Independence of the Seas 2-10-2013 6-night pictures and review

[rotchill]

We are sailing on Indy this Saturday. Enjoying your pictures and review.

[phabric]

We will be on the Independence March 16.

 

We are renting from Avis at the airport and suppose to return it there. I did not know about Hyatt Pier 66 office. Did you have any problems returning the car to the hotel office instead of the airport. How often is the shuttle?

[poodog]

Nice review, Thank you

[micmacmissy]

Thanks for the review! We were on this same cruise a few weeks ago, and I didn't notice several of the pieces of art you took photos of.

 

I wish the staff on Independence would do an art tour of the ship!

[nbsjcruiser]

Thanks for the pics and review. We'll be sailing on the IOS on Saturday for the 8 day Eastern so I very much appreciate the effort.

[ahecht]

Not meaning to thread hijack, but here's one I took... it's not a great angle, as I only spotted it last minute too!

Thanks. Here are the pictures I got -- the light was low so they're not great (I kept forgetting to take one during the day).

 

 

 

 

Thanks for the review! We were on this same cruise a few weeks ago, and I didn't notice several of the pieces of art you took photos of.

 

I wish the staff on Independence would do an art tour of the ship!

 

There was an "Art Walking Tour" on Day 3 (February 12th) that departed from the Champagne Bar at 4:15. However, we were feeling too tired to do a bunch of walking after spending the day snorkeling in Grand Cayman.

[ahecht]

Day 2: Monday, February 11th, 2013 - Part 1

 

Before I get into Day 2, I want to mention one very important thing about Day 1: ship motion. Given the huge size of the ship and the relatively calm waters between Florida and the Caribbean, I hadn't expected much in the way of ship motion. However, by the time the sun set the ship had started really rocking and rolling. Despite the size of the ship, the movement was more of a left-and-right jerking motion, not a gentle rolling. During the welcome aboard show, Joff kept making comments about how smooth the seas were as the curtains swayed back and forth violently behind him. It was at this point that I started having my doubts about cruising -- I didn't think I could take a week of this.

 

However, we woke up the next morning to glassy smooth seas and almost no detectable motion. Since I had to be up early to get Ice Show tickets, I caught the gorgeous sunrise from out balcony (in fact, since the ship made a U-Turn around the western point of Cuba this day, we saw both the sunrise and sunset directly off our balcony).

 

Once there was enough light, we could see Havana, Cuba off in the distance. It was hazy, so I had to do some image tweaking to make it visible:

 

Ice Show tickets were supposed to be distributed at 8:30 on the Royal Promenade in front of Sorrentos. When I got there at 8:15, the line stretched about 2/3 of the way down the promenade (almost to the moving bridge).

 

Since there was already a line, they started distributing tickets early at 8:20, and by 8:15 I had my tickets and had grabbed a white chocolate donut from the Cafe Promenade. Tickets were free, only one person from each party needed to be there, and they didn't need to see SeaPasses or anything.

 

After I got back to the room, we headed to a wonderful relaxing breakfast in the Main Dining Room. The fruit and granola buffet was great, especially the fresh figs (recommended by a table-mate), and the Eggs Benedict and Crab-cake Benedict were very good as well. Much better than the offerings in Windjammer.

 

After breakfast, we set off to explore the ship more. Our first stop was the Helipad. It was here that we discovered that the rough seas of the night before had been replaced with 55mph winds. Since we were traveling at 18 knots into the wind, the apparent wind speed was over 75mph (that's hurricane force!). We braved the winds anyway and got some great views of the water and the coast of Cuba.

 

Here is the view of the Helipad looking back at the front of the ship:

 

Of course, we had to do the "King of the World" bit from Titanic. I couldn't get a shot of both of us together as I didn't trust my tripod in the wind:

 

See, I told you it was windy:

 

I'll post the rest of the day when I get home this evening...

[Solarad]

Thanks so much for taking the time to post the review. We are 12 days and counting before boarding IOS! Looking forward to reading about your snorkeling experience in Cayman.

[ahecht]

Since there was already a line, they started distributing tickets early at 8:20, and by 8:15 I had my tickets and had grabbed a white chocolate donut from the Cafe Promenade. Tickets were free, only one person from each party needed to be there, and they didn't need to see SeaPasses or anything.

 

CORRECTION: I had my tickets by 8:25, not 8:15. The line moved fast and took about 5 minutes.

Edited February 25, 2013 by ahecht

[phabric]

Do you remember what the times of the ice shows were? Were they on sea days?

[ahecht]

Do you remember what the times of the ice shows were? Were they on sea days?

I posted a link to the compasses in the first post, so you can find all the schedules there. The ice shows were at 3:15pm and 5:15pm on Day 2 (Sea Day) and at 7pm and 9pm on Day 4 (Jamaica). The show is called "Freeze Frame" on the 6-night cruises, but there is supposedly a different show for the 8-night cruises.

