Boarding the Enchanted Princess

Thursday March 20, 2025

The Enchanted Princess

We didn’t really choose this ship or cruise line on purpose. We chose the itinerary. It has four stops we’ve never been to before, one we’ve been to but I don’t remember, and one we’ve been to and always enjoy! It is also 10 days long and fits in almost perfectly with the dates of our Spring Break this year. Bonus points for two of the stops being new countries we haven’t visited before to add to my list of countries visited! (This makes 47 countries visited... unless I'm forgetting some!)

We checked out of our hotel and asked them to call us a taxi to get to the port. (Do we never learn?) It took the taxi driver 20 minutes to arrive (in which time we saw several groups of people who had ordered an Uber arrive and leave). Then when we got in the van, he started driving before I had my seatbelt on and both van side doors were still open! I would say this driver was the opposite of our last driver… fast… in a death wish sort of way… and didn’t really understand that you drive between the lines and not on top of them. Despite this, we arrived at the cruise ship terminal all in one piece, and reminded ourselves to take an Uber next time.

The embarkation went pretty smoothly and we were on board reasonably quickly. The embarkation window is quite small (10:30 - 2:00) and there are no set times to show up. We showed up right at 10:30 and were probably on board by 11:00.

Something new for us, is that you don’t use a room card anymore, you use a medallion (instead of a sail and sign card) to pay for things, and enter your room (it actually unlocks your door as you approach). It is also trackable… if I look in the app I can see where Steve is on the ship. When you receive it they give it to you on a very long lanyard. I didn’t find this particularly comfortable (so many opportunities for me to lose it) so right when we got on board we went to the photography shop and ordered the watch bands that hold the medallions. They had a variety of bands to choose from. Weirdly you had to wait until after 6:00 to pick it up.

We had a relaxing afternoon sampling the tasty treats, exploring the ship and unpacking our bags. One plus for this ship is they have self serve laundry on each floor which I think is terrific, especially because one of us likes to change HIS clothes a lot!

Before dinner we headed out to get our wristbands and then had a cocktail before our dinner. I had something with gin and maraschino liqueur (strong but tasty) and Steve had a Mai Tai. We both wished we had a mudslide instead… there is something to be said for finding something you like and sticking to it!

We decided to go for having a dinner reservation at the same time each night, which means we have the same table and the same waiter each night (more of the traditional style of cruising).

Our dinner was quite delicious… Steve was astonishing the people at the table next to us by ordering two mains and two desserts (there was a lot of silent signalling and a kick under the table when his second main arrived). I would say the appetizers and mains were delicious and the desserts were just okay. I feel like this is typically true on cruise ships… and am sure we will find some desserts we love over the next 10 days.

One thing I like about dinner with the same waiter is getting to know them. Our waiter is from Mauritius which is a country I’d like to know more about and visit (we were suppose to go in 2020… but we all know what happened there!) He is lovely and sweet and has decided to teach us some French so when we go to Mauritius we will have an easier time. So far we are acing it as I know quite a few French words (I just can’t understand them when someone speaks to me or form my own intelligible sentence).

After dinner we went to a show in the main theatre which was a performer from Las Vegas doing a tribute to Lionel Ritchie. He was quite good and worked hard to keep the audience involved (and awake!) We also met the cruise director who is from Argentina and he did a little slideshow about his life that was quite funny and mentioned that Argentina won the world cup this year about 100 times 😀

Last note about something I wanted to remember. This time we got a balcony guarantee cabin. This means you pay a little less because they pick your cabin for you. Our cabin is lovely, but small even by cruise ship standards. 

Luckily we don’t need much room. I love being able to have my balcony open for fresh air and listening to the waves as we sail. The closet and storage space is also amazing (seriously, even with the copious amount of clothes we packed we still have room for more!). 

What we don’t have is the sofa space. There is a vanity and a mini fridge across from it. This isn’t really a problem for us as I don’t think we really sat on the sofa anyway… it just makes the room smaller. The balcony is also smallish, but there are two chairs and a little table which works for us. 

Steve likes the variety of movies available on the TV and I like that we have HGTV. Entertainment on the TV has definitely improved over the years we have been cruising.

Because we got a balcony guarantee our room ended up on the 15th floor right near the front of the boat. For those of you non-cruisers this means a little more motion from the ocean which can be a problem for me. So far so good… I felt the ship rolling last night but managed to sleep through it with no problems. Fingers crossed it stays this way! If you want to go on a cruise, but are worried about the motion I recommend a cabin on a lower floor mid ship. That is where the least motion is.

Oh! One more thing. We decided to use the stairs more on this trip to combat the extra desserts and the mudslides BUT our room is on the 15th floor and our dinner restaurant is on the 5th floor. I decided to take the elevator if we are going up (I can walk down many flights of stairs with no problem!) more than four floors, but Steve wants to take all the stairs. Now we play a little game where he races the elevator. So far he beat me by 5 minutes the first time… beat me a few other times and kept pace with the elevator at the end of the night… will I ever beat him? Only time will tell. Most people in the elevators are amused by this… he may become known as the “guy who races the elevators” on this ship.

Okay… just one more thing. Have you heard about the upside down pineapples? If you know you know… anyway there is a door on our floor with a bunch of magnets on them… including the pineapple. They are just asking for trouble. Someone who may or may not be married to me turned it upside down once… when we passed by again it was right side up… it seems others have the same idea because it was once again upside down when we came back for the night.