JamieLogical

I am honestly not picky enough about brands of artificial sweetener to bring my own. I can make due with whatever. But I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a cruise line to provide SOME brand of artificial sweetener with coffee... I think it is ridiculous that I would have to bring my own if I am not picky.

I would definitely recommend the price that includes the Easy Plus drink package and Browse wifi. It is a great deal and most drinks will be covered unless you are a big wine drinker or want some more expensive scotch/whiskeys. The dining packages aren't as good a deal anymore because you have to use them in specific restaurants, you don't just get credits to use in any restaurant you want.

Well this was a port day where we didn't plan to actually get off the ship, so we were in no hurry. On port day, the breakfast buffets on cruise ships are always complete insanity!

They were definitely chicken finger. One was okay, but the other had "chunky chewy" bits that were super gross and hard to bite through.

This was in the MDR, not the buffet. As others have suggested, I may try building my own next time, but if they are willing to accommodate build-your-own, why not list that on the menu?!?!?

Yes, that is one thing I definitely miss about Celebrity, as Truvia is my favorite and the one I use at home.

My favorite was when I was on the Celebrity Summit and we ran out of limes after having stopped in Key West!

Yesterday was our port stop in Cozumel. We decided early on that we were not going to get off the ship. We woke up early enough to watch the boat sail into the pier and get tied up. That is always a fun process to watch and it was cool seeing it from our vantage on the front of the ship. We enjoyed our room service breakfast out on the balcony. My husband had written in on the room service card asking for BOTH sugar and splenda and were actually delivered both. I went with the pizza muffin again and my husband tried the breakfast sandwich. It was definitely better than the one he had received on the Emerald Princess with its 2”x2” piece of paper-thin lunch meat ham. However, he didn’t eat it all, because we decided we would go down to the Amalfi Dining Room to try out MDR breakfast. We were seated quickly at a two-top and another couple was seated right next to us shortly afterward. We all got coffee The other couple and I all wanted artificial sweetener and it took a long time and asking three people to eventually get some. Not sure why they wouldn’t just have it sitting on the tables. I imagine with Princess’ older demographic, a huge percentage of them don’t use sugar. I was also disappointed to see that there is no build-your-own omelet option. I thought that was standard for all cruise line MDRs (and pretty much any restaurant that serves breakfast on land as well?). They only had plain, ham & cheese, or mushroom & cheese. So, I went with some over-easy eggs, bacon, and white toast. My husband ordered scrambled eggs, sausage, and white toast. Anyone following my MSC Live Blogs will know what a challenge it is to accomplish toast on those ships. Not so here on the Enchanted as the butter was brought out before the food, my toast was actually toasted, and a man came around with jam shortly after my toast was delivered. My husband’s toast and sausage were delivered on a separate plate after his eggs and I don’t think I got a photo of that, so don’t be alarmed when you see just a photo of a perfect circle of scrambled eggs. We had a really nice chat with the couple next to us. We talked about cruise lines we sailed and what we have liked and disliked about them and what has changed in cruising post-COVID. After breakfast, we went back to the room for our games and headed to Princess Live ahead of trivia. We had planned to get drinks at the Princess Live bar, but it was closed, so we rolled the dice and my husband ordered us some mimosas and bottles of water through the app. We played a round or two of Rummy and then Wally and Wes showed up to join us for trivia. We had run into them on embarkation day and then I ran into them the second night and we agreed to try to do morning trivia together. We didn’t win, but we didn’t do terribly. Also, our drinks actually showed up! After trivia, we headed down to Good Spirits, since they were actually open and we set up Splendor Duel. I went up to the bar for our second round of mimosas, since the first round would have been charged to my husband’s account through the app. Later, a server came around asking if we wanted another round and we asked him to charge one to each of our accounts. We had decided on the buffet for lunch, since only the buffet, Gigi’s, and Salty Dog were serving lunch as it was a port day. More accurately, we planned to go up to the buffet, get seats, I would get my food from the buffet and my husband was planning to get food from Salty Dog. However, Salty Dog doesn’t work like it did on the Emerald Princess. Apparently, on the Enchanted, you go up, place an order, and they bring it to you at a nearby table. Since my husband wanted to come into the buffet and eat with me, he didn’t want to have to wait at a nearby table. So he ended up with a burger from the little grill station inside the buffet. For my food, I got some tortilla chips and put some chili con carne on top and some cheese sauce. Then I went over to the Indian station and put some sort of Indian beef stuff on top as well. The Indian beef was way better than the chile con carne so I mostly ate that. The cheese sauce tasted like nothing at all. I also went over to the kids’ station where I had not seen a single kid and got two small chicken fingers and some french fries. I put some vinegar on my fries and filled a little cup with HP sauces and headed back to the table, but while I was getting my sauces, I overheard an incredibly rude and entitled woman interacting with the crew. She used a very snooty and exasperated tone when talking to them. First, two crew members were clearly mid-conversation and she repeatedly and demandingly said “excuse me, excuse me, excuse me” until they had to cut off their conversation then she asked them where the pickle relish was and it was literally RIGHT in front of her. Then she came over to the little sauce station and tried to put some mustard on her hot dog and just held the bottle up towards the crew members and said “it’s empty!” She didn’t even