I have been to St. Thomas on two prior cruises, in 2012 and 2015, and both times I spent the day at Sapphire Beach. Ever since, I have known that if/when I return, I want to go to Coki Beach to try something new. I have read countless reviews of people doing a Discover Scuba Diving course from a shop on Coki Beach, and it seemed like such a fun way to spend the day: take an open-air taxi from the port area to Coki Beach, take the course, and spend the rest of the day relaxing on the beach and snorkeling at our leisure. We loved the Discover Scuba course we took in Cozumel on our 2019 cruise, where we did 2 dives off the boat, so I was curious to experience scuba from the beach. As soon as we booked this cruise and I knew we were returning to St. Thomas, I contacted the Coki Dive Center to book our tour. Imagine my surprise and disappointment when they informed me that they are going out of business and will not be operating tours anymore. I was so upset! This was back in January 2025, and they said they were closing up their shop on February 1. I asked if any other company offered a Discover Scuba course from Coki Beach, but they said no.
Okay, well this is a huge island in the Caribbean with tons of infrastructure for tourism. Surely there must be a different company who can offer us a Discover Scuba Diving course, right?! I spent the next few weeks combing the internet for every dive shop I could find, but I kept running into the same conundrum. The tours all started at 8am (2 hours before we were due to dock) or 1pm. I was worried that a 1pm tour would cut it too close to get back to the ship on time since it wouldn’t end until 5pm (the tours were all 4 hours long), and all aboard would probably be at 5:30pm. It seemed like these tours were more meant for people taking land vacations and staying overnight on the island so their timing was more flexible, but obviously that was not our situation.
Once I had exhausted all of my options, I looked at the excursions offered by Princess to see if we should just book through the ship. While Princess did offer one Discover Scuba tour, it cost over $200 per person, and the reviews were terrible, saying you only had 30 minutes for scuba in the 4 hour tour. That seemed very expensive and not worth the money so I continued with my research. I still wanted to go to Coki Beach so I decided to look into the options at Coral World Ocean Park. This is an outdoor aquarium located right next to Coki Beach, with shark, sting ray, and sea turtle exhibits. They also have lots of water-based activities, including swimming with dolphins and sea lions, a sea trek, and SNUBA. We did a sea trek excursion in Moorea on our honeymoon cruise through French Polynesia. It was fun, but I didn’t want to do it again quite yet. I actually made a mental note about it because it is the kind of thing we can do with Ian when he gets just a little older.
I have never done SNUBA before, so it sounded like something fun to do as it combined the ease of snorkeling with the depth obtained with scuba. They don’t have a Discover Scuba course, so I thought SNUBA might be a good compromise. The experience lasts 75 minutes, with 4 start times each day, so it was definitely possible for us with our time constraints. I liked that they only allowed 4 people per group, so it was possible it would just be us booked, or at most there would be one other couple and the instructor. I also liked that there wasn’t as much learning involved as compared to Discover Scuba, so more time would be spent in the water. Another benefit was that I was able to book online using Viator for $102 per person, with free cancellation until 2 days before the tour, and the tickets included general admission to Coral World so we could check out their exhibits before or after our tour. I opted for the 1pm tour, figuring we would take an open air taxi to Coki Beach and arrive around 11am, spend some time exploring the exhibits at Coral World, take our SNUBA excursion from 1-2:15pm, and then have some time to go snorkeling on Coki Beach before needing to head back to the ship.
Oh, and in case you were wondering what Ian was doing today… my parents were kind enough to offer to watch Ian today so we could take this tour (since there would be no way for us to do something like this if we had Ian with us). They planned to take Ian on the Sky Ride cable cars up to the top of Paradise Point, and my brother’s family ended up joining too. That was the perfect excursion for my parents to do with Ian, and he had a great time.
Since we weren’t scheduled to dock until 10am, we were able to sleep in a little bit and my alarm was set for 7:30am. I got up and got ready for the day, then I went out onto the balcony to check out the current view. It was shaping up to be a beautiful day in St. Thomas!
