JamieLogical's Live from the Enchanted Princess 8/10

[southpawsdakota]

Curious as to whether there is a Most Traveled Luncheon or Coctail part on the Enchanted. A friend on the Sky said they are doing a Coctail party but we were recently on the Majestic and it was a luncheon.

[mdgary]

We were on the cruise before yours and my wife loved the Flanna’s Elixer in O’Malley’s. 

[beshears]

I just seen you were getting ready to do the 14 day cruise on the Enchanted, and that CAUGHT my attention. 🙂 The 8 of us just did the Regal in February of this year, and since everyone seemed to like the Regal so much, we are doing the Enchanted the 28th of February next year for a 10 day southern cruise. If you have never been to San Juan, my opinion is it is wonderful! You mentioned of having a list, and believe you me, whether I am leaving my Kansas City home and going to our lake home, or traveling elsewhere, I always have a list with just about everything on it. As I am putting items in my luggage, or etc. I always mark them off. I plan to follow along as you two make your trip.

[beshears]

I love your brown, pink and green sweaters, as they look pretty similar to the ones I have. I do have white, black and tan too. I use them with sleeveless dresses, and they come in so handy.

[dreams_of_travel]

3 hours ago, southpawsdakota said:

Curious as to whether there is a Most Traveled Luncheon or Coctail part on the Enchanted. A friend on the Sky said they are doing a Coctail party but we were recently on the Majestic and it was a luncheon.

That depends. No one would necessarily know there was to be a Most Traveled luncheon unless you were invited. I have cruised many times, and during my current B2B in Alaska, (Grand Princess round trip Vancouver) I qualified for that luncheon twice. This cruise only had about 100-ish platinum or elites, only about 30 qualified for the luncheon, and there is over 2000 first time cruisers.  They also had the usual Captains Circle cocktail party, which was sparse compared to some other cruises I’ve been on this year. 

[JamieLogical]

5 hours ago, southpawsdakota said:

Curious as to whether there is a Most Traveled Luncheon or Coctail part on the Enchanted. A friend on the Sky said they are doing a Coctail party but we were recently on the Majestic and it was a luncheon.

 

This one I can't help with at all. This is only our third Princess cruise so I am nowhere close to o being invited to such a think, if I exists.

[CRLess]

When we were on the Enchanted last month, we spent our pre-dinner time at the Crown Grill Bar with Blasco and Lorena.  In Crooners, we were happy to see Carmen back at sea after a few years off on her part.  If you run into any of them, especially Carmen, please let her know that Chris and Brenda say hello!

 

Enjoying your blog so far.  We were fortunate enough to do 360 on our cruise, and it was one of our most memorable dinners ever on Princess, and we have done many Chef's Tables and Wine Maker Dinners.  If you can sign up, I highly recommend it!

[suzyed]

13 hours ago, JamieLogical said:

Today was our first full sea day. Our room service breakfast arrived at exactly 6:30. We had selected 6:30-7:00. Since I am going to be working most mornings on this trip, we decided to just stick to the 6:30 wake-up time from my real life. I had my breakfast out on the balcony, but I was having trouble getting my laptop connected to wifi out there, so I ended up coming back inside. Once on the wifi, I worked on my blog and my husband played his Steam Deck for a long time. We were clearly going to miss MDR breakfast so we decided to lazily take our showers and get dressed for the day. By the time we were done with that, we realized that neither of us really wanted breakfast at all (besides my pizza muffin and his half a danish from room service), so we grabbed a board game and headed down to Good Spirits.

 

At Good Spirits, I went up to the bar to order our first round of drinks while my husband set up our game. At the bar, I ended up sitting right next to the same couple we had met there right when we boarded. The wife overheard me ordering a Champagne & Chambord and decided she really liked the sound of that, so she was going to order one next.

 

We played through our first round of Splendor Duel and then I was poking my phone and checking Cruise Critic. Someone posted to our roll call asking what date/ time the M&G was and I replied that it was in an hour at Take Five. I then decided to double-check and found the Google Sheet that the M&G signup was in and lo and behold, I was wrong. The M&G was right then! We quickly packed up our stuff, grabbed the second round of drinks that had just been delivered to our table, and headed over to Take Five, only a couple of minutes late.