[GXmanDC]

I am loving the review. Our Indy cruise ended the day you started. Sounds like you enjoyed it as much as we did.

[duncanmaria]

Great review and pictures! It's always fun to read in-depth trip reports from first time cruisers and yours is no exception. Looking forward to the rest!

[KirkNC]

Thanks for the report!

[drog]

Awesome review so far I'm subscribed!

[gelo7]

Great review.

[LBumb]

excellent job so far

[ahecht]

Day 2: Monday, February 11th, 2013 - Part 2

 

We continued our tour around the outdoor promenade deck, taking advantage of the smoother seas (we tried walking out there the night before buy were immediately hit by the salty spray from the waves).

 

There is a nice little hump on the outdoor promenade near the main dining room that allows you to get a great view looking both forwards and backwards:

 

 

Around the aft, you can get a great close-up view of the ship's wake:

 

We returned to the cabin and spent some time on our balcony looking out at the ocean since the aft seemed to be the one place outside to escape the wind. On our balcony, the hurricane force winds were reduced to a gentle breeze. Before we knew it, it was time to head back to the Main Dining Room for lunch. I ordered the roast beef, which was flavorless, but the chedder-potato gratin it came with was very good. My girlfriend ordered the seafood risotto, and although it was tomato-sauce based instead of being a true risotto, it was very good. We also got salads from the salad bar, and while they didn't quite live up to the hype on here, they were good enough that we resolved that next time we would skip the hot entrees and just do salads.

 

We were finishing our dessert when we realized we were going to be late for the Cabin Crawl. I should back up a bit here...

 

We were lucky on this cruise that the Roll Call thread here on Cruise Critic was really active. By the time we left, there were Cruise Critic members posting in the thread that were going to be on the cruise with us. We had a meetup at the pool bar on the first day, and it was great to put some faces to the screen names. Unfortunately, we had to leave the meetup early because we wanted to unpack before sailaway.

 

daniels5759 organized a great Cabin Crawl for the first sea day. A cabin crawl is where members of the roll call thread open up their cabins to other cruise critic members so that people can get a feel for the different accommodations available on the ship. daniels5759 went all out, and printed up these great cards listing the rooms we would be visiting:

[ahecht]

Day 2: Monday, February 11th, 2013 - Part 3

 

As you can see in the last post, we visited 10 cabins of Cruise Critic members, and got to see a wide variety of rooms ranging from an inside cabin all the way up to a grand suite. Along the way we got to see a hump cabin, the Ben & Jerry "Sweet" (the cow-butt cabin), an accessible room, and bow and aft-facing cabins (including the infamous Stripper-Pole corner-aft on Deck 10). Most of my pictures from the cabin crawl feature close-ups of other people and their belongings, so I don't feel comfortable posting them here. However, here are a few pictures that are generic enough to post:

 

The cow butts above the Ben & Jerry store:

 

Some of the cow knick-knacks in the "sweet":

 

Bow-facing ocean view cabin:

 

The view out the bow-facing porthole:

 

The cantilevered hot tubs as seen from the Grand Suite:

 

daniels5759 also organized a poker run, where we put money into a pot and then drew one card in each of the last five cabins. The winning hand ended up having something like four aces, so we didn't stand a chance:

[Ian2000]

Great review and pictures!

[ahecht]

Day 2: Monday, February 11th, 2013 - Part 4

 

Since our cabin was on the cabin crawl, I thought I'd take this opportunity to talk a little more about the cabin. We had a lot of concerns about soot due to being in the aft, cigarette smoke from our neighbors, and noise from being in the aft and just under the Windjammer buffet.

 

Soot wasn't a problem, but that's mostly because our balcony was almost entirely covered by the overhang from Windjammer. Our neighbors below us were often outside smoking, and while we could definitely smell it strongly on the balcony it wasn't frequent enough that it prevented us from enjoying the space. The cabin was quite noisy, but not from the windjammer buffet above. As you can see in the below picture, there is a half-deck, almost four feet thick, between decks 10 and 11. My guess is that this extra space is to accommodate the depth of the various pools and related plumbing, but in any case it provided enough insulation that we never heard noises from above such as footsteps, furniture being moved, or vacuuming. You can see that deck in this picture (the picture isn't mine, but it illustrates my point):

 

Here is a shot from our balcony showing the space between the ceiling of our cabin (which is pretty much flush with the top of the sliding door) and the floor of the Windjammer above:

 

However, the cabin was quite noisy from the wake itself.

 

The churning water behind the ship made a constant dull roar whenever the ship was moving. It was white noise, so it didn't bother us too much, but if you need quiet to sleep an aft cabin might not be for you. Being in the aft also meant that we felt a lot of vibration whenever the ship was turning. The ship uses azipods to steer (which means the propellers themselves yaw to steer the ship instead of using a rudder), and whenever the wake was directed to the sides of the ship it would hit the underside of the ship in such a way that it caused the whole aft area to shake. Unfortunately, such maneuvers were usually conducted early in the morning as the ship approached ports and served as an unwelcome wake-up call (although it did help me catch the sunrise each morning).