When I went back inside the cabin, Jason was awake and getting dressed, but surprisingly, Ian was still asleep. He hadn’t woken up yet by 8:30am, but we really needed to get going, so I had to do the unthinkable and wake him up. That is never a pleasant experience, but at least we could snap him out of his typical morning funk with the promise of a fun day in the Caribbean!
We got him dressed and packed up a day bag for Jason and myself, and a separate bag with Ian’s necessities to hand off to my parents, then we all went up to the buffet for breakfast at 9am. Not surprisingly, it was insanely crowded with everyone trying to grab breakfast before the ship docked at 10am, but at least we were able to snag a table by the window with a beautiful view.
I loaded up my plate with lots of goodies, hoping to keep my belly full until we returned to the ship later this afternoon.
When we finished eating, we dropped off Ian at camp at 9:45am. My parents are late risers and weren’t planning to go to the Sky Ride until the afternoon, so our plan was to leave Ian at camp for the morning, and my parents would pick him up at 11:30am for a quick lunch before they got off the ship. I told that to the staff at camp, and also that Jason and I were going ashore so if there were any problems, they should contact my parents, and she said it was no problem. She gave me a beeper (as we always got when Ian was at camp), so I went back down to the cabin to hand over the beeper and Ian’s bag of necessities to my parents.
I took a quick peek outside and it looked like we were docked in St. Thomas, promptly at 10am as scheduled. I have always thought this was one of the most beautiful harbors in the Caribbean.
Jason and I grabbed our day bags and went down to mid-ship deck 4 to get off the ship. We exited the gate at the end of the pier and were surprised to see taxis waiting right there for us. I thought I remembered that the last time we were in St. Thomas, we had to walk down the street of stores to a main road to get the taxis. There was a man in charge of telling people which taxi to take to which location, so at first we stood at the end of the long line of people waiting for a taxi. It was nice that they had a sandwich board listing the prices for all the places you could go on the island, so there was no question about what it should cost and you didn’t have to worry about negotiating prices.
I started to second guess that we were at the right spot, so I left Jason in line and went up to the man to ask if this was where we got a taxi to Coki Beach. It’s a good thing I asked because that whole line of people was actually just for Magen’s Bay. He called over to the driver of a 12-passenger van and asked if there was space for 2 more. The driver said yes, so I waved Jason to come join me. The van was almost full, so we crawled into the last 2 seats at the back of the van. It was very cramped back there, and the air conditioning barely worked, but at least we didn’t have to wait very long and we were on our way by 10:30am.
I knew from my research that the drive to Coki Beach should take about 20 minutes. Unfortunately for us, this taxi was also stopping at Secret Harbor, the Red Hook Ferry, and Sapphire Beach, so it took 45 minutes for us to finally be dropped at Coki Beach. The taxi cost us $14 per person because we had 2 people (it would have been $18 for 1 person). I asked if it was necessary to schedule a time for the driver to pick us up later in the afternoon, but she said we wouldn’t have any trouble finding a taxi whenever we were ready to leave as there were always taxis waiting in the parking lot to drive people back to the ship. I was a little confused on exactly where we were supposed to go, so I asked the driver. She said to go to the left for Coki Beach and the right for Coral World. Simple enough!
I went up to the ticket window to check in for our 1pm tour at 11:15am. They had all the prices for all the activities listed on the window, and I noticed that our Snuba tour still cost the same $102 as we had paid a year in advance.
At first, the woman at the counter said that the 1pm tour was overbooked, so she was glad we were early so she could send us out on an earlier tour. She said to fill out the safety waivers now, and that we should come back to her at 11:40am for an update. Oooh, maybe we would end up on a private tour if they were sending us out early on a tour that wasn’t pre-scheduled!
We walked around the grounds of Coral World to see what they had to see. There were several pools with different animals where you could watch them swimming around. First, we saw a sea turtle. It was really hard to take a good photo from above the water, but I tried my best.
We spotted a rooster walking around the tables outside the cafe. Maybe he was hoping to pick up some scraps for lunch?
Next, we saw a pool with sharks.
The restaurant had a large open-air dining room, with a beautiful view over the water.
We could see back down towards the sea turtle pools from up there.
