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

[cruisemeister8]

Fear not, Harry. Your fort pictures are not boring. I like seeing places like this, that I'll probably never get to. Unless there's a shuttle involved. That's a looooooooooooooong walk. Impressive that your family did it.

 

More impressive that you walked all the way to that horseshoe in the heat! It was very cool to see, thank you, but man, you all are hardy souls to walk out there! And I was thinking the same thing when you mentioned there were no rails. It's a wonder that they allow public access to a place with no railings. Or benches. Or water stations. Or outhouses. Or anything. Au natural countryside! Love it! Your side trips are as fun as the cruise. That's why we follow you.

 

One thing though, when you get back to the ship. It's day 4, and unless I missed it on some side trip into the redwoods, I don't think you've mentioned yet how you like the window cabin. We know you are IN a window room, but how does it compare in pros and cons to your favorite promenade room?

 

One last thought from the recent pictures. I know you're concerned about taking your boys out of school for these trips. But honestly, you should share your trip report with their school/teachers. I mean, exploring forts in old San Juan on Christmas Eve (in shorts, no less)! The kind of enriching life experiences and memories that you are providing your boys can be more valuable than rote book learning in a classroom. You should be a proud dad. And they should get extra credit!

[Coralc]

Pirates of the Caribbean in a classical composition was lovely. But now I have added the Grammarly extension (via an ad) to my browser to improve my written communication. It was my choice to add it. :rolleyes:

[harryfat1]

I normally don’t care about clouds itself but I had to do a double/triple take when I looked up and saw the clouds right in front of me.

 

If you look right about the middle, it looks like a creepy ghost head looking down directly at me – the type you see from the Hollywood Movies with special effects.

 

[harryfat1]

Fear not, Harry. Your fort pictures are not boring. I like seeing places like this, that I'll probably never get to. Unless there's a shuttle involved. That's a looooooooooooooong walk. Impressive that your family did it.

 

More impressive that you walked all the way to that horseshoe in the heat! It was very cool to see, thank you, but man, you all are hardy souls to walk out there! And I was thinking the same thing when you mentioned there were no rails. It's a wonder that they allow public access to a place with no railings. Or benches. Or water stations. Or outhouses. Or anything. Au natural countryside! Love it! Your side trips are as fun as the cruise. That's why we follow you.

 

One thing though, when you get back to the ship. It's day 4, and unless I missed it on some side trip into the redwoods, I don't think you've mentioned yet how you like the window cabin. We know you are IN a window room, but how does it compare in pros and cons to your favorite promenade room?

 

One last thought from the recent pictures. I know you're concerned about taking your boys out of school for these trips. But honestly, you should share your trip report with their school/teachers. I mean, exploring forts in old San Juan on Christmas Eve (in shorts, no less)! The kind of enriching life experiences and memories that you are providing your boys can be more valuable than rote book learning in a classroom. You should be a proud dad. And they should get extra credit!

 

Hi,

 

Thanks for continuing to follow along. I had thought I lost most of the people as it has been very quiet the past couple days. It’s one of those weird feeling sometimes you feel as if you are talking to yourself when you write and upload info.

This is similar to the old days of messages in a bottle communication where I write something and put it in a bottle and toss it in the ocean:

 

 

Yes, I plan to comment on the ocean view cabin later on when I have the pictures to discuss. I’m a show and tell type of guy.

 

Nah, I’m borderline bad dad in taking the kids out one week for the Allure cruise and 2 days out for this cruise just to save $$.

 

This walk wasn’t too bad. Per Google map in going from the pier to both forts and back is around 4 km or around 2.5 miles. The wind made it a fairly comfortable walk as it was very scenic.

 

The worst walk was in Utah. I will get to that detour near the end of this trip report. That one almost killed me. After that hike, the in-laws have decided they will pass on going to the summer trip with us this year as it was too much for them as well.

 

The only public service was the announcement at the parking lot to tell everyone there is extreme heat and have plenty of liquids (Thanks, Captain Obvious). The only shade/few benches were on the top of the ridge/hill of this picture. Going back is a killer as you are already tired and it’s uphill in the heat.

 

Oh, yeah, that’s when you miss being on a cruise.

