Part 1 - The TMI Independence May 24-May 31, 2015 Cruise Review (aka short novel)

[lmp29]

Our itinerary is a Sunday-to-Sunday, Eastern Caribbean cruise, consisting of the ports of San Juan, St. Maarten, and St. Kitts.

 

During the excitement of planning I decided to outline my review, which made me realize that with all of the material that I have to share, I could post all of the pre-cruise and planning phases before the cruise, and then follow-up after the cruise with what actually took place. This also would allow people to ask ahead of time about things I can find out while on board. (I can’t see myself giving up any of my sun-pool-island-event time to submit live commentary during my vacation, nor do I plan to get internet access since I don’t need it for work, but I am happy to try to find out things if I know to do it or take pictures of certain requested items/places….)

 

I am a periodic visitor to the Cruise Critic site to gather information, vicariously enjoy others’ cruises, and occasionally offer comments, but this is my first review. As indicated in the title, I intend to include far more information than anyone really needs, but there were so many times that minor details outside of stated facts in someone else’s story gave me insight or would spur me to look in a different direction for information, so, I hope that perhaps my giving “TMI” will be beneficial to others…

 

As I read posts throughout reviews (and subsequent questions), it seems to me that people are split into two categories – those that want to get to know the writer and live through the entire experience, and then those that want to simply gather facts and tips for their own vacation. (I, for one, felt like I knew Gambee throughout one of the reviews I read and loved that!)

 

In order to meet the needs of both groups, I am going to use headings to allow skipping past subjects that may not be of interest (like, perhaps, my life and all the details about it!). To also aid with that, I have created this document as a word document and will load it in large chunks. Also going to try to utilize an online file sharing with the documents.

 

Disclaimers

Another reviewer (forgive me for not remembering specific person) added a disclaimer to their review that I thought was great, so in typical fashion, here are mine:

 

• I typically read the reviews of those that have sailed on the same ships as my planned cruises, so I am sure that there are many other great reviewers out there, but I particularly want to thank Gambee, Kanscocoa, and Darthgrady for all their efforts and their fabulous reviews. And JimZim’s recent review was so comprehensive that I almost decided to skip this one, so any reader expecting anything of the quality of those mentioned, do us both a favor and stop reading now, as my review will NOT compare!

• I like to think that I am a live-and-let-live kind of person, but I am pretty sarcastic and opinionated, which is bound to come out even when I am trying to be neutral and objective – so I want to get it out there now that I apologize to anyone that may be inadvertently offended by my statements.

 

The family

I have one younger brother. Between the two of us we had six children in six years, then five years later he & his wife added another daughter, so our seven children are all very close. We all also live within fifteen miles of each other (with the exception of college addresses) so another definition of close is applicable. The two families make up our core group and we vacation together as much as possible, whether it is a cruise, a trip to Disney, or a summer beach house. Even as they are getting older, our children are bringing their significant others with us instead of choosing not to participate. (Something that makes me and my sister-in-law VERY happy!)

 

The parents – {me} Laura (48) & husband Shane (43); my brother Steve (45) & wife Jill (44).

 

Our kids – Jilissa (26), Andrew (25), Janelle (24), Anthony (23), Alec (22), Jake (21), and Jocelyn (15).

(The As are mine, the Js are my brother's.)

 

The rest of the “Cruise Crew”– Jilissa’s husband, Dan (27), Jilissa & Dan’s son, Wrett (9 months); Andrew’s wife, Gentri (26); Janelle’s boyfriend, Colin (22); Anthony’s girlfriend, Abby (21); Jake’s girlfriend, Kristen (22); and Alec’s girlfriend, Jessica (20).

 

With us for a second cruise - my father and stepmother, Steve Sr. and MaryAnne, along with my Dad’s cousin, Dave, and his wife, Jan.

 

From the time that my eldest niece had her son in August of 2014, she expressed concerns about taking a baby on the ship. There was a lot of trepidation and a bunch of research about whether it was safe and how others handled it; she made arrangements to leave him with her grandmother and her mother-in-law while we were to be gone because she felt it wasn’t best to take him. This isn’t to say that it isn’t a good for others to do, nor that we found anything that substantiated that it would make for a lesser experience; my niece and her husband ultimately just decided that it wasn’t what they felt right about doing. Then, right before final payment was due on the cruise, it was determined that she and her husband wouldn’t be joining us either. It was particularly disappointing, but one of those decisions to be respected even if the opinion is not shared.

