Wife and I took our very first cruise 19 years ago for our honeymoon and were immediately hooked. Sailed on RCI's Sovereign of the Seas and had a wonderful experience. Have been on several cruises since, but all with Carnival as the price difference always made it much more manageable to travel with our kids (2nd marriage for both so we have hers, mine and ours). Decided to surprise her for Mothers Day with a long overdue return to RCI for just the two of us. Booked the Enchantment of the Seas using their "buy one, get one half off" discount for an ocean view room and still spent more than our last Carnival cruise with one of the kids in a balcony room!

We sailed out of Galveston and embarkation was great. Didn't buy any quick entry items and still found ourselves onboard within 20 minutes of arrival at the terminal. Was offered a discount to eat at the onboard steak house "Chops Grill" while boarding. We had planned on visiting the steakhouse at least one night anyway, so we accepted the offer for the first night of sailing. More on that to come.

While boarding, I looked over the exterior of the ship and saw all the rust that other reviewers have mentioned. That didn't bother us because the inside of the ship looks great. After we ate at the Windjammer buffet, we explored the ship while we waited for the rooms to be ready. We found Chops Grill and spoke to the staff there about our dinner reservation for that evening. We wanted to make sure we had proper attire as our bags had not arrived yet. They offered us the full dining plan which would give us dinner at Chops for three nights, lunch at Chops on two days and then one dinner at the Chef's Table, which was even more exclusive and formal then Chops. My wife liked the idea of fine dining each night so we accepted. Read more