Great cruise!

This week’s cruise on Enchanted Princess was a welcome return to holidays and cruises and was a relatively last minute booking due to an excellent deal with gratuities, drinks package and wifi all included.
The Enchanted is on its inaugural season, albeit 2yrs late for the obvious reason, and is a Medallion Class ship. I am in two minds about the medallion…very handy that you can have it in your pocket or bag and it unlocks your cabin door to save you trying to find your key or balance stuff when trying to unlock the door…the staff know who they are talking to as your photo comes up on their handset which can be handy when ordering drinks etc face to face. However, we tried ordering drinks 3 times via the app and they didn’t arrive, do we resorted to asking humans and we received them quickly!!! Nothing will replace the human touch and it’s so much friendlier!
That said, it was a minor glitch and the rest of the cruise was great. We have sailed on quite a few of the Princess ships and I have to say I think this is my favourite – it was at 69% capacity and never felt crowded or busy.
The pizzeria was a nice place for lunch and has a lovely outside view. Sabbatini’s was excellent value at £25 each and Bistro Sur La Mer lovely too at £29 each, again with an outside view. The food in the dining room was good although I’m not a fan of ‘freedom’ dining – even if you booked a time in the main dining room, you had to queue to be shown to a table….what was wrong with set times and tables – there were never any queues and you got to know so many people and lifelong friends in the process!
I have to say I don’t like buffets – too many people, balancing trays and inevitably end up with weird combinations of food – and I’m on holiday so want to be spoilt and ‘dine’! Having said that, we did go to the buffet for lunch a couple of times as I found the salad section! Some lovely fresh salads with so many options and served to you by the chefs – you really can eat healthily on a cruise (at least some of the time)! The food generally in the buffet all looked appetising and a lot of variety. There was also a burger place on deck – freshly cooked burgers which I was told were very nice but long queues (not so good), probably as they were freshly cooked (which is a good thing)! Ice cream parlour on deck was very nice and great to be included too!
Our cabin (or stateroom as they call them now!) was lovely – a Mini-suite – we loved the lounge area – huge settee, converts to a bed if you want it, for watching the tv (2in the room) and lots of wardrobe and drawer space, fridge and safe in the wardrobe. AND, for the first time on a Princess ship…..tea/coffee facilities with kettle!! I think they must have been tired of reading comments from British passengers, as it’s based on Southampton at the moment! We met someone who had been onboard a few weeks before and no kettle!!!
The staff everywhere were great – room steward, waiters, bar staff – thank you!
The one big stand-out about this ship was the entertainment…the production shows Rock Opera and 5-Skies were great…the singers and dancers were excellent and the staging and special-effects had the wow-factor, something that, in my opinion, had been lacking recently on cruise ship shows. We also had Lucy Porter, Ardal O’Hanlon, Rory Bremner, Comedy Store Players and a fantastic comedian/ventriloquist Gareth Oliver (he needs bigger billing!) – all very good – great entertainment every night.
We visited Kristiansand, Copenhagen, Skagen and Oslo, had amazing hot and sunny weather and calm seas the whole time – amazing! Kristiansand is a nice town, although closed as it was Sunday, but we marvelled at the lovely harbour side apartments on the walk into town!
Copenhagen and Oslo are both nice cities to explore – we had a day in Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen and took the hop-on hop-off bus tour around Oslo as we had spent the previous 3 days walking non-stop!!
We hadn’t visited Skagen before and were very pleasantly surprised – a beautiful town, beautifully kept and hope to visit again.

So, all in all, a great cruise!