Continuing our walk, we saw the sting ray pool, with a very feisty sting ray who looked like he was trying to splash his way up onto the sidewalk!
There was also a bird enclosure with colorful lorikeets.
By then, it was nearing 11:40 when we were told to return to the check-in desk, so we made our way back to the front of Coral World. On our way, we noticed this sign showing the schedule of presentations.
When we checked in again with the lady at the desk, she said the 1pm tour was no longer overbooked and we would keep our original timing. I’m not sure what happened there, but that left us with an hour and 20 minutes to kill. We decided to use this time to walk over to Coki Beach and go snorkeling from the shore. We originally planned to do that after our excursion, but we had the time now, and we figured the snorkeling would be more impressive if we did it before the Snuba tour.
There is a marked path from Coral World to Coki Beach, so we followed that until we found the stairs going down to the sand. We could immediately see that it was a busy day at the beach, with tons of people relaxing on lounge chairs and swimming in the water. That wasn’t surprising though considering it was nearly noon, and there were 2 other cruise ships besides us who docked earlier in the morning, so I’m sure these people had been here a while at this point.
We weren’t going to stay at the beach very long, so we didn’t want to rent a lounge chair. Instead, we found a place to leave our bags and towels on some rocks under the trees at the back of the beach, pulled out our snorkel equipment, and walked down to the water. I wasn’t really sure where the “good” snorkeling was on this beach, but a good rule of thumb is to stay near the rocks.
This looked like a good place to snorkel…
Unfortunately, as soon as I walked into the water, I could feel that the current was really strong this morning. It was approaching high tide and the waves were coming in strong, pushing me back towards the shore. It was very choppy, and all the sand was churned up making the water too murky to see anything. I put my head under water and immediately regretted it because all it did was leave my hair messy and wet, but there was nothing to see. I could feel myself getting tired really quickly, and I realized that I had better quit now and conserve my energy or I would be too tired to enjoy our Snuba tour. Jason wanted to swim out further and try to see if there were any fish near the rocks, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t be worth the effort so I just stayed back at the shore and kept an eye on him. A few minutes later, he came back and confirmed my suspicions that the conditions were not good for snorkeling today. This got me worried because if the water was this churned up at the beach, what visibility would we have just a few hundred feet away on our Snuba tour??
We probably stayed at the beach for a total of 20 minutes, then grabbed our bags and walked back to Coral World. At the top of the stairs that led down to the beach, we spotted this convenient tub of water to clean the sand off our feet. I thought it was funny that they wrote “not for feet” on the tub meant to return rented snorkel equipment.
As we re-entered Coral World, we spotted a few iguanas basking in the sun.
This guy looked like he was smiling at me…
We walked down to check out the other sea turtle pool, and noticed there were two turtles swimming in there. Coral World has a rehabilitation center for sick and injured turtles, and they also care for turtles who cannot be released back into the wild, so I’m not sure which category these turtles fell under.
I have seen photos of this building hundreds of times in other people’s reviews. I always thought this was where they had the under-water viewing windows to look at the fish swimming in the bay, so I was really looking forward to checking it out. At one point in our planning, we suggested that my parents bring the kids here to Coral World to check out the exhibits while we did our Snuba tour, and perhaps they would even see us swimming through the windows. They decided that was more of a journey than they wanted to embark on with the kids, so they stuck to the Sky Ride as it was close to the ship.
We walked out to the bridge and over to the round building, but we couldn’t figure out how to get inside. There was a door, but it was locked. We overheard someone nearby talking about it and they said the building was closed for construction right now. That was a huge disappointment because this is a unique exhibit (the only one of its kind in the Caribbean!), and is meant to be a highlight of visiting Coral World. Our tickets to Coral World were included in the price of our Snuba tour, but I would be really upset if I paid the $29 admission fee for just seeing the exhibits and found out afterwards that this place was closed for construction. I also found it odd and disappointing that they would do construction during the peak tourist season.
Walking back along the bridge, we noticed these rafts out in the water connected to blue tubes, and realized those are used for the Snuba tour! The prior group must have been out swimming right now, and we were getting excited knowing that it would be our turn next.
