Enchantment Review - 12/15 - 12/20 with Toddler

[colemkr]

I also put this on the RCCL forum, but since there are a few things on traveling with our 2 yo, I thought I would post here as well:

 

We are a 32 yo couple traveling with our 2 yo daughter, my husband’s parents and his sister and her husband who are around our age but no kids. This was our 4th cruise and 2nd with RCCL. Our 1st two cruises were with Carnival and this was our second on the Enchantment of the Seas.

Travel to Florida – We are from Ohio. So we flew down the night before the cruise and spent the night at the new Hyatt Place (old Amerisuites). It was a great hotel. They are still working on the lobby, but the rooms were very spacious. When we got to the airport we called the hotel and they came and picked us up. We waited about 15 minutes for the bus to get there. I think this was a little longer than normal since it was a Friday night at rush hour. The driver was very friendly. We checked in and then headed over to RJ Gators for dinner. Our party of 7 got right in on a Friday night. Service was fast which was nice since we were traveling with a 2 year old. We then headed over to Publix to pick up some diapers and juice/water that we didn’t fly down with. All of this was in walking distance from the hotel. The shopping area was nice if you had a few hours to kill. My in-laws drove down from Ft. Myers and ended up leaving their car there during the week. We signed up for the shuttle to the port and it was almost full (the 11 am one) by the time we checked in. They had two busses going. This was very easy to deal with. My in-laws just called the hotel when we got back into Florida and they came and picked them up. I would stay with them again.

Embarkation – We took the 11 am shuttle to the port and were dropped off right at the ship’s porters. With all of the luggage we had this was very nice. We probably waited 15 minutes or so until they started the boarding process. Because we had a stroller we were able to go up to the front of the line (very nice) and were the 2nd ones through the security screening. Walked right up, checked in and we were on our way onto the ship. We were on the ship by noon. We were told that our rooms weren’t going to be ready until 1 pm. So we headed to the Windjammer for lunch. After lunch we headed to Chops and made reservations for dinner for the night we were in Jamaica, we also checked out our table assignments. Our family was all together for the main seating. I also headed to Guest Relations to make reservations for babysitting.

Dining – At lunch in the Windjammer the first day we ran into Ajay, our waiter from last year. We loved him last year so were excited to see him again. We told him where we were sitting in the dining room. We ended up having him as our waiter. Not sure if that was coincidence or if he asked for that section, but we were really pleased. His assistant was Simona from Romania. She was wonderful. We also had Bogdan from Romania as our Head Waiter. This was the most we had ever seen a head waiter work in the 3 cruises we have taken. He was always around helping out. Our 2 year old daughter ate with us every night in the dining room. The staff was very helpful with her even though she really didn’t eat much. She sure liked her ice cream though. Ajay always made her a nice big bowl.

The Windjammer was ok food wise. I really liked breakfast. Lunch was ok. We never ate dinner there. We always found a seat. Never had problems with that. We didn’t remember from the last time we were on the EOS how helpful they were in the Windjammer. They were always coming up and asking you if you needed anything else to drink, etc. I can’t say enough about the service from everyone on the ship.

We ate at Chops one night (the 2 yo went to the babysitter) and it was as good as we remembered. Well worth the $25. There were 6 of us and everyone really enjoyed themselves. We all had the Filet and it was so good. The service was great as usual.

Babysitting – We signed up for the service for every night for a couple of hours after dinner. We had Marissa from Jamaica. Other than the last night she showed up on time and seemed to enjoy playing with our daughter. The last night we had her reserved and she ended up calling a half hour late saying she fell asleep. At that time my inlaws had already decided they would watch her so we didn’t use her. The rate was $8/hour.

