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

[harryfat1]

 

Another guy taking pictures of the harbor as well

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

Technically the sail away was to be at 6 PM but I think they were running late as we were waking round and round on deck 12 but the ship didn’t look like it was in a hurry to pull out. Maybe they had couple stragglers late in coming back so the captain is waiting. Not as if Antigua is that far away nd I think the captain said he was going to sail at the leisurely 9 knots to get there.

 

So as we walked around, I took some twilight pictures of the pool deck area. I’m just amazed at how much low light these phones can capture and still have decent amount of detail from a hand held cell phone. The pool area is always nicely lid at night time. In the old days with the lowly older digital camera, you can never capture these scenes.

 

Now it’s so simple to just aim and click. No talent needed. Dummy see, dummy press a button and dummy looks good when people comment on the picture...

 

 

 

 

 

 

I call this the human soup

 

[harryfat1]

Anyway, after 6 something, it was time to go back and change to the formal wear again for Christmas night. As always, we have a show before dinner. Tonight’s show is the hypnotist. My overall impression as that he was ok. Not as much as I was hoping for.

 

 

[harryfat1]

Saw this holiday towel guy in the hallway on the way to dinner. Probably the most fancy/complex towel character I have ever seen.

 

 

OK, tonight is the “special” holiday dinner they were promising us over the PA system at the MDR the past couple days as the head waiter says they are cooking up something special for the holidays.

 

 

 

 

Guess I remembered to take a picture of the menu again tonight. The menu is Pomodoro with a special holiday thing on the side of ham and turkey. I guess that special holiday dinner is the “traditional” dinner from home with ham and turkey. Nah, I think I will pass on their special dinner. Certainly wouldn’t do the $79/pp special dinner at the specialty restaurants that RCI was trying to get people to sign up.

 

But my older one is more traditional and he wanted a traditional Christmas meal from home so he ordered the turkey. The younger stuck to his nightly beef dish. My wife and I got the lamb shank. That to me is the quintessential RCI cruise dinner food.

[harryfat1]

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

Between the main course and dessert, the waiters lined up at the staircase and sang a Christmas song. I can see the negative folks on CC shaking their heads and mutter this isn’t what they want in a cruise.

 

Maybe, maybe not.

 

I like these special entertainment venues. You can’t get this from any restaurant from home where the staff just stop serving and sing to the whole restaurant. Stop being cynical and just enjoy the face value of what is presented to you.

 

There are too many negative vibes out there.

 

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

So for dessert, I got the same type as from the Freedom the year before. The classic French log dessert for the holidays – Buche De Noel. Sounds and looks better than it tastes.

 

 

 

Now one advantage in cruising with little kids is there are extracurricular activities during some of the meals. The waiter likes to come and do extra stuff with them after dessert on many of the nights. Tonight he brought in extra napkin animal.

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

The girls got this for dessert

 

 

And after playing with their dad, they designed this instead - their version of Olof

 

 

Here is a cropped picture of us at dinner as it was taken with all 8 of us so I had to cut the picture in half to just show the 4 of us. Depending on if you are viewing this on PC monitor or cell phone, you may or may not be able to see my Loony Tunes Christmas Tie.

 

It should come as no surprise to anyone that I would have a cartoon Christmas tie, right?

 

 

OK, all done with dinner. Time to head out of MDR.

 

One last pic for the night of MDR

 

[harryfat1]

After dinner, it was time to visit the crazy aunt in the basement as we wanted to make sure she has enough to eat for her Christmas dinner (aka visiting the photographers). As we were all in the formal clothes and the guys all have Christmas ties on and my wife in her Christmas red dress, we wanted to take some family pictures. I won’t bore you folks by showing lots of those.

 

One final note is that if anyone plans to go on a Christmas cruise, note that many ladies wore red dresses on Christmas night dinner as well as folks walking around with Santa hats. We had 4 hats in our party as you saw my older one and I wearing those. Many people walking around the ship in Santa hats as well as in red outfits.

 

[suesnake2002]

As i look careful at your dinner picture, i did notice you had two desserts in front of you. You admit to the cake, but failed to mention the ice cream

 

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N920A using Tapatalk

[lbjen]

I wonder whether part of the issue with the rebuilding on the French side is that they don’t have a lot of major islands over there like Holland does, the Netherlands Antilles islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao are probably providing a lot of assistance on the Dutch side, I would imagine.

[harryfat1]

As i look careful at your dinner picture, i did notice you had two desserts in front of you. You admit to the cake, but failed to mention the ice cream

 

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N920A using Tapatalk

 

Hmmm, don't remember eating anything else that night. I know later on in the cruise, some of us got double desserts as the ice cream of the day sounded good. But this one looks like a sherbet and I typically don't eat that.

