Blue Collar Diamond becomes Enchanted! (4 days - 9/17)

This was our 3rd year in a row doing a 2nd cruise of the year and making it a road trip cruise out of Port Canaveral. I will start by talking about what a drama getting this reservation was by mentioning we didn’t intend to sail out of Port Canaveral a fourth time. When I made this reservation Majesty was still sailing out of Port Canaveral. We have done Majesty 5 times, enjoyed every cruise, but wanted something different this year. It is almost exactly 1000 miles to both Port Canaveral and the Port of Tampa for us. We did a road trip cruise to Tampa back in 2012 and enjoyed it. So after 2 straight years of Majesty on the 4 day we booked a 5 day out of Tampa on Empress.

This was not long after the announcement of Empress moving to Tampa. She was still going to do Cuba cruises from there, but we saw a greatdeal on a cruise going to Key West and Cozumel. We like Key West and this would have been our first trip back since the last hurricane. So this seemed like a win-win for us, the ship we wanted, a port we wanted ,and great price.

The drama started when we walked off Majesty last September on a 4 day cruise shortened to 3 day. We were the first sailing after Majesty did its humanitarian work in St Thomas and St Martin. We were refunded one day on our fare and it showed up promptly in OBC and that workedgreat. We were also told we would receive a future cruise credit in the amount of that one day. Great, but theysure gave out a lot of misinformation, or conflicting information. I went to the Next Cruise desk on Majesty and was told there that the Crown and Anchor Reps would have the that info on file for me to make a reservation, but it had to be made in 30 days. I received conflicting information from other crew members on board and people here on CC.

Making a reservation in 30 days, whether required or not ,wasn't a big deal, we found something we liked. Again that was Empress 5 dayfrom Tampa – Key West and Cozumel. Shortly after, Royal made a bold, or perhaps boneheaded, move and moved bunch of ships around all at once. They did so before the end of current schedules for those ships. They included, but not limited to Empress, Mariner,Majesty and Enchantment. These re deployments effected a bunch of people and Royal knew it had work to do. They created a special REDEPLOYMENT phone number that I’m sure helped some people, but it was of no value to me.

The first thing I noticed when I got my email was I was now on Majesty. I wasn’t happy to be going on Majesty for the 6th time, but it was still a good price for a 5 day cruise. But, for reasons I don’t know they changed the itinerary removing Key West and adding Costa Maya. I didn't like this change, so I had a ship I didn’t want and an itinerary I didn’t want.No problem the cruise was a year away. My cruise was at the tail end of the list of those effected by the redeployment,so I was told to wait patiently for my chance to make changes. In a rare thing for me I was patient, but I began to look for what cruise I wanted to replace it.

I found it ironic that the ship I ended up wanting was Enchantment. I never sailed out of Port Canaveral until 2015, so I never cruised on Enchantment when she was there. I sailed Majesty out of Miami. When I started sailing and doing road trips to Port Canaveral Enchantment moved to Miami. It would be the same old 4 day Nassau/CoCo Cay Route, but that didn’t bother me. I noted the cost of the cruise for the samedate (9/17) and waited patiently. (I had an ocean view room and a cruise fare that I now forget the exact amount. )

My patience ended quickly when the Black Friday sale came. The Enchantment cruise I wanted was actually a really good sale. I could get a balcony for less than what I had paid for my OV. I called C&A and they couldn’t help me because my reservation was locked up with the redeployment team. I called the redeployment team and was told I was still quite a bit down the list. I was given a date when the redeployment teamcould work on my reservation. I called that day and changed my reservation to Enchantment. However, the balconyI could have booked 2 weeks before was now $700 more and no black Friday OBC! For the first time in 12 years I was furious with Royal.

I did vent here on cruise critic and it was friend to all,Bob (Host Clarea) who suggested a name at the corporate offices. That worked! After stating my case, which Ithink I documented well, I was given a balcony and OBC that matched the Black Friday sale.

