Bahamas 2015 Day 4
Tuesday, September 29: Coco CayFollowing a mildly rolling night, Day 2 of the cruise dawned bright, hot, and calm with us anchored off Coco Cay. First we headed to the WJ for breakfast. This morning we discovered the inside “dining annex” on the port side of the WJ, leading out to the pool deck. It seems that most people never got around to discovering this area, as it became our daily place to find a selection of tables we could eat at without any worries that we’d be left standing around. (It was also the place where they had a small selection of Indian dishes during lunch and – I assume - dinner.)
Following breakfast we changed into our beach gear and around 10AM we stopped off in the Centrum at Deck 4 to grab beach towels and (buy) bottles of water, then hoofed it down to Deck 1 to get on the next tender. A digression re: stairs and elevators. On Oasis we used the elevators to get everywhere – there were often 7-8 decks between you and your destination, to say nothing of a possible fore/aft hike at the start or end. On Enchantment I believe we got on the elevator less than 5 times during the entire trip. The ship is so much more walkable than Oasis that taking stairs up/down a few levels was no big deal.
Tendering at 10AM was no problem. We exited the ship, climbed up to the exposed top deck (the bottom, shaded deck already being full) and found the last few remaining seats. Within about 2 minutes we were underway. No idea how long the first passengers had to wait while the tender filled up – but within 10 minutes of boarding we were debarking on Coco Cay.
Having never been here before we quickly looked for an island map, ala Labadee. None was obvious, however, so we were limited to the signposts. Of course, we had no idea what the different areas were like so we simply walked straight past the straw market and plopped down at the first beach area we saw. This was a large open beach with some palm trees just in front of the snorkel rental hut. We actually don’t care about the beauty of the lounger area – for us, a lounger is simply a place to put your towel while sitting in the shallow water, not a place to occupy. I see from other reviews that there are other beaches with more tree coverage and perhaps more privacy, but we were more than content with where we landed.
As suite guests, we had received an email from the Concierge on Friday before leaving home welcoming us aboard and (among other things) offering us priority to rent one of the 13-15 cabanas on Coco Cay. While this is not something that would ever interest us, the location of the cabanas here seemed to us to be hugely unattractive. The cabanas are located inland, in a private section that is basically a large concrete pad with small cabanas ringing it. It didn’t look like you could step outside and into water without taking a bit of a hike. I definitely didn’t understand what the attraction to these could be.
Lunch is a BBQ buffet with several separate areas all of which have the same layout and food choices. The best that can be said about the beach BBQ is that it is better than starving. Having said that, I’m not sure what you could do to make it better, given that you (the cruise line) are tendering food for 2000 people from the ship to shore and therefore your menu has to be able to survive the trip and be setup/served with minimal fuss. So the variety is obviously less than you'd find in the WJ (primarily burgers, dogs, chicken, pork ribs, mac and cheese, potato salad, green salad, fruit, and cookies) and mostly without flavor. Water and weak fruit juice are served up in small plastic cups. I imagine there must have been some vegetarian-friendly main dish there, but as this isn’t relevant to us we didn’t pay attention.
Following lunch our oldest son said he really wanted to try snorkeling, which none of us had ever done before. Unfortunately our 10 year old isn’t a confident swimmer so we couldn’t do this as a full family, so oldest son and I went to the rental shack and got 2 sets of masks/fins/vests for about $70 total. (That’s for a full day if you’re so inclined.) We waded into the water and set out. It took us about 15 minutes to get comfortable, which is also about how long it took us to get out far enough from shore that visibility cleared up. The water is very shallow (5-7’ deep) for most of the way, so if all you had was a mask you’d be OK. Apparently there’s a couple of staged “wrecks” – one of a ship, another of an airplane – that lots of fish congregate at, but he and I didn’t reach either one. We still saw a lot of fish, however, even in such shallow water. Later, when he and my wife went out they did find the ship. While I’ve never snorkeled before this trip I suspect that what we did was VERY much “beginner” type stuff – which made for a perfect introduction for us. Definitely something I think we’d like to try again.
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| The view from the tender's upper deck as we returned from Coco Cay. |
We finally packed things up and returned to the ship around 230P. We were again on the upper deck of the tender, and (again) didn’t have long to wait after boarding before we set off to the ship. We returned our towels on Deck 1 (rather than Deck 4 where we’d picked them up) and headed up to our cabins to shower before visiting Park Café and the Solarium Bar for snacks and pre-dinner drinks which we brought back to our balcony. We spent time relaxing and then got dressed up to report to the MDR for a formal night dinner.
This was our first formal dinner and we had a great time. If I had to guess I’d say about 65-70% of diners dressed up. I didn’t see any tuxes, but the men were wearing suits or ties or open neck shirts with sports jackets. The women seemed to be wearing mostly cocktail style Little Black Dresses and/or “sparkles”. (OK – I’m not a fashion expert.)
After dinner we made tracks to our cabin in order to change back into shorts. Getting back to our cabins from the MDR took us through the Centrum, and we stopped and enjoyed the live music by the house band (Rockport) for about 20 minutes. We were hanging over the railing on Deck 8 for this, both listening to the music as well as watching those doing similar things on the other decks. Again, the energy of the Centrum was really fun!
Following dinner we went to the production show, entitled “Can’t Stop the Rock”. The Orpheum Theater is a pretty comfortable venue – the balcony seating off Deck 6, where we sat every time we went, is mostly a series of cushy 2-person couches. The center balcony section (where we sat for the Welcome Aboard show) is pretty cramped for legroom, but the side sections were quite roomy and become our preferred location for the rest of the cruise. There’s also less heads in your way on the sides, which for our 10-year old was a particular attraction of these locations. Colors on the video screens was a bit washed out from the sides, but that basically only impacts the pre-show presentations going on. CD Marc made a pre-show appearance to confirm that the prior night’s rough seas were quite unusual and that we could expect much smoother sailing the remainder of the cruise.
My wife and I met through theater, where we both were involved with technical aspects (costuming for her, lighting design for me), so we tend to look upon shows pretty critically. From a technical perspective, the show’s production values were excellent. Good lighting design, simple but creative sets, nice wigs and costumes (which also included a lot of tough costume quick-changes, which the cast is obviously skilled in pulling off). Artistically, the show was less successful. It was good, but not great. Vocally, there were some pretty big clunkers from the 4 singers and some odd harmonies. The dancers were energetic but suffered some meltdowns, including a throw that ended up with two dancers on the ground. But given that we were quite prepared to enjoy ourselves the blemishes were minor compared to the fun we were having. Theater is always fun – and when you realize you’re sitting in a theater on a ship floating in the middle of nowhere there’s an extra thrill. Marc made a post-show appearance to tease the next day’s activities and, with that, our evening came to an end.
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