We also saw a ton of fish in the water over here, so we hoped they stuck around long enough for us to see them when we got in the water.
We still had some time before our tour, so we walked over to the Caribbean Reef Encounter. When I first walked inside the building, I was confused because it looked like the photos I had seen of the undersea observatory, but this was not in the middle of the water- it was surrounded by land! Then I realized there was a wall behind the rocks so this was an enclosed aquarium meant to simulate being in the ocean. This is the description from the Coral World website:
An 80,000 gallon coral reef aquarium encircles you as you enter the air-conditioned Caribbean Reef Encounter. The aquarium is open to the elements, which means the hundreds of reef animals that are housed here receive natural day and moonlight and experience rain just like a natural reef would. This is an important factor in keeping the many corals and sponges alive. Water is pumped in at a rate of 15,000 gallons per hour. It is made of concrete with 12, three inch thick acrylic windows for 360 degree viewing. This continuous supply of unfiltered sea water allows the living corals and sponges to grow naturally, while offering visitors a most attractive decor.
It’s hard to tell from this photo, but this fish was huge! He just stayed in that one spot and didn’t move the whole time we were in there. I’m not sure if he was sick, sleeping, or just enjoying the warmth from the sun, but either way, it made it easy to capture a photo of him!
When we exited the aquarium, we saw signs pointing towards the dolphin sanctuary. I assume this is where they do the swimming with dolphins tours, but there weren’t any tours happening while we were back there. It was a really large enclosure with a ton of space for the dolphins to swim around. There was a long shaded walkway going out across the water so we could walk alongside the dolphins as they swam and jumped. There was a staff member out there to answer any questions, and had we not needed to get back to the front desk for our tour, we could have spent a long time out here.
It was nearly 1pm, so we walked back to the front desk to check in (again) for our tour. Our guide came over to find us and one other man who was also booked on the tour. I’m not really sure what ended up happening that they thought it was overbooked, but the maximum number of participants for this Snuba tour was 4 people, so if anything, we were underbooked. No complaints about that! Our guide’s name was Glenn and he escorted us up a flight of stairs to an open-air “classroom” located above the front desk office.
Glenn told us to take a seat at the table, and he explained a few safety tips. The other man had never done anything like this, and we could tell he was a little nervous about the experience. We felt more confident knowing we had gone scuba diving before, even if it was nearly 7 years ago. It did help to know the concepts and the hand signals to communicate under water, but even if we had no prior experience, Glenn was great at explaining everything we would need to know for Snuba. He showed us how to use the regulator, how to clear our mask in case water got in, and how to equalize our ears. One big difference from scuba was that we were tethered to the raft, so Glenn said that if we needed to go back up to the surface for any reason, we should pull ourselves up using our oxygen line. That way, the raft would be there when we reached the surface and we would have something to hold onto while we made our adjustments. I will say it was nice not having to stress about all the skills we were tested on for scuba diving, and this felt more relaxed and easier to learn.
When he was done with all the instructions, Glenn got us fitted for fins, a regulator, and weights. He had eye masks we could borrow, but Jason and I opted to use our own masks from home since we knew they fit our face and did not leak. Glenn offered to spray our masks with an anti-fog solution, so we let him do that since we usually just use the spit method and assumed his solution must work better. **Foreshadowing…**
Before we left the classroom area, Glenn told us we could stash our belongings in a large plastic box that would be safe while we were out in the water. One thing I was really worried about before this tour was if I would be allowed to use my camera to take photos. The online registration information says that no personal cameras are permitted, and several of the TripAdvisor reviews said they were not allowed to use their own cameras and had to purchase photos taken by the guide. Glenn did have a GoPro and took tons of photos throughout our time underwater, but I was thrilled that he said it was no problem for me to take my own camera and take my own photos throughout the dive! For me, half of the fun is being able to document the experience from my own eyes, so I knew I would have more fun now that I was allowed to take my own camera.