 

 

 

Oh, they also have a sign to thank you for coming but no garbage can until the parking lot so you have to carry your plastic cups all the way back...(oh, yeah, also have my fanny pack front and center)

 

[harryfat1]

Pirates of the Caribbean in a classical composition was lovely. But now I have added the Grammarly extension (via an ad) to my browser to improve my written communication. It was my choice to add it. :rolleyes:

 

Hehe, that's how YouTube makes its money...

[tb4]

I'm still following along. Your awesome reports make me wonder if my waitlist Sydney-Honolulu on Ovation next year doesn't work out if I should suck it up, fly to Houston and see some of these places.

Thanks again for taking the time to do this.

 

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[harryfat1]

I'm still following along. Your awesome reports make me wonder if my waitlist Sydney-Honolulu on Ovation next year doesn't work out if I should suck it up, fly to Houston and see some of these places.

Thanks again for taking the time to do this.

 

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Naw, the Ovation trip is special. My itinerary is very basic. Freedom used to do the 8 day eastern every other week. When they switch with Adventure of the Seas, they will do the 8 day run to eastern Caribbean.

 

If you really want to fly out here, look to fly to Puerto Rico and then do the Southern Caribbean route. Maybe even a back to back and hit all the islands out there in one trip. If you fly to US, you spend too much time on sea days sailing from either Texas or Florida.

 

Happy to do this as it's fun to share pictures and discuss my vacation as to relive it. No one else (friends or family) cares to look at this many pictures or want to know all the details. As long as people are willing to read it, I will continue to upload.

[SenatorsFan]

Harry, I'm still here and enjoying. I just thought it would be redundant to comment on more nice rock pictures. :cool:

Heather

[Elerja]

I look every night too for your posts. We are going on the Freedom in March- the same itineary as you did last year. I also enjoy your summer pictures. We have done a lot of similar trips. Do you do trip reports of those on trip advisor?

 

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[lbjen]

You can’t get to Puerto Rico out of Houston either, very limited choices unless you’re on a repositioning sailing.

[harryfat1]

Harry, I'm still here and enjoying. I just thought it would be redundant to comment on more nice rock pictures. :cool:

Heather

 

Haha, I have you down as number 1 rock fan. It's the fort pictures I wasn't sure about. Historical forts and Mayan ruins are acquired tastes as I know not everyone cares for them.

 

For the Caribbean cruise crowd, I can upload 25 beach pictures and people will ask for more. But after 6 fort pictures, many people are ready to move on.

 

I get that. I feel the same way when I read other people's trip reports and they go on some excursions I am not interested in, I just pass and come back later on.

[chooseauser]

Here’s something for a bean counter reader to calculate – approximately how much money was saved by giving passengers only half cup of juice instead of full cup?

 

So take 4,200+ passengers for the Indy as an example. Assume for simplicity sake, 1,200 or so passengers daily does not eat at WJ for breakfast as they prefer in cabin breakfast/MDR/café promenade. That means 3,000 will file into WJ. Further assume only half of the people drink the juice being offered as the other half drink tea/coffee/water/booze for breakfast. That gets us to 1,500 people.

 

Now assume by serving half cup, the cruise line saves 4 ounces of juice per person. That would mean 6,000 ounces would be saved each and every day.

 

Then if someone can find/estimate the average cost of cheap generic juice the cruise buys by bulk, multiply that cost by 6,000 ounces by twenty something ships and 365 days a year, you should get a ball park figure.

 

Of course, that person is free to adjust any of my assumptions to do the math. I just started down the path but by no means is my assumption correct.

 

Hello sir.

 

Based upon your assumptions, 6,000 oz are saved each day. Let's talk annually. At 365 days a year, we're up to 2,190,000 oz of orange juice saved.

 

Now let's look at the cost of orange juice. 59 oz bottle available from Walmart for $3.33. Dividing $3.33 by 59 oz yields us $0.056 per ounce. But, we know Royal Caribbean isn't paying that much for OJ.... they're a large company so there are likely economies of scale at play here which allow them to get a better deal from a distributor. Let's say they get it at $0.04/oz (perhaps even cheaper? maybe someone in food distribution business can share).

 

 

For the grand finale, let's see how much they're saving. $0.04/oz times 2,190,000 oz gets us $87,600 in savings. Cool. If they implement this across all of their ships, we're talking millions of dollars here (of course, we must scale the calculations by the number of passengers on the ship).