Traveling with a Toddler – We went with my husband’s parents and his sister and her husband. We also took our 2 year old daughter. We had an adjoining room with his parents. This was nice because we had a little more room to let her run around. Also helped for when she napped or to bed we could hang out in the other room until we were ready. I think that the staff really missed their families. They were so friendly to our daughter. They were always talking and playing with her. We brought our stroller, but never really used it. She likes to walk most everywhere. We did go to the Aqua Tots program a couple of days. The first day she really enjoyed it, but she was cranky the other day we went and ended up leaving early. She did really well at dinner. Only once did we get up and walk around with her. We brought some markers for her to draw with while we waited for dinner. She doesn’t do movies all that much so we didn’t have a DVD player, but we did see a few of them in the dining room. It is so loud in there they didn’t really bother anyone. We had early seating so there were quite a few kids. We were able to hook the DVD player up to the tv in the room though with ease. She likes to have it on in the background. She was only in the pool one day. She liked playing in the splash zone area. We did see a few swimmy diapers and noone seemed to say anything about it. I think if I had to do it again, we would probably wait until she was big enough for Adventure Ocean as we didn’t have much down time.

Georgetown, Grand Cayman – We missed this port due to bad weather and having to tender. This was really the only port we wanted to go to, so we were bummed. But what can you do.

Ocho Rios, Jamaica – Originally when we booked this trip we were supposed to go to Costa Maya, but due to the hurricane they changed it to Jamaica. We were supposed to be in Jamaica that day until 5 pm. Because of problems with the ship (which were never mentioned by the way) we left at 2 pm. We weren’t going to get off because we were going to go to the Beaches resort, but we found this Sub Sea Viewer excursion with RCCL. Thought this would be good with our daughter because she loves fish. We were supposed to meet at the pier at 8 am. We made our way down to Deck 1 around 7:30 and pretty much walked off. This was the fastest we have ever gotten off for a port. We took a bus to the other pier around 8:10. Waited for a few minutes and we were on the boat. We weren’t sure where the underwater part was until we saw him lift some door. The seas were really rough. I did ok at first. It was very hard to walk down to get to the underground. As soon as we got down there I knew I wasn’t going to be down there long. I stayed about 2 minutes if that and had to go back up. Too rocky for me (might have had a little to do with me being pregnant as well). Slowly everyone started making their way up. Plus there were no fish. I guess there was a storm the night before. I felt bad for the tour guide because noone had fun. I am sure if the water was calmer it would have been better. After that we talked the driver into taking us to the Taj Mahal Shopping Center instead of back to port. For $5 extra per person he came back and picked us up an hour and a half later. We walked around and shopped a bit. My husband decided that he wanted to get a watch so we walked around and found the one he liked and tried to get the best deal. My daughter got a couple of braids and we got other misc. souvenirs. The drive came back for us and we were on our way back onto the ship. This was around 12:15 and there was only a small line. Took maybe 10 minutes to get back on the ship.

Shows – The first night was Al Romas who was a comedian. He was really funny. My sister in law saw him for the late night show later in the week and said that wasn’t as good. The second night was the production show from the singers and dancers. This was a great show. For 45 minutes they didn’t stop dancing. They had to be tired. This was a show from various broadway shows that also became movies. The third night was the Motown group, Spectrum. I am not too much into Motown, but they were pretty good. They had another production show on the 4th night. This was was Rock music through the decades. Once again pretty good. They were even down a female dancer as she hurt herself in the first nights show. The last night was Team Rootberry jugglers. They were on the ship last year when we were on. They had a longer show last year, but were good again and they are pretty funny.

Debarkation – This was very smooth as well. We got up in the morning for breakfast. It was crowded, but Ajay our waiter found a table for all 7 of us. So we sat in there until they closed down. Then we headed to the pool deck to wait for our color to be called. We were light blue and headed off around 9 am. Took no more than 20 minutes to get off the ship. Our luggage wasn’t too hard to find and there was a porter there to take our bags. This was nice because with the stroller and everything it is nice to have an extra set of hands. Customs was pretty much non-existent. She didn’t really ask much and we were on our way. The day before we decided to go ahead and book the RCCL shuttle to the airport. We were worried about our daughter in a cab, so it was just easier and safer. We had to wait a while on the bus because we were one of the first people on, but once again this was pretty easy.

All in all this was a great trip. This was the second time we were on the Enchantment. Really liked the service from the staff. This was top notch. We would like to cruise around this time again next year, but try a bigger ship and maybe without the kids (we are expecting again in April.)