 

The M&G was well attended. We got to make nametags for ourselves as we walked in and then we all just loitered and chatted. There were three officers there. I believe they were the Guest Services Manager, the Hotel Manager, and the Food & Beverage Manager, but don’t quote me on that. I didn’t get a chance to talk to any of them, because we were so busy chatting with our fellow Cruise Critics. We had a nice time and ended up staying way past the end time of 11:00, chatting with @Canuker and his wife.

 

At that point, it was time to decide what to do about lunch. They were doing Pub Lunch in the MDR, but we decided to do Pub Lunch in the actual pub. So we headed to O’Malley’s. This time I got the onion soup and the other burger option (the Blue Cheese one). My husband got the crab dip and decided to try the fish & chips. My Blue Cheese burger came without any blue cheese on it, but that was the only snafu and was quickly remedied. My husband said the fish & chips were okay, but still likes the stew better. I suspect that he will be ordering the stew for the remainder of this trip now that he has tied two other items and has been less impressed.

 

After lunch, we, of course, headed back to our room for a nap. I napped HARD and didn’t even notice when my husband got up and left the room. I woke up around 2:30 and tried to text him, but my phone didn’t seem to be working. The text wouldn’t go through and I couldn’t get on any websites.

 

I headed down to International Cafe for my afternoon coffee and then used the app to stalk my husband, who was at the Crown Grill bar. Once settled in there, I rebooted my phone and it was working fine, but my husband was having the same problem with his and rebooting didn’t help. We ignored that for the time being and played another round of Splendor Duel. I won that round, making us even for the trip so far. Also, while we were seated at the Crown Grill bar, my husband attempted to order us some drinks via the app and it worked! It took a long time, but we did actually receive our drinks. After that, I decided that I wanted to get my casino-ing done early in the day so that I could enjoy the evening activities. So, I headed off to the casino and left instructions for my husband to find me there later since his phone wasn’t working, so he couldn’t text me.

 

I then proceeded to rapidly lose my daily budget. On the bright side, I actually managed to acquire a drink from one of the roving servers, which I have never been able to do successfully in the casino on this ship. My husband managed to find me as I was cashing out my $.74 or whatever paltry amount I had left for the day.

 

I don’t remember the exact sequence of events after that, but I know we ended up in Crooners for some pre-dinner drinks and a quick chat with Bon. We then headed over to Ocean Terrace for dinner. I got the Octopus Nigiri and the Spice Salmon Roll. The Octopus Nigiri was AMAZING and I will order that every day for the rest of the cruise! The salmon roll was also good, but I had tried that on our May sailing, so that wasn’t a surprise.

 

After dinner, we decided it seemed like great hot tub weather, so we went back to the room and got changed into our swimsuits. We picked up some drinks from The Mix bar up on deck and then headed to the hot tubs overlooking The Retreat pool. There was one gentleman in the hot tub when we arrived, but he didn’t stay much longer after we arrived. We stayed for quite a long while. I found it interesting that the jets never timed out and there wasn’t a button we needed to press to restart them.

 

We went back to the room and changed. I decided I desperately needed a pizza muffin, so I stopped by the International Cafe while my husband headed to Princess Live where we planned to watch Karaoke, but it turned out we had the location wrong. Karaoke was being held in the Vista Lounge, so we moved over there. We ended up not staying long though, because my husband’s tolerance for bad singing is way lower than mine. We then headed to the theater, thinking the Adele tribute show started at 9:00, but we were wrong. It didn’t actually start until 9:30. So, we headed up to the buffet for some early late-night snack. We both got some fries from the Kids’ Corner and munched on those. My husband grabbed a brownie and some cookies to drop off back at the room.

