Continuing our theory of “if the kids are out of school, we might as well all be on vacation,” as well as a newfound affinity for Princess, we took a 10-day “Eastern Voyager” sailing on Enchanted Princess over the Ontario March (“mid-winter”) break.
We loved the increased time onboard compared to our previous 7-day sailings and the extra days gave us a good opportunity to relax. Our kids were occasionally able to stay up later and take advantage of the evening kids club sessions, so Kayla and I saw a couple shows and even went for dinner by ourselves once. Service, food and beverages on this trip ranged from great to outstanding.
I was very pleased with the layout of our mini-suite for four people, but there were some downsides to its starboard-aft location on deck 8. Some other negatives (with this cruise still being a 9/10) include a technical glitch with our cabin door, casino smoke, pool maintenance issues, fruit fly presence, and a few limitations compared to to Sun Princess.
As is usual for these reviews, I won’t be writing about the ports; unfortunately, we missed Princess Cays where we had splurged on a bungalow as our main “beach day”, and replacement options weren’t appealing. If you’re here for the ship or just general travel ramblings – as well as a newly updated focus on Sphere versus Royal-class ships – let’s get into it.
Booking and planning
Scheduling and travel
Because of the unique Monday departure and three more days than a standard one-week sailing, the kids were officially absent from school for a few extra days. In exchange we got a much cheaper return flight home on a Thursday and overall better value per day. Neither Kayla nor I were concerned, since both children have had good attendance this school year with relatively minimal illness.
I was also proud when early 2025 report cards came out with positive feedback. One teacher commented directly on our child’s stories from a recent cruise, which I’m pretty sure means that our kid wouldn’t stop talking about it. Reports were sent home well after final payment was due and wouldn’t have changed our decision to go, but things going well at school was a good lead-in to the trip.
The weekend that kicks off Ontario’s March Break commands a significant premium for flights from Toronto. The best overall value was a flight into West Palm Beach the day prior to sailing, combined with a ride with Larry’s Limo to take us from PBI to Fort Lauderdale for our pre-cruise night. Larry’s offered an additional-charge booking option for car seats (rear-facing, forward-facing, or booster) for the 45-minute drive so we wouldn’t have to bring our own. You still have to install them yourself, but we’re seasoned professionals with all things car seat.
Larry’s Limo is highly rated on CruiseCritic similarly to Jiffy Jeff, although both are expensive choices compared to Uber or public transit. Jeff’s online booking portal wasn’t as full featured and had much more “submit this form/call us for a quote” vibes, so that tipped the scale toward Larry’s, which had more of an upfront price.
As an alternative option, Tri-Rail does have a station near-ish West Palm Beach airport, but no complimentary shuttle bus from the airport like at FLL, so you’d end up with a trip that looks like more of a circus:
- 9-minute taxi/Uber or 22-minute Palm Tran trip on bus route 44 to get to the West Palm Beach train station
- ~73-minute ride on the train to get to the Fort Lauderdale Airport train station
- Up to 20-minute wait to get on the complimentary shuttle to the airport itself (this has improved since 2023, where I believe it was once an hour)
- Indeterminate amount of wait time to get on the complimentary hotel shuttle
- Another 15-30 minutes getting to the hotel, depending on FLL construction and traffic
I would still consider flying into PBI and taking a car service for future trips when it makes sense, as we can’t rely on Uber/Lyft/other rideshare services to have two car seats or risk the driver rejecting the ride without them. The price difference between flying into PBI versus FLL was about $1200 CAD for our family of four, so even with Larry’s premium to get further south, it was still a worthwhile option.
Cabin selection
This was the longest cruise we had planned so far, and after our 2024 sailings on Discovery Princess and Enchanted Princess we wanted a cabin arrangement where the kids don’t sleep directly above the primary bed. We therefore selected a mini-suite where the Pullman bed is above the sofa in the living area, and there is a glorious curtain to separate the adults from the children.
Mini-suites on deck 8 on Royal-class ships are slightly smaller than the same grade of cabin on higher decks. At the time of booking, other mini-suites at similar pricing were in far-forward sections, which we disliked on our last cruise. Also available were cabins on Marina deck 15 under the pool deck or buffet, with a high likelihood of overhead chair scraping noises early in the morning. Prices jumped over $1000 more when picking anything better than those options.
There are several downsides to this cabin choice that I knew when booking. One issue we couldn’t avoid (being at the aft) was the proximity of the room to the starboard smoking area one deck below. The same area on the port side of the ship is smoke-free, but only starboard mini-suites were available when we booked. On a future Enchanted Princess cruise, we did deliberately select a port-side room.
Additionally, the balcony is completely uncovered with no privacy from cabins above – and in direct sunlight at least part of the day. Since we’d be one deck away from public outdoor space, we accepted the likelihood that the balcony wouldn’t be a highly usable space for us, and would just head downstairs and out the port side to get some sea air. We’re not huge users of the balcony anyway, having been perfectly fine with an Excel-class Oceanview on a previous sailing.
Aft mini-suites on 8 have the Vista Lounge beneath, which is used in the evening for comedy shows and as a nightclub until “late” per the Princess Patter. Online comments about noise were much more encouraging than the ones about smoke, and we hadn’t experienced issues on Discovery Princess on the same deck above a busy hall, so this wasn’t as much of a concern for me.
Hotel and dining
I’d booked the Best Western Fort Lauderdale Airport/Cruise Port initially, well before we’d booked for our Sun Princess cruise last December, since it was in a familiar area and once again significantly less expensive than the Hampton Inn. After the December trip, I did revisit hotel options – the Best Western had been OK but I wanted to see what else was in a comparable price range, especially the Holiday Inn Express and Suites or the Candlewood Suites which used the same shuttle. It turned out that the next cheapest hotel in the area was now charging double what the Best Western initially cost, so we kept the reservation.
