Allow me to begin with a Happy New Year!

My partner and I have recently disembarked the Enchanted Princess which sailed from Fort Lauderdale, Florida from December 20-30, 2024. We booked our trip in December 2023 and waited a year for this. We sailed in a mini-suite on Deck 16 in cabin L212. 🙂 Also, this is going to be long, so go ahead and make yourself a nice coffee, grab a beer/wine/cocktail, and prop your feet up. I appreciate you bearing with me. 

First, I need to give some history on my relationship with Princess Cruises. The last cruise we took with Princess was in 2015 via the Regal. On that trip, I experienced a near death accident that left a vast amount of psychological trauma and PTSD on me as I had an accident on an excursion, tripped, and rolled down a hill stopping only 2-3 foot short of going over a cliff in St. Thomas where I most certainly would have perished.

At the time, I swore I would never take another cruise, with any cruise line, due to what happened. In short, I tore the supraspinatus in my right shoulder when I fell, then as I tumbled my right wrist was slashed open by rocks. I required stitches when I got back on the boat, and they were concerned about a concussion/head trauma, naturally.

All of that was normal and fine and then when we went to ask for a refund for the excursion, mind you this was 2 people, total of $50-$55 refund, the excursions manager asked “Are you sure you didn’t manufacture these injuries in your stateroom to get a refund?” – essentially accusing me of self-harm to get $50-$55 bucks back on a multi-thousand dollar cruise.

As you can imagine, for a number of years I harbored a lot of resentment for Princess.

However, therapy prevailed and after time I felt ready to do it again, so here we are.

I would like to thank Princess Corporate for being kind enough to grant us the FCC they gave in 2015 after the accident. As many know, FCCs do not last indefinitely, and by the time this sailing rolled around – my $500 FCC was long expired. After writing a kind note to Princess Corporate and asking if they would be courteous enough to extend the FCC again, they were gracious enough to do that and give us both Princess Premier at no extra cost – a total surprise.

We actually didn’t think we’d be able to come on this trip as I was laid off on November 7th and until a day or two before departure, had not secured another job. Fortunately, that’s in the bag and not a worry.

We decided to drive down a day early to avoid any possibility of chaos on the day the cruise left. Through Cruise Critic I found a website called Value Trips that did a special rate on the Hyatt Place located at the Fort Lauderdale Airport and Cruise Port. No offense to Value Trips, their site looks quite sketchy because they don’t have a SSL certificate, but it’s a legitimate site and we were able to stay in the hotel for the rate advertised.

I feel like an idiot looking back, as I didn’t take any pictures of the room at the Hyatt Place! However, what I can tell you is the hotel is clean and smelled nice on entry. The room is the same style all Hyatt Place hotels are, they use a standardized layout, down to the A/V input panel that is on the side of the TV stand. Everything in the room was clean and the a/c system worked quite well, which is nice considering the heat and humidity in Fort Lauderdale. While there, I needed to print some paperwork for my new job and the agent on duty was able to help me. I remember she was exceptionally kind and very social, as she was also serving some guests in the bar area and they all seemed quite happy.

I would rate our stay at the Hyatt Place Fort Lauderdale Airport and Cruise Port as a 5/5.

We took an Uber from the Hyatt Place to Port Lauderdale. Technically speaking, I think you can walk, but you’d probably melt into a pile of goo just because of the heat and humidity. It’s also a much more complicated walk than it looks from Google Maps. The Uber was about $40 just because we used Uber Black XL and tipped.

Enchanted was docked at Terminal 2 in Port Lauderdale, which meant we didn’t need to enter the secure area of the port. When we sailed in 2015, I think this was the case as well, but I remember the inside waiting areas being much different. This time we arrived so early, there were hardly any people in line and we only waited for approximately 10 minutes before being ushered into the terminal where we gave our luggage to the porters and gathered our Medallions.

After boarding, I rushed to The Lotus Spa so I could secure passes for The Enclave for both of us. Much like The Sanctuary, Princess’ Adults Only area on the top deck of the shop, The Enclave sells out pretty fast. We had a couples deep tissue massage in The Sanctuary on our 2015 Regal Princess sailing and recall the area being fairly open to the sun, so while The Sanctuary on Enchanted Princess is slightly different, we still didn’t have much interest in the area for this sailing.