 

I guess I might have ordered a backup as I wasn't sure on the yule log since I wasn't that impressed with it on the Freedom but wanted to give it another shot as it was Christmas and the other options didn't strike my fancy.

[harryfat1]

I wonder whether part of the issue with the rebuilding on the French side is that they don’t have a lot of major islands over there like Holland does, the Netherlands Antilles islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao are probably providing a lot of assistance on the Dutch side, I would imagine.

 

Could be. I don't know all the inner workings between islands. Mailman just made it sound like it was a cash situation for the individual owners not repairing until they see the money from insurance. There may be other issues we don't know.

[SenatorsFan]

OK, Harry, now I have to put Utah on the travel bucket list. :cool:

 

Heather

[Disney Sheep]

Although I am enjoying your cruise report, I have to comment as well that I would love to know your itinerary for your Grand Canyon/Utah trip! We were briefly considering a Grand Canyon trip for end Feb (University reading week for our kids), but it was tough to just do a land trip without all kinds of planning - so we defaulted to cruising, on the IOS - so here I am taking notes on the ship, but I have to admit that a Grand Canyon trip is also on my someday list . Thanks for the great trip report(s).

[harryfat1]

OK, Harry, now I have to put Utah on the travel bucket list. :cool:

 

Heather

 

 

Yes, if you like rocks/mountains with lots of rocks, Utah is a must visit place along with Arizona.

 

There are 5 national parks in the state alone, on top of other state parks and other scenic places to see. We only went to 2 parks last year due to time constraints. We are going back this summer to knock off another two parks on the list. So hopefully I will have more rock pictures to share whenever I write my next trip report around the 2019/2020 time frame.

[harryfat1]

Although I am enjoying your cruise report, I have to comment as well that I would love to know your itinerary for your Grand Canyon/Utah trip! We were briefly considering a Grand Canyon trip for end Feb (University reading week for our kids), but it was tough to just do a land trip without all kinds of planning - so we defaulted to cruising, on the IOS - so here I am taking notes on the ship, but I have to admit that a Grand Canyon trip is also on my someday list ��. Thanks for the great trip report(s).

 

Hi,

 

Thanks for the compliment.

Yes, it does take more planning to do a road trip than a cruise.

With a cruise, all you need to do is make sure you get to the pier and then you are set. You can add independent tours if you like or just be lazy to walk around each port or do the ship’s excursions.

 

With a road trip, you have to plan for each night’s stay as well as scout out dinner places nightly if you don’t have condo/place to cook.

 

Here is a screen shot of our trip itinerary. Comes as no surprise it was done in Excel where you can easily customize it for additional columns to list things that are important to you.

 

Note that we didn’t go to Grand Canyon last year as we had other places we wanted to see. If Grand Canyon is important, you can either go to the north rim after visit to Antelope canyon or go down further south.

I don’t know where you will flying into. To see Utah, you can either start at Salt Lake City or Las Vegas or Arizona.

 

What I typically do is use several tabs of the web browser and go back and forth between them when I plan my routes. I typically start with Google maps and then select point A and then point B to see how far it is to get there. Then I go to new tab to trip advisor to see what hotels are in the area as well as any special visiting sites that I don’t know about around the city. I would also open third tab of Yelp to see what restaurants are decently priced around the town.

 

Once I have more or less mapped out where want to go and see, I go to each place’s official web site to request free brochures/booklets (i.e. Utah or Arizona state visitors’ sites) as I am old school and prefer something hard to touch and browse through. Once I get the written material, I might go back and tinker with the itinerary if I see something great that we want to see from the booklet.

 

So if you look at the list, I already shared pictures from 3 sites so far from the trip. Will have few more rest of the trip report next time my ADHD hits.

 

Hope this helps.

[harryfat1]

So after enough pictures from either our cameras or the ship based photographers, it’s time for the last official event of the night - The signature RCI 70’s and 80’s party at the Royal Promenade.

 

First comment is why did they schedule it for Christmas night? Many of us are still in formal clothes at 10:15 PM when the party started. It’s harder to dance in those clothes compared to the more casual clothes. They should have pushed this event onto day 6 instead since many parents probably had to get up early in the morning to stand in line at the Santa event that started around 8AM by the pool and after a long day in port, now have to suck it up late for the final event.

 

Another thing of note is that instead of calling it the 70’s party like the old days, they have gently nudge the timeline to be 70’s and 80’s as to include the younger folks that has no connection to the old disco era.

