Friday, March 6, 2020

Nights of Enchantment- Sea Day 2

A Cold Front in the Gulf of Mexico

Gulf of Mexico 

Sea Day 2



MORNING
We woke up around 8:30AM and both of us had slept better than the previous nights. As I mentioned in a previous post, the beds were HARD... but not the hardest we have slept on while cruising with Royal Caribbean. INSIDERS INFO- Royal is notorious to having hard beds! It is a crap shoot but if you’re lucky, you’ll get a good one that is softer than the floor.

We got ready for the day and then went to the My Fair Lady Dining Room for another full-service breakfast. The service was not as fast as the previous days, but we did not arrive until after 9AM so we figured it was due to the lateness of our arrival. The food was superb once again.

Time to EAT! It is what we do best on a cruise!

After breakfast we went to Café Latitudes to get our morning specialty coffees. Oh, the JOYS of having the Beverage Package! The line was even longer than previous days but again, it moved quickly. We had our coffee in hand within 12-15 minutes. After we got our coffee we went to the Royal Shops on Deck 6 to get some gifts and souvenirs for our kids. Luke got his typical (LITERALLY every cruise) inflatable cruise ship and Natalie got a cute dog purse.


No matter the cruise line and no matter the ship, there is always repairs to be made! Thank you Royal Caribbean for keeping your ships "ship shape". 

By mid-morning we headed down to Deck 5 to walk the Promenade and get a video of the promenade area. During this time, the Cruise Director came on the speaker to let us know that some of the crew members would be testing the life boats for the next hour or so.

The officers and crew getting ready for the Life Boat drill!
We had never seen this done on a moving ship and on a sea day! It was neat!

We were able to get a time-lapse video of the starboard side of the Promenade deck, but we were not able to walk all the way around the promenade deck as we had hoped!

The time-lapse of the PORT side of the Promenade! 

We learned there were 5 different service dogs on board. There is a even a space for the dogs to relieve themselves on the Promenade deck. It is very interesting! 


The calm before the storm... The seas were almost as if they were glass around 10AM. 
These were very calm seas! It made for a PERFECT Sea Day!


My FAVORITE view EVER! 


The crew was working on the something with the life rafts so this was blocked off! 


This was the best view I could get of the wake since the VERY BACK was closed.
This was still absolutely PERFECT! I cannot get enough of this! 

We love Sea Days! 

Another great picture taken from the Promenade deck! 

After we explored the Promenade Deck we went back up to the Lido but couldn’t find Richard, so we found a spot at the Oasis Bar, mid-ship Lido. We met another nice bar tender from Jamaica who was on his very last day of his contract. He had been with RCCL for nearly a decade and had left his wife and girls too many times to count. He told us about his 3 little girls and just thinking of leaving my kids for more than a week at a time makes me cry so much. And he has had over a dozen contracts and did just that… left his family MANY TIMES! He was tearing up as he was telling us the stories. It makes you really appreciate the crew members that serve you non-stop for the duration of your cruise. Thank you, Crew Members. Thank you so much!


The Oasis Bar on the Lido Deck. 

#TeachersonBreak

We then went up to the Viking Crown Lounge for a bit but realized that there was not any bar service and other service, so we decided to go to Boleros on Deck 5. We met some more wonderful and friendly crew members at Boleros and we stayed there for over 2 hours. One of the officers was in Boleros and we talked to him for quite a while about the cruising industry and he was very impressed with the amount of information we knew. It was great talking to him about the various brands and cruise lines he had worked with. This officer had his wife on board working as well and he called her “the tax collector”. It was so hilarious!

While we were in Boleros the activities staff came and set up a game of “Giant Pong” on the dance floor so we decided to participate. We had no idea what this was but that made it even more interesting! That was… FUN! We did not do well, and both got out in the 1st round of the game but it was an unexpected fun event.

This was a game that we would have done better at had we not had the drink package. 
Chris playing "Giant Pong" in Boleros! It was harder than we thought it would be! 

And it was now my turn! This was difficult! 

AFTERNOON
We decided to go to a late lunch in the Windjammer since we had the 8PM set dining time. Once again, I was not impressed with the Windjammer, but it worked for what we needed it to. After lunch we decided to go back to our stateroom to take a mid-afternoon nap.

We woke up at 4:30PM and went to Viking Crown Lounge. By this time, the cold front we were “passing through” had made its way to us and it was WINDY and very cold. The Captain had already put the stabilizers to good use and we were not swaying as much as I would have thought but it was intense to say the very least.

A view of the very choppy seas from the Viking Crown Lounge around 6PM. 


When we got back to the stateroom we realized the ship was on a course that seemed a bit off. Chris thinks the Captain was trying to "skirt" the storm and go around it instead of through it. 

EVENING
We spent a few hours in the Viking Crown Lounge before going back to our stateroom and getting ready for dinner. Even as we were in our cabin getting ready, we could start to feel the swaying of the ship even more than before. It was incredibly windy and the ship “was a rocking”.

One last towel animal from our stateroom steward. 

We went to dinner in the My Fair Lady Dining Room at 8PM and once again the service was top notch. I had been feeling so much better now that I had adjusted back to eating regularly that our waiter, Chris, brought us additional appetizers and even accidentally brought me 2 steaks. The whole dining room staff was fantastic, and we enjoyed eating at the set dining time of 8PM. In fact, we decided we would try this type of MDR service on our upcoming cruise with the kids on the Liberty of the Seas in April 2020.


Prime Rib... What a great way to end our cruise! 
BE SURE TO CHECK BACK FOR OUR FOODIE BLOG! It will have menus, pictures and even some ratings to help you choose what to order! 

After dinner we went back to the room to start to pack our bags and we were falling over getting back to our forward cabin. The seas were MUCH worse, and the tiny little ship was just swaying back and forth so much. As we sat on the bed and watched some news, we were close to getting “air” on the bed. It was so intense.

We left our room to go to the late-night adult comedy in the Main Theater and most of the passengers were having a hard time walking down the hallway, the ship was swaying so bad. As we got to the Main Theater, we were just swaying back and forth ourselves. In fact, we saw an older gentleman in the balcony of the Main Theater nearly fall over the railing getting to his seat. My blood pressure jumped sky high watching him nearly fall over.

This is not a great view but the curtain does show how rough the seas were! 

The comedian was the same from the previous nights, which we found hilarious, but this time he was just not that funny. He may have been feeling the swaying of the ship as well. We left early to go back to our room to put out our luggage for debarkation the following morning.

The rest of the night was very shaky, rocky and the ship just kept swaying back and forth and back and forth. We felt the movement of the ship more than usual, but this was the lowest and most forward cabin we have had in many, many cruises, if not our most forward and lowest. This is something we noticed and something we will remember when booking future cruises. TIP- In our experience, mid-ship is the best room location and the higher the deck, the better.  

We called it a night shortly after midnight, but we could still feel the swaying of the ship well into the night. In fact, it took me several hours to fall asleep. Luckily, we are not people who get seasick, but the movement of the ship keeps me awake most of the time and this time was no different.

It was a great last day on board the Enchantment of the Seas and a wonderful cruise overall, but it was time to face reality and get back to “life as we know it”. The life of the “mom and dad taxi and chauffer”. These kids got to get to practice and games somehow!

Next Up… Easy Debarkation from the Enchantment of the Seas!
Stay Tuned!

God is good… ALL the time!



 




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