Because of our relative unfamiliarity with food options at the airport and need to head to our pickup arrangement immediately, we also planned to pack more snacks than usual and order some food on the plane. We couldn’t really be sure about the lunch situation on landing and the PBI airport maps did not look promising.
In what is now a family tradition for cruising from the Fort Lauderdale area, I booked the Old Heidelberg Restaurant for dinner through their web form to secure a 5:30pm table for four. I also pre-booked All Stars Tours and Transportation for a 10:30am pickup on embarkation morning.
Other pre-cruise notes
It turned out that our usual arrangement of suitcases was sufficient for eleven days of warm-weather travel: one carry-on each for the adults, a larger checked suitcase for the kids’ clothing and overflow for liquids/gels/bulkier items, and small backpacks for everyone as personal items. While Enchanted Princess does have paid self-service laundry, we didn’t plan to use it after seeing how much we could fit in the suitcases.
We did choose to have our Medallions shipped to home since it was free with Plus, and they showed up through Canada Post 17 days before sailing – a much better lead time than the 2 days prior to sailing in December, and the same delivery timing we saw for Discovery Princess in May 2024. I was worried that the internal batteries would have run down or start showing problems mid-cruise, but we saw no persistent issues on that front.
The Princess app also persisted “Green Lane” status right up to check-in, and lacked some of the glitches we’ve seen leading up to previous sailings. We were also able to reserve dining in the Amalfi (deck 6, aft) dining room for 5:40pm each day – the “traditional” option was 5pm and 7:30pm, and we found that 5pm is too early and 7:30 will be too late.
One issue in the app was related to saving credit cards. Sometimes the app will not accept a credit card – it’s not an authorization issue, as the card works fine elsewhere. Once you get a card number stored successfully, as soon as the primary guest chooses to authorize its use for all guests, that option disappears – so you can’t easily change to a different/newly entered card for everyone before sailing. At least this can be fixed quite quickly at Guest Services onboard and isn’t necessarily a Day 1 critical task.
Speaking of credit cards, I did add the TD Aeroplan Visa Infinite to my portfolio, which gives a first checked bag free for each traveller on the same reservation as the cardholder. Since WestJet flights from Toronto have gotten more limited this last year due to a Calgary focus, Air Canada is the main game in town. The first year fee of $139CAD was free at time of signup with varying amounts of points after certain spend and time. Since checked bags to Florida on standard economy are $36.75 CAD or USD – one way – you only need two round-trip flights a year with one bag to come out ahead, even paying the annual fee.
While the terms and conditions indicate that the benefit “may not be applied retroactively”, this seems to mean for flights already taken or baggage fees already paid. I had booked these flights with a TD First Class Travel Visa card before I’d gotten the Aeroplan one – at online check-in time, my checked bag came up as $0.
I don’t know if I’ll keep the TD Aeroplan card next year, or try churning to a CIBC or American Express variant for similar benefits. Since I’m booking through an Expedia Cruises agent, the points value on the First Class Travel card used against cruises is still better than the same spend on the Aeroplan card against economy air travel.
Unfortunately both TD Visa cards still have a 2.5% foreign exchange premium, so my choice for onboard purchases was a no-fee Rogers Red World Elite MasterCard. It also charges 2.5% + the MasterCard exchange rate for foreign exchange, but provides 3% cashback for US dollar purchases, so ends up being a good option for cruises that use USD onboard.
Journey to Fort Lauderdale
Flight and limo
Despite inbound aircraft tracking showing an on-time departure, we were delayed two hours for air traffic control limitations and then a plane swap. In what I thought was a decent apology, after the second delay notification, Air Canada issued us each $15CAD food/beverage vouchers tied to our boarding passes. For those who haven’t experienced this, appropriate airport retailers can scan the barcode on the boarding pass and apply a use-it-or-lose-it credit.
One kid insisted on Booster Juice (it’s absolutely possible to burn over $15 on an airport smoothie) and the rest of us prowled the limited selection of food outlets accessible to US-bound passengers.
At Pearson Terminal 1, some gates are split between US and domestic/international flights, and on Sunday morning most of the good food venues were on the non-US side and inaccessible to anyone who had gone through American pre-clearance. My favourite tactic of getting a large Italian sub for the plane ride was thwarted; Subway was barricaded off, as was my backup choice of A&W breakfast. Eventually Kayla and I settled for very mid $18+tax baguettes from Upper Crust, but we were nearly on the verge of breaking down and considering Tim Hortons.
I did use the WhatsApp contact information for Larry’s Limo to let them know about the delay, but was immediately reassured that they were tracking the flight and a driver would be waiting when the plane landed.
Once we took off, it was an uneventful flight, although the in-flight food options were also limited. Don’t promise your kids pizza, as it will either not have been loaded by catering, or out of stock by the time the flight attendants get to your row.
As we landed, I had an immediate text message from our limo driver Carmine, who asked us to keep in touch as we made our way through the terminal and collected checked bags. We exited out the arrivals area and let him know where we were standing between airline signs. It was legitimately less than a minute before he pulled up in a 10-seat stretch limousine, complete with the booster seats we’d requested.
On the way south to Fort Lauderdale the car had cold water and pop available, and Carmine also let us know how to connect to Bluetooth and play our own music. Our kids were fascinated and thrilled by the experience, and I enjoyed a very smooth ride that was so much better than some of our extended hotel shuttle waits of the past. It was slightly amusing to pull into the Best Western entrance in a stretch limousine as well.
I would have no hesitation using Larry’s Limo again from a service perspective. The final price at $290US (all-in, with two booster seats and gratuity) was steep – an UberXL would have almost certainly been less than half of that, but the limousine experience was solid.
