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Our Recent Independence Voyage: Some Random Pictures and Scattered Thoughts

Badlands99
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Badlands99

Badlands99

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First of all, look at this cloud.

IMG_4642.jpg

 

I mean, just LOOK at it.

 

 

IMG_4643.jpg

 

The sun had already dipped beneath the horizon, and for just a few seconds the top part of the cloud looked like it was on fire. I thought it was pretty cool.

Also, it must have been turbulent up there because, as you can see, the cloud had it's stabilizers deployed.

 

 

We were on the Feb 15 sailing of Independence out of Port Everglades. I just now got around to offloading the images from my cameras, so I thought I'd share some pics and a few comments.

 

 

Balcony rainbow!

IMG_4666.jpg

 

This might be St. Marten. I kinda lost track.

 

IMG_4660.jpg

 

Stay tuned for more...

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Badlands99

Badlands99

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This was our 6th cruise, and we did a few things differently this time. I didn't book ANY excursions in advance, and we only did one paid excursion the whole time. We didn't see a single show or parade of any kind. We spent most of our time on the balcony. We didn't pack clothes for formal nights (Still got lobster though! more on that later). We smuggled a TON of booze, so you can tell me all about how I'm a cheap alcoholic with no moral compass if you'd like.

 

Other firsts:

*Dinner in the Windjammer on a couple of nights. (very nice)

*An EIGHT nighter! (all previous were 7's)

*First time using the paperless coupons. (Didn't like it)

*First time cruising as Platinum. (yawn, no difference)

 

 

I thought this was interesting; I hadn't seen it before. As we were leaving the port, a heavily armed coast guard boat was HUSTLING to keep other boats away from the ship. As other boats approached, this thing would race up and get between them and us. Check it out...

IMG_4635.jpg

 

IMG_4637.jpg

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Badlands99

Badlands99

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I knew there was a guy who essentially lives on RCCL ships, so when I saw this guy sitting every day with his computer I thought it might be him. I just asked him if he was Mario and yep, it was him. I chatted with him for a bit and he was very nice and very patient with my questions and such. An all around cool dude.

 

IMG_4730.jpg

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Badlands99

Badlands99

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We just didn't feel like packing formal clothes. I typically enjoy dinners in the MDR, including formal night, but I was willing to sacrifice two of them this time in exchange for a little less hassle with packing. I was able to leave out a bulky pair of size 12 dress shoes, as well as a jacket and such.

 

HOWEVER, it just so happened that our table, while in a nice location by a window, was surrounded on three sides by a large family or group that had about 15 kids. There was one table with about 9 boys, aged maybe 9 to 14, and another table with a half-dozen girls in roughly the same age range, plus one big table with 14 adults. So dinners in our "neighborhood" were pretty raucous and casual anyway, with lots of people moving around and lots of chatter and noise. The kids were remarkably well behaved and I'm not complaining about these people at all, but the atmosphere, including the dress, was just more casual than normal.

 

Even still, we planned on skipping formal night and when we informed our waiter that we wouldn't be there, she insisted that we come and not to worry about dressing up. That, combined with the previously described casual atmosphere, convinced us to go to one formal night in our less-than-formal attire.

 

On the other formal night we had dinner in the Windjammer, which is AWESOME. It's so nice and quiet in there at dinner time, compared to the utter chaos that exists during breakfast and lunch. I think we ended up having dinner in the WJ three times in total. I highly recommend it.

 

One final observation on the dress code. What the heck is this? ...

dress_code_.jpg

 

"Shorts and tank tops are not allowed in ANY dining venue?"

RCCL is saturated in very specific policies that they never enforce. Or if they do, they enforce them rarely and selectively.

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Merion_Mom

Merion_Mom

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This was our 6th cruise, and we did a few things differently this time. I didn't book ANY excursions in advance, and we only did one paid excursion the whole time. We didn't see a single show or parade of any kind. We spent most of our time on the balcony. We didn't pack clothes for formal nights (Still got lobster though! more on that later). We smuggled a TON of booze, so you can tell me all about how I'm a cheap alcoholic with no moral compass if you'd like.

 

Other firsts:

*Dinner in the Windjammer on a couple of nights. (very nice)

*An EIGHT nighter! (all previous were 7's)

*First time using the paperless coupons. (Didn't like it)

*First time cruising as Platinum. (yawn, no difference)

 

 

I thought this was interesting; I hadn't seen it before. As we were leaving the port, a heavily armed coast guard boat was HUSTLING to keep other boats away from the ship. As other boats approached, this thing would race up and get between them and us. Check it out...