That brings us to2018. After the hurricane season of 2017, I knew I’d be watching every named storm in the 2018 season. Yes, I was thinking of my own self-interest and my vacation, but I do have plenty of friends and family affected by the 2017 storms. July was a quiet time for the Caribbean/Atlantic this year. On to August! August remained quiet with only 2 named storms that formed further North than most do. They both disappeared into the NE Atlantic.Ernesto might have bugged the British Isles, but I lost interest ��August gave way to September and the storm activity picked up a bit, but nothing like 2017. That year we watched storm after storm form over or just off West African and Bee-line to the Caribbean. This year those storms seemed to take a more northern course turning back eastearlier than many similar storms. Gordon, developed over Hispaniola and entered the gulf. Gordon ended up dumping about 4” of rain on my Ohio home the 2nd weekend of September.

About 30 days out the new Royal App for Android started showing details on our cruise. A couple ofthe hard sell products showed up as lectures, but I’m too smart for that. I did see a couple of new trivia topics that I was interested in. It showed love and Marriage on 3pm on a Sea Day? No, thank you. I had found out Susan Adams was going to be our cruise director and I did drop her a note on Facebook to welcome her to the ship and mention that I wasn't fond of a daytime L&M. (For what little that is worth)

Another 30 days out event, my wife broke a bone in her leftfoot! It was a minor non-displaced fracture, but it did require a boot for 4-6 weeks, so we took that on ourvacation. It turned out to me not too big of an issue.

Getting back to the weather, Florence became the next storm and it just sat out there for a week or more. Early projections had it turningNorth like Ernesto, but that didn’t happen, She just seemed to loom out there till a week before our cruise and predictions for Florence got worse for theEast Coast. It should spare Port Canaveral, but by cruise week it became apparent she might affect my road tip. I had made a hotel reservation for Savannah, Georgia with the plan to stop there overnight Saturday. By Tuesday I realized that the best scenario would be that the storm wouldn’t be that bad, but traffic would probably be bad from people possibly returning from evacuation. Worse case, people in that area might need the hotels for themselves or relief workers. I canceled my hotel reservation and planned ontaking the Western route via Cincinnati – Central KY, TN, and Georgia. I could still see some rain on my drive, butI could divert as far west as Louisville, KY and still make it about as far as Valdosta, GA on day one.

That turned out to be a wise plan, unusual for me! We started out at 7am on Saturday and had a sunny, uneventful drive. Atlanta was the only hard part arriving there around 4pm I think. We went straight through Atlanta and did hit heavy traffic. The car pool lanes did help us get though town in a reasonable amount of time. We did stop in Valdosta, just about 20 miles north of the Florida line. This left us about 230 miles to go to get to Port Canaveral.

(I'll update this and add photos around noon today. For now, its back to work, and checking these posts for missing spaces between words that this forum software steals!)

Excellent start

 

 

(I'll update this and add photos around noon today. For now, its back to work, and checking these posts for missing spaces between words that this forum software steals!)

It’s very annoying when it does that. Every time I copy paste from word to here that happens. Then by the time you catch it, it’s to late. Looking forward to seeing the rest of your adventures.

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I was wondering why that was happening. At first I just thought a particular person wasn't hitting the space bar. But it was happening in posts from many different people.

It’s very annoying when it does that. Every time I copy paste from word to here that happens. Then by the time you catch it, it’s to late. Looking forward to seeing the rest of your adventures.

 

 

 

 

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Looking forward to hearing the "rest of the story"

After a pleasant sunny drive on Saturday, we got up early, probably too early to start our journey to Port Canaveral. We were on the road by 8am. Once I entered Florida on I75 I decided to by pass Orlando and the turnpike tolls and go I-10 west to Jacksonville, and then south into the Port Canaveral area. That stretch of I-10 is boring until you get to Jacksonville. I guess that boring highway gave us time to think. My wife remembered that our Nephew and family just had a newborn baby after moving to Orlando, so after some brief texting, we invited them over to the Port area for lunch

Our driving and weather luck continued as we pulled into the Radisson exactly at noon, just as I planned it! What I didn't take into account was Oasis and 2 Carnival ships were in port leaving so the hotel was busy! We weren't in a hurry, so we did some shopping in the area till we could check in our hotel and have dinner with our local family.

Gina was happy to be one of the first to hold our new great nephew. There is a nice pizza place adjacent to the Radisson that made for a nice lunch. After that, I planned drinks and dinner at Grills at the port to watch the ships sail. The last 2 years we were thwarted in our attempts to do this, but after checking in the hotel we were at Grills by 4pm. Grills sits adjacent to terminal 1 and gives great views of the ships there.

