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

Harry, I've enjoyed your review and I am sad it's almost over. I fun to see family hanging out together and having fun with each other.

Like you, I prefer port days also.

What are your typical selections?

At Giovanni’s I like to get the filet with mushroom risotto.

Most of my MDR selections are super boring, a lot of Caesar salads and chicken or beef.

Apparently in Canada it's around 50%. Very surprising! I'm actually covered by my work benefits, as are most full time professionals in Canada. Which might explain the higher rate of coverage here, actually.

Am Canadian - always get travel medical when we go to the States, even overnight. Although as someone with an allergy (anaphylaxis), it is just safer.

Oh my what am I going to do each day? Your trip report has been entertaining and informative. Thanks so much

Are you going to the parade next Saturday Harry? We are taking BART over to the Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco to see "Book of Mormon" on the 24th. I didn't realize that it was parade day for the Chinese Lunar New Year Festival when we booked many months ago.

I think that we will be leaving early for our 2PM show time. Enjoy your celebration! :D

Harry, I've enjoyed your review and I am sad it's almost over. I fun to see family hanging out together and having fun with each other.

 

Like you, I prefer port days also.

Oh my what am I going to do each day? Your trip report has been entertaining and informative. Thanks so much

Hi, folks,

Thank you very much for the kind words. I’ve been doing this trip report since New Year’s Day, it’s time to end it eventually but we still have day 9 and part day 10 to wrap up.

I’m sure some of the people probably think I went on too long with my pictures and comments, but my style is to be methodical as you would expect from a bean counter.

I need to start making hotel reservations for the upcoming summer driving trip to Utah as well as looking to book the December Disneyworld trip if they have the free meal plan promotion that they typically have in the spring time (cheapo dad not going to Disneyworld without discounted food plan).

So I need to finish this trip report and move onto the other projects.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves; still have to get through the rest of the trip report.

Are you going to the parade next Saturday Harry? We are taking BART over to the Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco to see "Book of Mormon" on the 24th. I didn't realize that it was parade day for the Chinese Lunar New Year Festival when we booked many months ago.

 

I think that we will be leaving early for our 2PM show time. Enjoy your celebration! :D

Hi, Patti,

We just watch the parade on TV. The parade starts around 6 and runs to 8 so if your show starts at 2 and can end before 5, you will be ok to leave SF on BART afterward. By the afternoon, the crowd will be to coming into the city so if you leave by then, you are OK. Whatever you do, don’t drive to SF on Saturday.

As the theater is on the south side of the Parade route, you are at least 4 plus block from the parade. Just stay away from the other end of Market Street where the parade starts. You will need to pre plan your lunch as the restaurants in the area might be crazy busy with the parade goers.

For those non local bay area folks wondering what we are talking about, there is the annual Chinese parade in downtown San Francisco that typically draws around 1 million people. It's the largest parade outside of Asia.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/chinatown-tradition-san-francisco-s-chinese-new-year-parade-american-n847661

For anyone interested to watch the parade live, think you can stream it live from this TV station’s web site (per the link at the top of the page). It’s a 2 hour event that starts at 6 PM (Pacific Coast Time) on Saturday, February 24:

http://www.ktvu.com/

Officially today is Friday to the rest of the world. Typically Fridays are the best days of the week for the working stiffs like yours truly but somehow Fridays on a cruise that is ending doesn’t have the same luster as Fridays back home.

Time to drop in the last daily compass that nobody will read

Looked at the TV to see where we are on the map – guess the captain slowed down a bit to only be going at 20.5 knots. Still fast by any means.

A lot of snow on the satellite TV as we got bad reception but you can still make out the speed

Got the troops up and dressed and off to elevator lobby to take an elevator to go up to WJ. But probably not this on as it’s out of order being stuck in between decks and not moving…technically it’s probably at deck 2.18.

This lady is ready to smack me across the head any given second...

Found a table by the side at WJ facing the ocean. The weather looks better today than yesterday and with less waves, we should be able to have the belly flop contest as well as the ice show. Since we like to be entertained, those 2 events are important to us.

We had another breakfast at WJ. The fam is starting to say it’s the same food every day. That may be true but compared to what we normally eat at home during weekday or weekends, the WJ is still miles ahead as who has this much variety for breakfast daily? I know we don’t eat like this at home.

After breakfast, walked down to RP to visit the uncle in prison (aka shopping) to see if there was any good last day sales as other ships typically do. Nope. Indy is pretty dead in terms of sale as they don’t have much RCI logo wear. Was hoping for the 2 t-shirts for $20 sale as from other ships. Nope.

So if you are going to be on the Indy, get your t-shirt fixes at the ports when you can get them for $5 as I have shown in previous photos. Not going to get them from the ship.

Saw the dude opening the awning at Sorrento's

Never realized they retract that daily and then he open it up in the morning. How about that? Take a picture...