IMG_4635.jpg

 

IMG_4637.jpg

 

You're a cheap alcoholic with no moral compass. ;) :D

 

Ok, now we have gotten that out of the way.

 

I enjoyed watching the Coast Guard boat herd boats out the way, too. When I saw it, there was a guy manning the gun on the front of the CG boat, and he was POINTING it at the boats! :eek:

 

The rest of the time, the CG were whistling and waving and hooting at us on our balconies! ;)

 

I am LOVING your attitude and your pictures.

 

Keep 'em coming.

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Badlands99

Badlands99

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Yeah, I smuggled booze. I used three different techniques (none of them were rum runners) and all our luggage was delivered to our stateroom with no issues. We made drinks every day and enjoyed them on our balcony.

 

This is a topic that interests me a bit because I'm pretty new to drinking. On all of our first five cruises combined I think I had two drinks. These days I have a few cocktails a week, and so on this cruise I wanted live it up a little on the booze front.

 

Our smuggled booze was for the balcony; when we were at dinner or in the casino or wherever, we got drinks from a bar. From my experience, and from what I've read here at CC, it is apparent that in order to get "good" drinks, you have to pick a bartender or two and "treat them right" so they will, in turn, "take care of you." I think that is stupid and it makes me not want to patronize the bars on board. When drinks are ten dollars, every single one should be a "good" one.

 

We didn't really use any one bar more than any others, but we enjoyed chatting with this guy...

 

IMG_4673.jpg

 

The standard responses from those who disapprove of booze smugglers are along the lines of "It's their ship, they make the rules" and "You must have a drinking problem" and "Just get the drink package, you cheap bastard."

 

First, the "drinking problem" argument is irrelevant in this context. Second, the drink package does not cut it. My wife and I want to sit on our balcony and sip cocktails. Making them ourselves is nice. We make them how we like them. We don't want to have to put on shoes and decent clothes in order to go find a drink. We have everything we need and we like it that way.

 

Here's my personal policy: If RCCL were to confiscate my booze or not allow me to board, I would maintain that is their right and I would not complain, to you people or to RCCL. Their ship, their rules, right? I would simply be done with RCCL.

 

What they need to keep in mind is that EVERY SINGLE other option available to me for my vacations are ones at which I am free to bring whatever I want to my room.

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Badlands99

Badlands99

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So the coupon booklet is no more. We now have invisible discounts that live inside our seapass cards. It actually works sometimes, too!

 

When my wife ordered a glass of wine at dinner one night, our assistant waiter brought it and then told us that we had a BOGO discount on our card for a glass of wine, and that we should use it next time, but that we had to order two glasses at once to get the deal. First of all, that's kinda lame I think. I don't drink wine, and by no means is my wife a double-fisted wine drinker. But no big deal, we filed that info away for next time.

 

Fast forward to next time. We're in the casino. My wife is ready for a drink and says "Hey, I can use my BOGO coupon now!" She goes to the bar, tells the bartender about her BOGO, he takes her card to check, comes back and says "Nope, sorry. There's no drink coupon on there." Just for grins he checks my card, too. Same deal. No coupon. No discount.

 

It's nothing major, but when I had a coupon book I at least KNEW what I had. Yes, there was a paper that listed the discounts that should be on the card. We had it in the room. There was nothing on there that interested us, really. We got our "Free Spin To Win" tokens and fed them to the machine, and that was it for our discounts since the wine BOGO didn't work.

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Dan-P

Dan-P

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We didn't really use any one bar more than any others, but we enjoyed chatting with this guy...

 

IMG_4673.jpg

 

 

We were on the Indy the week before you (9-15), and the Sky Bar became our bar of choice. All of the staff there were great. This guy spent half the cruise walking around with a bottle cap on his forehead. :)

 

Loving the pics.

 

Dan.

 

 

Sent from my Kindle Fire

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Badlands99

Badlands99

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In a review of a previous cruise, I declared that these things are useless, because there are diagrams of the ship all over the place. I have "adjusted" my opinion based on a feature that either didn't exist on my previous cruise, or I was too stupid to notice it. If you want to know what's on tonight's dinner menu, you can do that at these things. You no longer have to go all the way to the dining room entrance to see the menu. Well done, RCCL. We used these daily. I'm sorry for ridiculing them last time.

 

IMG_4847.jpg

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