say “excuse me” that time. It just seemed like she jumped straight into Karen mode without even giving them a chance to help her first. Anyway, we had our lunch. The chicken fingers were not good. The fries were fine. Then we went looking for desserts. We found some sticky toffee pudding and were both very excited about it. We each got a serving and then took our bowls out to Swirl to have some vanilla ice cream put on top. It was very good. Then it was time to nap, so we headed back to the room. My husband, once again, got up before me and went off to play is Switch and get some coffee. When I got up I grabbed our games and met him down near the International Cafe to get some coffee of my own. I gave up trying to get a shot of Bailey’s in it though as, by this point, we were approaching the all-aboard time so most people were coming back onboard and Good Spirits was the only bad open in the interior of the ship, so there was quite a line. After having my coffee, we decided to roam in search of a place to play our games and settled on the tables and chairs in the hallway with the shops. Turned out the Bellini’s bar was open, but we ended up not ordering any drinks. Once we had finished our game, it was close to 4:00 when Crown Grill Bar was scheduled to open, so we just headed over there and played a round of Rummy while we waited for the bar to open. We had a couple of rounds from Crown Grill Bar. By this point, we had realized that my husband’s drink order from Princess Live in the morning, while successfully delivered, still only showed as “preparing” in the app and when he had tried to order coffee earlier, it just got added to that earlier order and remained in limbo since then. He had to chat with guest services through the app, send them a screenshot of the stuck order, and then they were able to cancel it out. But he had ZERO drinks on his account for the day at this point. Who knows where that third mimosa from the morning had been charged? He should have had the two mimosas he ordered through the app and one mimosa from the roaming server in Good Spirits. I had my correct total of three drinks on my app: the first round of mimosas that I had gone up to the bar to order at Good Spirits and the one from the roaming server. Since he had zero drinks on his account, I sent him to the bar for our first round at Crown Grill. Once we had our drinks and played a few more hands of Rummy, we headed up to the room to get changed for dinner and so my husband could try out the travel router to see whether he would be able to work from the ship in August. He didn’t get it fully working before we had to head down for our pre-dinner drinks and our reservation for Sabatini’s at 6:00. That reminds me! We had managed to make reservations at Sabatini’s for 6:00 by stopping by the host stand there the previous night even though everything in the app and on the touch screens said Sabatini’s was fully booked for the week. We went to Bellini’s and tried some of their prosecco-based cocktails and then over to Sabatini’s for our reservation. The menu had changed since we were at Sabatini’s on the Emerald. They brought us bread and fried rice balls unsolicited. Then we were supposed to eat an appetizer, pasta, main, and dessert! Yeah right! I ordered the appetizer with fried seafood and my husband ordered the meat & cheese plate. Then for pasta I ordered the lobster tortelloni as my main and my husband got the fettuccini. For his main, he ordered the Ossobuco. All of it was very good, there was just WAY too much of it. We decided to skip dessert. After dinner, I wanted to go down to the casino to figure out what I needed to do for the slot tournament. There was a long line out the main entrance so I asked one of the people in it what their time slot was and it was 7:45. Since my time slot wasn't until 8:00, I went over to the cashier to cash out my bank from the previous day then I decided to run up to my room to get my invitation since I saw that a lot of people waiting in line had theirs with them. When the host called for the 8:00 people to line up, I got in the line, which didn't move very quickly, but I was able to get a bit of a sense of what was going on. They had 12 people at a time sit at machines that all had the same game loaded on them. Once the game started, you had 1 minute to mash the spin button as fast as you could and try to touch all the bells and coins that came up on the screen. The woman who sat next to me had Parkinson's so really just had no hope. I also had no hope, as it turns out. The top 12 players would play in the final round at 9:00. I had seen on the screen at the desk that the current top 12 all had point totals over 4 million. I ended my turn with something like 2 million. Oh well, it was interesting at least. I then tried to stick around and play some normal slots for a bit, but it was just sooo crowded and smokey with all the people crammed in there for the tournament. My eyes were literally watering from all the smoke. We had talked about going to O’Malley's to listen to Celtic Wave later, so I just headed over there early to get seats and listened to the band doing 70’s hits in the Piazza. They were very good and they had everyone up and dancing. It was a nice time. We had some Clover Breezes and waited for Celtic Wave to play and once they did, we stayed for the full set. It was really fun and we probably drank a bit too much. After they finished, I headed up to Slice for some pizza. My husband tried to get to the buffet for some cookies, but it had already shut down. I don't love that three isn't a late-night snack available at the buffet on Princess. The buffet is only open until 9:30, Slice closes at 11:00 and the only thing left open at that point is Internal Care, which I guess is okay if you like pre-made sandwiches as a snack. Pizza is fine for me as a late snack, but eating tomato sauce that late in the day causes my husband acid reflux when he is sleeping, so it’s not an option for him. He decided to try to order a chocolate chip cookie and french fries via room service and ended up with the most ridiculous chocolate chip cookie ever. It was about an inch thick and about 5 inches in diameter. The “cookie” part was more like a cake and had oats in it and there were just some chocolate chips stuck on top of it? He tried it, but did not eat it. Then we went to bed as we had an excursion booked in Belize for the morning.