Once we were all suited up, we carried our equipment down the stairs and across the bridge, then down a few more stairs to the staging area. This was underneath the building that was closed for construction. We walked down a few metal stairs into the water, then sat down to put on our fins and mask. While we did that, Glenn went out into the water to set up the rafts for our oxygen supply.
Glenn told us to sit down on the platform under water and to wait for him to suit up and join us, so I put my regulator in my mouth and sat down where I was told. I was immediately surrounded by literally hundreds of fish! Holy cow! This was crazy!! These must have been the fish we saw from up on the bridge an hour ago. After the tour, Glenn told us these were called Horse-Eye Jacks because of their large eyes.
I wasn’t wearing my watch, but it felt like we were sitting there a long time. I kept floating up to the surface so I had to hold on to the bar and push myself down on the seat. In the meantime, I just kept myself entertained by taking photos. I was already so happy to have my own camera with me because Glenn wasn’t with us to capture all these fish since he was still busy getting set up.
When Glenn finally joined us, he instructed the other man to follow him, but then it seemed like he was getting him set up or put in place so I didn’t follow. It wasn’t really clear what he wanted me to do but after another minute, I just went for it and swam down. Glenn had warned us the swells were high the last few days. He said it calmed down a little now, but the visibility wasn’t great. We could see about 15 feet out, but beyond that was murky.
Most of the area where we swam had a sandy bottom with the occasional rocks and algae here and there. There were relatively few fish, and honestly there really wasn’t much to see. I had always heard great things about the reef near Coki Beach and Coral World, so I’m not sure what happened but we did expect to see more down there. Maybe we are just jaded because we had such an amazing experience on our prior scuba dive in Cozumel?
Glenn seemed to spend a lot of time helping the other man. I don’t know exactly what was happening, but maybe he was having trouble equalizing his ears? Jason and I just went off and explored on our own, making sure to keep an eye on Glenn so we wouldn’t lose sight of him in the murky water.
Jason loved hovering close to the bottom of the water. I, on the other hand, struggled with buoyancy issues. One minute, I felt like I was sinking to the bottom of the ocean, and the next, I was floating up to the top. I was afraid to get scratched on the coral and rocks, so I tried to hover somewhere mid-way down. Glenn later told us we had gone down to a depth of 20 feet (another big difference from discover scuba, which can dive down to 40 feet because you aren’t tethered to the raft at the surface).
I handed my camera to Jason to take a few photos of me, and he kept going down to the bottom to take the picture so I look like I am just snorkeling at the surface, but I assure you I was definitely deeper than it appears!
Does anyone else think this looks like a recreation of Nirvana’s Nevermind album cover? Wearing a bathing suit, of course!
I signalled to Jason to adjust his angle, and I think this photo looks much better…
Some more Horse-Eye Jacks came out to find us.
At some point, an air bubble got trapped inside Jason’s rash guard, so it looked like he had a fish caught in there that was trying to escape!
A mid-snuba selfie… notice that my mask is starting to fog.
We met back up with Glenn and he swam backwards to capture a few photos of us, so I took a photo of him!
He spotted a ruby brittle star and swam down to pick it up.
He handed it to Jason to hold, but Jason dropped it before he could hand it to me. Bummer!
We saw one giant brain coral with some interesting bright blue coral growing on its side.
I could tell we were nearing the end of the tour, so I swam up to Glenn and signaled to him to see if he could take my camera to take some photos of Jason and I together. I had asked him about that back in the classroom and he said it was no problem, so I handed him my camera. Unfortunately, these came out horrible! I think the sun was behind us, so there was bad lighting, and the water was so murky you can’t see any coral or fish or anything in the water. At least it shows we were on the excursion together, but really the photos are disappointing.
You can see in that photo that by the end of the tour, my goggles were so foggy I could barely see anything. I guess Glenn’s magic spray didn’t work so well after all! I probably should have just swum back up to the surface to remove the goggles and wipe them clean, but I didn’t think of it at the time.
