wakeview area, we realized that level was for smoking, so we quickly went down to Deck 16. We tried to sit out there for about 0.5 seconds before we decided it was just too hot and ended up sitting near the windows at the back of the buffet to watch sailaway.

 

Then we headed down to O’Malley’s to get a table well in advance of dinner. We brought some playing cards with us and played some Rummy, but we weren’t even through the second hand when Irish Wave started playing. Then we really just tried to get through that second hand quickly so we could enjoy the show and a couple of drinks.

 

We got the onion tower and we both had burgers. My husband had gotten the Irish Stew every time we ate there on our May sailing, so he was determined to try something new this time. He decided he liked the stew better, though he did enjoy his burger.

 

When we were up in the buffet for sailaway, I had tried to order an extra bath towel for our stateroom. The app said it had been delivered, so after dinner we headed up to see if it had been and also so I could get my AARP gift cards to take to guest services. Shocking no one, there was no extra towel. We decided to try again and have my husband order TWO extra towels through the app. He planned to go exploring and I planned to go spend the next hour in line at guest services.

 

While I was waiting in line, my husband texted me that his app showed the extra towels were delivered so he went to check for them and…. you guessed it! No towels. He asked me to ask about them at guest services while I was there, but before I actually got to the front of the line, he texted again saying he had run into our room steward in the hallway and gotten the extra towels.

 

My guest services experience was much better than it had been on our May sailing. While it did take me a while to get to the front of the line, once I was there, the person assisting me was able to do my gift cards, so I didn’t have to go wait in a separate line and then wait 45 minutes as the people ahead of me dug all of their gift card info out of their email. I was able to get a refund for the specialty dining we had booked with our credit card through the app before our Premier upgrade and I was able to get my five gift cards applied. I still think the gift card redemption process is more complicated than it should be, but it was relatively quick.

 

While I was still at guest services, my husband texted me that I would never guess who he ran into at Crooners. My first guess was the couple we had chatted with at Good Spirits. My second guess was Bon. Turns out my second guess was right! I went up to Crooners once I was done with my gift cards and there was Bon, my favorite bartender from our May sailing. Apparently he is no longer at Take 5 now that that has been turned into more casino space.

 

He was very busy when I got there but he did at least say hello. My husband was having a pleasant conversation with the couple next to him at the bar and I joined in. We had a really nice chat and then Bon was a little less busy and made me a drink. We hung out there for a bit and then went off in search of dessert. We checked the IC first but didn’t see anything that was calling our names. We then went up to the buffet and I got a chocolate caramel mouse cake thing and my husband got a tart.

 

On the way out, my husband grabbed a plate full of cookies. I headed to the casino and he dropped the cookies back in the room and then met me in the casino. I hit a decent jackpot pretty early in my play and decided to cash out right away. I then went searching for my husband and found him on some new machines on the non-smoking side that I don’t think were there on our last sailing. I sat down next to him and pulled out a $20 from my winnings to play with. I got up to $27 and cashed out again.

 

We decided to head back to the room to get to bed early. I did run up to Slice for my late-night pizza and to watch the end of the latest Ant-Man movie (I had already seen it in the theater). I scoped out the buffet for any other little treats and ended up trying one of the chocolate chip cookies my husband is so obsessed with. It was better than I thought it would be. At the mid-ship elevator bank, there was a shattered plate and four cookies on the floor. One of the spa workers who was there trying to sell spa services said one kid had knocked it out of another kid’s hands. There are a lot of kids on this sailing. More than I really expected with it being a 14-day, right before the start of school, and Princess.

 

I headed to bed and put out the room service card for 6:30-7:00 delivery.

 

Day's Drinks:

Mojito from Good Spirits

Run & Coke from Good Spirits 

Champagne from Gigi’s

Coffee w/ Bailey's 

Clover Breeze from O’Malley's 

Golden Gorse from O’Malley's 

French 77 from Crooners

 

Edited August 11 by JamieLogical

[JamieLogical]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 11 by JamieLogical

[JGmf]

17 minutes ago, JamieLogical said:

We were walking onto the ship at 10:23. So very smooth process overall.

 

I was on the Enchanted last month, and then April before that.  Same excellent, smooth, and efficient embarkation for me too.  I remain very impressed with both Princess and the port operations in FLL. 

 

As you know @JamieLogical, it's a far cry from the clunky NYC embarkation experience with NCL.

[JamieLogical]

25 minutes ago, JGmf said:

 

I was on the Enchanted last month, and then April before that.  Same excellent, smooth, and efficient embarkation for me too.  I remain very impressed with both Princess and the port operations in FLL. 

 

As you know @JamieLogical, it's a far cry from the clunky NYC embarkation experience with NCL.

 

The main thing that Manhattan and Brooklyn have  going for them is not having to line up outside in 90 degree heat and 90% humidity. I do like that Princess boarding begins so early. I have never boarded NCL before 11:30 or so. The one time I was early enough to an MSC sailing out of Brooklyn, we boarded around 10:30, iirc.

[RNRcruisers]

Interesting bundle idea, thanks for the excellent details. In the other hand, ONE pair of shoes? Haha that would not work for me.

 

Nice stateroom! I’ve wanted to take a Southern Carib cruise for ages. Following with interest. 

[arizonaperson]

@JamieLogical

I am enjoying the following along and your blog and your pictures are great.
I thought when I read your bundling technique earlier this week that you only took a carry-on suitcase and that’s it. But you mentioned that three out of four suitcases were in the hallway when you got off the elevator going to your cabin, so I guess you take more than just the bundled carry-on?

[di234]

I love your trip reports. Very interested in following along. We will be doing the same cruise but opposite in November. Interested in seeing what you are doing on the islands. Thank again for doing a live trip report.