Just saw a barefoot man walk up to the Bellini's bar and sit down on one of the stools. This is a bar on deck 7 between Sabatini's and Gigi's, not the pool deck! He was otherwise wearing shorts, a polo shirt, and a baseball cap.

Anyone know how the slot tournament actually works? I got my invite hat says my tournament time is 8:00pm, but in the patter, it says the slot tournament runs from 7:00-9:00.

Glad you had such a great trip! I knew about the slot machines in the Champagne Bar, as that's how it was my last time onboard. Can't wait to be back in October!

So we were at sea all day yesterday and, at least in rh morning it was not even a tiny bit windy. I am sure it depends on a lot of factors like how fast the shop is moving, which direction the wind is coming from, etc., but there was almost no wind yesterday. It was actually more more windy this morning docking in Cozumel even though the shop was barely moving. I think it was just a little windy in Cozumel.

Yesterday was our first of two sea days (second one will be Friday). We had already decided that, since it was a sea day, we would take it really easy and not rush to get up and out of the room early. We had filled out our room service breakfast card for 7:00-7:30 and at 7:01 there was a knock at the door with our order. We had the exact opposite problem from the few times we ordered room service coffee on the Emerald Princess before eventually giving up. We received only sugar and no artificial sweetener. I made due with a tiny amount of real sugar in my coffee rather than sending my husband down to fetch sweetener packets for me, since any place that had those would be a long trek from our very far forward room. I had also ordered an pizza muffin? I had no idea what to expect, but I thought I would give it a try. It was delicious, though not very breakfast-y. I am sure that if they sold those frozen at the grocery store, they would be a big hit with moms for their teenage sons. It took me a really long time to type up my blog and get that posted along with all the pictures from Saturday. Then it took me a long time to figure out how to get the temperature of the shower to something I could tolerate. My husband had to come help me with it, as he had taken his shower first and apparently figured it out. Would it kill them to put little red and blue symbols so you know which way to turn the knob? I had started out by turning it left, as that usually makes water hotter, but in this case the water got colder. So then I turned it to the right as far as it would go and it just stayed the same temperature… not cold… but not warm enough by any stretch of the imagination either. My husband came in and turned it left again and it did eventually get warmer VERY slowly. Finally, we got it to a temperature I could live with. The shower itself was fine. I liked that I didn’t have to mate for life with the shower curtain. I did spend some time shifting the shower curtain over hook by hook so the right-hand side of it wasn’t attached to the fixed hook at the far end that kept us from being able to open it from the end where all the controls were. Hopefully, our room steward won’t shift it back. I was finally showered and dressed just before 10:00! We had come up with a plan. We were going to try O’Malley’s for lunch because as we understood it, they are only open for lunch on sea days and we only get two of those on this cruise. The bar was set to open at 11:00 and food would be available beginning at 11:30. We headed down to Good Spirits, which is just across the piazza, and got ourselves mimosas. I was very explicit with the bartender that we wanted one charged to EACH of our accounts. Then we headed across to O’Malley’s and found ourselves a nice booth by the window and set up our board game, Splendor Duel. At one point we needed a refill on our mimosas, so I went back over to Good Spirits with both medallions and once again asked to be sure that we were each charged for one drink. By this time, they were working on getting the bar set up at O’Malley’s so we could just get our next round from there. As we were playing our game, a server came around asking if we were planning to have lunch. We told him we were and he gave us some silverware and napkins. Then a bit later the bar was open and he came around to ask if we wanted more drinks and I got a third mimosa, but my husband abstained. We started really