We followed Glenn back to the starting point and onto the swim platform to remove our gear. Based on the time stamps from my photos, we were swimming for exactly 30 minutes. Given the sparse and murky conditions, I thought that was the perfect amount of time and I was ready to finish up (especially since my goggles were too foggy to see anything at the end anyway). Overall, I loved the idea of Snuba. It had all of the benefits of scuba diving with going as low to the ocean floor as you want, without the stress of taking the class and learning the skills. I wouldn’t hesitate to book a Snuba tour again in the future, but hopefully it would be somewhere with better visibility and marine life.
Glenn led us back across the bridge and up the stairs to the classroom where we could retrieve our bags and towels to dry off. He said we could purchase the photos he took from the gift shop in a few minutes. It was now 2:15pm, so the tour lasted exactly the hour and 15 minutes that was advertised. We tipped Glenn and thanked him for a fun and memorable tour, then went back down the stairs in search of a bathroom to change into dry clothes. We stopped in the gift shop to look at the photos Glenn took, but decided against buying them since they weren’t much different than the ones I took on my camera.
We considered going back to Coki Beach, but we were tired and hungry and thought it sounded more fun to just go back to the ship for a “free” lunch and to make use of our drink package. We walked out to the front parking lot and found where the taxi drivers were hanging around. We asked if we could get a taxi back to the cruise port, and they pointed us to an open-air taxi that already had a few people inside. We climbed in, and then waited for 20 minutes until all the other seats were filled. The ride back cost the same $14 per person, but it only took us 15 minutes (versus the 45 minutes it took us to get to the beach!). On the way, we saw a beautiful view overlooking the bay, and we could see all 3 of the ships in St. Thomas today (the third ship is at the other port in the distance on the far right of the photo)…
The taxi dropped us off on the street with all the stores, so we had to walk all the way back to our ship.
I am sure they do this in hopes that we will go shopping, but we didn’t really want any souvenirs, so we just headed back to the ship. At least the walk was easy and there was a sidewalk the whole way.
We were back onboard around 3:30pm and went straight up to the Lido pool bar for a drink. As soon as we entered the pool area, we ran into my sister in law and my niece. It was really amazing how many times we ran into my family unexpectedly during this cruise, especially considering there were over 4000 passengers on board! I ordered a Captain’s Bounty, with Bacardi Spiced rum, Bacardi Limon rum, Malibu coconut rum, Kraken Black Spiced rum, lemon, pineapple, and coca cola. I had avoided this drink earlier in the cruise fearing it would be too strong, but I actually really liked it and ordered it several times throughout the rest of the cruise. We took our drinks over to where my brother was sitting near the pool, and chatted with them for an hour. I was starving, so I grabbed a slice of pizza for a late lunch, not wanting to eat so much that I’d spoil my dinner.
I love how they have this glass floor area extending out over the side of the ship. I assume people with a fear of heights aren’t as fond of it, but I always thought it was fun to check out the view of what was down below.
At some point I texted my mom to let her know we were back on board and find out how the day went with Ian. She said they had a great day and Ian did a ton of walking to and from the cable cars, so he was napping now. When planning our day, I didn’t know what time Jason and I would be back on the ship, so we planned that my parents would take Ian to dinner at the buffet and drop him at camp before they went to dinner at the suites dining room. Now that we were back early, I double checked that she was still okay with that plan, and she was, so Jason and I decided we would use our night of freedom to have dinner at O’Malley’s Pub. We went back to the cabin at 4:20pm for quick showers and to get changed for the evening, being extra careful not to wake Ian in the process!
Mission accomplished, we got down to O’Malley’s just before 5pm, when the musicians were scheduled to start their set. We noticed the pub gets very crowded when they are performing, so we purposely got there a little early in hopes we could snag a table, and it worked! The duo was performing from 5-7pm, so we settled in for the show.
We weren’t quite ready to eat dinner yet, so we started with a round of drinks. Continuing to work my way down the special cocktails list, I ordered the Lucky Charm, with Meili vodka, St. Germain Liqueur, melon, lime, and lemon seltzer.
We were seated in one of the booths along the windows. They had a partition from the top of the booth all the way up to the ceiling, making the table feel very private and cozy. I really loved the decor of the partition and the decanters used as light fixtures.
