Bahamas 2015 Day 3
Monday September 28: All Aboard!Following breakfast we dropped our car off at Budget which was about one-half mile from the hotel. Had we chosen Hertz it would have been even faster – Hertz and the hotel basically shared the same driveway. At Budget drop off was pretty quick – we got there at about 10AM and were on the shuttle in less than 10 minutes. At the desk they asked if I had recorded the ending mileage (which I hadn’t, but that didn’t faze them in the least), whether I had filled up the tank (we had stopped at the gas station that was conveniently between the hotel and Budget), and how many people we had. We turned out to be the 11th-14th people on the shuttle, which filled it up. It sounds like they were running two shuttles – fortunately we didn’t have to wait around for the next one. If we had no rental car to deal with we could have simply taken the hotel’s shuttle instead.
Waiting for only the amount of time it took to put everyone’s luggage on board we were off to the cruise terminal – which was only about 5-6 minutes away. The shuttles all pull up into a special drop-off area where porters are waiting to accept all the luggage off the shuttle. They put everything into small piles for each family/group and make sure it is tagged. Since we had already put on our luggage tags all we had to do was say “yep, that’s ours and no, we don’t need to tag anything” and they directed us around the corner where we walked through the lower level of the parking garage to the main entry doors of the terminal.
From there we whisked through security, went up the escalator where we were directed to the Suites line (more on this later) and were standing at the desk getting our SeaPass cards printed in less than 10 minutes. By the time we got our cards they were almost done with Suites/Platinum boarding and were just about to call for Gold C&A (which is what we would have otherwise qualified for had it not been for our Grand Suite) – so we simply waltzed through check-in to be greeted with our first “Bing Bong” and started boarding. A quick stop for the obligatory group photo and then up the gangway to be greeted in the Centrum. I didn’t look at my watch, but from the time we entered the terminal to the time we got onboard was probably under 18 minutes.
We spent about an hour wandering around the ship, trying to get the “lay of the land”. Having experienced only Oasis previously the comparatively smaller size of Enchantment made for some entertaining contrasts. By the end of the cruise we’d all agree that the Centrum was a much nicer feature than the Promenade of Oasis. The Promenade was a more interesting place to walk THROUGH, but the Centrum was a more interesting place to STAY and spend time. The surplus of seating ringing the Centrum on multiple decks made for a great place to sit and enjoy music, people watch, or simply feel the energy emanating from everyone.
We made a particular point of checking out the Schooner Bar. On Oasis this had turned into our “go to” place when we wanted to relax, as the combo of piano and trivia played nicely into our interests. On Enchantment it turned out that a lot of the trivia happened in Boleros, and the piano stylings of Ronilo made for great background music but weren’t really “destination piano music”. We didn’t happen to hear the other pianist onboard, although the reviews we read about him were pretty mixed. Having said that we still managed to spend a lot of time at Schooner because it was comfortable and had some great views.
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| E during our post-lunch exploration of the Schooner, before the staterooms had opened up. We were both enjoying the Drink of the Day as a way to celebrate the start of our cruise. |
Around 1145A or so we headed over to Windjammer for lunch. We actually first detoured to Park Café in the Solarium to see whether they were serving or not – if they were, our oldest son really wanted one of the roast beef sandwiches. Everyone raves about those, but on Oasis I personally found them to be a big nothing – unless tough, tasteless meat qualifies as “something”. (Yes, I know this is probably a minority opinion, but that’s how I feel.) As it happened, they weren’t open, and every time we did visit throughout the cruise they were serving pork loin sandwiches. Don’t know whether they actually ever had RB or not on our cruise.
The WJ was, as expected, mobbed. However, we lucked into a four person table without too much trouble and chowed down. Oldest son and I both ended up with the deep-fried fish and fries as our main course, and we both enjoyed it. There are certainly worse buffets out there. I wouldn’t want to make a career out of eating at WJ – I know many cruisers here who do just that and are quite content – but as a breakfast or lunch destination I don’t have many complaints about their offerings or the quality.
After lunch the wife and I grabbed the Drink of the Day and we all kicked back in Schooner waiting for the staterooms to open up. Once that happened we made our way forward to deck 8 and cabins 8540 and 8539. 8540 was a Grand Suite, 8539 was an interior directly across the hallway (thereby satisfying the requirement that minor children not rooming with parents be either immediately next door or across the hallway from their parents). We decided to splurge on this trip and sample the GS – something we’d never do on a longer cruise given the premium cost. To balance things, we got the boys an interior. (On Oasis we’d done side-by-side balconies.) We knew that when not sleeping the boys would hang out in our GS so we’d all get the benefit.
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| The sleeping alcove of GS8540. There were two electrical outlets on the front of the vanity counter. If I recall correctly, one was a US 110V outlet and the other an international 220V. If you live in North America and carry around a UK (or univeral) plug adapter you can generally use both outlets for your gear. Just make sure your equipment can handle 220V input. (Most can handle both 110V or 220V). |
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| The seating and bar area of the GS. Loved the large couch! It is actually covered in something (like) vinyl - so it had a hard feel to it rather than being soft fabric. |
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| The GS had a great balcony with lots of seating options. |
The bathroom has a tub/shower combo – although the shower curtain still suffers from the tendency to glue itself to you while you shower, so having something to weight down the bottom of the curtain is a good idea. (We used 4 wooden clothes pins – 8 would have been better.) Our cabin attendant was Elmer – he was always present and ready to give us a welcome. The ability of the cabin and dining staff to learn and remember everyone’s name is a wonder to me!
