After going large can you go small again - Enchantment of the Seas trip report

[gatour]

Short answer is yes you can.

A bit of background. We are in our mid 50's without children. I have been cruising since 1981 on all of the major lines. Besides RC, we have done Princess, Disney, Carnival, HAL, and Carnival. I am partial to Princess but due to the lack of Princess cruises out of Florida during our vacation time frames we have been doing Royal Caribbean cruises recently.

For the last five or six years we have been doing jumbo and super jumbo ships (the Freedom and the Oasis class ships). So this was going to be a change of pace for us.

Even though I have this report completely wrote up, I am going break it down in blocks and post over several days. Please feel free to jump in with any questions. I also have the Cruise Compasses for each day. In addition I grabbed the Baby/Tots and Teens flyers.

 

Two weeks before the 15 Oct sailing we booked the Enchantment. Months ago we had booked the 9 November sailing. It is the weekend before our marriage 20 years ago on 14 November, our honeymoon cruise started on the Enchantment following day, 15 November. So the 15 October boarding was a fortuitous coincidence (19 years and 11 months)

The reason why we did this impromptu booking, was that we had talked about doing a trip during the week of 15 October. A couple months ago I had researched going to Savannah, Ft Lauderdale or St Pete but had not booked anything. So two week before, my wife suggested a cruise might be cost effective. I did quick research and confirmed that the rate were cost effective. Basically, for the cost of a hotel room for 4 nights in any of those cities, we could get a room on the Enchantment and food. It was a no brainer.

[shorti503]

Looking forward to following your review.  I LOVE the smaller ships.  I do sometimes worry about taking my kids back on a smaller ship after they will have sailed on Adventure in January.

[birdylady]

Great start.   SO looking forward to hearing more.  And cruising with you on Enchantment in November.

Erika

[island lady]

I love..love the sweet little EN....and missed her dearly when she left us here in PC.  She is back again for a brief stay, and booked again for February.  Perfect size ship..not too large...not too small.  😍 Wish she could stay as a third ship here in PC.  😥

[John&LaLa]

52 minutes ago, island lady said:

I love..love the sweet little EN....and missed her dearly when she left us here in PC.  She is back again for a brief stay, and booked again for February.  Perfect size ship..not too large...not too small.  😍 Wish she could stay as a third ship here in PC.  😥

 

Yep, not much use out of T1 on Saturdays. I'd rather see Celebrity take the slot for a 7 day East/West.

 

Enchantment 10/11 Southern rotation could use it on Saturdays and Tuesday or Wednesday, I think.  Not sure there is a market.  A 4/3 Saturday and Tuesday departure is not very marketable either.

Edited October 23, 2018 by John&LaLa

[gatour]

We arrived around 10:50ish.  Love the new parking/terminal.  You drive through the ground floor of the parking deck and drop off your luggage. and then drive back through the structure and do "u ie" to go up the ramp where you prepay for parking.  Check-in in was painless. We were walking on the ship at 11:15.  I am guessing they started boarding at 11:00.

 

Overall, I found the ship in good condition.  There was some rust spots and some wear and tear, but that is expected on a 20 year old ship.

 

We had an inside cabin.  It was smaller than our recent cabins on other ships, but I remembered that Royal Carribean had a phase where they had the smallest cabins afloat.  I can deal with this as we mostly use the cabin to sleep.  The only complaint I have is the size of the shower.  I am not a big person but I was constantly banging my elbows on the sides.  In addition it had a curtain instead of the clamshell.  Made it hard to get the temperature correct before entering without flooding the bathroom.

A word about the bed. They run parallel to the sidewalls. They are low and the support legs are a u-shaped bar at the foot and head of the bed. This makes it impossible to slide luggage under the bed from the foot of it. We were able to get one of our full size luggage bags under the be by shoving the bed a little to the left and lifting the bed. The other bag had to go into the closet.

 

There were two U.S. Style and two European style outlets above the desk. There was also a third U.S. Style outlet in the set of shelves next to the bed. I thought it looked odd being placed there, until I realized that is was originally for the old CRT type televisions. Nowadays a flat screen TV is mounted on the wall of the bathroom facing the bed.

In regards to available stations on the the TV. It had ESPN 1 and 2. the odd thing was that sometimes they seemed to alternate between the U.S. feeds and the Caribbean feeds. One station would be broadcasting Sport Center. While the other would be broadcasting a show about a cricket matches. This wasn't an exhaustive viewing project as I am not into watching sports on TV unless it involves Formula One, Indycar, Sportscar racing and World Cup soccer.

The other stations of note: TBS, Fox News, MSNBC, BBC world news feed. There were also a couple of children stations along with some non-english staions.

 

The room also had a small couch and a little coffee table. Due to the size of the room I could have done without the table.

 

[LuCruise]

Interesting in hearing about your trip.  We've been on Allure and then tried Mariner in the summer...a smaller and shorter cruise.  All I can say is I loved both..so would love to hear about Enchantment after the bigger ones. Think they all have their positives.  Have a great cruise!

[LMaxwell]

Enchantment has a better Solarium than Mariner; Park Cafe is nice.  Other than that I'd rate Mariner better in every other way.  

[Clarea]

2 minutes ago, LMaxwell said:

Enchantment has a better Solarium than Mariner; Park Cafe is nice.  Other than that I'd rate Mariner better in every other way.  

 

I agree and would add that Enchantment has a huge main pool deck.

[island lady]

21 hours ago, John&LaLa said:

 

Yep, not much use out of T1 on Saturdays. I'd rather see Celebrity take the slot for a 7 day East/West.

 

Enchantment 10/11 Southern rotation could use it on Saturdays and Tuesday or Wednesday, I think.  Not sure there is a market.  A 4/3 Saturday and Tuesday departure is not very marketable either.