We really enjoyed listening to the O’Malley’s Duo. They played a mix of traditional Irish music and modern music by Irish singers. The pub filled in soon after they started playing, and most people stayed for their whole 2 hour set, so we were glad we came early enough to get a seat or we wouldn’t have been able to eat dinner here.
Around 5:30pm, we decided we’d better order our dinner so we would have time to finish eating before we needed to reunite with Ian at 7pm. Neither of us were particularly hungry after our late lunch, so we decided to share one of our casual dining meals. We already planned to share a meal at Gigi’s later in the week, so this was a good use for that one extra meal. Jason ordered the Irish Onion soup and I ordered the drunken mussels, and we asked the waiter if he could bring both out at the same time.
Unfortunately, this is where things took a turn for the worse. Service was incredibly slow and our food took 45 minutes to be served. When it finally did come out, we were disappointed to see that both dishes were about half the size that they were last year.
Last year, the soup was served in a large bowl with several pieces of cheese layered across the top, versus this year it was just a small cup with one single piece of cheese.
My mussels were also literally half the portion size of last year. This year, there was just a thin layer of mussels at the bottom of the pot. Everything still tasted good, it was just disappointing to see the obvious cutbacks.
They brought out our food at 6:15pm, and we had to meet up with the rest of my family at the theater by 7pm, so we felt very rushed to eat. The waiter apologized, and we asked if he could bring out our desert ASAP. It would be fine if the dessert sat on the table until we were ready to eat it, but at least then we knew it wouldn’t come so late that we had to skip it. Sure enough, it came out about 3 minutes later.
For dessert, we shared a slice of the six-layer Guinness chocolate cake. Last year, we had a brownie for dessert that was so dry it was inedible, but this cake was moist and delicious. Funny enough, we noticed they removed that brownie from the dessert options. I actually just looked back at my photos from last year’s cruise and that is the only change on the whole menu! I’m not sure if that change is just an Enchanted thing or if it is fleet-wide, but we weren’t surprised to see it no longer offered.
We finished our meal just a few minutes before 7pm, so I texted my brother to ask where they were seated in the theater and let him know we were on our way. We found them with seconds to spare before the lights dimmed to start the show. Tonight’s show was a magician named Jamie Raven, and we thought Ian would enjoy the performance so we kept him with us instead of sending him to camp after dinner.
Jamie was really more of a comedian than a magician as he only did a few tricks over the course of his 45-minute long show. He spent half the act talking about how he got 2nd place on Britain’s Got Talent, but we honestly didn’t understand why considering how little magic he actually did in the show. At one point, he picked out a child from the audience to help with his act. The little boy he picked was seated in the front row, so perhaps that’s why he picked him, but it was obvious that the child was very shy and uncomfortable with participating, and he didn’t respond to any of Jamie’s questions so Jamie had to keep prompting him. This went on and on for about 15 minutes. What Jamie should have done was to realize the kid was uncomfortable, thank him for his help, then pick a different child for the rest of the bit. It was just incredibly awkward to watch since that poor boy looked miserable being the center of attention. On the bright side, Ian and my niece and nephew all loved the show and had a great time clapping and cheering from their seats.
After the show ended, we went down to the Piazza for something called “Princess Pops.” We weren’t really sure what to expect, but apparently this is a very new activity and the Enchanted was only the 2nd ship in Princess’ fleet to have this. It was half show/performance as the production show dancers performed for a few songs, and half dance party as we were encouraged to dance to the fun pop songs from the last 4 decades. We had so much fun watching the dances and singing along, and the kids loved getting to dance with all the adults.
I went over to Good Spirits to pick up one of my favorite drinks on the ship: Vanilla Sky, with vanilla vodka, triple sec, fresh pineapple, orgeat syrup, lime, and agave. It is part of the special menu themed for different countries that is only offered after 4pm.
When I returned to the group, I found Ian sitting on his cousin, who was sitting on my brother. It made me so happy to see them getting along so well!
Shortly after that, Ian started getting cranky, so we took that as our cue to head back to the cabin and get ready for bed.
Today’s drinks total: 14
Up next: New Year’s Eve in Dominica
Dana's Destination Diary 