Enchanted Thanksgiving 2022 Southern Caribbean review with patters, menus, and pics of food

[paradiselivin1]

Thank you for this wonderful post. I'm so excited to get on board this Friday and check out the shows and all the great food that you showed. Our itinerary is totally different and over 20 days we'll hit 10 different islands (most we've been to before) and Princess Cay (twice). Mostly going to relax so we'll just play most of it by ear. Glad you had a great cruise!

[SumoCitrus]

Wow. This all looks amazing. Looking forward to my Christmas cruise on Regal!

[MissP22]

8 hours ago, wrongwaywatson said:

I had the sesame chicken bites as my appetizer and I enjoyed them! It was a change for me, as I usually order shrimp cocktail.  The Prime Rib was outstanding!  Thoroughly enjoyed it!  I didn't order dessert that night, because I was so full, and they brought me out a piece of carrot cake.  I didn't even take a bite, but my DH did and he said it was bad.

Good to here about the Prime Rib. On our last cruise it wasn't all that good. It looked great but just didn't make the cut. Maybe they bought a better grade of meat lately?

The carrot cake has always looked good but has always been disappointing.

Our go to dessert is now the Key Lime pie (served in a mason jar) which can be ordered from room service and occasionally in the DR.

[macaroni]

The lemon meringue cheesecake was the best dessert we had in the MDR along with the bananas foster.

skip the rockfish…not very good.

[555]

3 minutes ago, macaroni said:

The lemon meringue cheesecake was the best dessert we had in the MDR along with the bananas foster.

skip the rockfish…not very good.

I always get it once a cruise. 

[Itchy&Scratchy]

The following day was a sea day and a formal dinner. We chilled, read books, watched TV, enjoyed our balcony as much as we could (it was in direct sun almost the entire day), the boys played ping pong a LOT and had lots of ice cream, DS enjoyed a lot of mocktails, I also read in the Wake View bar area for a bit, walked around the stores (I love smelling perfumes and looking at jewelry), just a nice relaxing day...

 

 

 

Lime and salt-cured salmon was delicious! The taste of a crab salad with salted salmon combination was very unexpected, but great. Both of us enjoyed it very much.

 

 

I also tried the escargot (not a big fan, but I try to be open minded), and I didn't like the taste of the butter. It had way too many spices for me. I would have preferred a simpler butter and garlic flavor:

 

I also tried Cucumber-melon-mint soup and didn't enjoy it at all (kind of tasteless and plain if you ask me):

 

 

DS ordered the lemon scented ravioli as an appetizer, but didn't like them. I thought the flavor was great - very delicate, but the ravioli themselves were undercooked.

 

 

He then enjoyed his regular Fettuccine Alfredo, while I opted for a very nice lobster entree: 

 

Now, the biggest surprise of the night was Pumpkin and Walnut crepes. Santorini's hostess Rachel (a lovely young woman) told me they were excellent. We are not big fans of pumpkin anything, so I was skeptical but gave it a try. Mmmmmmmmmm! Incredible! So fluffy and creamy at the same time, and had a wonderful flavor that was not reminiscent of pumpkin pies (I was afraid of that).

 

Will definitely order them next time:

 

DH loved his beef wellington (medium):

 

 

 

Both DH and I ordered the 5-spice duck and couldn't have been more disappointed: It looked fantastic on the outside and smelled great. 

 

 

 

But inside it was a splotchy grey and pink - not very appetizing looking. We also didn't care for the taste or texture. Upon seeing that neither of us ate it, our head waiter Doru (very hard working and caring) talked to the chef about it, apologized and assured us it was safe to eat, despite its color palette. But we didn't like the taste either, so he offered more lobster instead, but we declined - had little space left for dessert (we saw other people getting the Pistachio Dome). We didn't like the noodles that came with the duck either.

 

Ta-da, the Pistachio Dome! Same as before - delicious and rich:

 

 

 

 

Crepes Suzette, in contrast, were such a waste and a failure:

 

Imagine carton-dry and carton-tasting crepes literally swimming in a sea of caramel sauce. The crepes were inedible, the sauce was extremely sweet and couldn't be consumed alone or with the gelato. I ate some of the gelato alone, and it was great. But the rest of it went to waste. Disappointed.

[Itchy&Scratchy]

And that brings us to the final day of unlimited dining:
 

 

 

Tropical fruit soup - excellent! Interesting that mine tasted like mango, and DS's tasted more like pineapples.... must have been made in different pots. 🙂

 

Seafood medley app was pretty good:

 

 

but I didn't really enjoy the seafood bisque.