 

The turnout for the Adele show was pretty nuts. There were people just standing in the aisles. The singer did a fantastic job. I was skeptical because Adele is Adele for a reason. It was going to be pretty hard to do her voice any justice, but this woman nailed it. The only thing I didn’t love was that she talked a lot between songs about stuff I really didn’t care about. I would have preferred less talking and more singing. During one of her long monologues, I lost my husband, as he got up to head off to bed.

 

After the show, I went up to Slice for my late-night pizza, then back to the room for bed.

 

Day's Drinks:

 

2x Champagne & Chambord from Good Spirits

Champagne & Chambord from Take Five

Golden Gorse from O’Malley's 

Coffee w/ Bailey's from International Cafe

Vodka & Ginger Ale from Ocean Now

Double Vodka & Ginger Ale from the Casino

French Martini from Crooners 

Mango & Strawberry Daiquiri from The Mix

 

Do they "charge" you for two drinks when you get a Champagne and Chambord? 

[JamieLogical]

8 hours ago, suzyed said:

Do they "charge" you for two drinks when you get a Champagne and Chambord? 

 

Not in my experience. At least I don't think so?

[Bimmer09]

13 hours ago, CRLess said:

When we were on the Enchanted last month, we spent our pre-dinner time at the Crown Grill Bar with Blasco and Lorena.  In Crooners, we were happy to see Carmen back at sea after a few years off on her part.  If you run into any of them, especially Carmen, please let her know that Chris and Brenda say hello!

 

Enjoying your blog so far.  We were fortunate enough to do 360 on our cruise, and it was one of our most memorable dinners ever on Princess, and we have done many Chef's Tables and Wine Maker Dinners.  If you can sign up, I highly recommend it!

Chris, we will be on Enchanted October 26. Where was Carmen working when you were onboard recently?

Norris

[CRLess]

21 minutes ago, Bimmer09 said:

Chris, we will be on Enchanted October 26. Where was Carmen working when you were onboard recently?

Norris

Norris,

 

She was in Crooners.  Not sure when her contract is up though.

[JamieLogical]

Yesterday was our second sea day and my first day attempting to work remotely from the ship. Trying to stick as closely as possible to my normal morning routine, we filled out the room service breakfast card to be delivered between 6:30 and 7:00. Once it was delivered, rather than dig in, I jumped in the shower and then had my coffee and pizza muffin after I was showered and dressed. I had some frustration trying to get my laptop to reconnect to the wifi, so I ended up just hotspotting my phone, which worked fine. I had my coffee and worked on my blog some and then when 8:00 rolled around, I connected to my work VPN and remote desktopped into my work computer. Then I ordered a mimosa through Ocean Now and it was actually delivered! I worked for about two hours and then I finished typing up my blog and headed down to Good Spirits to meet my husband.

 

The table my husband had snagged at Good Spirits was too small to accommodate Splendor Duel and there were no larger tables available, so after acquiring a Champagne and Chambord, we headed up to the Crown Grill Bar where there are bigger tables and less activity (since the bar is closed in the mornings). At some point, we fetched a second round of Champagne and Chambords from Princess Live while we enjoyed our game. I lost, so my husband is now up 2-1 for the cruise so far.

 

We had decided on the MDR for lunch, so we eventually headed back to our room to drop our stuff off and then went down to Amalfi right at noon, when they were set to open for lunch. Well, my theory that Amalfi is the “super secret” dining room since you can only get to it from the aft elevators was apparently incorrect. There was a long line out the door. Fortunately, that was moving fast and we were seated pretty quickly. Despite the dining room allegedly opening at noon and us being seated by 12:05 (the time stamp of the photos I took of the menu), there were people who already had their appetizers by the time we got water. We waited for what seemed like forever to even be able to place our order and then people were finished with their entrees before we even got our appetizers. I feel like this ALWAYS happens to us in MDRs for breakfast/lunch and this is why my husband hates them so much. We always somehow just miss the magical time to arrive for quick service and we end up in this awkward space where everyone around us has food, including people who arrived well after us, while we just waiting and waiting and waiting.