 

But, there are hidden costs that you accountants often forget about but we economists freaking love: opportunity costs. By carrying 80 fewer tons of orange juice, Royal Caribbean is saving money in a lot of ways. The first is the cost of fuel required to transport 80 tons of orange juice several thousand miles. The next is the opportunity cost of the worker's time; workers have 80 fewer tons to load and unload each year; 80 fewer tons of stock and expiration dates to manage. There are also consumption effects (not worth delving into) that show that having to take two cups will decrease the amount consumed (this is more behavioral than it is economic, so I'll stay out of this, but it does have to do with the idea that eating off of a smaller plate will cause you to eat less food).

 

Even if RCCL didn't think about all of this, it's a wise move to implement this as a fleet-wide policy. So who wants some OJ?

[harryfat1]

I look every night too for your posts. We are going on the Freedom in March- the same itineary as you did last year. I also enjoy your summer pictures. We have done a lot of similar trips. Do you do trip reports of those on trip advisor?

 

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I read trip advisor regularly but I have never done a review on it. I can't be sarcastic on it as I can here so I always thought it was a bit too boring to write over there.

 

On side note, you do know that trip advisor owns cruise critics.

 

Thanks for reading daily. I try my hardest to at least upload something nightly so people that checks daily will have something to look at as I feel bad if people checks in and sees nothing new. It's easier now with Shutterfly to attach than Flickr.

 

Have a great cruise in March on the Freedom.

[harryfat1]

Hello sir.

 

Based upon your assumptions, 6,000 oz are saved each day. Let's talk annually. At 365 days a year, we're up to 2,190,000 oz of orange juice saved.

 

Now let's look at the cost of orange juice. 59 oz bottle available from Walmart for $3.33. Dividing $3.33 by 59 oz yields us $0.056 per ounce. But, we know Royal Caribbean isn't paying that much for OJ.... they're a large company so there are likely economies of scale at play here which allow them to get a better deal from a distributor. Let's say they get it at $0.04/oz (perhaps even cheaper? maybe someone in food distribution business can share).

 

 

For the grand finale, let's see how much they're saving. $0.04/oz times 2,190,000 oz gets us $87,600 in savings. Cool. If they implement this across all of their ships, we're talking millions of dollars here (of course, we must scale the calculations by the number of passengers on the ship).

 

But, there are hidden costs that you accountants often forget about but we economists freaking love: opportunity costs. By carrying 80 fewer tons of orange juice, Royal Caribbean is saving money in a lot of ways. The first is the cost of fuel required to transport 80 tons of orange juice several thousand miles. The next is the opportunity cost of the worker's time; workers have 80 fewer tons to load and unload each year; 80 fewer tons of stock and expiration dates to manage. There are also consumption effects (not worth delving into) that show that having to take two cups will decrease the amount consumed (this is more behavioral than it is economic, so I'll stay out of this, but it does have to do with the idea that eating off of a smaller plate will cause you to eat less food).

 

Even if RCCL didn't think about all of this, it's a wise move to implement this as a fleet-wide policy. So who wants some OJ?

 

Per the 2016 Form 10K, Royal operates 25 ships in the fleet. Some are larger and some are smaller. So I am comfortable with the 6,000 ounce per day estimate unless someone wants to do a weighted average.

 

I would say the 4 cents per ounce is way too high. Royal buys in bulk and in generic cartons, they don't need to pay the higher price.

[harryfat1]

Few more pictures of the fort area before we start to head back to the ship

 

 

 

 

[Laurie411]

Hi Harry!

Thanks so much for sharing your trips with us! I got hooked on your review last year, before we sailed on Freedom. We are sailing her again in 2 weeks. We were wondering about hurricane damage, specifically at SJ. Last year we did the island tour, and our tour bus stopped briefly at the fort for picture taking. You posted a picture of tour buses in the lot! We plan to go tour the fortresses this trip, as you did. Glad to see all is well there.

Love all your pictures and your sense of humor! Keep it coming! Thanks again!

[JamesEM]

Hi, Cindy,

 

I now realize many people don’t sleep on the long flights. I need to invest some money on a good soft eye shade before I do another red eye flight across the country.