 

Anyway, moving on.

 

After the cabin crawl, we set out to explore more of the ship. One the way to the pool we passed Squeeze, the juice bar. I hadn't seen any posts that showed the menu for Squeeze, the juice bar, so here it is:

 

Here is the main pool area:

 

I didn't get a picture of it, but located on the starboard side of the main pool was Sprinkles, the self-server soft-serve frozen yogurt machine. We stopped there way too many times, and seemed to always make an excuse to get a cone. My only complaint was that despite the name there were no sprinkles to be found anywhere!

 

Just behind Sprinkles was the towel exchange area:

Edited February 26, 2013 by ahecht

[ahecht]

Day 2: Monday, February 11th, 2013 - Part 5

 

Beyond the towel exchange is the adults-only solarium area, which features a pool with a swim-up bar and a nice bridge going over it as well as the two cantilevered hot tubs. Surrounding those are a variety of comfortable chairs, love-seats, and swinging benches. Unfortunately, I didn't get any daytime pictures of the Solarium.

 

Between the solarium and the fitness center we found this nice quiet hallway with great views of the ocean and nice chairs to sit and read. Well, it was nice and quiet until the daily announcement for the shopping seminars and bingo sessions came on. In this small hallway were no less than four loudspeakers, and it was so deafeningly loud that we had to quickly escape to the fitness center:

 

Here is a quick shot of the fitness center. I'd like to say I spent a great deal of time here, but other than spending a few minutes running on one of the treadmills overlooking the bow of the ship and pretending to be running through the water I didn't get any exercise here.

 

I took a peek in the steam room and sauna area, and since no one else was there I took the opportunity to take a few pictures. Here is the changing area:

 

Off to the side of the changing area, out of view of the camera, there were several large showers (well, at least large compared to the ones in the cabin). Beyond that was the steam room (excuse the bad picture -- it was very steamy):

 

And the sauna:

[ahecht]

Day 2: Monday, February 11th, 2013 - Part 6

 

I had intended to start each post with the obligatory picture of the elevator carpet and a link to that day's Compass, but I forgot about it earlier. So, with out further ado, I proudly present: Monday

 

We went back to the room and saw on the TV that we had made the U-Turn around Cuba in time to catch the sunset from our Balcony:

 

After sunset we started getting dressed for formal night. While my girlfriend was getting ready, I went down to the Captain's Welcome Aboard party. The Captain descended from the ceiling on the moving bridge and gave a very funny speech (He assured us that he was sure he knew where he was going because he had recently seen all 4 Pirates of the Caribbean movies). He also introduced the rest of the officers and senior staff. It was quite a spectacle, between the dramatic colored lighting, the orchestra playing below, and the impressive architecture of the promenade. This is the best picture I could get from my phone camera:

 

After the reception we headed to dinner. Again, I won't post my menu and food pictures here, but all my dinner pictures from Day 2 are available at https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=300858D26087A5BF!146

 

Dinner that night started with the very good chilled papaya and pineapple soup. I had the escargot which were good, but the snails are really just an excuse to get the garlic butter and cheese from the plate to your mouth. If you've never had escargot, the flavor and texture is very similar to mussels. My girlfriend had the shimp cocktail which was good but small.

 

For the entree I had the roasted duck, which was one of the best meals I had all week. My girlfriend had the filet, which was good but not great. We also shared the shrimp ravioli which were very tasty, although we suspected that the lobster cream sauce on the ravioli was the same lobster bisque that was on the menu as a starter that night.

 

I ordered the bittersweet chocolate souffle for dessert which was impressive looking but completely lacking in chocolate flavor. My girlfriend couldn't find anything that appealed to her on the regular dessert menu so I grabbed the kids menu off a nearby abandoned table. She ordered the banana split from that menu, which she was quite happy with (and which was better than my souffle). Moral of the story: don't be afraid to order from the kid's menu.

 

When we got back to the room, this cute little guy was waiting for us with the Compass for the next day:

 

We carefully placed him to on the couch and went to bed, since we had an early morning the next day.

 

Stay tuned for Grand Cayman and Quest tomorrow! Hopefully the following days' reports will be shorter...

Edited February 26, 2013 by ahecht

[Daghis]

Thank you so much for doing this review. I'm really enjoying reading it and the pictures are fantastic!

[BettyPC]

Hi Ahect! You are doing a fabulous job of documenting our cruise! Your pictures are fabulous & you hit a couple things that I missed entirely (where was I??) like the Captain's reception.

 

Thanks for posting all the great pictures! We had a great time & would love to do Indy again (with LOADs of the people we met from the Roll Call!!) I will subscribe so I get to see the rest of our trip!

 

Betty & Bill