8 Day Independence Review with Pictures

Day 0 / 1

Fly out of JFK on Jetblue to FLL on Friday evening after work . Oh great a broken TV. Oh well what can you do?. Upon landing at FLL we sadly discover my wonderful GF’s Paulette’s suitcase is missing. I quickly get that feeling in my stomach, thinking about the 8 days of hell that are ahead of me if Jetblue cannot get that bag to FLL by sail away. Jetblue assures us the bag will be on the 6am flight. They even ask for a luggage tag and offer to directly transfer the bag to the ship. We $16 taxi to Hyatt Pier 66. Due to my Hyatt status we are graciously upgraded to a port facing suite on floor 14 with a huge balcony.

Very Nice!!!!!!

I pick up the phone and program 2 wake up calls - 4:45am and 8:30am, one to watch Oasis, Indy and Liberty sail in, and one to high tail it back to the airport to rescue the missing suitcase and my vacation :-)

Note – Paulette took the missing suitcase, much better than I thought she would.

4:45am - Wake Up Call

As I run to the balcony I am met with the sight of Indy backing into Term 29 (More on the terminal later)

Quickly followed by Oasis

Then a host of other ships...

8:30am - I successfully rescue the recovered suitcase; head back to the Hotel, then take the $10 pp hotel van to the Port.

Term 29 – 2.5 hours to board!!!!!!!!

The huge lines are caused by only having 5 security screening lines. Let’s examine the math:

4400 people divided by 5 security lines = 880 people per line divided by 5 hours of boarding (11am – 4pm) = 176 people have to be screened by hour at each line divided by 60 mins = 2.9 people have to be screened every minute – WHICH IS IMPOSSIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hey Richard and Adam – YOU NEED MORE SECURITY SCREENING LINES!!!!!!!!!!!! (or move back to Miami – Terminal 29 is not good for the brand)

Finally on board!!!!!!!

A huge crane was being used to replace the forward Satcoms on Indy, hopefully for the new high speed internet

These guys were also working at the stern of the ship, I wonder what they were doing???

Busy afternoon at Port Everglades

And we are under way...

We were told the divers were working on the bow thrusters.

Two of the satellite dishes were replaced and a 3rd was added, so now there are 3 dishes forward, and 2 aft. These new dishes are for the new internet provider and one of the TV channels which is streamed over the internet.

2 Sea Days

Meet and Mingle was hilarious. A lot of undercover comedians and hecklers. Nice job by Cruise Critic host with the extra raffle gifts

Cabin Crawl was a lot of fun

Here are 30 people in our Owners Suite

Shout out to the Crawl host – He did a great job.

Slot Pull – We all walked away with $20, another great job by our hosts

Enjoyed Sunset

Awesome review thus far!

Very nice! Watching for more!

Today was a great day since, my snowbird parents live on St Kitts' sister island of Nevis, we planned on taking the ferry over to visit them.

We docked right at 8am, pulling in after the Adventure of the Seas.

Took a 4 min walk to the ferry pier - $10US pp and $1 port fee.

9:30am Caribe Breeze to Charlestown, Nevis

Goodbye St. Kitts

Hello Nevis

Arrived in Nevis at 10:10am

There are 2 famous people born on Nevis – Alexander Hamilton and My Father :-)

My Parents took us on an island tour - This is where Alexander Hamilton was born.

Pit stop at their house - Then on to Sunshine's for lunch and the beach

We took the 4pm ferry back to St Kitts.

Arrived just in time to see Adventure departing (minus 4 people who were left)

Arrived early, great weather, but very windy

Took a $7 pp taxi to Orient Beach which was very very rough!!!!!

Enjoying your review, looking forward to the rest of it. Great photo's, thanks for posting.

Cloudy weather, but that didn't stop us from enjoying the beach. We took a $21 dollar taxi to Playa Isla Verde. Since it was raining we were the only people on the beach. We rented 2 chairs for $4 each

We then took an $8 taxi to our favorite - Metropol for lunch and margaritas!!!!!

Returned to ship and watched a great sail away

About an hour after leaving, we heard over the PA system the dreaded, “OSCAR OSCAR OSCAR – Port side.” There were 3 men on top of a very small capsized boat. Capt Remo’s team was absolutely amazing. The men were rescued safely. We later found out they were out there for 6 hours.

We were on at the same time. Enjoying your pictures and review.

What a wonderful review.... I can't wait for the rest.

Pier 29 sucks, I get it, but so far sounds like everything else went well.

Hi Ken & Paulette!! I met you ( I think) on the Liberty cruise Nov.10...hope you enjoyed the cruise..how would you compare the IOS to the Liberty? I heard she has not gotten the Oasis upgrades yet...we wanted to try this 8 night cruise because we are sick of the same Eastern/Western routes on the big ships AND we prefer Eastern over Western....nice review so far!!!

Big Al

Enjoyed reading your review with the pictures. We will be on the Independence March 16.

Terminal 29... gah!

This will be my first time out of FLL...

"It's a nice port" they said.

"Well organized" they said.

"My favourite port" they said.

"Parking is a breeze" they said.

Nope

Nope

Nope

Nope

What a way to start a cruise. Assuming I am sailign our of T29 in March, I am not sure what time to arrive now. The majority arrive around noon-1pm ish, but we like to be on the ship asap, so we tend to arrive around 10:30am or so - just not sure how this will work with T29.

...Pier 29 sucks, I get it, but so far sounds like everything else went well.

For the fly-in cruiser, pier 29 was really good on disembarkation. It's distance from other piers means that traffic does not bog down as it does around the pier 24/25 complex. We were off the ship, waiting for a taxi in 10 or 15 minutes. Once we got a taxi (another 5 or 10 minutes), we were out of the port in less than 5 minutes.

Here are 30 people in our Owners Suite

Any chance that you have a shot of 30 people in an inside cabin?;):D

Your night pictures are awesome. They are so sharp and not grainy at all. Beautiful!

What a great and amazing sight seeing 2 monsters docked next to each other on a tiny pier.

Pulling into Labadee

Walked over to Barefoot Beach, although I am suggesting a name change to "Swim Shoe Beach." There are so many rocks and coral, it is impossible to walk on the beach without swim shoes.

Here is our cabana - (MAJOR ISSUE - Will explain in my summary)

And our view

Back to the ship

As usual - The Quest was fantastic

Enjoyed a sea day walking around taking pics of the ship and packing :-(

@ 6:15am - we did express departure. Although the line was fairly long on deck 4, it moved very quickly. Grabbed a quick $12 taxi ride, a huge $20 tip to the curb side check in guy for Paulette's overweight bag :-) and we were on our way home @ 7am...

Is the ferry service over to Nevis pretty reliable? Having been to St. Kitts this past March I was thinking about going over to the other island on our upcoming stop and I'm not so sure that I want to do a ship sponsored tour. I would imagine that once arriving at Nevis there are tour operators and taxi drivers like at every other port looking to pick up customers?

Lovely review so far, fantastic photos.