Enchantment of the seas - trip report

This ship is a Royal Caribbean ship which departed from Baltimore on Saturday, Jan. 5th. The cruise was 9 nights including stops at San Juan, St. Thomas, Samana Dominican Republic and Labadee. Labadee is RC private resort on the north coast of Haiti. The ship itself was the smallest that I've ever been on having a displacement of 82,000+ tons. My only previous Royal Caribbean cruise was on the Explorer of the Seas in August of 2007. This was my first cruise from hell thanks to my sister and her family who were with us on this trip. The only positive was that I learned to play craps while on this cruise. This left a negative impression in my mind concerning Royal Caribbean and I've never really looked at booking another cruise until this one.

We tried something new on this cruise and that was to book an ocean view stateroom. Prior to this we've only been booked in balcony staterooms. Our logic was since we were cruising in January the first 2 days sailing south the air temperature would not be too enticing to want to sit out on a balcony. The same thing applies to the return trip. A second factor was the cost. $499 each versus $1000+ for a balcony. The ocean view stateroom has a big rectangular picture window and was on deck 3 so you could really see the seas flying by as the ship was cruising at 20+ knots. Our opinion is that the ocean view staterooms are fine and we would do it again on future cruises. In fact we have the Carnival Valor booked for May in an ocean view stateroom.

We only booked this cruise a month ago and really didn't do our homework when it came to booking our stateroom. As usual we choose the starboard (right) side aft location. All of the previous ships we've been on the main dining room and the buffet were both on the aft end of the ship. There has always been an aft elevator and stairway also. This ship had the dining room located aft but the buffet was all the way forward on the ship. There was also no aft elevator and stairway. There were only 2, one mid ship and the other forward. The casino was in the usual location, deck 5 forward.

This ship was refurbished a few years ago which included being stretched by 80 feet. What was really nice was that the atrium was all decorated for Christmas with a tree that had to be al least 20 feet tall. The ship did not appear to be old at all despite being built in 1996. The ship's captain was a Swede who spoke excellent English and was actually funny and entertaining in most of his announcements over the PA system.

The food on this ship was excellent and the service was extremely good in the main dining room. The total time for dinner was around 1 hr. 15 minutes. On the last 3 or 4 Carnival cruises I've had issues with how long it was taking for dinner to be served. An hour and a half and we still hadn't ordered dessert. In fact many nights I would skip desert so I could get my shooting position at the craps table.

One odd thing happened for the first 2 days at the buffet. Probably because of the flu epidemic or the noro virus outbreak on some ships they had staff at every food location at the buffet. You couldn't get your own food but just tell them what you wanted and they would then place it on your plate. On day 3 this stopped and you could serve yourself. We never had a problem getting a table for breakfast or lunch.

A nice feature on this ship was the solarium. This is an adults only pool area which has a sliding clear glass roof which was obviously closed for the first 3 days of this cruise. The lounge chairs are padded and are very comfortable. All the pools (3) on this ship were all heated to 85 degrees.

Now for the unfortunate part of this cruise. On day #3, Monday Jan. 7th we got a phone call from our daughter telling us that my wife's father had died. So we made some phone calls and made arraignments to leave the ship the next day when we docked in San Juan. We weren't docking until 3 PM so we had to make our flight home on Wednesday so we stayed at the Courtyard by Marriot near the airport on Tuesday night. My wife was so upset when she made the flight arraignment that she booked the flight to Philadelphia instead of Baltimore. Oh well. We had friends pick us up at the Philly airport and bring us home last night. The only problem is my car is parked at the lot at the cruise port in Baltimore so sometime in the next 3 or 4 days we are going to have to make a drive down there to get my car. Right now I'm not sure when we will do this since the funeral will be on Saturday. Luckily we had the foresight to take out travel insurance for this cruise and this was entirely due to my father-in-laws health condition. We certainly didn't expect this to happen during our cruise but we did expect it to happen during the next 2 or 3 months. With the insurance we should get reimbursed for the cost of our flight home and the cost of the cruise should be pro-rated.

Now on to the casino and craps. The casino was small having 1 craps table, 2 roulette tables, 4 blackjack tables, 1 three card poker table, 1 Caribbean Stud table, 1 Ultimate Texas hold em table and 1 regular poker table. I'm guessing that there were 160 slot and video poker machines. Quite a few of the slot machines were pretty new. Because of the small size of the casino there was no main pathway through it and when the shows in the theater ended quite a large number of passengers had to walk through the casino to get to where they were going. One of these paths led right by the craps table.

The craps table was 12 feet long with a slightly textured micro fiber layout with a perfectly neutral bounce with normal rubber pyramids on the wall. It reminded me of the Norwegian Gem table where I had such good results a little over a year ago. They had all of the proposition bets including hopping bets. Unfortunately Royal Caribbean only allows 1X odds. The bet minimum was $5 with a maximum of $300. What they had that was different was in the afternoon on at-sea days the table minimum was $1. I guess this was an attempt to lure in new players. I saw very few new players during the 3 days I was playing.

