Royal Caribbean International
Monarch of the Seas Cruise Review
Ensenada

Jon Smith
Age: 46
Occupation: Television Producer
Number of Cruises: 1
Sailing Date: December 1st, 2006

My wife and I are southern California natives, both 46 and took our first ever cruise on December 1, 2006 on Royal Caribbean’s Monarch of the Seas for a three-day trip to Ensenada and back. We did this as a pre-cursor to our family cruise to the Southern Caribbean coming up this July. We were so excited about that cruise that we just couldn’t wait. We had to have a little taste of cruising before then.

We arrived at the pier about 11:30am. Parked in the closest space to the terminal and pulled our bags across the street and gave them to a porter along with a $5. We went inside and checked in. We had completed the Set Sail passes and check in took about 2 minutes. We wandered down the hall and looked at the wine packages, although we didn’t purchase one. We sat and waited about 15 more minutes and the elites and suites were called for boarding. We had drawn a “group 3”. Once we were called, we made our way through the metal detector, had our pictures taken and were onboard. A quick check of our cabin hallway revealed that it would be 1pm before cabins were ready. So up to deck 11 and the Windjammer for lunch. Lunch was really pretty good, better than I expected after hearing rants on this and other review sites.

After a quick walk around the decks, we went back to our cabin, 2076. It was small, as described in detail in previous reviews. However, it was cozy and the upgraded bedding was quite comfortable. Having an ocean view on deck 2 (as well as 3) gives one a porthole rather than the more rectangular window. Still it was nice to be able to look outside at night and see our movement. Our bags didn’t arrive until about 3pm. We changed into our casual dinner clothes and participated in the muster drill. Immediately after having been dismissed from muster, my wife went to the pool deck and bought two of the drink specials, while I returned the life vests to the cabin. We met on deck 12 for sail-away. We were a little late in departing so we didn’t get to see much of sail-away, because we had to be down in the Claude’s dining room on deck 4 at 6pm.

Dinner was lamb shanks with rosemary and was truly wonderful. We bought a bottle of California Cabernet and drank half of it that night at dinner. We asked our waiter to save the rest for the next night.

We took in the comedy act in the Sound of Music lounge. It was very funny and we enjoyed it. After that, I promptly lost $40 at the craps table and my wife promptly spent about the same in one of the onboard stores.

We awoke the next morning as we were pulling into Ensenada, Mexico. We showered and dressed and had breakfast in the dining room. We had eggs benedict, juice and coffee.

We didn’t want to go to La Bufadora or the winery, so we took the $2 shuttle into town and just walked around downtown Ensenada. It was quite cool out in the shade of the morning winter sun, so we bought sweatshirts at the Hussong’s store. We bought a gift for each of our three kids and had a lobster lunch at one of the many cantinas. We found a bottle of local red wine and some nice vanilla at one of the liquor shops. We sampled a “high-end” tequila at one of the smaller, sidewalk cantinas before heading back to the ship. There was a crazy guy sitting at one of the tables who talked to us through our entire time there. I just wanted to sit in the sun with my beautiful wife and sip tequila, but NO! Oh well, at least we have another story, right? I travel the world extensively for business and whenever something goes wrong, that’s our motto, “Oh well, at least we have a story!”

After a $1 shuttle bus ride back to the dock, we shopped a little more in the dockside shops, then we were back on board by 4pm or so.

We dressed warm and watched our sail-away from deck 12 again and then went back to the cabin to change for formal night. I wore a black suit and tie, and my lovely wife wore a black party dress. We went to have our formal picture taken by the Christmas tree in the Centrum, but the line was enormous. So we had our dinner in Claude’s again and tonight was filet of beef and again was very good. We finished our bottle of Cabernet with dinner tonight. Dessert was a soufflé with Grand Marnier crème.

We attended the Captains party and had the complementary drinks there. It was nice to hear from him. After that there was another comedian, and we made the mistake of sitting in the front row. I was the object of two of his jokes, but he was really quite funny. This was the “midnight buffet” night. We were still stuffed from dinner, so we went up the Windjammer and took a couple of pictures of the ice sculptures and had a couple of chocolate dipped strawberries and bananas.

We slept late this morning, about 10am (late for us). That meant breakfast in Windjammer. It was surprisingly good.

We then shopped a little more, bought some Starbucks liqueur for some Christmas gifts and then made our way to the pool deck and watched some of the activities, like belly flop contest and ice sculpturing. We had a little of the barbeque lunch served on the pool deck, but still felt so full from breakfast.

For our final dinner, I had a breaded fish dish that was pretty weak. Dessert was the ubiquitous “baked Alaska”, complete with dancing wait staff carrying the flaming dessert on their heads.

After, we attended the musical production number with the Royal Caribbean singers and dancers. It was ok. Then we went up to deck 8 and the Circuit Lounge for the Quest game. It was hilarious to see what people would do to win a dumb Royal Caribbean logo gift.

Back to the cabin to pack, however we decided that we could just pull our Rollaboards off of the ship the next morning and use “express departure”. So we packed, but didn’t put our bags out in the hallway. We awoke docked in San Pedro. We made our way to deck 4 for express departure and found a zoo. People were already lined up all the way around the Centrum and back into the aft elevator area. The line snaked around the elevators and down the halls. No one knew which of the “hallway” lines were first so there was some “tension”, so to speak. Also, those attempting to exit the elevators had nowhere to go. The area was completely full of people. When the line starting moving, EVERYONE started moving toward the Centrum, which produced further tension. At any rate, we were off the ship and moving through customs and immigration quickly and were in our car by 8am and back at work by 9am.

In summary, we had a wonderful time on the Monarch of the Seas. This was a great bargain for a three-day weekend trip. By contrast, a three day trip to Vegas, with three meals a day and entertainment would have been about three times the price we paid for two. We are now looking forward even more to our July cruise on the Adventure of the Seas.




 

Ask a Question About Royal Caribbean Cruises

Ever thought about becoming a home based travel agent? Check out my web site for home based travel and cruise agents located at;