(Slightly less so) Cheapo dad's trip report on Independence of the Seas

We’re considering doing DisneyLand this year, do you need to be as anal about it all as you do with DisneyWorld? That place scares me!

No, Disneyland area is much more compact versus Disneyworld so you don’t need to plan things out as far in advance. Disneyland is more about rides as you can go to another theme park across the way about 1,000 feet away whereas Disneyworld has the parks miles apart.

You can do Disneyland and CA Adventure in 3 day period and then spend the rest of the time in Orange County and LA. Disneyworld with its 4 parks and all the hotels can easily suck up a whole week.

Hello! I stumbled upon your trip report yesterday and I've already devoured all 66 pages, I was enthralled! We just booked our first cruise for our family and will be going on the Freedom of the Seas in June to the Southern Caribbean so we will be visiting some of the same places you did on your trip and I know that Independence is the sister ship.

I too am a planner, Excel spreadsheets for activities, packing lists, and cruise expenses so I feel like I found a kindred spirit in you! I do have some questions that I hope you or fellow cruisers can help me answer. What did you end up spending your onboard credits on and can you put them towards your gratuities at the end of the trip?

 

I plan on being a cheapo mom with the exception of some excursions that I have booked so we will limit our alcoholic drinks and dine only in the WJ and the MDR. Did your brother in law's family have sufficient room with their two girls sharing one cabin with the two drop down beds? Our girls are 12 and 8 and we are hoping to make it work all in one Ocean View room.

I really appreciated your pictures of their room as well as the kids menu! Our cruise is 7 nights seeing six countries with only one day at sea. We intentionally did not schedule excursions for two port days in the middle just to give us a little break and perhaps to be able to enjoy the boat while other people are out doing their own thing.

One of those days is Antigua and we would like to see Nelson's Dockyard, do you think we could just hire a cab to take us directly there and maybe drop us off at a beach for a bit?

The other day is St. Kitts and we figured we would just take a look around the port, visit the uncle in prison, and then have a pool day on the ship.

In regards to the ship pictures, can you purchase individual ones or do you have to buy a whole package. I know you spoke of visiting the crazy aunt multiple times so do you select which pictures you want to purchase and then get them all at the end or just as you like them. How much does that normally run?

Thanks again for all of your super insightful information and gorgeous pictures, I'm sure I will pop over to your Freedom trip report next as I really want to see your spreadsheet layout. Happy travels!

Hi,

Thanks for the compliment and welcome to CC.

I took the liberty to add paragraphs to your original post as to make it easier to read rather than one big block.

So you read 66 web pages in one day? Assuming each page of 20 posts takes you 10 minutes to read and digest, that is over 600 minutes or 10 hours. That’s a long time to do in one sitting. I guess if you skip all the rock pictures, things will go faster.

The brother in law didn’t have any issues with the quad cabin. They are the active type that rarely stays inside other than sleep/shower.

You might want to look into the pricing for 2 inside connecting cabins (double/double) instead of quad. Depending on what promotions RCI is running currently, sometimes you are better off with 2 doubles instead of a quad. Even if the pricing is close, you should get 2 doubles as the extra bathroom and space is very useful in getting ready in the morning /formal nights.

Not everyone here at CC like the Royal Promenade cabins but I like them a lot and there are many inside connecting cabin combos.

Sobro already answered your questions on photos and taxis. If you go back to my Nelson dockyard pictures, I took one with the taxi stand folks standing there waiting for business.

As for the picture of the children's menu, I wonder if they upgraded that menu as they changed the adults menu.

Have a wonderful cruise on the Freedom.

Harry just an FYI-the Liberty the last 2 weeks the glasses in the WJ were 3/4 full not the 1/2 full or less that you had pictured. I was actually going to take a pic for you but thought that would be weird.

Thanks for the info. So wonder if it's just an Indy thing to have it half full?

Why would it be weird to take a picture?

Thank you for an amazing review! It's a good thing I typically stop by during my lunch break at work. All those food pictures make me hungry!!

Hi,

Thanks for the kind words.

If you have a phone or tablet and watch the food pictures on the apps, they will be bigger as there is less "white space" that you have on a PC.

With the new menu being rolled out, some of the food pics will no longer be around.

Our waiter told us the next night that this was actually a death on the ship and the unscheduled stop at St Thomas was to take the body off the ship. He said that it was the second death of our cruise and that passengers dying is not uncommon at all. The ship even has a morgue with room for six bodies. Yeah, he told us that as he was serving our appetizers. Nice.

Thanks for the info. Guess for the crew if someone passing away isn't a big event, they will treat it as a regular occurrence as part of life on a cruise ship. I had seen YouTube videos about ships having a morgue onboard, but didn’t know the capacity until now.