rushing to try to finish our game, as they had already come around with menus and asking if we were ready to order around 11:15, even though they weren’t supposed to start food service until 11:30. We did eventually finish the game (I won!) and get that cleaned up and settled in for lunch. We both ordered the Clover Breeze as our drink. I thought it was really good, but we foolishly did not ask to have one each charged to our accounts. I kind of assumed that with us both sitting right there and each ordering our drinks individually, they would figure out we were two separate people and charge the two separate accounts. For food, we got the onion tower and crab dip to start and I got the burger and my husband got the stew for mains. The crab dip was kind of “meh,” but everything else was very good. My husband loved his stew! We went ahead and got some dessert as well. I got the chocolate cake and my husband got the brownie. He didn’t like the brownie at all and ended up just eating some of my cake. I thought the cake was okay, but a little dry. After lunch it was time for a nap! We headed back to the room and crashed for a while. I didn’t wake up until 3:00 and by that time my husband had left the room. I texted him about getting coffee and he let me know that he was down in the Crown Grill Bar area and had good seats he didn’t want to give up. He also asked me to bring a board game down. I stopped by the Princess Live bar that does serve coffee and got myself an Americano with Bailey’s. We played Splendor Duel again. Many people stopped at our table to ask us about the game since we were kind of in a high-traffic area. It was a formal night so after we finished the game, we headed back to our room to get changed for the evening. Once we were both looking swanky, we ran back down to the Crown Grill Bar to get some drinks to take with us to Super Hero Trivia in Princess Live. We did okay-ish at trivia but I was really distracted because at some point, we decided to check our drink totals in the app and I was already at 12/15 drinks and my husband was only at 4. We went through my drink log and refreshed our memories about which drinks my husband had had and at that point in the day, I had had 7 and he had had 5. The two extra drinks I had were the third mimosa at O’Malley’s and the Bailey’s in my coffee from Princess Live. So first of all, we had only had 12 drinks total between the two of us but had been charged for 16 so far. And second off, they were all on my account, so I was already almost out of drinks for the day at 5:00pm! I tried chatting with guest services through the app and that was just a huge exercise in futility. What it ultimately boiled down to is they definitely had charged me for other people’s drinks and extra drinks. They had three Elderflower Palomas on my account, even though I had only had one and they had a Spicy Margharita on my account when neither my husband or I would order one of those in a million years. I was told they could/would not remove any drinks from my account and that if I did go over for the day, I would need to contact them again or go to the guest services desk to have any monetary charges removed. This conversation got so complicated that at one point they asked me to find the closest house phone, tell them the number, and they could call me so we could discuss it instead of chatting about it through the app. At that point I was up by the buffet so I found a house phone near the elevators. After trivia, while I was still fighting with guest services, we had decided to skip the MDR (really nothing looked appealing for mains on the menu) and scope out Cinco de Mayo night in the buffet with the plan to ultimately go get sushi. The selections in the buffet did look good, so we vowed to come back there if there was a wait for a table at the sushi place. However, we didn’t have any problem getting a table for sushi. It seemed like a popular option, but wasn’t completely packed. The piazza was definitely packed, though. They were doing the champagne fountain so people lined the railings and stairs and it was VERY loud. I didn’t get a drink with dinner for fear of using up my drinks for the day. My husband got some saki and we were very explicit with the server that it needed to be charged to HIS account. I just got the spicy tuna roll and my husband got the edamame and the spicy salmon roll. Rolls are only $5, so even if