 

Both DH and DS ordered the meatloaf (I don't know why)... and both left it uneaten. Just wasn't very appealing.

 

 

DS ordered the Asian noodles, and, to my huge surprise, he actually loved them:

 

DH enjoyed the mahi-mahi:

 

 

And then he saw me immensely enjoying my surf and turf (that tenderloin - medium, no sauce - was probably the best I've ever had):

 

that he ordered and devoured his own (also medium, but with the rosemary sauce) to make up for the meatloaf:

 

 

What an excellent finish for our sailing!!!

Complete with the Baked Alaska Parade. 🙂

 

[larrybritt]

I'm just curious, did you guys order more than one dinner at a time, I have heard they will let you but just have never done that yet. We are going in three weeks and would like to try some different dishes but don't want to feel uncomfortable ordering more than one. Just wasn't sure what others do?

[Itchy&Scratchy]

39 minutes ago, larrybritt said:

I'm just curious, did you guys order more than one dinner at a time

of course!

We order 1-3 appetizers each, and 1-3 entrees depending on what tickles our fancy. Sometimes you only see one thing you like and sometimes you see 3. Or even 4, but let's be reasonable - that's a LOT of food. Sometimes if we haven't tried something before, but we are not sure we are going to like it, we will only order one and share it (and something else that we know for sure we like). But usually DH and I like somewhat different things. Some people order only one of every course, because they don't overeat. 🙂 We are not this kind of people.

 

The waiters usually ask if you want all appetizers or entrees brought out at once. We usually do, because if they bring out one at a time, it'll be a veeeeeery looooong dinner. More than two hours. We don't have time for that, and we eat pretty fast so things don't cool down or warm up by the time we are ready for the next dish.

[wrongwaywatson]

3 hours ago, larrybritt said:

I'm just curious, did you guys order more than one dinner at a time, I have heard they will let you but just have never done that yet. We are going in three weeks and would like to try some different dishes but don't want to feel uncomfortable ordering more than one. Just wasn't sure what others do?

I ordered two entrees on this night.  I ordered Beef Wellington and the Lobster!  DH and BIL both ordered two appetizers often.

[paradiselivin1]

20 minutes ago, wrongwaywatson said:

I ordered Beef Wellington and the Lobster

Were they good? I will look for that on the menu as I love both of them, too!

[Itchy&Scratchy]

5 minutes ago, paradiselivin1 said:

Were they good? I will look for that on the menu as I love both of them, too!

Yes, for us - for sure.

[wrongwaywatson]

24 minutes ago, paradiselivin1 said:

Were they good? I will look for that on the menu as I love both of them, too!

Both were delicious!  Highly recommend!

[Itchy&Scratchy]

So, let me know if you have any questions, but this is about it.

We loved the cruise. The ship is gorgeous.

 

Perfume store:

 

 

Fruit carvings at the buffet:

 

I was desperate to have a balcony, even though it wasn't affordable with the original prices or any time after that. I was so happy when I won the bid for an obstructed deluxe (wanted a regular obstructed, but none were available). Yay!

 

We listened to the violin duo in the plaza quite a bit, especially when they played Vivaldi.

Watched the flash mob dance - very cute.

 

Princess Patters were delivered every evening, and we had twice daily service, unless we put on a DND sign up (electronic). The bathroom had two pump bottles in the shower (body wash and shampoo/conditioner) and two pump bottles on the vanity (lotion and soap). No soap bar - I brought my own just in case. Same awful shower curtain which often flipped over the splash guard and water went all over the floor. 😞 The cabin was great and we love the layout which allows us to store two opened suitcases in the closet. RCI cabins are so bad in this regard - the closets are inaccessible, with or without the suitcases in them.

 

We took it easy on this cruise and stayed out of a lot of crowded venues for fear of getting Covid, like last time. Hope to pick up the speed on our next cruises. Princess doesn't have anything but Caribbean Princess sailing during Thanksgiving next year, so I just booked a brand new MSC Seascape - with everything included (wifi and alcohol), the balcony for 3 is a very reasonable $2,330 for a holiday sailing. I am going to bring my parents with us. The itinerary is nowhere near as wonderful as Southern Caribbean, but a cruise is a cruise, right? Our first two attempts to sail with MSC have failed - first in April 2020 and then I cancelled April 2022 because the covid infections were spiking on ships amid masking cancellations. We were going to travel with my elderly parents then. And look at us know - nothing is required anymore.

MSC food is also reportedly not as good as Princess', but we'll survive. 🙂

 

But they do have a ping pong table which is what my kiddo wants most of all at this time.