Hotel and dinner
Check-in at Best Western was slow. Like our December trip, a solo desk agent had to handle multiple responsibilities for both in-person and over-the-phone requests. We were assigned a room on the first floor this time, which still had the same odd air-freshener smell and terrible carpet. Because of the delayed flight we didn’t have time to use the pool.
I think our two stays at this location are enough – I can’t point to one specific thing that’s a dealbreaker, but unless it is a truly compelling price our next trips will start in a different hotel.
With a reservation, Old Heidelberg was once again a comforting and delicious dinner and helped us kick off a relaxing vacation. I did have two 1-litre beers which certainly helped take away some pent-up travel stress. This may have been a suboptimal decision. While I wasn’t seriously intoxicated, the volume of liquid ingested was quite uncomfortable, sloshing around internally on our return walk and for a while back at the hotel. Maybe I just needed a digestif like Underberg to close out the meal of schnitzel and sausage?
A loss for the area is that the Winn-Dixie supermarket in the Southland Shopping Center was in the process of closing – not for temporary renovations but permanently, and it wasn’t clear if a replacement grocery store (or any store) was expected soon. We walked in and found rows of empty shelves and a very limited selection of discounted items. Remarkably, I’d consider this a successful shopping trip: mint-chocolate ice cream cones and UV-resistant lip balm were among the few remaining available products.
While I’ve tended to book hotels in this area mainly due to German Restaurant Proximity, and there are other options in the same plaza for a pre-cruise bottle of wine, a walkable supermarket has been a notable advantage on previous trips. I will be looking at the area around Southport Shopping Center (northeast of Southland) in future for a new set of hotels and restaurants to try.
Embarkation
After an early but very leisurely paced hotel breakfast, we re-packed our bags, attached luggage tags and went outside. The All-Stars bus was already there at 10:20 and we were able to confirm our reservation with the facilitator quickly. Once onboard, our driver drove towards the exit but then stopped. He parked the vehicle, turned off the A/C, and gave a several-minute speech boiling down to “no weapons allowed at the port” and “if anyone asks, I checked all your documentation.” This is something we could have done without, especially since in December the same content was delivered while en route.
We entered the Terminal 2 area at Port Everglades at 10:53am but were forced to go around the traffic circle, so it took a few extra minutes to park and unload luggage. Happily, the security checkpoint and Green Lane process that followed inside the terminal were very smooth with no hold-ups. All our Medallions seemed to be operating as expected and we stepped on the ship by 11:20am.
Cabin
Layout and features
Fortunately, stateroom E711 had the layout and configuration I expected, so there were no disappointments about the sleeping arrangements. There is a note for this cabin on the Princess deck plans: “Balcony Door Blocked When Upper Berth Or Sofa Bed In Use.” In practice, the balcony sliding door opens from the opposite side of the beds, closer to the desk, so really the only obstruction to getting outside is the ladder for the top bunk. Even with the ladder out, there was still clearance to fully open the mini-fridge door in the desk cabinet closest to the balcony.
The top Pullman bed was already opened and made up when we got into the cabin for the first time, and our room steward never locked it back into the ceiling or converted the sofa between couch and bed throughout the cruise. We didn’t ask about it and the perma-bed arrangement didn’t really bother us, but that daytime/evening configuration change did happen daily and automatically on Sun Princess.
While this cabin had a shower/tub combination compared to the shower-only setup in our Sun Princess mini-suite, a tub has no value for us. We mainly appreciated the extra-lengthy clothesline for hanging up swimsuits to dry. The walk-in closet was also not a great use of space versus the wardrobe-style cabinets on Sun, but I think it depends on how many clothes you hang up, versus put in drawers, versus just leave in your suitcase.
I didn’t notice any motion sensor lights under the nightstands beside the main bed, but there was one in the hallway by the bathroom that was quite helpful in the dark. That one could have been more sensitive; I resorted to hand-waving on a few occasions to activate it. There were several banks of lights in the room with four switches each, and it was a game of chance as to which one would turn on the light you intended. The motion sensor was a better choice than waking everyone up by accidentally pressing the wrong overhead light switch.
Television
While we very infrequently use the TV onboard, the 2025 Australian Grand Prix was happening over the weekend and we wanted to catch up (but not at whatever awful hour the race actually aired live.) The LG-brand TV closest to the primary bed did have an accessible HDMI port on the left side. At least on Enchanted Princess, in this particular cabin, the port was not physically blocked or glued shut. With a skinny cable and moderate maneuvering, we were able to connect a USB-C to HDMI adapter to my phone, then a HDMI cable between the adapter and port on the TV, and queue up F1TV to stream practice, qualifying and the race.
Getting to the HDMI input required some maneuvering: choose to access live TV from the menu and go to any channel, then use the 4-way directional buttons on the bottom of the TV itself to navigate to the Input menu and select the correct HDMI port. I believe if you had a universal remote or similar IR device coded to LG televisions, you could also trigger the necessary Input menu once into the live TV channels and out of the Princess menu.
Noises and smells
We did experience the downsides I had anticipated pre-cruise. With E711 one deck above the sanctioned smoking area, the smell on the balcony was noticeable – but at unpredictable times, purely based on low wind speed and if other passengers were out there with cigarettes. If there was moderate or high wind, I wasn’t bothered at all. Thankfully the scent didn’t make it into the room’s ventilation system or when the glass sliding door was closed.
An amusing moment, at least to me, was one day when we spent part of the afternoon on the balcony reading. There was no odour for the first half hour or so, but when one floated up it was distinctly cannabis and not your standard tobacco cigarette.
Sound did transfer from the Vista Lounge downstairs. We didn’t notice it during activities like trivia and comedy shows, but the DJ sessions that started around 11pm and went until just after 1am did provide an audible bass line in our cabin. Overall, I didn’t find the noise to be overwhelming or a serious detriment – I had to explicitly listen to notice the music most nights, it didn’t interrupt our sleep, and we are also lucky that our kids were not bothered by it.