Maybe that is the question everyone should ask at the Captain's Corner meetings to get an idea on how many slots per each class of RCI ship as maybe the Oasis class ships have more capacity - Excuse me, Captain, just wondering how many slots does the ship's morgue hold?

If you think about the stereotypical cruise passenger, there are more elderly and have higher chances of medical issues.

Second death, huh? Wonder when did the first one occur?

Thanks for the info...I thought they kept the dead bodies in the morgue until returning to the home port?? Unlikely the person is from St. Thomas!

I thought they kept the bodies in the morgue also. Not to be gross, but that is why we purchase insurance. Mom is in her 80's and is in good health for her age. But you just never know.

Harry, that’s a good price for a WDW vacation during theholidays.

We are resort snobs when it comes to DW and stay at theBoardwalk in a rented DVC. Has a kitchen,so we eat all but lunch in. But it isgetting real expensive, so we might have to change.

Maybe the deceased person's family has religious/cultural reasons to want to take care of funeral arrangements earlier rather than wait for the ships to sail back 2 days later.

If you think about it, this occurred really suddenly/quickly as we were returned to St. Kitts unexpectedly at 7 PM. In theory they could have dropped the deceased person then at St. Kitts but they waited until 3 AM to do so in emergency at St. Thomas so the person must have passed away between 7 and 3 and the family made the quick decision to request the body to be dropped off there.

Anyway, onto happier thoughts on Disney vacation planning. Yeah, Disney charges extra for the Christmas week hotel stay but they don't go crazy high like cruises. It's like $200 more to vacation the Christmas week compared to the week prior at Disneyworld.

Whereas the greedy gravy sucking pigs of all the cruise lines want to charge over $2K more for Christmas sailing versus the week prior so Disney is a much better deal for Christmas period.

[quote

As for the picture of the children's menu, I wonder if they upgraded that menu as they changed the adults menu.

Have a wonderful cruise on the Freedom.

We don't have kids so we didn't see the kids menus first hand.... a table beside us had kids and the last night it made to the floor at least 3 times. It's just a paper menu but I don't know if they changed what was on it....

[quote

 

As for the picture of the children's menu, I wonder if they upgraded that menu as they changed the adults menu.

 

Have a wonderful cruise on the Freedom.

We don't have kids so we didn't see the kids menus first hand.... a table beside us had kids and the last night it made to the floor at least 3 times. It's just a paper menu but I don't know if they changed what was on it....

Yeah, ours was paper menu as well because it lets them draw on it. I'm sure if there's a change to the menu, someone will surely take a picture of it. If nothing else, adults can ask for a copy to order dessert from it.

(Back to the story line)

After shopping, it’s time for the ice show. This is the regular ice show “Strings” that Indy typically puts on. The one we saw at the beginning of the cruise was the special holiday show. So in essence, we got 2 ice shows.

This was originally scheduled for yesterday on day 8 but due to wind/turbulence on the ship, it was canceled as it as unsafe for the skaters. They moved it to day 9 instead.

Good thing it wasn’t windy/heavy motion on day 9 or we would have missed the show. So there is a good reason to grab the earlier show if your schedule allows it as if you do the later show and they cancel, they may not be able to reschedule it.

As with all ice shows on the Indy, you have to get tickets for the show. In theory, it should have been a full house as the CD said they issued all the tickets but then he said over the PA that with the warm sun on day 9 that people might not want to come indoors at 4 PM for the show so people should come for the stand by line even if they had no tickets. He was right; the place wasn’t full at starting time.

We got there early before the crowd showed up

Now anyone that has read my previous trip reports knows that one of my pet peeve in life is people saving a large block of seats at these events. Now I have no problem if you are saving a seat for your spouse as they are in the bathroom or getting a drink, but when one person from the family or group is saving it for their lazy/not punctual party members, I have issues these are first com first served seats. You can save one or two seats per person but when it’s one person saving for 6+ seats, come on, really? That’s rudeness to your fellow passengers.

There was almost a fight over the seats on our row as there was one guy on the same row we sat down that wanted to block out around 8 seats just by himself. Now these are pretty nice seats at the coveted ends zone section and just second row up (you will see pictures from the section soon) so a lot of people came by to try to sit in them only to be turned away by the guy.

Until about 10 or 15 minutes before the show, a couple approached the seats from our side of the aisle and walked across our seats and plopped themselves down next to me at the 2 empty seats out of the 8. The guy walked over to try to chase them away but the couple refused to move and the guy came over, bumped knee with the guy sitting there and stood over him to try to intimate the couple in leaving but they refused to budge. I figure they were one shove away from a full blown fight but they just exchanged heated words.

At the end, the guy who tried to saved seats walked away but he tried to sarcastically extort a “tip” from the couple in saving them a prime location seat for them to use…

Interesting human behavior…

Anyway, the show itself was pretty good. The name of the show, Strings, pretty much tells you what it’s about. Loose history walk through of strings musical instrument.