we didn’t have Princess Premier, that would be a nice, cheap option for lunch or dinner. The rolls were good. My husband was complaining about how spicy his was and I thought that was weird because my spice tolerance is lower than his and I was having no trouble with mine. Turns out, the spicy salmon roll has jalapeno in it! He had thought it was just cucumber and/or avocado like my spicy tuna roll. After dinner, we went up to deck 7 for a quick peek at the sunset. Then we headed down to the International Cafe thinking that we could get premium desserts there, but saw no sign of them, so we headed over to the gelato place. They had both the cakes and sundaes. My husband got the German chocolate cake and I got the Lake Cuomo sundae. We took them over to a table outside of O’Malley’s and listened to Celtic Wave for a while and debated whether Johnny Cash was “Irish music.” Then we headed back over to Crown Grill Bar because the Gold String Duo was scheduled to start playing there. This was probably my favorite part of the evening. We ordered drinks and VERY explicitly asked for all of them to be charged to my husband’s account. I had to Floradora’s which was my new favorite drink onboard at that point. We got to do SO MUCH people-watching as people came and went to the comedy shows in the Vista Lounge and came and went to Crown Grill for dinner. Since it was a formal night, the variety of dress was highly fascinating and I just loved the contrast of a man in a full suit or tuxedo followed by a man in a sleeveless tie-dye shirt and gym shorts. It was a really really nice time. The music was great too! They won me over right away by starting with two Beatles songs. We had two rounds of drinks and stayed for the full set. After that, we came back to the room for some reason, though neither one of us can remember why. We were both feeling snacky, so I headed up to Slice for some pizza and my husband headed to the buffet for some cookies. We agreed to meet back up at 9:15 in Princess Live for Karaoke, which started at 9:30. It had rained at some point because when I went up to Slice, the decks were all wet. My pizza was pretty good, though not MSC good. I then ran down to the casino to cash out my bank from the previous day, since I had forgotten to do so the night before. I have a daily casino budget and I don’t carry over funds from one day to the next, so I wanted to make sure to cash that out before doing any of my casino-ing for the current day. I had thought to stay and do a little gambling then, but it was cutting it close to our meet-up time, so I headed straight over to Princess Live. I am glad I did because it was already packed. There was a long line for the bar and another long line to sign up to sing. I grabbed a couple of chairs and decided to risk ordering a drink through the app so as not to have to contend with the long bar line. For once, my order actually came and quickly! It actually showed up before my husband did! Karaoke was good. All of the singers did well, but a few were real starts. The last was the tiny, blonde, teenage girl that was sitting at the same table as us who KILLED “House of the Rising Son.” She had a HUGE, soulful, gritty voice and was just absolutely amazing. She got a standing ovation and when she came back over to our table, people were actually walking up to her and telling her how amazing she was. I jokingly asked if I could have her autograph. After Karaoke, my husband headed off to bed and I headed back to the casino. I decided to try to grab a drink from Take 5 and there was a jazz band playing in there. I hate jazz, but this band was actually pretty okay and I discovered that Take 5 has a really interesting drink menu. I ordered the first thing off the list that sounded good to me, but there were a whole bunch more drinks on there that I want to try, so I vowed to make my husband go back there with me. I lost a suitable amount of money in the casino and then headed up to bed. I have an invitation to the slot tournament at 8:00 tonight, so I will let you all know how that goes. Day's Drinks: 2x Mimosa from Good Spirits 1x Mimosa from O’Malley’s 1x Clover Breeze from O’Malley's 1x Americano w/ Bailey’s from Princess Live 1x Vodka and Ginger Ale from Crown Grill Bar 1x Elderflower Paloma from Crown Grill Bar 2x Floradora from Crown Grill Bar 1x Vodka and Ginger Ale from Medallion App 1x Night at the Apollo from Take 5