The noises that did bother me were related to our neighbours. With the aft balcony cabins on deck 9 slightly inset from the aft mini-suites on deck 8, people dragging or adjusting their chairs on the balcony above do cause a scraping noise that can be heard in your main cabin very well. We also suspect the neighbours in E715 (one cabin aft of ours) had something hanging on their wall that caused a tapping or knocking sound directly behind our bed. This was especially prominent when the ship was sailing in the 18-20 knot range. Kayla did require noise-cancelling earbuds on some nights for that reason.
Technology failure
On entering the cabin the first time, the TVs did not register my medallion as present for the purposes of watching the muster safety video. I also checked in-app and received the same dreaded unable to locate message that I had on Sun Princess, and figured it would be a trip to Guest Services for a Medallion replacement. I watched the video on my phone, while Kayla and the kids got credit for seeing it on the TV. A few hours later, my location did show up in the app and the door regularly began to recognize my presence, so no exchange was needed.
Early in the cruise, one morning Kayla and I returned from dropping the kids off at the supervised program on Deck 17, and tried to get back into the cabin to retrieve her e-reader. The display at the door detected our Medallions as we approached but then got stuck on a Verifying access… message and did not unlock the door. We tried varying combinations of both our medallions, leaving and walking down the hall jointly and separately, waiting for a timeout and using the NFC “tap” sensor – all with no success. Our room steward was down the hall and noticed us trying to get in. Using his keycard also resulted in the same stuck message.
He assured us that he would contact his supervisor, since he needed to get access to our cabin to perform the morning service, so we went out wandering around the ship as he began WhatsApp’ing someone. About an hour later we returned, but the door display/tablet still would not grant access; our steward popped out of another cabin and said he’d tried three times to get someone from maintenance already, and he appeared rather stressed about it.
We gave it another half hour and one more failed retry before I went down to Guest Services, where there was only one person in line ahead of me. When hearing about the problem, at first the representative replaced my Medallion, but then I clarified that the room steward couldn’t get in with his card either. At that point there was much typing and I was assured that someone would address the issue. We went for lunch with the kids and then were able to get back in the room after that.
Service
I’m deliberately not naming our stateroom steward, not because it was bad service or anything like that, but because I don’t think it was a perfect 10/10 or even a 9/10 – closer to a 7 or 8. In cruise review/NPS land that rating’s a “fair”, “passive”, or more likely perceived as a failure. I don’t want that to be the perception for anyone on these ships. I also think that he would have addressed these issues if we’d spoken up; I mention them here because it’s a different degree of service by default than last time on Sun or Enchanted Princess.
On the positive side, we received all relevant children’s documentation on the first day and additional kids’ event information throughout the cruise, which has not always been the case. We also got the expected pre-disembarkation documentation, including the paperwork we needed to book airport transfers. My transfer form was collected the next day, and the appropriate tickets and luggage tags arrived on schedule.
Apart from the permanent Pullman/sofa bed “night mode” configuration, his cleaning schedule always seemed to conflict with our late-morning/early-afternoon return to cabin to change into or out of swimsuits. I was under the impression the stewards could use medallion presence to help indicate service times, but maybe we were at a spot in his roster of cabins where it just didn’t line up.
There was also some inconsistency in types and quantities of towels delivered. Four people do generate an above-average quantity of bath linens, but occasionally we’d get 3/4 items in a category, or zero of a certain type like face cloths. I also don’t think he was as effective as possible when it came to our cabin access issue, even though it was not his fault and certainly would have been in his own best interest to get the situation resolved quickly.
Overall
Starboard aft deck 8 has its disadvantages, but I was very happy with the position of this cabin for getting to places and venues we wanted to be. I’d lightly griped about a more forward room on the previous Enchanted sailing, and moving into the aft section did make it much more convenient to get to the WakeView pool, kids’ clubs, and the Amalfi dining room on deck 6.
E711 was also set back enough from the elevator bank that we didn’t get a lot of noise from the hallway. E707/E708, as the other 4-passenger cabins in this section, were just closer enough to the elevators that I would hesitate to pick them with the other noise sources also in play.
Any additional cost to get a mini-suite on a higher deck with extra square footage wouldn’t have been worth it for just the space alone. The practical reduction in space was the absence of a third nightstand by the sofa bed, and a little less room by the balcony door. I’d absolutely be more frustrated about scraping chairs from the pool deck or buffet above than the music from the club below.
I’d be comfortable with this exact same cabin in future, but E712 would be my top preference to avoid the smoke and fully enjoy the balcony. There are also other more forward or mid-ship options on other decks – avoiding the set on M-deck 15 – that if priced comparably would be worthy of future investigation.
Ship
Compared to Sphere class
I did a fairly thorough job of describing Enchanted Princess’ layout and features in the last review, so this section will provide some additional comparison to Sun Princess, as well what has changed since August 2024.
An obvious advantage on the older generation of ships is the approach to the Guest Services area. On Enchanted Princess, the area is much more spacious, so people aren’t bunched up, forced into tight lines, or impeding an elevator lobby like on Sun Princess. Even when there were a few guests ahead of me, the overall atmosphere on Enchanted wasn’t one of grim resignation and an unpleasant crowd. There were other activities going on around, you could hear music from the Piazza, and there was enough room to spread out.
On elevators, I did miss Sun Princess’ smart ones as they seemed to be more efficient, although during this sailing I wouldn’t say elevator access or timings were generally an issue. There were a few times when doors opened to a full cab, but waiting for the next lift never took long.