Lunch was being served in the Capri Dining Room and if you know Princess, you know they serve a dessert on sail away day that isn’t served anytime else – the orange souffle. A picture of it is in the album below, along with the lunch menu itself, and I have to say it’s absolutely delicious. While in the main dining room, I was able to acquire what would become one of the very few drinks I was able to consume on the trip – Dunes.

While I’m not a fan of coconut, this was absolutely fantastic and the Midori drowned out the coconut flavor.

My partner, however, normally a huge fan of the Pina Colada, ended up settling on two frozen cocktails on the trip:

Between the two of these drinks, I can confirm my partner safely maximized the use of his beverage package. I, on the other hand, found myself ignored by various service staff approximately 14 times on the sailing. Multiple times I sat in the bar area adjacent to the International Cafe (the area by the ocean windows in front of the IC Bar, if you’re familiar with the ship), both bars on Lido deck, and the “Princess Live!” area to find myself never being approached by staff to ask if I wanted anything to drink or when making eye contact, they never acknowledged me or confirmed they would be with me in a moment. For a moment, I thought maybe I had died and was now haunting this ship for eternity – a most unfortunate doom.

What started as something irritating quickly became a point of contention for me on the cruise as by the end, I was ignored a total of 14 times.

I thought I might counteract the in-person service problem by using the OceanNow app to order beverages. This was a hit or miss venture. Once while doing Christmas movie trivia, we placed an order for drinks using the app and requested delivery to our table. By the time trivia was over, the drinks were still missing. However they had definitely deducted the beverages from our 15 beverage per day allotment, which was something I found myself remediating a few times by the end of the sailing.

The only truly reliable way to get drinks or food delivered was by calling room service. Unfortunately, the time it would take to get something as basic as an iced tea ended up being an average of nearly 2.5 hours by the end of the sailing, so we would end up placing an order once a day for a large assortment of drinks. This ended up being a decent solution to my service problem.

Enjoy some pictures below of sail away and the lunch menu.

Did you know as you age, your vestibular system can change and you may find yourself getting sea sick, even if you didn’t in the past? No? Neither did I.

Day two rolls around and what I thought was just some nausea related to my Zepbound shot turned out to be full on sea sickness. I’ve never been one to get motion sickness in the past. We frequent Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando quite frequently and never get sick on rides, and I never got sea sick on previous cruises. This feeling was truly awful and while I am thankful the ship had Bonine available to sell, it is not a perfect medication. The medication definitely kept my vomiting to a minimum, but I was unable to eat much of anything – even by the end of the sailing.

Speaking of food, lets talk about it!

The photo gallery above is a selection of food we had on the ship. This is a mix of food from the buffet, main dining room, casual restaurants such as O’Malleys, and the specialty restaurants.

Regrettably, due to my sea sickness and being on Zepbound, my ability to eat food was greatly diminished. What I did eat was a mix of good and “meh”.

• For breakfast, the scrambled eggs they are serving in the bain-maries on the buffet are powdered eggs, which I personally find disgusting and insulting to serve on a cruise this expensive.
• The meats in the buffet and main dining room are poor quality, beef is close to utility grade – the lowest of the USDA beef grades. The only way to get higher quality is a specialty restaurant or to pay for a fancier cut in the MDR.
• Food on the buffet is often cold or just barely warm.
• Buffet selection was mostly the same day in / day out, with a few items switched in as new each day.
• Pizza on the Lido Deck is phenomenal and their claim to best pizza at sea is deserved.
• The chicken wings served in O’Malleys are terribly poor quality.

The food served in the specialty restaurants, such as Catch by Rudi, Crown Grill, and Sabatini’s Trattorria are a world of difference from food on the buffet and in the MDR, if you have a package such as Princess Plus or Princess Premier, definitely make a point to book your entire sailing in the specialty restaurants – you won’t miss anything in the main dining rooms – except perhaps the beef wellington. Below is a selection of images from each of the specialty restaurants.

It is worth noting, on this sailing Crown Grill featured beef from Nolan Ryan’s farm as an up-charge. My partner selected the Nolan Ryan 16 oz Rubeye and to date says it was the best steak he’s had in his entire life. Notably high praise.