The bed was really comfy and we had no problems sleeping at all. So, that was a positive at least.

Oh for sure I would not recommend walking to the terminal if you weren't physically capable or had a ton of luggage. We both just had one carry-on sized roller bag and one backpack each. Our roller bags are the spinner type that roll easily.

I have seen several (including and upside down pineapple!) on our deck! Our own cabin door has a Canadian maple leaf "stain" on it? Like maybe someone put a sticker on there that didn't completely come off?

You can purchase Princess gift cards from AARP rewards in $500 and $100 increments for an 8% discount. So a $100 gift card costs $92. You can then use those gift cards to pay or cruise fare balances or apply them as OBC to your folio onboard. They are electronic gift cards that are delivered to your email have a unique number and PIN. Printing them out is essential if you are using them onboard because the guest services person needs to enter that long unique number and PIN in order to cash them in. There isn't a simple bar code or QR code that they can scan.

So for anyone who hasn't followed my previous Live Blogs, this is usually how they work once I am onboard. I will make one text post and one photo post each morning with the full report/photos from the previous day. The text post will be in all bold because I work in Google Docs and when I copy/paste into CC, it always comes out bold. If I try to paste as plain text or paste into Notepad first and then copy/paste into CC, I lose all of my line breaks. So you will just have to deal with the bolded text. I will also try to remember to post my drinks log at the end of each text post. So, without further ado, here is my report from yesterday: Yesterday was embarkation day. I already posted a bit about the experience, but I will briefly recap the stuff I posted about. Woke up early yesterday morning, both anxious for our cruise. As I explained, the lighting in the bathroom was basically non-existent. Every time I walked in there, I reached for the light switch to turn on the lights only to remember they were already on. There was a light built into the edges of the mirror that was about as bright as a standard night light and that was it. So, when I went to attempt my shower, I played around with trying to add light with my cell phone flashlight. Pointing it at the mirror was not effective, but pointing it into the front of the shower from the top of the toilet, propped up by the tissue box, did add a bit of light. It turned out that the lighting was the least of our problems as the water pressure and temperature were completely unpredictable. I was at least able to complete my shower and just deal with the fluctuations, but by the time my husband was trying to take his shower, the issue was much worse. The water pressure went down to near zero to where it was less than a little trickle and then when the water pressure strengthened for any amount of time, the water was scalding hot. He was trapped, because he had already gotten wet, so he tried to persevere, but every time he did something like soap up or put shampoo or conditioner in his hair, he would just have to wait for the water pressure to pick up and get scalded as he rinsed himself. His whole shower took about 45 minutes instead of the usual 15. Turns out we weren’t the only ones with these issues as everyone was complaining about them at breakfast. They clearly need to upgrade their plumbing system to function when you have dozens of people all showering at the same time. We had decided we were going to leave for the pier at 9:40 because Google said it was a 16-minute walk and we had to check out. After we checked out, we pulled out our phones to check the route on Google Maps and the guy working at the desk overheard us and volunteered that we could not walk to the pier. This was counter to everything I had read online about terminal 2, so I ignored him and we proceeded to walk anyway. I think he was partially correct because there were three ships in port yesterday. Two of them were docked inside the secure area where you would have to pass through the security gate in a car. But terminal 2 is before the security gate (as I had already learned in my online research), so you could walk directly to it. So depending on the ship, you may not have been able to walk. I wouldn’t have wanted to walk anyway if I were docked on one of the other ships, as it is a MUCH longer walk to those terminals. It took us pretty much exactly the promised 16 minutes to get in the line after dropping our bags with the porters who we passed on the way to join the line. There was quite a long line outside. There were signs all over that said doors opened at 10:15, even though our boarding passes said 10:00. But the doors had clearly opened before 10:15, because we were already through the long outdoor line and into the terminal at 10:15. As I described yesterday, security was a pain, especially when they pulled everything out of my backpack which I had very carefully packed tetris-style in order to squeeze everything into it. Trying to get all that stuff back into it without holding up the entire line even longer was very stressful. Once through security, we got in the green lane and moved quickly. The blue lane was short and it looked like had you needed to pick up your medallion, you wouldn’t have needed to wait long either. We were surprised that we were then able to just walk right onto the ship since the green lane people made it sound like we would have to wait to board once we got through that area. I guess they didn’t know boarding had already started? We walked onboard at 10:33. First stop was Good Spirits where we had our first drinks of the cruise, mojitos. We were given a slip of paper in the green lane that listed what venues were open for lunch. The options were Amalfi Dining Room, Salty Dog Grill, International Cafe, Gigi’s, and the buffet. We watched out safety videos on our phones and came up with a plan for lunch. We would try Gigi’s first since we have Princess Premier and it would be free. But if that was too packed and we would have to wait for a table, we would run by our muster station (the theater) and then up to the buffet. Gigi’s was not packed and we had no issue getting a table. I am sorry that I forgot to take a picture of the menu. We ordered