 

Our cruising “history”

We go on a land-based vacation in even years, and we cruise in odd years. Some of us had taken cruises separately, with our first cruise together being with Disney in 2007. Though we originally intended to only do it once, we had such a wonderful trip that we made up our minds that it was something we really wanted to do continuously in the future. We took another cruise in 2009 and though it was also a great vacation, we realized that the kids were on the cusp of needing a little more in the way of activities (my only real criticism of Disney cruises is that they don’t do enough to provide activities for the 18-21 year olds. It’s a tough age group….). As we explored other options, we found ourselves loving what we saw and booked the Allure in May of 2011.

 

I imagine that in a few years (and a few more grandbabies), we may vacation with the Mouse at Sea again, but for now, Royal is the right fit and we have no real complaints (besides the rules enforced on the Flowrider).

 

Our planning which cruise to book

For whatever reason, we had made it a habit to start planning a future cruise while on a cruise. It’s that whole thing of everyone all together, sitting out in the sun by the pool, drinking foo-foo drinks, flipping through the Royal Caribbean cruise book, and thinking about what we want to do next.

 

We had several compelling issues that impacted the cruises we were reviewing for 2015:

• College schedules. (Meaning no cruises from late August-December break, or early January-May. “Spring break” is not an option for us because we have multiple colleges involved that don’t take their break at the same time.)

• Sports schedules. (That eliminates December break as an option because my nephew is a college wrestler and my husband is our high school varsity boys’ basketball coach.)

• My work schedule. (August is out because I work for a large University and August is devoted to preparing for the fall semester.)

• We have done both the standard Western and Eastern routes with each cruise line and really loved the idea of seeing some “new” islands.

• We only go for seven-day cruises for many reasons - overall costs; the fact that the kids are either in summer jobs or relatively new to their “adult” jobs; my brother owns a company with several subsidiaries that are rather demanding; and then, of much importance, I have two Golden Retrievers, King Midas and Sir Archimedes, (ages four and two) and I would not be able to bear being away from them much longer than a week.

• The desire to avoid sailing, if possible, in June or July because of weather and the increased rates. So when it comes down to it, we want to sail in a window of approximately three weeks in May.

• Flowrider. I personally had not ever heard of a flowrider prior to being on the Allure (in my sheltered little life in Central Pennsylvania), but once introduced, my sons and nephew were hooked. It was a definite must-have for our very active and athletic guys when considering on which ship to sail. (At least at the time, which was prior to the current nonsense that has been imposed.)

 

Based on the above, we were limited to the Freedom-class, the Oasis-class, and the not-even-built-or-named-then, Quantum-class. And itineraries weren’t out as far as we wanted to book so we were trying to project what we thought would happen based on the schedules that were current at the time. I was savvy enough to gather information from Cruise Critic, but in the beginning I was looking at the threads that were isolated to the Oasis-class ships as it was prior to combining those threads with all the others. (The way the Quantum threads are separate now.) Due to the separation of the posts (and the aforementioned habit of only really reading what I thought pertained to me), I missed so much information about the way Royal handles dry-docks, or moves ships to other parts of the globe when making up new itineraries. It would have been useful knowledge.

 

We were attracted to The Freedom because of the itinerary, and what sealed the deal was that we noticed that the Freedom-class ships have a set of rooms on Deck 10 along the back of the ship that include two Junior suites and six balcony rooms. We wanted those rooms in order to have the whole back “to ourselves”. Not only were the individual balconies larger, we were thrilled by the idea of all that mostly private space when opened….so though we were hesitant about the distance from the stairwells to the back of the ship, we were feeling that those rooms were definitely worth the extra walking.