One of the key reasons we decided to sail with Princess again wasn’t just because we liked this itinerary, they also have “The Enclave”, a thermal suite area within the Lotus Spa. This is a paid area, not included in the price of your cruise. Pro Tip: it’s often cheaper to buy before you sail rather than on board. For our sailing, it would have been approximately $229 per person. Princesses Royal-class ships, and the newer Sun and Sky, are equipped with these thermal suite areas. In my opinion, they should maximize the spa areas and segment them into ladies areas and gentleman’s areas, but I understand that mixed-gender couples, i.e. men and women, want to sit next to each other in the wet area or the various steam/thermal rooms. Speaking of those, here’s some info:

Above is a picture of The Enclave on-board Sky Princess. Each one is a little different. According to Princess, the central feature of Princess’ thermal suite is the dramatic hydro-therapy pool, which helps rejuvenate the mind and body with a cascading rain shower and therapeutic air jets in various locations around the pool. Passengers can also choose to relax on heated stone beds or soothing water beds, plus enjoy steam and sauna options using different temperatures, humidity zones, and aroma infusions to offer a sense of rejuvenation, including:

• The Hammam – a Turkish-style steam bath to enhance well-being, the Hammam’s warm marble slab is a soothing addition to a massage and can be used with clay, mud, or salt treatments.
• The Caldarium – a feature taken from Roman times, this warm, light steam ceramic chamber offers an infusion of herbal aromas. Walls, floors, and seats are heated for a deep penetrating warmth that promotes relaxation.
• The Laconium – this warm, dry chamber gradually warms the body to help with purification and detoxification.
• Sensory Showers – there are 4 of these, tropical rain, cold mist, rain shower, and Siberian shower, each of which have mood lighting and their own fragrances.

Unfortunately, on this sailing the Spa Management made the decision to allow double capacity for The Enclave, which left it almost always busy, except select times such as 7 or 8 am, 5-6 pm (dinner time), or port days when most are off the ship.

Though there were many entertainment acts, we were only interested and/or able to see the three mentioned above. Without a doubt, my personal favorite was BaraJolka, a sand theater show, playing with music, light, and sand. The things Svetlana creates with just her fingers and sand are truly amazing. As amazing as BaraJolka’s performance was, I can’t go without mentioning Mr. Ken Boyd and his comedy show – truly a highlight for the cruise. Neither of us had laughed so hard in quite a long time. And last, but certainly not least, Mr. Nathan Coe Marsh, a world-class magician who’s act kept our full attention and gave us many laughs.

One thing to keep in mind about Princess is their theater does not hold the entirety of passengers on the ship, so be sure to get there early to get good seats!

We stayed in a Mini Suite cabin, L212, which is on Lido Deck. Below are some pictures of the cabin and bathroom.

Although the cabin had a balcony, I didn’t get any pictures of it, apologies. And YES, that is a bathtub, can you believe it?

One of the arguments I hear from people with regard to cabin selection is they don’t intend to spend a lot of time in their stateroom, so why get a big one? In our case, we’re the opposite. Neither of us like being in the sun for very long periods of time and there’s only so much you can do on the ship each day. That isn’t a backhanded way of saying they don’t plan many group activities, it’s just that we aren’t interested in 100% of them 100% of the time, so it’s nice to come back to the stateroom and relax. Because of this, we wanted a larger stateroom where we could spread out. It also helps with “stuff” and not feeling cramped because there’s “stuff” everywhere.

One of the things Princess likes to brag about is the “Princess Bed”, a custom mattress implemented across the fleet that is supposedly the height of luxury and comfort. I’m a mattress snob, exceptionally well educated on the industry, how they’re made, and how to read through the marketing gibberish that mattress companies like to use, so I’m here to tell you the “Princess Bed” is crap. Maybe if it was a brand new mattress, it might be slightly comfortable, but mattresses used on cruise ships should be latex, not coil/spring mattresses. This is because of the high turnover in the cabins and also to help reduce motion in the mattress due to the ship being on the water. The bed was clearly worn, it had an indentation on each side, and on the side I elected to sleep – some of the coils were damaged/bent, which meant they poked me in the back.

The floor would have been more comfortable, except I might have rolled around all night. If I had to rate their bed, 2/5. IKEA makes a better mattress.

Another rationalization I hear people make about Princess is the availability (and lack of cost) to the in-cabin entertainment on their stateroom televisions. While this is true – the content is free to watch, the amount of content we were interested in was minimal. Mind you, we’re 40, not 60+ like most of Princess’ customers, so with that in mind, you’d think there’d be some decent satellite tv channels? No. Just news channels and sports channels. So what about plugging your own computer into the television via HDMI?

While you can, it’s a pain in the ass and not reliable. For starters, there’s no guarantee the TV in your cabin will have an accessible HDMI port.

