I didn't see this message until I arrived home yesterday.
Here are just a few brief highlights from the Enchanted from the Dec 9 and 19th sailings.
- As expected, the ship was crowded on the Christmas cruise. Lots of kids but taken care of by the Princess youth team. I believe they hired extra help during this cruise.
- Using the Medallion worked somewhat well for boarding although there were a few hiccups on occasion during both our trips. I only used it for ordering extra desserts during lunch at the buffet and for some reason after placing an order it would automatically cancel itself after a few minutes. Not a big deal but I never knew if I should immediately reorder or not. There working our the bugs.
During our B2B cruises I returned to my car at Park N Go and was a little surprised to find my car with a dead battery. They were accommodating by getting a jump starter but when starting the car I noticed that someone had left the shifter in drive, not park when they shut off the car, which I believe caused drain on the battery. I let it run for 20 minutes or so to charge up & the next week it started fine even though they moved the car again during the week. Makes me wonder about their crew.
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The first trip we ate in the DR on deck 6, Capri and it was painfully slow. We arrived at 5 PM sharp and for 10 days it took almost 2 full hours for dinner. Most of the time we were just sitting there waiting.
The second trip I had had enough & switched DR's to deck 5, Santorini (different galley) and found it to be much faster. Eating in a little over an hour each night. I suspect the galley is a little overwhelmed buy a shortage of crew.
In general I did notice some reduction in food quality in both the DR and buffet (now self service) but still enjoyable.
The production shows were the 5 Skies and Rock Opera, both which are
LOUD. Bring ear plugs or tissue for you ears. Things never change on Princess no matter what the show.
They had 4 or 5 comedians performing over the 2 cruises which were new to Princess and were quite good considering that Princess limits their material. At least they've changed the older comedians which have gotten stale over the years.
The internet service is poor at best unless you just want to check email. The typical speed most of the day was around 50 to 100 Kbps and improved during the middle of the night to around 2 Mbps.
It took around 3 hours to download a 1 Gb program from home on average if I began at 4 AM.
During the day, forget about it.
On one cruise I managed to attend a Zoom meeting at 1:30 - 3 PM without it disconnecting.
On the second trip it dropped out so many times I gave up. There were to many people on board & the speed dropped way off.
In general the ship seems back to normal with just a few minor reduction from the pre Covid days.
Oh- one thing else- Check you account multiple times a day on the medallion app. I must have had 10 or 12 charges for drinks that should not have been charged and unless you go to the Pass service desk & have them removed ASAP it will be total confusion on the last day trying to straighten them out. We were getting charged for drinks (liquor and water at different bars even though we had the Plus package with a max of 15 drinks each.