O’Malley’s on Enchanted also seems to have more tables than on Sun, but the focus for this cruise wasn’t the food offerings – it was the incredible performances from Pint of Plain that caused a packed venue on multiple evenings. I expect this area to be eventually expanded on Sun Princess given the plan for Star Princess.
I did frequent Good Spirits at Sea a few times on Enchanted Princess due to its proximity to the Piazza and International Cafe, but never made it to the more-enclosed version of venue on Sun. That will be something to rectify on a future sailing.
There were slightly more obvious Park West art auctions during this cruise. They were set up a few times in Princess Live, which is an unavoidable venue on Deck 7, and we got badgered once on our way through to try and guess the sculpture’s weight. To my best recollection (backed up by deck plans and dailies), Sun Princess does not have any art auction space or gallery. This is a positive for the newer ship as I leave the 2019 NYT article about Peter Max for your consideration.
I wrote about Take Five in the last review, but the Double Down Bar now in that space is one of the two bar venues that stays open past midnight (Vista Lounge being the second spot, and only for as long as the DJ’s session is well-attended.) I ended up at Double Down on a couple nights for a nightcap and to continue conversation with fellow cruisers. Other bars have a hard close at or before midnight, and by 11:30pm those teams are well into cleaning and sanitization. Sun Princess wins here as three of the bar options have a stated 1am shutdown, and the International Cafe serves alcohol until 2am.
Many folks also bemoan the layout and capacity of The Arena, the primary theatre on Sun Princess, but the more traditional theatre configuration on Enchanted Princess filled up very quickly as well. For two good seats together, you’re going to have to get there half an hour beforehand, regardless of which ship generation we’re talking about. The one nudge I would give to Enchanted is that you could still probably get a bad seat, or individual seats not together, closer to showtime. Those choices might not be possible on Sphere class.
While we didn’t experience any of these directly, the specialty dining options on Sun Princess are more numerous and varied than your steakhouse/seafood/Italian choices on Enchanted. On a cruise without children, especially if I’d sprung for the Premier package with specialty dining included, Sun Princess would be the better choice.
Condition
Enchanted Princess has shown some additional wear and tear in the 7 months since we last sailed on her. While there was significant improvement in water quality and cleanliness in the WakeView pool, all the pools on deck 16 had some missing square tiles. This made the area look run-down and added concern that someone might cut themselves or catch a toe where the ceramic had lifted. This seems like a pretty obvious thing for any supervisor to note on their walk-arounds, and should be possible for a maintenance team to fix with minor off-hours downtime.
One tongue-in-cheek comment in some of the more humorous CruiseCritic posts relates to mismatched salt and pepper shakers, where individuals will dramatically lament how it ruined their cruise experience. The kids pointed this one out at the outdoor buffet area where we had two P’s and no S. This did not ruin our sailing, for what it’s worth.
There were two key machines on the ship that were not operational. First was the dysfunctional ATM outside the casino. It is supposed to operate as a bill breaker (a very useful feature in getting $1 bills at your own convenience) as well as a way to extract your casino winnings without visiting a cashier, but neither of these features worked. The second machine that attracted Kayla’s ire was the espresso maker in the Princess Live! bar, which broke early on and disappeared entirely by the midpoint of the sailing. Getting a specialty coffee on the go was slightly more inconvenient, requiring a trip two decks down to the International Cafe. Again, not cruise-ruining.
Princess – or perhaps blame should be given to the parent Carnival Corporation – has also updated the software on the large touchscreens in the elevator lobby, unfortunately removing the games and ocean creature customization. Screens now just feature upcoming events, locating cabinmates, and provide walking instructions to venues. Our kids were moderately disappointed.
A nice improvement in the lobbies was the introduction of signage that pointed to port/starboard and noted whether a side had odd or even cabin numbers. While they were only laminated sheets of paper rather than acrylic or metal signs, they were professional-looking with appropriate fonts and branding, and immediately visible as you exited the elevator. This was one of the complaints I raised in my last review, and this change made it much easier to navigate the guest decks.
Perhaps the biggest issue we had with Enchanted Princess was the continued presence of fruit flies in certain areas, which points to a more systemic pest control issue on the ship as well as suboptimal cleaning efforts. It clearly wasn’t a one-off from our August trip; Kayla noticed a swarm of them in the accessible bathroom outside the Amalfi dining room, and there were a few buzzing the overhead lights near the liquor bottles at a bar venue.
In fact, late in the evening, one of the indoor bar staff took out an electric swatter shaped like a tennis racket, and was trying to reduce the insect count that way. During the behind-the-scenes tour on NCL Bliss, there were countless wall-mounted bug zappers with UV light that seemed very effective, but I can’t speak to the configuration for Enchanted. With recent alleged reductions to US Vessel Sanitation Program staffing, this could get worse in future if inspections will be less frequent or intense. We’ll have to see what the best way is to approach this onboard if it happens again on our Enchanted Princess sailing this summer.
Kayla also mentioned that the women’s bathrooms in this location had an unpleasant smoky smell – looking at deck plans I have to wonder whether a crew area or smoking section above is somehow venting into them.
A positive note was the announcement from the bridge late in the cruise, letting people know that wildlife had been spotted on the starboard side. We were able to get to our balcony and peek out at some porpoise-like creatures as a result.
Kids’ programming
Debranding
The biggest change with the youth programs since August 2024 is that Princess has dropped the Discovery branding. The three rooms (Tree House/The Lodge/Beach House) kept their names but the Camp Discovery logos had been replaced or covered up with generic Princess badges. Sun Princess never had this partnership, going for generic names like Firefly Park, Neon Grove, and The Underground from the start.
I don’t know that this really changed the types of activities or events. Our kids brought back similar arts and crafts like tote bags and bucket hats that seemed aligned to a “discovery” theme – but maybe they were still working through old stock. There was also a session in the program that had previously been branded as Animal Planet, but didn’t carry that indicator on this sailing.