In a mini-suite, there’s 2 TVs, but for us, I could only get my hand behind the TV in front of the bed to access the HDMI port on the side.

There’s a trick to switching inputs. Princess uses Hospitality TVs, which are similar to what we have in homes, but they have connectivity options that enable Princess to disable features, limit volume control, block inputs, etc… One of the things you should know beforehand is you need to bring a LG remote control with you, or you won’t be able to switch the inputs. The other thing to know is before you can switch inputs, you have to tune to the bridge cam channel. Then you can use your remote from home to change to the other HDMI input. However, periodically, Princess’ TV system will push a signal that will switch it back to the bridge cam, so keep the remote handy. It was infuriating, if I’m being honest. Just leave the inputs alone, Princess. Or if you truly don’t want guests using them, block them off with an input blocker, something you can get from LG, and PAY FOR MORE TELEVISION CHANNELS, FFS.

Now, on the note of internet, Princess has made a marked effort to upgrade their fleet to Starlink, and in doing so they have opted to offer 2 levels of service to passengers – MedallionNet and MedallionNet Max. The later being the faster tier of on-board connectivity which from what I can tell is capped to 8 Mbps-ish. This was sufficient for us to stream from our DirecTV Stream service through the entirety of the sailing, which made things a lot easier to bear given I had to spend so much time in the cabin. It also made it possible to upload photos from our phones, and watch YouTube videos. Kudos to Princess for implementing Starlink.

As I mentioned, this was a Christmas cruise, or Holiday Cruise, whichever you prefer – I am not attempting to be exclusionary. The ship had around 6200 people on it, likely 99-100% capacity, and it truly felt like it. There was insufficient staff, in my opinion, for the number of people on board, and this resulted in me (and many others) receiving terrible service. Also, because it was a Holiday Cruise, I think a lot of guests ‘let go’ of some of the normal customs they would have sailings happening during other parts of the year, just in the name of having fun. Unfortunately, this is an ignorant and selfish point of view and this attitude comes at the expense of the comfort and well-being of others on the ship. Something I took note of when each morning we were awoken around 7 or 8 am to cabin doors slamming shut as people went downstairs to eat breakfast, get their morning pump on, or whatever. Never mind that people might still be sleeping until 9 or 10 am and letting the door to your stateroom slam will reverberate through the entirety of the deck. Running up and down the hallways at all hours of morning and night was also a problem I noted many complaining about to guest services, but nothing was ever done. I’ve had a lot of time to think it over and came up with some advice to future cruise ships guests:

1. You didn’t take out a mortgage on the staircase. You don’t own the elevators or the hallways, walkways, or any public area. You’re on a ship with 4000+ people and the crew and you should be aware of your surroundings. Stopping in the middle of a hallway, walkway, etc is rude and inconsiderate and will cause people behind you to possibly bump into you. Just step to the side. 
2. The signs in the elevators that state it can hold 20 people is like a cake – a lie. If you get that reference too, then you’re my kinda people, lol. If we were all rail thin and supermodels for Vogue, yes, 20 people maybe 30! But most people are not, so if you see an elevator that looks to have 8 to 12 averaged sized humans in it, maybe don’t barge your way in? Also, remember that people get sick on ships because other people are gross and don’t wash their hands, or cover their mouths when they cough…. with things like the Norovirus floating around, is being in an enclosed elevator with that many people something you REALLY want to do?
3. If you are walking 3 to 4 abreast – you are blocking other people from getting to where they want to go. Sure, you paid maybe as much as I did, or maybe even more if you have a fancy suite, but again – you didn’t take a mortgage out on the hallway – 2 abreast, the rest behind. Theme park rules people, theme park rules!
4. It is exceedingly impolite, and borders on the vulgar, to clear your throat like you are coughing up a loogie, repeatedly, time and again, every 30 seconds to a minute, in any public dining area, on land or off the ship. If you need to get something out of your throat or chest, I get it, but you should excuse yourself to the restroom. We all cough stuff up as humans, but don’t make the other passengers around you listen to that.
   

For some of these issues, such as the overselling of The Enclave, Guest Services was able to compensate us. For other issues, I can’t fix ignorant behavior and neither can guest services.

Due to the decline in quality, this will be our last Princess (or Carnival PLC) sailing. We are considering Explora Journeys or Ritz-Carlton Yacht Club in the future, and perhaps other ultra-luxury lines.

Thanks for reading! Enjoy some additional photos below.