We shared a nice early dinner and watched people explore Oasis. We were on Oasis in 2016 and were happy to see her again and her new compliment of happy cruisers.

Carnival Sunshine was the first to leave, she sailed past our seats. This is really a great place to watch cruise ships.

Here is a picture of Sunshine passing Oasis from our point of view.

I was wondering why that was happening. At first I just thought a particular person wasn't hitting the space bar. But it was happening in posts from many different people.

Other than typing directly into the forum box, I haven't found a way to stop it, I just go back and try to edit most of the post.

We continued to enjoy a perfect day at Grills. It was a little cooler than some of my visits with a slight breeze. I was told the breeze was enough that the port required the ships to have a tug escort in case they were blown off course.

After all the cruise ships left, we finished a wonderful dinner and started to walk back to our car. Gina noticed the boat storage area and the large fork lift they use to move boats around. As our luck continued, they retrieved one boat from the dock and stored it away.

We found this really fascinating to watch

(I'll update this and add photos around noon today. For now, its back to work, and checking these posts for missing spaces between words that this forum software steals!)

Microsoft Word does auto-wrapping by removing a space and changing it into another character (CR or LF, maybe both). When you copy this into a CC edit box the new character isn't recognized and it is removed. I've see the same thing happening between various Microsoft editors as well. About the only way to get around this is to turn off auto-wrap before doing a copy so the target program handles it all.

Same problem with a tab character - pretty much all browsers think you are leaving the box you are in so you can't enter a tab within an edit box.

This is so interesting. Thank you for writing.

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It’s very annoying when it does that. Every time I copy paste from word to here that happens. Then by the time you catch it, it’s to late. Looking forward to seeing the rest of your adventures. using Forums

Someone just posted a day or two ago with a possible solution. Copy and paste from word to notes. Then copy and paste to CC.

i also had to remove the double spacing between paragraphs after doing a word copy and paste. If you try the above, let us know if it works.

After our touristy dinner at the port, we went back to the Radisson and enjoyed one my favorite hotel pools.

One great thing about this pool is the waterfall. After 1000 miles of driving, standing under this water fall and letting the water pound your shoulders is like a free massage!

I neglected to tell you that we got an email a week ahead of time stating that the ship was going to do a Mandatory Coast Guard inspection and boarding wouldn't start till noon. We discussed this in our roll call. (Once again, I had another great roll call, I love Cruise Critic Roll calls!) I remembered this when I checked into the hotel and asked for a time on the shuttle to the port on Embarkation day. Their first shuttle was 9am! I wanted to be the first on the ship and would rather wait in the terminal than at the hotel. (We came equipped with phones and Ipad to keep us entertained.) But I figured 9am was too early, so we took the 9:30 shuttle after moving our car to the parking area for the week. Here one of the small memorable incidents of the week occurred. As I was walking to the shuttle area I noted about 300 sea gulls all standing under cover in the parking area. As I started to detour around them, a tourist, showing off to his family threw a doughnut into the flock. A gull picked it up and flew directly at me along with this 300 friends. For a moment I thought of Tippy Hendron and missing the cruise because of bird attack, but I survived!

Yes, our bags are always easy to spot! So we did arrive at the terminal by 10am and security was open. We rushed up to the Diamond check in area and were processed quickly and we went into the comfortable waiting area and started our relaxing wait. Enchantment was in site!

Above is my lovely wife Gina, one of the reasons these road trips are so pleasant. Soon another lady would join us, you see her in the back to the right. She was obviously a seasoned, veteran cruiser from this port. I like to think I am too, but she was the cause, no fault of hers, for me to get embarrassed. There had not yet been any notice about boarding time when about 10 people walked up to the gate and started boarding. Of course I get right in line behind them after posting on the roll call that boarding at started (this was about 10:50am) As we got to the front of the line, I was told they were B2B cruisers re-boarding. I felt stupid and the lady above just smiled giving me her best. "You dumb @ss, you should know better" look.

About the only way to get around this is to turn off auto-wrap before doing a copy so the target program handles it all.

 

Same problem with a tab character - pretty much all browsers think you are leaving the box you are in so you can't enter a tab within an edit box.