She is supposed to be some special guest violinist so she doesn't skate. Which would be a neat trick to do both.

You can tell his spinning by the ribbons on his clothes being out at 90 degrees angle

Kids, don't try this at home with your younger sister...

Look at her hair

Don'r drop her

I see someone I know...

I can see the tiny specks of ice by her skates when she jumps

Next costume set

1 handed

More costume changes

Hooray for the couple who wouldn't move, or let them selves be drawn into a physical altercation. Raspberries to all those chair hogs

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N920A using Tapatalk

Second death, huh? Wonder when did the first one occur?

Maybe the deceased person's family has religious/cultural reasons to want to take care of funeral arrangements earlier rather than wait for the ships to sail back 2 days later.

Our waiter did not specifically say when it was (obviously before the second one), but I got the impression that the stop at St. Thomas was specifically for the second death - so I think you might be right about the religious/cultural reasons to take care of arrangements quickly.

Thank you Sobro and Harry for your quick and informative replies!

Please excuse my faux pas in not having paragraphs in my initial post, I do not regularly post in forums and my typing got away from me. ;)

I'm not for sure how many hours it took me to get from page one to 66 but it was a good chunk of my day and evening. I was much busier yesterday and only was able to read the first 25 pages of the Freedom report.

We have been discussing the on ship morgues at my work and wonder if they also have a brig and how many it may hold. Given the recent events on the Carnival ship with fights it probably would have been at capacity! I say walk the plank!

Hi Harry. We're back from our cruise. It's great to see that your review is still going strong. I've updated my tracking chart. :D Love the skating pics. I know it's hard to get such crisp pictures during the skating show because of the constant movement and the relatively low light (at least to a camera). Were those pictures from your Note?

I must apologize. While on the cruise, I forgot to ask what they do with all of the accumulated sand brought on board during port days. I blame some combination of old man memory and relaxing man memory (i.e. forget about everything that happened prior to the cruise). We actually took the All Access Tour so I had the perfect opportunity to ask someone who may actually know the answer! My fault that pillow chocolates will not be back any time soon.

Hi Harry. We're back from our cruise. It's great to see that your review is still going strong. I've updated my tracking chart. :D Love the skating pics. I know it's hard to get such crisp pictures during the skating show because of the constant movement and the relatively low light (at least to a camera). Were those pictures from your Note?

 

I must apologize. While on the cruise, I forgot to ask what they do with all of the accumulated sand brought on board during port days. I blame some combination of old man memory and relaxing man memory (i.e. forget about everything that happened prior to the cruise). We actually took the All Access Tour so I had the perfect opportunity to ask someone who may actually know the answer! My fault that pillow chocolates will not be back any time soon.

Welcome back.

I have your cruise dates wrong in my fuzzy memory bank. I had you coming back this weekend.

The trip report is almost done. Few more days left. The fat lady is not the on the center stage yet but she is humming just behind the curtains and ready to come on soon.

Oh, yeah, these ice show pictures were all taken by the SLR. No way I can get action shots in the dark with cell phones. My wife took some that I will show later and people can see the difference. Cell phones are good indoor scenery shot but with moving objects, it must be SLR only. I learned that awhile back.

So in essence I spent more half of the ice show watching it with only one eye (and it had nothing to do with the grain of sand problem) as I was taking pictures through the SLR. My wife wanted to enjoy the whole show so it was up to me to take all these pictures with an eye out for action all the time.

Guess you went all out on your cruise with the Grand Suite and the all access tour. Maybe you should title your trip review to be "To hell with being cheap. Let me show you folks how to cruise in style..."

More ice show pics:

I'll talk more about this pic in next post

So this is my favorite shot from the show as they did the back flip right in front of us and I was able to capture the flip without much blur. I like these action pictures where you are lucky enough to freeze life for just an instant. The other ones were from my Allure cruise where I was able to capture the water show using my old 2006 Canon SLR.

This picture taken back on the Allure in 2014 from my ancient SLR bought in 2006 on the cheap nifty fifty lens

Somewhere toward the end of the show, my wife got something caught in her throat and she couldn’t stop coughing so she had to leave to get a drink of water outside. After that, instead of coming back to sit and disturb everyone, she just found a spot on the side and took some pictures there on her cell phone.

So in essence you folks get double coverage of the same event, just different perspective although the cell phone pictures are not the same as digital cameras as cell phones have limited zoom capabilities and have problems with moving objects in low lights.

Side view from the top

Violinist walking down

Cell phones are bad at zooms, especially in the dark but you can kind of see me taking picture with the SLR on row 2. I saw most of the show through the lens of the SLR

You see a lot more motion blur with cell phone in low lights

Much more clear if they stand still