Enchanted Princess Review
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We sailed the Grand Princess in October 2022 and it was a pretty poor cruise. When we discovered that another Princess cruise, aboard the Enchanted, was the only one that fit our timeline this spring, I didn’t expect much out of it. I am happy to say that I was wrong.
The Grand had that ‘Motel 6,’ tired look and feeling, Enchanted was one of the better looking ships I have sailed. There were no spectacularly ugly carpets! (How strange is that?) It was in excellent condition, very clean and had plenty of elevators. The Grand did have a wonderful walking deck, which was often closed. Eventually passengers just started opening up the gate and walking on the deck, and no one seemed to notice. The Enchanted does not really have a walking deck at all, so we booked a balcony to get ourselves some outside time, which largely worked. Oddly, there is a sunny “walk” on the top deck where there is usually a jogging deck. As it was labelled a walking deck, no one ever jogged there, so it worked for us, but I wouldn’t count on another cruise with no joggers aboard. I did miss the shade of the old promenade decks.
I thought the food on Grand was the least Grand, and the skimpiest and the nastiest on all of our many cruises. My husband thought MSC Splendida, with its sauerkraut with wieners in aspic, was worse, but you see where I am going with this. None of us gained an ounce on that 32 day long Grand cruise. The food on Enchanted was infinitely better! We had to eat most of our meals in the cafeteria because the waitstaff in the Main Dining Room couldn’t grasp the concept of social distancing, but we soon decided this was actually an improvement. We got more variety, and equal quality food, often the same dishes as MDR, but with much, much better tables. The Grand had the smallest and definitely the worst salad bar we had ever seen, but Enchanted had both an extensive, manned, salad bar and a smaller serve-yourself one at every meal, including breakfast. (Odd, but healthy. Not that I indulged at breakfast. I was busy with waffles with whipped cream) No decent omelette was to be had on either ship, but most food on Grand was nasty and most on Enchanted was very good. We appreciated the little steaks at every lunch and supper. The food is where Enchanted really shines.
Cabin Review
Our cabin was toward the back of the ninth floor I think, and just where the balconies were quite a bit deeper than those above or below. This made room for a proper table to eat at as well as two relaxing deck chairs and a footstool. That table was a delight. We brought many of meals along to eat there. The cabin was spacious and the closet was over five feet long. If you get a cabin two doors further along, starting at D714, the rooms are a little deeper, too. Most deck plans don’t show this, or the deeper balcony, but cruisemapper does. I believe you get the little sofa at that point. Anyway, our cabin was very satisfactory except for the need to slam the bathroom door to close it. Eventually I decided to just pretend I was being dramatic.