My wife and I decided to take a pre-Christmas cruise and with the help of our travel agent, selected the Enchantment of the Seas. We had cruised before on an RCI ship (Rhapsody) and had enjoyed that so doing another RCI cruise was not a hard decision.

We have friends that live in Boca Raton, FL so we flew in a few days early to visit with them and then headed to Port of Everglades on 12/19. We arrived at pier 25 around 12:30 PM and check-in was very quick. You are forced to turn your bags over to "porters" (hands out for tips) but other than that, it was smooth. Since I had already submitted our information online for the SeaPass cards, we just went right up to counter, showed proper documentation, and onto the ship we went. Signs were up saying our cabins wouldn't be ready until 1:00 PM so we headed up to the Windjammer cafe for a nice pre-cruise buffet. Let me stop here and say that for those that prefer a buffet atmosphere as opposed to the regular dining room (Fair Lady Dining Room), the Windjammer is more than adequate. There are large salad and bread bars and the main entree tables were quite numerous, well stocked, and provided all sorts of choices from American to Mediterranean to Mexican, etc. Standard fare for beverages - note that you'll have to pay for sodas at the nearby pool bar unless you get the Soda package (which is $6.00 per day - bargain if you drink a lot of sodas). We ended up eating at the Windjammer a few times but primarily for either breakfast or lunch as the dining room was so much better than the Windjammer.

We were able to check into our cabin, a balcony stateroom on deck seven, just a bit after 1:00 PM. We were very pleasantly surprised at the space in this cabin - bed for two, couch, nice sitting desk, bathroom that was very adequate with a suitable sized shower, and of course a balcony large enough for two chairs and a dining table. After this cruise, we will probably never get a non-balcony cabin again. There were several hours during the cruise that we retired to our cabin to just read on our own private "deck" and look out over the ocean. Read more