champagne from their limited drink menu. Why not? We had Princess Premier! For lunch my husband had the ravioli, which was veal and parmesan ravioli in a veal sage sauce. He said it tasted like Thanksgiving. He clearly didn’t know what to make of it at first, being such a non-traditional Italian/pasta dish, but he decided he really liked it. I got a pepperoni pizza, which was huge. I literally only ate ¼ of it. Now we know to share! We did share the antipasti appetizer and the dessert. We had the Tiramisu and it was funny because both of us were so stuffed already, we said we would each only take two bites, but it was so good that we ended up eating the entire thing! While we were at lunch, they announced that our rooms were ready, so we headed to our muster station to quickly tap our medallions and them up to our room. As I had posted before when we got our room assignment, we are in one of the forward-facing mini-suites on deck 15. These are not the Reserve Class mini-suites on the corners with the GIANT wrap-around balconies, but they are still pretty cool. The room is basically square, instead of long and skinny. We have a crazy amount of storage space. Kind of a laughably abundant amount for a 7-day cruise. It would be great for a 21-day cruise! Usually, my first step on any cruise is to write a note for our room steward to bring extra hangers, an extra towel, and empty the minifridge. In this case, the minifridge was already empty and we had plenty of hangers, so I just needed an extra towel. I remembered that you could order extra towels through the app, so that is what I did. We had decided we would go deal with our Guest Services issues and then go up on deck and find a spot for drinks and sailaway. We got about halfway down the hall between our room and the forward elevator when my husband changed his mind and decided that he wanted a nap before sailaway, so I proceeded to guest services on my own. I had two tasks I wanted to accomplish at guest services. First, we had booked our Crown Grill reservation online before we had upgraded to Princess Premier, so we had been charged $78 to my credit card. After upgrading to Premier, I was told that could be refunded to our folio as OBC once onboard, so I wanted to get that sorted out. Secondly, I had bought some AARP gift cards that I wanted to add to our account for my casino-ing. As expected, the line was pretty long with it being embarkation day. A lot of people whose medallions weren’t working and a lot of people who couldn’t get connected to the wifi or figure out how to use the app. The line moved decently quickly. I got up to the desk and was able to get my dinner charge sorted without *too* much trouble though it did take longer and FAR more mouse clicks and keystrokes than it should have. However, when I asked about the gift cards, the girl helping me pointed me to another woman and said she was the only one who could process gift cards, so she sent me over to wait in line directly behind the folks that woman was currently helping instead of back to the main line. The two people ahead of me, who I believe were a father and daughter traveling in two separate cabins, were the bane of my existence. They each had multiple gift cards (woman had 6 or so and the man had 4) with random balances remaining on them and they had NONE of them printed out. They were having to search for them in their email on their phones and forward them to this woman, who was then having to receive the forwarded emails and print them out herself. The man clearly had forgotten his reading glasses as he was struggling to see and navigate his emails to find his gift cards. And, of course, both of them accidentally forwarded the same email more than once (because the emails all look the same) or didn’t forward one they thought they had. The entire process for them too over 40 minutes and they were already there when I got there, so I have no idea how long they were there in total. It was completely insane. I don’t know why you would come so completely unprepared and expect the poor Princess employee to jump through so many hoops to accommodate you. The poor employee was as patient as a saint, but she was getting paid to be, meanwhile, I was PAYING to be there so I was MUCH less saintly. The worst was when she looked at me and apologized for the 8th time and motioned two me that she only had one more left to process and then the daughter found another gift card in her email and they had to do a whole other one on her account after they had already switched to her father’s account. Finally, it was my turn and my three printed gift cards took 7 minutes to process from start to finish. People, have some consideration! Don’t waste everyone’s time by coming unprepared and if you expect guest services to spend 40+ minutes helping you, maybe don’t go there during the busiest time on embarkation day! Princes, let more than one of your guest services people have access to the system(s) required to process gift cards! By the time I was done at guest services, it had been a full hour since my husband went back for his nap. Oh, I forgot to mention, I had ordered a bottle of water from the app while I was in the initial guest services line, and in all that time, it had not been delivered. I headed to the International Cafe for some afternoon coffee and called my husband telling him that if he wanted coffee before sailaway, now was the time. He said he would head down, so I ordered him coffee as well. We drank our coffee and listened to the singer performing in the piazza and then we headed up to deck 17 to see if we could get a spot for sailaway. Still no water delivery, btw. I wanted to go to the seating area above the Wake View bar, but it was already packed and smokey, so we went down one level and found a shaded table off the back of the buffet. I learned that when the room steward had come to deliver my bath towel I had ordered through the app, he opened the door, saw my husband sleeping, apologized, and left without dropping off the towel, even though the app said it was delivered. So, I ordered another towel through the app, but it got combined with my existing water order, despite having specified I wanted the water delivered to my location and the towel delivered to my room. I got us a round of Rum & Cokes and we sat and relaxed. I overheard a group of guys talking to one of