 

I ordered the calamari for my appetizer and my husband ordered the “colossal fries.” You will see from the pics below that there was certainly nothing colossal about them. The main reason we had decided on the MDR for lunch was for science! I had the world’s saddest Monte Cristo sandwich on the Emerald Princess back on our Panama Canal cruise and it was one of the major contributors to what made that our worst cruise ever (along with 100 other things). So it was time to see if Princess could redeem themselves and deliver a decent Monte Cristo. I ordered that as my main along with the spaghetti as a backup. My husband ordered the “street tacos,” but again you will see in the pic that the plural is a lie. He only received one taco.

 

My calamari was fine. The chipotle tartar sauce it was served with was delicious. The fries my husband received were… cruise ship french fries. None of his sauces (truffle aioli, cheese sauce, and mayo) were anything to write home about. Then the moment of truth eventually came and I received my Monte Cristo. It was definitely an improvement over the one on the Emerald. Instead of the 4th-grade public school ham sandwich, it was definitely meatier, the cheese was melty, and it was on French toast? I guess that was their vague nod to battered and fried? It tasted pretty good at least. Oh, but the jam (they did serve it with jam instead of cocktail sauce so that was a significant improvement!) was broken? Can jam break? It was separated so that there were solids surrounded by a lot of water? I tried I tiny amount of it and decided I shouldn’t eat it. Clearly, I am not going to get the Monte Cristo of my dreams onboard a Princess ship. They used to have a really good one sometimes at lunch on NCL, but that was years ago, so I don’t know if that is a thing anymore. The spaghetti was pretty okay!

 

For anyone keeping track, our entrees were delivered at exactly 1:00, so about 57 minutes from the time we were seated. I suppose that’s not terrible, but my husband definitely had his “I told you so” attitude about the waits in MDRs for breakfast and lunch. Not sure I will be able to convince him to go back this trip.

 

During lunch, I had received an email that I needed to attend to for work, so we went back to the room so I could work on that. My husband joined me for a bit, but when it was clear it wasn’t a quick task, he relocated back to Crown Grill. Once I was done with my work stuff, I joined him and got some coffee from Princess Live. We played another round of Splendor Duel and I lost again! I decided I wanted fancy drinks, so my husband packed up our stuff and took it back to the room while I went to Bellini’s for a couple of prosecco/champagne cocktails. I started with the Roman Sunset which I didn’t like as much this time as last time. Then I went with the Summerberry Fizz minus the peach and that one was good. Then I tried the Giuseppi l’Orange, which was basically just a mimosa. I had the bartender add some Galliano and that made it taste more like a creamcicle.

 

After our drinks, we headed back to the room to get fancied up, because it was formal night. We had looked at the MDR menu earlier in the morning and decided there wasn’t really anything on there that we were excited about, so we changed our Catch By Rudi reservations from tonight (8/13) to last night (8/12). We then headed over to Crown Grill for some drinks, because the Patter said they opened at 4:00. Well, that turned out to be a lie. I went up to the bar to order and the bartender told me they didn’t open until 5:00. So, we headed over to Crooners instead where my husband tried the Violet Cloud and I tried the Mint Chocolate Martini. The Violet Cloud was certainly impressive looking, though I didn’t really get a sense of whether my husband actually liked it. My mint chocolate martini tasted exactly like a York Peppermint Patty and was delicious!

 

Sometime during that round, Bon had arrived and I asked what he could make me with the bottle of Bombay Blackberry & Raspberry I spied sitting on the shelf. He said he could make me a special concoction, which he did and it was great! At some point during this stretch is when I headed to the casino for a bit, but I was not having any luck and gave up quickly.

 

If you are keeping track, I had had something like 5 potent drinks in the space of a couple of hours here, so my memory is a little fuzzy. What I do know is that we ended up at Catch By Rudi a few minutes before our 6:20 reservation. This was another experiment for science! We had had a pretty catastrophic experience at Catch by Rudi on this same ship in May. Things had gone swimmingly in the beginning with quick service and delicious appetizers but went WAY sideways when we waited 65 minutes from the time we received our appetizers to the time we finally just gave up on our entrees and walked out.