Hours and activities
Our kids were enrolled in the youngest Tree House group, and we got to understand the scheduling and sequencing of the program much better over the 10-day sailing. On port days, the program would generally open at 8 or 9am, close at 12 noon, reopen from 1-5pm for the afternoon, and then have a 7-10pm evening session. The posted schedule would indicate 9am-5pm, but didn’t mention the obligatory noon hour break.
The morning and afternoon sessions on these days were generally held in The Lodge, which is typically used for kids 8-12 years old – but they combined this group with 3-7 year olds, probably due to lower participation while in port and the fewer number of children on this 10-day sailing.
During port days, the schedule was typically less structured and relied more on video games, movies, and independent colouring/drawing. Evening sessions had this age group return to the Tree House room for directed group activities like crafts, stories, songs, and physical activities like long jump and ring toss.
On sea days, the sessions were 9am-12pm, 2pm-5pm and 7pm-10pm. A slightly later start time and a longer lunch break, but all of them featured plenty of scheduled activities and were held in the assigned/expected room.
Our kids liked sea day blocks in the Tree House room the best. They weren’t fans of the more freeform activities offered in The Lodge, despite that room having objectively cooler (and free-to-play!) Skee-Ball machines.
While I generally like the kids to go to both daytime sessions, with family meals and swimming surrounding them, after a few days I only asked them to go to one of the two time slots in the Lodge each day. As they get older, I also expect that they’ll be more interested in the activities and friends in the older age group. Shore excursions will also be much easier in terms of transportation and keeping interest, so we might use more port days as intended to do something in the port.
There were some exceptions to the daily three-session schedule: on day 3 (at sea) there was a “Story Time with Stanley” the Princess bear mascot, and while it was advertised as happening in the Piazza it was really inside the Tree House room. Parents weren’t required to attend, but the event was open to families, and many did take the opportunity to come and hear the story. On the same night, the 7-10pm session started in the buffet area. Kids could eat dinner, supervised by the staff, before they were taken back to their respective program rooms for 8pm.
On day 7 (a port day in St. Kitts), the evening session started with a Family Dance Party in the Vista Lounge at 7pm, with fully supervised programming not starting until 8:30pm. Lastly, the Family Fun Fair (face painting, glitter tattoos, puppet and button-making) was scheduled on day 9 in the Piazza from 2 to 3:30pm, with no afternoon session that day.
Retrospective
The Tree House program continued to work very well for us, especially with our kids being able to attend some evening programs without being grouchy. The staff did an incredible job and we even met Danny again, one of the wonderful youth staff who had been on Discovery Princess last May. All of the staff were lovely, but having someone familiar to welcome the children made drop-off a much smoother process.
Slight variations in afternoon and evening programming, which could differ from sailing to sailing, mean that you can’t rely on the program for childcare if you want to book specialty dining in advance. The night you might want to have a fancy dinner alone could be the night with an hour or so of family-supervised movies or dancing, and you probably won’t know until onboard.
I did compare Firefly Park to Tree House in the last review, but one additional point is that because Firefly Park is a full deck up from Neon Grove on Sun Princess, they are less likely to combine the programs. This might be a factor if you’re going to use the service on port days and your younger kids prefer a more supervised, structured experience.
Princess’ program does seem to run similarly to Royal Caribbean in terms of operating hours, and even the much-touted Disney has similar breaks throughout the day, so there doesn’t seem to be an advantage schedule-wise to either competitor.
Main dining
All of our dinners were in the Amalfi dining room, and the 5:40 reservation time worked very well for us. You can technically be up to 20 minutes late for your slot, but we never were that tardy. We also found that the staff were very flexible if we showed up much earlier than that. One night we were down at the dining room entrance by 5:10, and even as we acknowledged we were quite early and would be happy to wait, they were already ushering us to a table. We did notice that when leaving around 7 to 7:30pm, there were significant lines to get in.
On our 10-day cruise there were three extra menus that you don’t get to experience on a standard week’s voyage. Before sailing, I was very excited to try some items that aren’t available in the 7-day set, but after the fact I can’t honestly pick any stand-out dishes other than the “Spaghetti and Giant Meatball” for its novelty, tastiness, and precise description. This is not to say that the food wasn’t good – I really enjoyed everything I had over the course of the journey, but there is a tendency for the nights to blur together and to order comfortable favourites.
Service varied in how proactive that specific night’s waiter/assistant waiter team was with suggesting items, offering wine refills, topping up water, and noticing appropriate pauses to prompt for the next course. On a few evenings, the assistant waiter would not only re-prompt for drinks throughout the meal, but jovially ask “double?” for wine by the glass orders. Princess’ standard pour size tends to be less than 6 fluid ounces, so this offer was both welcome and taken up often. Once we knew this was a well-understood request with the dining team, it was trivial to “double” our wine order at the start of the meal, reducing the chance of a potentially catastrophic moment without fermented grape juice.
I would say five of the ten evenings fell into the “excellent” category for overall service, three “good”, and only two evenings had notable deficiencies in speed or pacing. I wouldn’t blame the waiters, since so much of the dining experience is predicated on a seamlessly functioning kitchen team that you don’t ever get to see. Regardless, none of our requests went unfulfilled and everyone was very patient with our kids, who can be shy when asked for their orders.
One thing we will be ordering, perhaps “double” like the wine, is actually from the regular 7-night menu. On Italian night they serve a lemon meringue cheesecake, and Kayla made a point of bringing a few extra slices back to the cabin to share. It had all the right flavours and while we both generally prefer savoury over sweet foods, this was a top dessert for our palates.
The “Baked Alaska” parade at the end of the cruise was difficult for the whole family to see from our table in one of the side sections near the windows, so a request to be seated in the central area that night might be worthwhile.