That didn't occur to me, I'll see what I can do differently next time.

Shortly after my aborted attempt to board, a lady made an announcement about the CG inspection and the plan to board around noon. I think it was then 11am and the waiting area got a little more crowded.

They did have some snacks and drinks for us, so I got back on my Ipad and told my roll call mates that I prematurely embarked, or attempted to. My newest cruise friends - MikeW and Cmurph were both driving in from their Florida homes. After that, the last hour went fast and we did board at noon and went straight to the Windjammer. Since this was my first time on Enchantment, I studied the deck plans and reminded myself DECK 9, DECK 9, DECK 9. Before you knew it, we were there.

Now, for another admission. We have never got the deluxe drink package(s) before, just the soda package. I had thought we never would having made Diamond and getting the 3 hour happy hour and the fact that our bar bill is never over $100 a cruise. But I got a $1500 bonus at work right before the cruise, so I canceled our soda package and got the full packages for us. I surprised Gina by ordering us a couple of Captain and Cokes.

Actually Gina's was a Captain and Diet Coke, or she says its called a "skinny pirate". I hate Diet Coke and normally get Coke Zero, but I tried her drink and the Captain covers up the diet taste, so that was my main drink of the week. Looking back now, I knew I wasn't going to "get my money's worth" out of the package and avoided the desire to try and do so. We had a great time, but I probably will not buy the package again for the foreseeable future.

Even though I tend to spend a lot of time here and research things to death, I somehow was unaware that Enchantment added the electronic signage first seen on the Oasis and Freedom class ships.

These signs were almost worthless most of the cruise. Their internet connection was so slow, most people gave up tying to use them. Once in awhile they worked ok. Next we went to the dining room and check out our table location. We asked for and got the late seating. Our table was a table for 6 near the back of the room on the lower level.

I thought the room looked nice and found these white chairs pretty comfortable. Next, as is our tradition on nice days, we changed into our swimsuits and hit the solarium pool.

Because of the Coast Guard Inspection the rooms were not available till 2:30pm. After swimming we tried the Oasis bar on the pool deck.

Leo above was a great bar tender. You will want to note that this convenient bar is on the smoking side of the ship. This early in the boarding day it was no problem. When the ship was moving, again, no problem, but when in port the rest of the trip, we avoided this bar.

We did finally make it to our room.

I have read thousands of posts (I don't think that is an exaggeration) about bed near balcony vs bed near bathroom. It was here that Gina and I realized that this was our first ever bed near the bathroom in 16 previous cabins! I still don't think it is a consideration for us in picking a cabin.

Frequently on cruises, I an near the bow of the ship waving to the port webcams, but with Enchantment showing her backside to the port cam,and having sailed from PC 4 times before, I thought Gina would enjoy participating in the sail away dance party, which she did despite her temporary handicap.

We stayed on the pool deck until sunset. and then prepared for dinner.

Despite the drink package, we found the Diamond Lounge in the Viking Crown lounge and met a few really nice people there.

I think the guy above was in the witness protection program and didn't like his picture taken. (I just now noticed this)

We walked into dinner and attempted to go directly to our seat , but one dining room waiter insisted he take us to our seat. He kept trying to go the wrong way and we took him to our seat! Already there was another couple a little older than us, they were D+ and on the 2nd leg of their B2B. As much as we enjoyed their company, I don't think we ever got there names. Next came another couple and an interesting moment.

I mentioned that I really enjoy roll calls. Typically the ones for the shorter cruises aren't that big, and ours wasn't. The majority of the posts were from 3 of us. (But we certainly didn't exclude anyone) This couple walked up to our table and I instantly recognized her face from her profile pic on Cruisecritic. I could see she recognized me. (Don't want this to sound romantic or anything :) But the moment of recognition was there. This was Connie, or CMurph as she is know here. Connie, Mike (MikeW...) had kept in touch for months before and on boarding day. We would run into Mike later. As frequently is the case, we enjoyed our table mates the entire cruise having a full table all 4 nights. I had the pork chop as I frequently do from the first day menu, and Gina just has the Onion soup and a salad. Our wait team was excellent all week! Our cruise was off to a great start. Connie and I both had spouses who are not on cruise critic, but well aware of who was joining them on the cruise.