 

Everyone on Cruise Critic swore up and down that Rudi’s is the best and so we decided to give it another shot once we committed to the Premier Package. I am glad we did! Our waitress, who was from Ukraine, asked us if we had ever been there before. We explained that we had sort of been there before and she promised this time would be better. She brought out the baguette with the crazy delicious spread that we had loved so much the last time. That spread is so good I could just eat it with a spoon for my meal. For my appetizer, I got the crab cakes again, because I remember them being very good. My husband got the smoked salmon and OMG!!!! That salmon… I don’t even know what to say. It was one of the best things I have ever eaten. My delicious crab cakes were just “fine” compared to that. Needless to say, I only ate one of my crab cakes and stole a bunch of my husband’s salmon.

 

For our entrees, my husband ordered the steak frites. I couldn’t decide between the Concerto and the Triple S Platter, so I got both! I was pretty surprised when she brought out my Triple S Platter and there was a tiny lobster (langoustine) hanging over it. The waitress pulled the little bit of meat out of it for me and it tasted pretty good. There was some on my Concerto as well. My shrimp from the Triple S were pretty good, but the scallops were just okay and the salmon just paled in comparison to my husband’s salmon. The clams in my Concerto were good!

 

For dessert, my husband ordered the Crepes Suzette and I had the Chantilly Lace. I have to say I made the better choice. Luckily there was a ton of food, so my husband was able to share my Chantilly Lace with me and there was still a lot left over.

 

After dinner, we were able to just make it to the 7:30 comedy show in the Vista Lounge. It was a guy named Doug Funk and he was hilarious. I was falling out of my chair laughing. He did this bit where he had a member of the audience come up and provide sound effects for a story he was telling and it was just too funny. Usually, I hate audience participation bits, but the guy he got from the audience was a pro and he did a fantastic job.

 

We then headed over to Princess Live for the Yes/No gameshow, which ended up being standing-room only. It was also a lot of fun to watch. The best part was when this 10-year-old kid went up and, being a very experienced cruiser (he is Elite on Princess already), he completely nailed it.

 

After the game show it was definitely time for us to head to bed!

 

Day's Drinks:

Mimosa from OceanNow

Champagne & Chambord from Good Spirits 

Champagne & Chambord from Princess Live 

Americano w/ Bailey's from Princess Live

Roman Sunset from Bellini’s

Summerberry Fizz from Bellini's 

Giuseppi l’Orange from Bellini's 

Mint Chocolate Martini from Crooners 

Bon’s Concoction with Bombay Blackberry & Raspberry 

Prosecco from Catch by Rudi

Vodka & Ginger Ale from Princess Live

[JamieLogical]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 13 by JamieLogical

[Scottdalfonso]

I'm with your hubby on the MDR Lunch\Breakfasts! We tried a breakfast and a brunch on RC Oasis last year and both times, the same thing happened. We sat there and everyone around us had food, took forever to get refills and the food itself. I think both times ended up being longer than MDR dinner service, so I've written them off. Buffet has everything I need for breakfast! lol. 

And I am excited for the Yes No game if it's what I think it is. I worked at a top 40 radio station here in Philly in the early 00's and we did a yes\no game on the air for prizes. It was always fun, I can't wait to tell my old co-worker that it lives on in a cruise ship!! 

Edited August 13 by Scottdalfonso

[voljeep]

If this Carmen mentioned in above posts is the same Carmen we had in Vines cruises a few (maybe more years) ago - she is definitely top tier and an asset to Princess.  Maybe her new contract, if that happens, could be on the SUN P when it starts its US sailing season.

 

Would love to be in her bar / area any time

[WisCruiser2]

1 hour ago, Scottdalfonso said:

I'm with your hubby on the MDR Lunch\Breakfasts! We tried a breakfast and a brunch on RC Oasis last year and both times, the same thing happened. We sat there and everyone around us had food, took forever to get refills and the food itself. I think both times ended up being longer than MDR dinner service, so I've written them off. Buffet has everything I need for breakfast! lol. 