Other dining
We did use our two casual dining credits this cruise, one at Ocean Terrace for sushi and the other at Gigi’s Pizzeria by Alfredo. Ocean Terrace only opens for lunch on sea days, so we made sure to include this one in our plan as I think it would be disappointing quantity-wise for dinner.
Our orders at both venues were exact repeats from last August. I appreciate the inclusion of these places in the Plus package, but if I had to pay for it on my own, a $15US per person charge just doesn’t make sense when all the other food on board is really great. I could definitely see springing for some O’Malley’s chicken wings on a long enough sailing, though.
As the cruise went on, we had a few more breakfasts in the World Fresh Marketplace than on previous Princess voyages. We weren’t always able to make the 9am cutoff for a full service breakfast in Amalfi. I’d love to see breakfast in the restaurant end closer to 10am or even 10:30 – while there are definitely logistics around setting up for lunch and staffing, there are three dining rooms on Enchanted Princess so I bet this could happen.
There were good breakfast options in the buffet, but I’m much more of a lunch person. Kayla and I typically ended up eating whatever the kids didn’t finish, then having a more substantial meal around noon.
The Salty Dog Cafe on Lido deck had good burgers, hot dogs and fries, but we went twice at peak lunch hours and ended up having to wait probably 20 minutes for our food both times. They do give a buzzer so you don’t have to lollygag around in the immediate vicinity, but a lot of the Salty Dog items were also available in the buffet. I’ll steer the kids there next time for more expedient service.
Finally, the International Cafe – what a delightful option to have! While Sun Princess had more upscale/”foodie” sandwich options, like Banh Mi Beef, schnitzel on a pretzel bun, and katsu chicken – I discovered a new love for the Mortadella and Cheese on Enchanted. They did run out of certain sandwich types around midnight, but there was always something up my alley as a pre-bed snack, and you could either eat in the fairly-quiet Piazza or take it back to the cabin.
Drinks
I made the rounds of quite a few bars but my main choices ended up being Crooners and O’Malley’s, both with friendly and accommodating staff. I also ran into Lawrence from last August, who was previously at Bellini’s but now handling The Mix on the pool deck. Despite the constant crowds, he was still as effective, efficient and generally awesome as ever.
Strongbow did once again make an appearance on the OceanNow menu, and there weren’t any of the newer Betty Booze/Buzz canned drinks available. I didn’t see this as a loss as I wasn’t a fan of any of them on Sun Princess. While we did use OceanNow a few times to stock the fridge, I found it more effective to head one deck down to the Crown Grill Bar – they would give us four drinks at a time without issue, and split them between Kayla’s tab and mine.
Speaking of tabs, there were a few more occurrences on this sailing where Kayla and I would order drinks and then they’d both be allocated to my account. Since Plus caps out at fifteen booze in a day, it was only a nuisance on a couple nights where I’d check at dinner and somehow be at 12 or 13/15, despite certainly not having consumed that many since 6am.
Since it wasn’t necessarily obvious when this was happening, and up to the individual server or bartender as to how they entered each order, I think my best defense against this will be to use Kayla’s allocation for an OceanNow order (or send her down to Crown Grill or Vista Lounge) – at least that way the fridge is stocked for the evening as a backup.
As I write this there are rumblings of a Plus/Premier change restricting passengers to one drink at a time and single pours, so this experience could be somewhat different on sailings past May 2025. I don’t think it’s a “dealbreaker” for us, but I will be curious to see what the impact to OceanNow orders ends up being – and if there is a forced 5-minute wait between drinks like on Carnival ships.
Entertainment
With the kids attending the Tree House on some evenings, Kayla and I were able to return to one of our favourite activities on a ship – going to a theatre show where we’ve already paid for drinks, food is readily available without a time-sensitive reservation afterward, and we don’t have a 45-120 minute hour drive home.
We saw two of the three production shows, 5-SKIES and Spotlight Bar. 5-SKIES unfortunately gets a lot of negative Internet commentary – the basic concept is a video game player proceeding through various levels, with various electronic scoreboards surrounding the stage. Not to stereotype the traditional Princess cruiser, but I think the entire concept of “VR video game as musical” is a hard sell to certain generations – both those that expect a certain traditional style of cruise entertainment, as well as those who lightly experienced early computer or console games, but it was really their kids who played them the most.
5-SKIES was delightfully cheesy for us late 30-year-olds, with callbacks to classic video games and mechanics, but also some definite facepalm moments and obvious plot holes. I thought the cast really did put their best effort into the performance. Even if the script wasn’t perfect, it was clear to me that this was a very talented cast and supporting team, and the show definitely made for an entertaining evening. I do intend to go see it again on a future Enchanted Princess sailing, but will try to sit further back and more centre to get a better view of all the projections.
Spotlight Bar featured many well-known songs, with a story mainly told through dancing, motion, and costumes rather than overt dialog. However, as someone who’s seen NCL’s Choir of Man, this was a pale imitation of that performance and invoked shades of “we have Choir of Man at home.” The singing, sets and costumes were all excellent, but the comparable option on Norwegian had a much clearer plot.
In a very welcome surprise for us, Pint of Plain had recently relocated from Sun Princess (where we’d seen them over Christmas) to Enchanted Princess. We were able to catch several of their performances in O’Malley’s as well as the Piazza. Since this cruise was over St. Patrick’s Day, they had their work cut out for them!
Disembarkation and post-cruise
Based on our flight times we were assigned one of the later (but not latest) luggage tags for airport transfers, which suited us fine. After a somewhat pressed breakfast service in Amalfi, we were off the ship with no wait by 8:45am.
The staff at the port did check our airport transfer tickets, which was a brief annoyance to fish out of my bag – on both previous sailings from Port Everglades they’d just waved us toward a bus as we walked down the correct ramp. We at least did not get badgered for a tip.