the staff about ordering the drink package. One asked how to track how many drinks you had already had for the day and the crew member just said to ask a bartender, so I butted in and showed them how you could track it on the app. It was at this point that I realized I had already had 9/15 drinks charged to my account (this was 3:00pm) and my husband only had 1. I totaled up the amount of drinks we had had between us and it was only 9, so somehow we had one extra charge and ALL of the drinks we had ordered were on my account. I told my husband that drinks were on him for the rest of the day. So, he ordered us another round of Cuba Libres through the app. For once the delivery through the app was very quick, but unfortunately, the drinks were awful. I don’t know what they did wrong, but they were undrinkable, so my husband ended up taking them back up to the bar and exchanging them. We enjoyed the sailaway for a good while and then we headed back to our room. My water/towel order showed as delivered at this point, btw. Back at our room, our bags were waiting for us, which was great because I had hoped to be able to change before our 5:20 Crown Grill reservation. There was indeed a bottle of water waiting for me in the room, but still no towel. This time, my husband decided to try to order a towel. We got unpacked, hung out for a bit, and then changed for dinner and headed out for dinner. Dinner was a nice pace. We both ordered a Bee’s Knees for our drink. For our meals I had the black & blue onion soup and the garlic shrimp dish. My husband had the lobster cake, the ribeye, a baked potato, and asparagus. We shared the mousse for dessert, but despite there being no mention of nuts in the description, I definitely tasted something nutty in there, so didn’t eat much of it. My dad called while we were at dinner which was a bit awkward timing-wise. He had run a 5k race earlier in the day and was proud and wanted to tell me about it. He’s 82, so that is definitely something to be proud of. After dinner, we hung out in the chairs outside of the crown grill for a bit to people-watch and then we went out on the promenade to watch the sunset. It was very very nice. We then headed in and over to Princess Live where there was going to be Star Wars trivia for May the 4th. My husband tried ordering drinks through the app again and they came quickly again, but once again, mine was undrinkable. I had ordered a white Russian and I have no idea what I actually received. I took it up to the bar and found out that it had been made with whipping cream? I then asked the bartender to make me something slightly different and she made me a vodka and Bailey’s and called it a Milky Way martini? Oh well. It was drinkable at least, even though a little Kahlua would have turned it into a blind Russian, which is one of my favorites. Trivia had already started and I was in a hurry. After trivia, we headed back to our room to see if my towel had been delivered. Once again, despite saying so in the app, it had not. There were three housekeeping carts in the halls near our room with stacks of towels on them and I was tempted to just snag one, but instead, I just loitered until one of the room stewards (not ours) emerged and I could ask for a towel. Finally, I had my towel! My husband and I agreed to meet outside the theater at 9:15 for the comedy show and I headed to the casino for a bit. I was actually up a bit by the time I needed to meet my husband. I am glad we got there and got seats before the show started because the comedians were brutal to the latecomers. The show was pretty funny. Not the best, certainly, but not the worst. After the show my husband headed back to the room and I decided to go back to the casino for a bit. I had hoped to acquire a drink, but there is no bar in the casino on the Enchanted. There were some roaming servers who seemed to have trained specifically in avoiding eye contact with me and generally ignoring my existence, so I stupidly tried to order a drink through the app again. When I gamble, I always have a low and high number that I intend to stop at if I get to it. I got to my first low number and should have just cashed out, but my drink still just showed preparing, so I kept playing. This continued for some time and I finally did cash out and stop playing and just sat awkwardly in the casino waiting for my drink. I really just wanted to go to bed at this point, but once your order is in “preparing,” you can no longer cancel it. This is an excellent strategy for forcing people to stay in the casino and keep gambling! I started a chat with customer service through the app to see if they could cancel my order (it had been 40 minutes since I placed it at this point), but they didn't respond very quickly and I ended up just giving up and going back to my room. At some point, after I was back in my room and getting ready for bed, customer service responded telling me that *I* could cancel the order through the app. I explained that I couldn’t because it was “preparing” and then I had to wait a long while for another response but they did eventually say they would cancel the order. I think I am done with ordering through the app now. I have survived 22 other cruises by fetching drinks for myself, so I will just return to that. I like the *idea* of the app, but it just doesn’t work the way it should. If my drink order is going to be in “preparing” for over an hour, I should be able to cancel it if I want to move on. How it takes hours to “prepare” a bottle of water is a mystery as well. Overall, it was a good day. Embarkation was pretty smooth, we like our stateroom, meals at Gigi’s and Crown Grill were good, trivia and the comedy show were fun… I am looking forward to a relaxing sea day today. Day's Drinks: 1x Mojito from Good Spirits 2x Champagne from Gigi's 1x Bailey's from Good Spirits 1x Rum & Coke from Wake View 1x Cuba Libre from Wake View 1x Bee’s Knees from Crown Grill 1x Milkyway Martini from Princess Live

Does Celebrity not do twice daily cabin service anymore?!?!

I tried that first but the mirror was far enough away from the shower that it was more effective to point the flashlight into the shower.

Did you have a working shower? When we went to breakfast, several other people ahead of and behind us in line were also complaining about the shower and the lighting situation in the bathrooms.