RESULTS:

DAY 1 - JAN 5

EVA 20 THROWS 3 PTS 1 CO

BOB UH 25 THROWS 3 PTS 2 CO

BOB UH 7 THROWS 1 PT

BOB UH 17 THROWS 4 PTS

BOB UH 9 THROWS 2 CO

DAY 2 - JAN 6

EVA 9 THROWS

BOB UH 5 THROWS

EVA 25 THROWS 3 PTS 1 CO

BOB UH 8 THROWS 3 CO

EVA 11 THROWS 1 PT 3 CO

BOB UH 15 THROWS 2 PTS

EVA 34 THROWS 4 PTS 1 CO

EVA 7 THROWS 1 PT 1 CO

EVA 11 THROWS 1 PT 1 CO

BOB UH 5 THROWS

EVA 7 THROWS

BOB UH 12 THROWS 1 PT 3 CO

BOB UH 7 THROWS 3 CO

BOB UH 15 THROWS 1 PT

BOB UH 13 THROWS

DAY 3 - JAN 7

AFTERNOON

BOB PARR 12 THROWS 1 PT 1 CO

EVA 6 THROWS

BOB UH 15 THROWS 3 PTS

BOB UH 35 THROWS 5 PTS 4 CO

EVA 29 THROWS 2 PTS

BOB UH 8 THROWS 2 CO

EVENING

BOB UH 20 THROWS

EVA 7 THROWS 1 PT

BOB PARR 10 THROWS 1 PT 2 CO

BOB PARR 5 THROWS 2 CO

BOB UH 38 THROWS 6 PTS 5 CO

BOB UH 5 THROWS

BOB UH 30 THROWS 3 PTS

BOB UH 19 THROWS 3 PTS

BOB UH 12 THROWS 1 PT 1 CO

BOB UH 7 THROWS 2 CO

BOB UH 25 THROWS 4 PTS 2 CO

DAY 4 - JAN 8 MARRIOT IN SAN JUAN

BOB UH 19 THROWS 1 PT

BOB UH 17 THROWS 2 PTS

Since we stayed the one night at Isla Verde in Puerto Rico we did the rounds of the casinos there since they are within walking distance of each other. First is the Marriot where we stayed. The table here is very bouncy but you can get good results if your throw is soft enough. The minimum was $5 but the box man gave me grief over my hand crossing the string in the middle of the table. The dice are released before my hand gets that far but the follow through will go past this point. I moved a foot to the right to satisfy him. Despite tipping the crew I felt nothing from them and really didn't enjoy playing here. Next stop was the Ritz Carlton. We got there around 7 PM and the craps tables (2) weren't open yet. I felt the table and it is definitely bouncy. We then went to the El San Juan. The table here has a decent bounce but their betting requirements are weird. The minimum was $10 but you can't make a $1 craps bet or $1 hard way bet. Everything is $5. A horn bet requires $20. I watched for a while but didn't play. The last stop was the Intercontinental. Don't bother going here. The nice craps table they had 2 years ago is now gone. There is no craps available here. That's the San Juan update.

In summary, craps was excellent on this ship. The crew was friendly and fun and there was no heat at all for anybody. Most of the time there were only 2 crew but if needed the third one would be there quickly. Every afternoon the craps table would open at 1 PM and at 8 PM after dinner. There were only 4 or 5 people there everyday but 2 of them were fleas who would only come to the table when either me or me and my wife were playing. None of the other players could get a hand length of more than 15 throws max. My wife, Eva had 3 hands of 25 throws or more and I had 5 hands of 25 or more with 4 of them coming in the last day on the ship. Our craps winnings were $800 between the two of us in 3 days on the ship. With the 55 points that we made between us if the ship had allowed odds of more than 1X our winnings would have been close to double the $800. If at all possible we would look to book this ship again sometime before it moves to Florida in May.

Dicenator

Bob,

My condolences to you and your wife for the loss of her dad and thanks for your trip report I always enjoy reading it, oh how I would like to be there when you throw so I can observe and learn from it!!

Teddy

Nice detailed report on the Casino. I am going on this ship in May. Did you happen to notice if the Poker table was a normal table or an electronic table? And perhaps you might have noticed the blinds for the poker table? $2/$5 I am guessing

Mightygator,

They had a regular poker table with a dealer. The only play I saw there was every at sea day they had a qualifying tournament ($75 entry fee) with the final being on the last night of the cruise. I'm guessing that if poker players wanted to play all you would have to do is go to the casino manager and ask him for a dealer. I don't know what the blinds were since I really didn't watch. The casino was very good on this ship and I wish you luck.

Dicenator