We did end up waiting a few hours at the airport and probably could have made the previous 10:55am flight easily – even with kids and checked baggage – but spent some wind-down time scrolling the Internet and eating some overpriced Shake Shack. Our return flight also had about a 40 minute pre-boarding delay.
That evening, we received a summary of onboard charges in an email, which started as expected – except the last line item, where the Crew Appreciation (daily service charge/gratuities) that had been accumulating at $18US/day/kid had been entirely reversed, showing a $180US credit per child. On our three previous Princess sailings, the kids’ gratuities had been very much in effect, and counted against non-refundable OBC before incurring a credit card charge.
It’s hard to evaluate this situation. Since Kayla and I have always purchased Princess Plus, our crew appreciation has been explicitly included and never shown up on the stateroom account each day. We also fully expect to pay this cost for our children as part of the overall vacation, and on other lines will try to pre-pay it so that the total cruise charge is eligible for credit card rewards.
While I dislike the general concept of service charges obscuring the true cost of accommodation and transportation, and will debate at length whether kids should pay the same amount of gratuity as adults, we have never asked for these fees to be removed or reduced. My visits to Guest Services during this trip were unrelated: to report the cabin lockout situation (not angrily or aggressively), and another to ask for a feedback form (which I was clear was intended for a staff compliment, and gave the staff member a full 10/10 review before putting it in the dropbox.)
Given when the reversal of charges actually happened, I don’t think we would have been able to catch it before leaving the ship, nor would I have made the effort to go to Guest Services to try to investigate – it seems like a situation that might be further misinterpreted and complicate billing further.
True to the process, the amount “referred to corporate finance” arrived as a USD cheque from Bottomline Technologies just over two weeks after returning home. I’ll probably be seeking futher feedback from Reddit and CruiseCritic while undoubtedly stirring up the age-old discussion about gratuities.
Going forward
Ships, cabins and packages
While we do like the Royal class of ships and the experience on them, the bed arrangement in oceanview and balcony 4-passenger cabins on these vessels is a significant downgrade from Sphere-class on Princess – or competitive ships from other lines. This is certainly a family of four problem; there are many more choices for 3-passenger cabins on Enchanted Princess that don’t sacrifice head clearance.
This means that a mini-suite becomes the new baseline for our family on this type of ship if we all stay in the same cabin. Other options are more complex: if booking two cabins, we’d need to select connecting or close rooms in potentially limited supply, try to get Princess Plus allocated only to the adults, give up any reduced or free 3rd and 4th passenger pricing, and stand in line at Guest Services to enable cross-room access once on board. We might do this once the kids are older and want a bit more privacy and freedom, but for now it doesn’t seem worth the trouble.
Given that we had no major problems on Sun Princess over Christmas – and dare I say, liked most of the experience – Oceanview cabins on both Sun and the upcoming Star Princess look like very reasonable options. The curtain, extra floor space, and second TV in a mini-suite just aren’t several thousand dollars more compelling.
What comes out of this for a family of four is that you must consider multiple lines and ships. Carnival Excel-class, for example, has essentially the same type of Oceanview cabin as Princess Sphere-class. Norwegian’s Breakaway-class, beginning with ships launched in 2013, have Family Oceanview rooms that can theoretically sleep five (double sofa bed plus a Pullman) and their quad balcony cabins are configured more to my liking. MSC and Celebrity – even on older hardware – also have single sofa bed with overhead-Pullman options. And I haven’t even seriously looked at the other majors in this space like Royal Caribbean and Disney.
Princess still wins on a bundled/package value, at least for Plus at $60US/day/adult. MSC’s at-time-of-booking pricing gets close; gratuities are extra but it includes their top drinks offering, wifi, and a “minor” drink package for the kids, who can then order pop and mocktails with impunity. NCL’s More at Sea is still a solid alternative with good drinks, specialty dining and shore excursion credits, but $20US/person/day gratuities aren’t included and bottled water somehow rates an extra charge. Celebrity’s offer seems the weakest, where gratuities are no longer bundled, wi-fi is throttled, and the drink package is designed to require an additional daily upgrade – even for those with basic palates.
What’s next?
Prior to this cruise, we had two future sailings booked with Princess: a return to Enchanted in summer 2025, and Sun Princess for a repeat holiday sailing.
I visited the Future Cruise Planning area a couple times and used the reduced deposit offer to hold additional sailings on Sun and Star Princess in 2026 and 2027. These were all booked in Oceanview cabins, which should suit us just fine on Sphere-class. Both these ships have a good number of 4-person Balcony and Mini-Suite cabins that are in relatively good locations, suitable for a minimum-bid upgrade if I really wanted the outdoor area or extra space.
A day or two before I was going to publish this write-up, all of these cruises dropped in price, all at least by $350CAD each. I had to give up some bonus non-refundable onboard credit, but still ended up coming out well ahead by rebooking them.
For summer 2026, I’d already known the Princess offerings were not aligning with the ships, locations, and pricing I was looking for. Coincidentally, Norwegian had sent us a 20% discount offer code, which did legitimately reduce the cruise fare and wasn’t a usual “50% off second guest!” type of general advertisement. There were also dates in the summer where an available “kids sail free (plus taxes and fees)” promotion worked. This resulted in a booking for Escape – as much as I’d like to try Prima class, the kids clubs seem to have more limited capacity on those ships. I am really looking forward to returning to NCL as the line that got us started cruising.
Finally, we have also held an Infinite Ocean View Aurea cabin on MSC World America, which by all accounts is quite similar to the Infinite Veranda on Celebrity. I will be pleased to return to Ocean Cay on that sailing, and see if the recently enhanced Aurea offerings are “good enough” or whether we have been spoiled by somewhat accidental Yacht Club.