 

I started reading what others cruisers had to say about those coveted balconies and knew it would be a challenge to get them all, so I started checking for the release of new itineraries no less than three times a day. There were times that I got up in the middle of the night with Archimedes (a brand new puppy at the time) and logged in at 3:00 a.m.! (What if the new itineraries were released automatically by the system at Midnight? LOL) That went on for several months and then between work getting busy and not having success, I wasn’t quite as diligent about checking. I had read on the boards that I shouldn’t expect anything for awhile, so I dropped back to looking a few times a week. Then one day at work I was eating lunch at my desk and happened to log into Cruise Critic, saw posts about new itineraries being available, and immediately went to the Royal Caribbean site. Filtering by just the Freedom resulted in nothing late in May. I was pretty much freaking out. Luckily I expanded my search and realized that the Independence was doing islands that were relatively new to us, so I started reserving 10 rooms. (This all sounds so much more calm than it actually was at the time…I was scrambling to make reservations, as well as trying to text and call my husband and brother and sister-in-law; after all, although we “knew” that we wanted to take the cruise, I still felt I needed confirmation from them to move forward, particularly when the ship and itinerary had changed from our predetermined plan.)

 

Apparently the bookings had been available for four or five days at that point. Miraculously, during one of the weeks in May that we could sail, there were seven of the eight rooms we wanted (we were even more lucky because they were consecutive) so they were booked by us, as well as three additional nearby rooms. We worked with a representative through Group Bookings (shout-out to Sergio N., who is amazing!). I was upset that we didn’t have that “last” room along the back, but we were going to watch it and keep our fingers crossed that we could nab it if it was given up for any reason.

 

As an obsessive planner I immediately started reviewing information about IOS (I had previously only looked at Freedom information, and though the ships are the same class, I was sure there were differences to learn). About a week or two after we had booked, I read something that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up – the dividers on the back of the ship do not open up. (I’ll bet many of you were saying that to yourself paragraphs ago….) Those dividers opening was one of the reasons that we booked those rooms. Texts were flying back and forth again trying to figure out if we wanted to stay back there, or move. We have always booked near stairwells/elevators and seemed to like those spots. We also really enjoyed having the open balconies on the other cruises (though we know that it is never a guarantee that the captain will permit it). But those aft balconies seemed wonderful. It wasn’t an easy decision but we chose to move. I was too impatient to wait for Sergio to get back to me, so I was trying to figure out on my own if there were 10 rooms all together anywhere else. Once again, I was a madwoman trying to find rooms! (I know there is an alternate program or site that can be used to see all of what is available in the different categories, but I couldn’t remember the site and didn’t want to take the time to try to find it. It’s too bad that Royal Caribbean doesn’t make the availability of rooms across categories easier to see …)

 

It was meant to be - we got 10 rooms in a row near the aft elevators, D1 and D2 balconies, along with two Junior Suites. The only thing that could have made it better would have been to have hump balconies, (which are nice but not quite the advantage as the Oasis-class hump balconies anyway), so we were pretty pleased with the whole situation. (Once again, Sergio in Group Reservations was a rock-star.) Side note – I think we made extra work for him when we did courtesy holds that had to be switched to our group reservation, and the same rooms probably would have been available anyway, so it really wasn’t the right way to handle that situation.

 

[mchhill]

My family is booked on IOS with this same itinerary in July. I have 3 boys - 19, 17, 13. I'm wondering what excursions, if any, you took. We are in San Juan from 4-11pm. I didn't plan on booking excursion for here because of times. Looking forward to your continued review!

[cruiseclues]

Thank You for your review...enjoyed it. :):):):)

[Beachammo]

I can't believe anyone would give up deck 10 aft...

[mickev99]

My family is booked on IOS with this same itinerary in July. I have 3 boys - 19, 17, 13. I'm wondering what excursions, if any, you took. We are in San Juan from 4-11pm. I didn't plan on booking excursion for here because of times. Looking forward to your continued review!

 

FYI, we are sailing on July 19th and doing the Bioluminescent Bay Tour in San Juan and really looking forward to it!

[kruzerci]

I'm excited for the rest. We were on this cruise with you.

[Summerknight]

Looking forward to the rest of your review. I love the longer, detailed reviews. Fun reading in the pre dawn hours.

[sg1phileshipper]

Can't wait for the rest of it :)

Cindy

 

 

Verzonden vanaf mijn iPad met Tapatalk

[mickev99]

Can't wait for the rest of this review! Will you post compasses and menu order?

[Goodtime Cruizin]

Enjoying your review and eager to hear more. We're sailing the Indy at the end of Oct w/ this same itenarary celebrating the DW's birthday. I'm sure I'll have a few questions throughout your thread.

 

Looking forward to more!