The delay in updates is sponsored by Microsoft.

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I forgot to add from day 1 that the welcome aboard show was short and in between first and second seating. The comedian was pretty good, I remember one line specifically, he was bashing millennial's by saying, "In my day, we had to eat Tide directly out of the box" He would have a show on the final night, but we missed it. I assume it is the Cruise Director's job, but Cruisin' Susan had Love and Marriage, Battle of the Sexes, and Quest all on the same night! On every 4 night cruise I've been on we have had these on different nights. She may not have been horrible, but she will definitely be my least favorite CD. Team her up with my least favorite Activities Director = Mo, I didn't enjoy this pair. In fairness, Mo may be ok, but he ticked me off on Majesty's quest 2 years ago, and I haven't forgiven him. (You would have to see my 2016 Majesty review for the details.) In any event, we skipped Quest the final night for the first time in years.

Day 2 was Coco Cay. and the seas were calm. I can now say I will forever be 5 for 5 at making Coco Cay. (while it was a tender port). I had to add that, even though I thought my meaning was obvious but you know the type of CC member who trolls for things to criticize. Yes, its possible to miss a dock port. :rolleyes:

Speaking of the dock, I can see considerable work has been done since our visit a year ago, and with no implied expertise, I am hopeful for those of you traveling here in Feb 2019 that the pier may be ready!

There were definitely a lot more construction people working this year than last year. I didn't see any obvious signs of PERFECT DAY construction, but there were a lot of areas that had fencing with jungle camouflage covering construction areas. I don't know how far along that is. Ignoring that, it was the same Coco Cay as last year.

I did get to dive again! My 2nd time at Coco Cay after 3 failed attempts. We did get the beach beds on South Beach again and that was a wonderful day. Though, for months, the beach beds were not available on the cruise planner. The bungalos, clam shells, and cabanas were there, but no beach beds. I don' t know if this was intentional or just an IT problem as much of the cruise planner was messed up for most of this spring/summer. We could book excursions for Cozumel and we weren't even stopping there!

I just realized I haven't uploaded the photos for South Beach yet, so those will come late tonight or tomorrow!

 

I neglected to tell you that we got an email a week ahead of time stating that the ship was going to do a Mandatory Coast Guard inspection and boarding wouldn't start till noon. We discussed this in our roll call. (Once again, I had another great roll call, I love Cruise Critic Roll calls!) I remembered this when I checked into the hotel and asked for a time on the shuttle to the port on Embarkation day. Their first shuttle was 9am! I wanted to be the first on the ship and would rather wait in the terminal than at the hotel. (We came equipped with phones and Ipad to keep us entertained.) But I figured 9am was too early, so we took the 9:30 shuttle after moving our car to the parking area for the week. Here one of the small memorable incidents of the week occurred. As I was walking to the shuttle area I noted about 300 sea gulls all standing under cover in the parking area. As I started to detour around them, a redneck tourist, showing off to his family threw a doughnut into the flock. A gull picked it up and flew directly at me along with this 300 friends. For a moment I thought of Tippy Hendron and missing the cruise because of bird attack, but I survived!

 

I just laughed so hard!!! I didn't know this review started.... but I will be catching up on the rest of it after work.

I just laughed so hard!!! I didn't know this review started.... but I will be catching up on the rest of it after work.

Welcome Mike! Mike is going to hate me, for posting this pic, but Mike and Cmurph were part of the trio counting down the hours to this cruise and we kept each other company on the roll call right up to the moment we boarded. As mentioned above Connie - Cmurph was our table mate at dinner. On night two, we would both run into Mike in the Diamond Lounge.

Mike is on the left, Cmurph is on the right with her husband John in the middle. Mike doesn't like this picture, but I think it accurately reflects the mood we were in and the good time we had. I'm not married to him, so I can post this photo without repurcussion. ;) My wife doesn't like me posting pictures of her that she hasn't cleared, so I'll mention that is her in the background picking up snacks! Jon and Gina are both understanding CC spouses, use to meeting strangers like new friends.!

Great review- We enjoyed our EN cruise a few weeks ago so much that I looked into changing our March BR cruise to another one on the EN (we live that side of the state) Found that it's not economically feasible to due that.

Enjoying your review, looking forward to reading more. Thanks for doing this.