On my last cruise in October on the Freedom of the Seas, I “donated” enough money in the casino to receive a certificate for a free future cruise. There were a list of cruises that I could choose from or I could apply the value of the certificate to any other cruise provided I sailed by a certain date. That certain date was January 31, 2016. I had already booked my London/Paris trip for earlier in January and with the holiday season there were no earlier dates that would work so I called the Casino Hotline at Royal Caribbean. The amazing folks there allowed me to book in February for a quick weekend trip on the Enchantment of the Seas, 4 days in an ocean view cabin. I was fully prepared to go by myself since I wasn’t going to take the kids out of school, but then my mother said that she would like to go as well, so I booked it. My brother and Peter were going to stay home and take care of my step-father so that my mother would be able to go. Unfortunately, my step-father passed away in December so no care giving was necessary. The only silver lining in this is that now Michael & Peter could use their certificate and come with mom and I…as much as I love travelling with the two of them (and I LOVE travelling with the two of them!!) I would still rather have my step-dad back. So even though this did not happen on this cruise, here is a picture of him on an earlier cruise. I love you David!
Ok, so moving on before we get too sad…
Mom and I were planning on flying down because neither one of us wanted to drive, but Peter doesn’t mind at all so we decided to drive down instead. Fortunately we had not purchased airline tickets so now we just needed to book a hotel because we ALWAYS go down the day before! I am way to nervous about coming in the same day, especially since most of our drive is on I-95 and who knows how traffic/floods/etc will be on that road at any given time.
Since the cruise was basically free, I purchased the Beverage package and we made reservations for the Chef’s Table dinner. We had planned on eating in the MDR at least once, but as it turns out, that never happened. We did make sure to let the dining room staff know ahead of time though.
So onto the itinerary…for this 3 night cruise we would go from Port Canaveral to Nassau to Cococay and then back to Port Canaveral. No sea days, but I had never been to Nassau and I was the only one of the group that had been to Cococay before. Michael & Peter were really looking forward to Nassau so that they could go over to Atlantis, but I was not really hyped about any of them and was really okay with just sitting on the ship for three full days. I had been travelling a lot and really just needed some down time.
Here is our Ocean View cabin, on Deck 3. I thought the room was fine, I had been in an OV cabin before so it was what I expected, if a smidge bigger than the one I had on the Freedom in October…plus, no pullmans!!
This was the first time I had been on this class of ship, only previously travelled on Freedom or Oasis class, but I was really interested in this class because it is very similar to the Rhapsody, where I will be spending two weeks in and interior cabin in July…Its Greece and the Mediterranean though so I really don’t think I will care that much about the cabin! But I was interested in the rest of the venues and how they would compare to the bells and whistles I was used to…the short answer is they are fine and in no way contributed to my attitude about this cruise.
The pool deck is lovely and there is a very nice splash pad for the littles…not quite as amazing as the H2O Zone on some of the larger ships, but since I did not have any kids with me this trip, that was a non issue. I did not take too many pictures inside the ship, or at all for that matter, this trip…Just wasn’t feeling it for some reason.
So with that being said, lets move on to the ports. This trip we were stopping first at Nassau. I had been in a chat with some other folks that would be on-board and one super nice gentleman had offered to take whoever wanted to go on a walking tour around Nassau as he had been many times (lucky!) and had a route that showed some of the highlights around the port area. I was pretty excited to go, I love wandering and I love walking tours!
We had been told that it was a semi-strenuous walk, with one long set of stairs to climb. I had warned my mother, but she felt she would be fine…until that morning, when she decided that she had better not.
So off I went to meet some random person to take me on an unknown route in the Bahamas. Now, don’t think for a second that I was nervous about something happening to me, that doesn’t bother me at all…ask me about driving out to Stonehenge with some guy I met on the plane ride over when I was 18!! So I had no qualms about mom not going with me, I did however encounter some issues! First: I had no idea what this guy looked like. We had (the group of us) set up some “meet & greets” earlier in the cruise, but I always seemed to miss them, then I would get there and everyone would be gone. Point being, I am now trying to find someone I’ve never met before in a crowd of several thousand people.
So I waited just off the gangway, and waited, and waited. I attempted to ninja my way into finding them by eavesdropping on every group that seemed to be congregating but that only served to rule out several gaggles of people…it also had the added effect of making me look a bit like a stalker instead of a ninja, but let’s not dwell on that!
So after waiting until it was really just me and the crew, I wandered around by myself to take a few pictures so that I could say I’d at least been to Nassau.
Atlantis in the distance. I found out later that I clearly was not watching as closely as I thought I was because apparently Michael & Peter walked off the ship and headed over to Atlantis without me catching sight of them…yeah, a real ninja, I know!
I loved this boat. Does anyone else see a big shaggy dog? No? Ok, well then carry on, nothing to see here!
I walked around a bit, but eventually just headed back on-board. It was chilly for the Bahamas…even though it was February. Back on board, I headed to my cabin and promptly fell asleep…I probably needed that more than anything anyway (even if I do hate to admit that!)
Next up, Cocoacay and Chef’s Table!
Sorry for your loss. You surely penned an interesting piece here. The smaller ships certainly have splendid offerings as you experienced both classes of ships.