[shamrockace]

We were also on this cruise with our DS, DIL, two small grands 8 & 6, and our grown granddaughter and her friend. The kids club was incredible and the littles loved it much better than Royal. The Thanksgiving Family Fun day was held in the Piazza and was a blast.
 

Instead of the shows, which we’ve seen numerous times, we did the trivia and game shows. I couldn’t say enough good things about Jayson (with a y) on the entertainment staff. He did some of the music trivia, some of the games, the dance classes and the exercise classes. Nicki did the rest of the trivia. She was sweet but not hilarious like Jayson and gave too much info away on questions.
 

I had issues with the food. I don’t like seafood and I’m allergic to tree nuts. Princess’ desserts all seem to have tree nuts. I couldn’t get regular cheesecake the days they had cheesecake with nuts. I’m afraid to eat in the buffet because you can’t tell what has nuts. The international cafe had awesome sandwiches. The only cookies with no nuts was chocolate chip or lemon and they didn’t have them everyday. Some days was nuts only cookies.  
 

we had a great time on this cruise. We spent plenty of time at the pool. 

[Itchy&Scratchy]

20 hours ago, shamrockace said:

The Thanksgiving Family Fun day was held in the Piazza and was a blast.

yes, we enjoyed it very much when DS was younger. Now he is a "big" boy, almost a teen, so he doesn't want to go to that party anymore. I still have pins he made years ago during this party. 🙂 Fun times. 🙂

 

 

20 hours ago, shamrockace said:

Instead of the shows, which we’ve seen numerous times,

I thought these were pretty new productions. Did you see them this year?

 

I am sorry you couldn't enjoy all the food. Having allergies is very tough, and staying safe while eating unfamiliar food is as well.

 

Jayson was awesome! I saw him do the dance classes and he also did the flashmob dance!

Edited December 8, 2022 by Itchy&Scratchy

[shamrockace]

59 minutes ago, Itchy&Scratchy said:

yes, we enjoyed it very much when DS was younger. Now he is a "big" boy, almost a teen, so he doesn't want to go to that party anymore. I still have pins he made years ago during this party. 🙂 Fun times. 🙂

 

 

I thought these were pretty new productions. Did you see them this year?

 

I am sorry you couldn't enjoy all the food. Having allergies is very tough, and staying safe while eating unfamiliar food is as well.

 

Jayson was awesome! I saw him do the dance classes and he also did the flashmob dance!

We did a 20 day B2B in February on Enchanted and the production shows were the same. My family were the ones doing the “Junk in the trunk” game if you saw it in the piazza. 

Edited December 9, 2022 by shamrockace
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[texasgirl29]

On 12/4/2022 at 4:00 AM, MissP22 said:

I've seen both the Rock Opera and Five Skies and didn't love either. 

After reading many good reviews, such as this these, I'll have to give them both another chance. 🙂

I thought I was the only one who didn’t love Rock Opera. I thought it was so loud it hurt the musicality of the performers. After that, didn’t go to the other production shows, but I loved other shows on Enchanted. I guess I’ll have to give it another try. 

[MissP22]

4 hours ago, texasgirl29 said:

I thought I was the only one who didn’t love Rock Opera. I thought it was so loud it hurt the musicality of the performers. After that, didn’t go to the other production shows, but I loved other shows on Enchanted. I guess I’ll have to give it another try. 

I attribute those type of shows being produced only to attract new blood to the Princess line, while still providing entertainment for the older crowd at the same time. I know I'm getting old but I'll just give them another chance with an open mind to see if my tolerance has changed.

See you there. 😉

[EatonDoolittle]

8 hours ago, texasgirl29 said:

I thought I was the only one who didn’t love Rock Opera.  

 

Nope, it bored me to the point that I left midway through. 

[wrongwaywatson]

I enjoyed Rock Opera, but not Five Skies.

[555]

1 hour ago, wrongwaywatson said:

I enjoyed Rock Opera, but not Five Skies.

Delete

Edited December 9, 2022 by 555

[arctickitty]

Itchy and scratchy thanks so much for posting this. Not many people have been posting menus and food pictures recently…you provided a great overview. Thanks!

[ohiocruisemom]

Thank you so much for this post!  We are back on the Enchanted in February.  Were there no soufflés offered for dessert at dinner?

[Itchy&Scratchy]

On 12/14/2022 at 1:02 PM, ohiocruisemom said:

Thank you so much for this post!  We are back on the Enchanted in February.  Were there no soufflés offered for dessert at dinner?

yes, they most definitely were. But we don't like them.