Also note all the shoppers visiting their uncles in prison

From the shops, it was super easy to walk outside on deck 4 to walk one lap around the ship to walk off a bit of the breakfast.

Since I suck at menu taking, here is the dinner option outside MDR

After seeing his cousins do the rock climbing, my younger one decided he wants to do rock climbing as well. So we made it up to deck 12, signed his waiver, and got him all strapped in.

My son on the right and the niece on the far left

Rang the bell and coming back down

As I waited, I watched a family playing basketball. It’s amazing how people don’t follow rules/logic in trying to play basketball on a hard court wearing flip flops. They had to be scolded by the workers to be kicked off the court. People have no sense of reason in knowing they can get hurt in not having the proper gear.

Not for all the peasant and near peasant level cruisers - stay out...

There is always a big crowd at the stands at Flowrider

I need to start making hotel reservations for the upcoming summer driving trip to Utah as well as looking to book the December Disneyworld trip if they have the free meal plan promotion that they typically have in the spring time (cheapo dad not going to Disneyworld without discounted food plan).

I booked at trip to disney world and got free dining and plan to do it again in september. I think it'd be hard to go to disney without it now! Fingers are crossed for both of us the free dining plan is offered during dates we plan to travel.

I booked at trip to disney world and got free dining and plan to do it again in september. I think it'd be hard to go to disney without it now! Fingers are crossed for both of us the free dining plan is offered during dates we plan to travel.

This web site has the estimated dates the free dining plans will be offered for 2018

http://www.disneytouristblog.com/disney-world-free-dining-dates/

Did your son enjoy the rock climbing?

Why yes…yes I do select my meals when Harry (or anyone else)posts the menus.

I’ll have the Beef Carpaccio for my starter and the Fillet of Sole for my main.

And no…no I do not get the Disneyworld dinning plan.

On lobster night in the MDR, do they only serve the tails? Not the entire lobster? And no claws? (Claw meat is my favorite. YUM!)

On lobster night in the MDR, do they only serve the tails? Not the entire lobster? And no claws? (Claw meat is my favorite. YUM!)

Rock/Spiny/Caribbean lobster, tails only. Not Canadian/Maine lobsters.

Did your son enjoy the rock climbing?

Why yes…yes I do select my meals when Harry (or anyone else)posts the menus.

I’ll have the Beef Carpaccio for my starter and the Fillet of Sole for my main.

And no…no I do not get the Disneyworld dinning plan.

He liked it. He had done rock climbing before from the indoor climbing walls at places back home but he was always nervous about the one on the ship as he didn’t like being close to the ship’s horn in the back as he didn’t want the ship’s horn blowing if he was up there.

You not doing the dining plan because you are not going to WDW or you don’t like what the package has to offer? From what I read, the free dining plan is the most popular promotion Disney has to offer and they are supposedly in high demand.

So far our WDW vacation is being quoted at $4K for the 4 of us for 1 week in Christmas, without the meals plan. Adding in the meals plan is $6K. So any discounts I can get off the of the meals plan is a win for what we like to do.

For comparison purposes, if we do Harmony the same week in Christmas, it's $7K for the 4 of us so as much a WDW is expensive during the holidays, they are still cheaper than RCI.

So after his rock climbing, we went back to the cabin and started the dreaded packing process.

Oh, forgot to mention that our cabin steward gave us group #4 tags to depart the ship. That’s too late for us as we had the morning tour the next day. The gal at the tours desk suggested that we drag our luggage out to deck 3 at the theater area where the tours meet and then drag it ourselves off the ship on deck 4. That sounds like a lot of work. Didn’t want to do that.

Instead, I stood in line at the guest services with our tour tickets to show them we have a departing tour in the morning and wanted tag #1 instead. Good thing they had extra helpers at Guest services to talk to people in line to see what they needed and so I was able to bypass the line and got the group #1 luggage tags.

Throughout the cruise, I collected and saved every page of ad/stuff with though that I might need to take back home and need to scan/upload. Last minute, decide to forget it and just kept the daily compass for reference purposes and in theory I didn’t even have to bring that back home as nobody really read it from the trip report anyway as the Indy typically doesn’t sail to eastern Caribbean or the longer special 9 day route.

So after most of the packing is done, it’s time to head back on top deck for the famous belly flop contest. Here is where I miss being on the Oasis class ships – you get to sit down and enjoy the show with their underwater camera on the dive. With other ships, you have to stand in the heat.

Also with the Freedom, they have the people jump off from the other end of the pool. That was better as we didn’t have people in front of us blocking the view.

We had a perfect unobstructed view until these two guys showed up the last minute by getting into the gold card section. No idea if these guys actually belong at the gold section as the just had a small chain rope there. No as if anyone was there to card them to make sure they are legit. They just walked up about 5 minutes before show and stood there and blocking our view.