 

Don't forget a set of ear plugs.

[SenatorsFan]

I like the fort pictures, too and I've been to those forts. Your perspective and pictures are interesting.

Heather

[bobmacliberty]

I like all your pictures Harry. Boats, sand, ropes, food, rocks, trees, forts, fanny packs...it's all good. Keep em coming. Did you do any tilt shift/miniature pictures this time? I don't remember on Freedom if that was a setting in your camera or if you did that with software after the cruise.

[harryfat1]

Hi Harry!

Thanks so much for sharing your trips with us! I got hooked on your review last year, before we sailed on Freedom. We are sailing her again in 2 weeks. We were wondering about hurricane damage, specifically at SJ. Last year we did the island tour, and our tour bus stopped briefly at the fort for picture taking. You posted a picture of tour buses in the lot! We plan to go tour the fortresses this trip, as you did. Glad to see all is well there.

Love all your pictures and your sense of humor! Keep it coming! Thanks again!

 

Hi,

 

Thanks for the compliment. I see that this is your first posting here at CC. Very honored you chose my trip report to post your first comment.

 

I can't speak for other parts of San Juan, but the part we were in, I didn't see any visible hurricane damages. Now when I start to show the pictures from day 5 at St. Maarten, you will see a lot more damages over there.

 

Do you remember how much you guys paid for the tour at San Juan and what spots they took you guys to? They were offering $20/pp tour for various parts of SJ but I wasn't interested as we wanted to do the forts only. Next time around we might venture off to see other parts.

 

Thanks,

 

Harry

 

 

Tour buses all lined up by the pier

 

 

 

[adam7392]

We too were on this cruise which was our first family cruise. Loving reading your views and looking at the pictures as it is bringing back happy memories. Seems you also have a similar ideas to us as to what to do in port - i.e. avoid the cruise tours and do it yourself (I'm also a cheapo dad !). We did the same as you in San Juan except in reverse order of forts. Looking forward to the rest of the report.

[ShelleyUM]

 

Harry, I’ve been following along from way back at page 1 and I’m enjoying reliving every single moment with you. My boyfriend and I were also on this cruise. I had to LOL at this picture. If you zoom in at the top of the ramp, you’ll see a crazy lady with her arms up in victory. That’s me, just happy to have made it up that steep ramp ;). The forts were amazing but quite a workout.

[Laurie411]

Hi,

 

Thanks for the compliment. I see that this is your first posting here at CC. Very honored you chose my trip report to post your first comment.

 

I can't speak for other parts of San Juan, but the part we were in, I didn't see any visible hurricane damages. Now when I start to show the pictures from day 5 at St. Maarten, you will see a lot more damages over there.

 

Do you remember how much you guys paid for the tour at San Juan and what spots they took you guys to? They were offering $20/pp tour for various parts of SJ but I wasn't interested as we wanted to do the forts only. Next time around we might venture off to see other parts.

 

Thanks,

 

Harry

 

 

Tour buses all lined up by the pier

 

 

 

 

We walked off the ship and decided on a whim to take the $20 tour. We were not disappointed. Our local driver LOVED his home of Puerto Rico, which made it such a great ride. The first stop was touring the Capital of Puerto Rico. Wow - gorgeous! You def need to put that stop on your next SJ list! Your pictures will be amazing! Our driver showed us many points of local interest, including the photo op stop at the fort. Wrapping it up, he offered a drop downtown in the shopping district, or you could stay on and he'd drop you back at the pier. We enjoyed it!

Looking forward to hearing about your SXM stop as well. We have nothing planned for there yet, as we weren't sure what's operating or not.

 

Thanks Harry!

[berjdrberjdr]

Still here following along! We did the walk up to the El Morro fort but did not see the first one. We thought the fort was awesome but what we loved possibly even more was walking up and down the colorful, Spanish colonial streets. Some of the street corners are so photogenic, not something you would normally see anywhere back in the continental U.S.. It was interesting because compared to some of the other port stops, OSJ seemed busy and bustling, but not necessarily in a tourism kind of way. I am especially looking forward to your St. Maarten pics because we went on a speedboat tour, but I am curious how the devastation looked from a land perspective. Thanks!

[WisconsinFan]

Keep posting. I am enjoying the photos and comments. On Freedom in April.

 

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