 

21 hours ago, John&LaLa said:

 

Yep, not much use out of T1 on Saturdays. I'd rather see Celebrity take the slot for a 7 day East/West.

 

Enchantment 10/11 Southern rotation could use it on Saturdays and Tuesday or Wednesday, I think.  Not sure there is a market.  A 4/3 Saturday and Tuesday departure is not very marketable either.

 

Agree...and in my perfect world that third ship would do a 9-12 day southern Carib rotation.  Really got my hopes up years ago when we had EX do that nice 9 night out of PC for one season, and then nothing.  Sigh...

[cruisegirl1]

No problem for us.  We had two weeks (B2B)  in a suite on  Oasis, then a month later had an inside on Enchantment.    NO PROBLEM  with a smaller ship and smaller cabin.  As long as you understand that each ship class has something to offer, you are fine. 

 

enjoy M

[gatour]

Staff was mostly pleasant and efficient.  Since we booked so late, we only had the 8:30 seating as a choice, but I wait listed for My Time Dining.  We cleared the waitlist.  The server we had the first night, was okay, basically took our orders etc.  However we really liked the assistant server, really tried to meet our wants and needs.  Because of this as we exited the dining room, we requested to be seated in their section for the rest of the cruise which was granted.

 

I enjoyed the food, felt it was well prepared and tasted good, although the escargot could use a bit more garlic. The one thing I don't like is the reduction on the choice of salads

For breakfast and lunch we ate in the Windjammer except for Coco Caye. For breakfast each day they had the same pretty much the same items but there was a good variety of choices. For lunch except for the Asian section, it was pretty much the same each day. The Asian section did change some each day. A word about the Asian section. While the Windjammer opens for lunch at 11:30am, the Asian section didn't open until noon.

 

My wife is not an alcohol drinker while I enjoy my wine and an occasional beer or mixed drink. Based on the reports I have read here, and doing the math, I believed we would break even if my wife ordered only one specialty coffee each morning. About a week before the cruise, I called Royal Caribbean, and after giving the rep an excuse and him checking with a supervisor I was able to purchase the alcohol package for myself and the non-alchohol package for my wife. For full disclosure, my wife had two sips of my Bahama Mama on Coco Caye.

When we got to the cabin instead of the expected RFID cups, there were two plastic tumblers. Not sure if this is normal or a short term supply issue. They did have several free style machines scattered about the ship.

 

[birdylady]

7 minutes ago, gatour said:

When we got to the cabin instead of the expected RFID cups, there were two plastic tumblers. Not sure if this is normal or a short term supply issue. They did have several free style machines scattered about the ship.

So does this mean you couldn't use the Freestyle coke machine?  Did anyone have the RFID cups?

Erika

[gatour]

41 minutes ago, birdylady said:

So does this mean you couldn't use the Freestyle coke machine?  Did anyone have the RFID cups?

Erika

You could use the freestyle machines.  I imagine the RFID "reader" can be turned off as it is an add-on to the standard freestyle machine that you see on land.  I think I saw one person with a RFID mug everyone else had the same type of tumblers that we received.

I think they may have even ran out of the tumblers.  One day I was sitting at the R Bar, when a guy came up and got a soda in glass, and asked if he could get the cup.  Not sure if he was referencing the RFID or tumbler, bar tender told him there weren't any available it turned into an interesting discusion.

 

Then a day later at another bar a guy asked for a replacement tumbler as he had left his in the Windjammer and it was gone.  The bartender said he had none, and suggested he go back to the Windjammer and ask one of the staff if they have found one.

[joelheather]

Thats what she said!!!

[gatour]

The headliner was Lou Gazzara. He was an American Idol finalist.  We weren't expecting much but was impressed.  There was also a comedian. Unfortunately I don't remember his name and it is not in the Cruise Compasses I brought home. He first did a family friendly show and then an adult show.  We really liked him.  His jokes were different than most comedians and even during the adult show, he didn't use cuss words just because he could.

 

There were also two pairs of “lead” singer. With accompanist of a chorus line, they did one show of movie and Broadway show tunes. It was a decent show, but I have seen better. They also did a second show in the Centrum of jazz tunes. I enjoyed that one more.

 

The cruise director was “Cruisin” Susan. I liked her. She was upbeat and not over the top. That has been my only complaint about some cruise directors they think they are funnier than they actually are. Liked her staff. They seem to specialize in the activities they hosted. For example one lady from Argentina hosted all of the line dancing and there was a lot of line dancing. This made my wife very happy. I attended many of the trivia sessions even though I don't compete. They were hosted by a man from Trinidad & Tobago. His accent made some of the sessions a bit interesting.

 

[gatour]

I was looking forward to Coco Cay. Since we have been taking the large ships we have been to it in years. I remembered that I liked it better than Labadee since it had more of a deserted island feel even with 2500 of your closet friends with you. While the construction wall was nicely painted it took away from that feeling. It will be interesting if they meet the January timeline for the pier to be done. It looked to me that they have away to go to make it long enough for the Oasis class ships.

 

One nice thing about taking a smaller ship to a place decided to handle is you don't have to fight for things or stand in long lines. When we got off the ship, we were easily able to find lounge chairs that we could place in some shade. We ended up just around the bend on South Beach. It wasclose to the restrooms and fairly close to a limited bar. My wife was initially going to rent a floaty cushion until she saw the $20 price and decided not. I am guessing a lot of people agreed with her as I did not see a single one in the water or by a lounger. I am used to seeing many of them, and later in the day able to grab an abandoned one.

 

[lovescats5]

We were on the Oasis 2 times and then the Anthem and we love the Anthem and the Quantum size.  So much so that our next 3 cruises are the Anthem, and then we are looking at the Ovation.