Waiting for us on the bar counter were some complementary fruit and water bottles. There are various other benefits of a GS – but we actually didn’t make use of any of them. We had robes – but didn’t wear them. We had access to the Concierge Lounge on Deck 11 for dinner time drinks and snacks – but never made it up there. We had first shot at reserving a cabana on Coco Cay – but had no desire to do this (more later). We had an invitation waiting for us to a special reception for Suite guests on (I think) Tuesday – but we didn’t go. We also skipped the C&A Welcome Back party on Monday, and another invite for something on Thursday. We did enjoy the fruit plate that was waiting for us. I did also have the Concierge take care of changing our reservation to Chops from one night to another – but I did that mostly so I could say I’d used one of the perks of the suite. I could have just as easily done this myself.
Would we get a GS again? If we didn’t care about the price, of course! However, we were also quite pleased with our balcony stateroom on Oasis, and given that we aren’t particularly “high maintenance” types all the perks of the GS were mostly lost on us. There’s no denying the extra space, sofa, and upgraded bathroom are nice – but not for the price.
Would we recommend 8540? No. 7540, yes…but 8540, no. There’s an outdoor extension of the WJ eating area directly above 8540, and with that comes a lot of clunking and banging noises at odd times – including as early as 430AM. The room is comfortable, but NOT quiet.
While we were exploring our rooms our luggage showed up. I don’t know whether suite guests are given priority delivery treatment or not, but I’m guessing this is the case. We took advantage of the early delivery to unpack and then continued exploring our room, reading through the Compass, etc. until it was time to go down for muster drill at 3:30PM. Somewhere during this time we took a detour to Guest Services to get some extra keycards made so we could access the boys’ cabin and they could access ours. I think I read somewhere that we could have had the Concierge do this for us but we just don’t have the mindset to delegate this kind of thing to others.
Muster drill was very different than what we’d experienced on Oasis. On the bigger ship our muster station had been in the MDR, where we’d been invited to sit down in air-conditioned comfort and watch a video outlining the emergency processes. On Enchantment we experienced what I assume to be a more typical muster, which meant standing outside on Deck 5, packed in like sardines, waiting for everyone to get checked in before seeing a live demo of life jacket use. If I recall correctly, the drill took about 20 minutes before we were released.
After muster, we immediately went over to Schooner and got ourselves four drinks (two virgin drinks for the boys, grown-up drinks for the grown-ups) which we took back to the GS in order to enjoy sail-away from our balcony. It was a good thing I was paying attention as the bartender mixed the drinks. Despite his having entered a “virgin strawberry colada” into the register, at the last minute he reflexively dumped a bunch of rum into what was supposed to be our 15-year old’s drink. THAT was a surprise we weren’t prepared to spring on him, so had to have a quick re-do!
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| R enjoys his (almost not-virgin) strawberry colada during sail-away. |
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| A and E enjoy their sail away drinks. Hey, we're going cruising! <g> |
We had the early MDR seating at 545P so were soon making our way aft to Deck 4. (I kept getting turned around on this ship. The theater-forward/MDR-aft configuration is opposite of Oasis’s setup.) We had a table for 4 in the main well of the MDR, at the base of the Grand Staircase. Our team consisted of Joenell (waiter), Anton (assistant waiter), and Sweedon (section head waiter). I was extremely pleased to be able to give all three of these guys WOW cards by the end of the cruise – they definitely deserved them. They earned them on our first night, and simply continued to impress throughout the entire cruise.
How did they impress us so much on that first night? Give credit – or perhaps blame – to Mother Nature. That first night out we had a lot more rocking than is typical. It was unfortunately enough to affect our 10 year old son, who was feeling the effects of mild sea-sickness. He did NOT enjoy our first night’s dinner as he felt lousy. Joenell was first to help, bringing over some ginger ale. Anton then went the extra mile to track down some crackers, which were clearly not immediately available at the waiter stations so that meant an extra, unplanned trip to somewhere for him. (A plate of crackers also greeted us when we sat down on the 2nd night – “just in case”.) Finally, Sweedon brought over some sliced green apples for us to take back with us, and then handed us a plate of cookies as we left. (I believe that some of this extra attention was because we were suite passengers – this is something that they clearly indicated they knew about us when they came around during dinner. However, whatever their motivation was it cannot be denied that they demonstrated tremendous customer service that night.) BTW: After dinner we gave our son a kid-sized dose of Dramamine and within 30 minutes he felt fine – the rest of the night and the rest of the cruise were both great.
After dinner we attended the Welcome Aboard show where we “met” our cruise director, Marc Walker. We liked him very much. He had the kind of energy and sense of fun that I would think should define a good CD (not that we’re experts on this at all). We didn’t attend this show on Oasis so can’t compare but I’m assuming all Welcome Aboard shows follow a similar format: some kind of sailing theme song (ours was “Come Sail Away”…duh!) accompanied by dancers, followed by the CD coming out and giving some stats on who was sailing with us (“you’re from N countries, with the top 10 countries being <list of the top 10>”), a bit more singing/dancing, some previews of coming attractions by the CD, a plug by the shopping team to buy stuff, a quick set by the comic (in family-friendly mode), and some closing remarks by the CD. I would imagine that most seasoned cruisers probably don’t bother with this one after their first few cruises.
Following the show we returned to our cabins to wind down the night and enjoy some sleep.
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