And I am excited for the Yes No game if it's what I think it is. I worked at a top 40 radio station here in Philly in the early 00's and we did a yes\no game on the air for prizes. It was always fun, I can't wait to tell my old co-worker that it lives on in a cruise ship!! 

The Yes/No game is where they get 5 or 6 people to come up to the "stage" and the contestants answer yes/no trivia questions by standing on one side or the other. Those who answer wrong go sit down and whoever's the last one wins.

[Scottdalfonso]

26 minutes ago, WisCruiser2 said:

The Yes/No game is where they get 5 or 6 people to come up to the "stage" and the contestants answer yes/no trivia questions by standing on one side or the other. Those who answer wrong go sit down and whoever's the last one wins.

Oh ok..lol. not the same. But still sounds fun

[JGmf]

41 minutes ago, WisCruiser2 said:

The Yes/No game is where they get 5 or 6 people to come up to the "stage" and the contestants answer yes/no trivia questions by standing on one side or the other. Those who answer wrong go sit down and whoever's the last one wins.

 

Well, that's not the game on Princess.  You're seemingly conflating two things.

 

The "Yes/No" game is a person being casually interviewed by the CD or one of his/her staff.  They can't nod or shake their head or say anything that resembles "yes" or "no".  If they do, they lose.

 

There are indeed other trivia contests where there are two choices and the crowd of volunteers on stage take a side until they whittle it down to the final winner.

[CRLess]

1 hour ago, voljeep said:

If this Carmen mentioned in above posts is the same Carmen we had in Vines cruises a few (maybe more years) ago - she is definitely top tier and an asset to Princess.  Maybe her new contract, if that happens, could be on the SUN P when it starts its US sailing season.

 

Would love to be in her bar / area any time

Yes it is her.  She took a few years off from sailing after a personal tragedy and worked at home in the Philippines, but missed being at sea.  We have sailed on ships with her at least six times and I got to know her very well.  We had no idea she was back at sea and she yelled our names out when we were walking by Crooners the first day on the ship.  So wonderful to see her enjoying her work again after all she went through.

[voljeep]

1 minute ago, CRLess said:

Yes it is her.  She took a few years off from sailing after a personal tragedy and worked at home in the Philippines, but missed being at sea.  We have sailed on ships with her at least six times and I got to know her very well.  We had no idea she was back at sea and she yelled our names out when we were walking by Crooners the first day on the ship.  So wonderful to see her enjoying her work again after all she went through.

Outstanding - yes, she is one of the most excellent ones - hope she is at peace now...🙏

[CRLess]

Just now, voljeep said:

Outstanding - yes, she is one of the most excellent ones - hope she is at peace now...🙏

She is getting there.  I could tell she still doesn't want to talk about it, but she was definitely smiling again!

[JamieLogical]

55 minutes ago, WisCruiser2 said:

The Yes/No game is where they get 5 or 6 people to come up to the "stage" and the contestants answer yes/no trivia questions by standing on one side or the other. Those who answer wrong go sit down and whoever's the last one wins.

 

No. This is a game where they have one person at a time come up and they casually ask them questions for three minutes each. If they can make it the full three minutes without saying the words "yes" or "no," they win a prize.

[Scottdalfonso]

8 minutes ago, JamieLogical said:

 

No. This is a game where they have one person at a time come up and they casually ask them questions for three minutes each. If they can make it the full three minutes without saying the words "yes" or "no," they win a prize.

Ok..so it IS the same Game as we did on the radio show! 

[beshears]

I am reading/seeing some more of your report. You mentioned of receiving a dozen YELLOW roses, how wonderful! The reason I say this (I'm 81), YELLOW, not gold but YELLOW is my favorite color! 🙂  You mentioned the onion tower that I believe ??? was at O'malley's? Is this onion rings, onion strings, or onion blossom, or what?

[beshears]

I failed to mention that you showed/mentioned that you took "1" pair of shoes. As someone else said, that would NEVER work for me. I guess that is why my luggage is heavy, as I take at least 6 - 8 pairs of shoes to "match" what I am wearing. 🙂