 

So my question to folks that cruised recently, is this at the discretion of the cruise director or this a fleet wide move to slowly move to the 80’s? I have seen on YouTube when the Indy is in Europe for the summer, they call this dance the British invasion or something. So just wondering if it was Indy that moved this to be more 80’s?

 

My kids always have fun at these events but they typically lament afterwards that the music is not in their era. I always laughed and say, of course, that’s because RCI is targeting my age group that listened to these songs back when we were younger. Since we are the paying customers (not the kids), these massive events cater to us. I’m sure at the teen center they have events with the more current music generation but my kids stopped attending those years ago.

 

So with the party being in the 80’s they chopped off songs from Village People like “In the Navy” from the 70’s era and substitute it with Cindy Lauper’s “Girls Just want to have fun”. It’s your personal preference on what you prefer.

 

Final note on this is similar to the previous night’s events, my younger one gave the camcorder to the old man to record as he wanted to be part of the dance party. So I had to juggle recording and taking pictures. So you folks get fewer pictures than you otherwise would.

 

The best place to stand in right in front of Michael Kors store for the party. The CD is right in front of you as they decent from the deck above.

 

 

OK, as this is a song/dance event, I will drop in more song links than usual. These are just the songs I remembered off the top of my head. I am sure there were many other songs I didn’t include.

 

A thought came to me that maybe for the next cruise trip report, I might upload few sample videos from either my cell phone or camcorder into YouTube. I have to make sure to scrub it for any personal pictures in there. But that’s later…

 

The typical kick off song is from theme song of the Rocky movie (how many young people even seen the movie series?)

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I33u_EHLI3w

 

Then we hit the disco era with the titan of the era – Bee Gees with Staying Alive

 

 

(WOW, 228 Million views? That's crazy high)

 

[harryfat1]

Time for some K.C. and the Sunshine Band on how he likes things

 

 

 

 

 

Moving onto the trippy song, “Do the Hustle”

 

 

[harryfat1]

 

You can’t have the 70’s disco party without THE BEST PARTY DANCE SONG of all time, YMCA, from the Village People. Or if you are really drunk, you just call it YYYY as you will just be stuck at the Y pose and can’t move as the people move onto the other letters.

 

No worries as they will come back to the Y position sooner or later. It’s like the old school clock where if it’s broken, it would be correct twice a day. With YYYY, you would be at least 25% correct.

 

I did notice that for this party, they were missing the Indian Chief Costume guy. They just don’t seem to be very 70’s like on this sailing…

 

To mix things up, here is the Minions version of YMCA

 

 

 

Time to get the people moving about and do the “love train” as it was called in that era. The next generation call it the Conga Line. Similar theory. Sorry, no pics of the love train as the whole family were part of the train meandering through the royal promenade (including me). Can’t take pictures when both hands are busy…

[harryfat1]

Alrighty, time to slide over to the 80’s to be inclusive of the younger crowd.

 

Here’s Whitney Houston who wants to dance with somebody tonight at the RP

 

 

Cindy Laupder chiming in that she just wants to have fun

 

 

(This one is crazy high at 500 million views)

 

 

Brandon and family

 

 

 

That's my wife in red

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

 

 

Here’s the King of the 80’s, Michael Jackson with the Thriller song

 

 

Time to hit the rock music scene with Bon Jovi. Crank it up, baby…

 

 

 

OK, had enough of music? Yeah, I’m tired too.

 

With the party all done, time to go to Café Promenade to get some ice water to cool off. I think we all went back to the cabin and took another quick shower to wash off the sweat from dancing in our suits and ties.

[harryfat1]

Oh yeah, it was time open the Christmas present from RCI’s Santa…Yes, that was when we found out what was in the present from Santa at 11 PM - NOT hours ago at 9 AM (or last week in trip writing time) when some impatient people couldn’t’ wait… ;p

 

 

[harryfat1]

As I have no more pictures, this concludes the trip report for day 5. This was the special Christmas Day event. We took by far the most number of pictures on day 5 as it was full of activities, with the special Christmas event day/various stops at St. Maarten/70’s party. Day 8 will be a much shorter by comparison.

 

So just housekeeping comment here – if anyone is new to RCI cruising and I mentioned something that is weird/odd to you, be sure to speak up and ask a question. Most likely I won’t have an answer for you as I am as clueless as they come but there are many veteran cruisers that can help. Hey, if nothing else, we will just make up some theory like the half full orange juice from awhile back.

 

I know social media places like CC can be a scary and cruel place at times as you worry that if you ask a “dumb question”, some people out there will blast you for asking a silly question and you should have research it on your own.

 

That’s not how we do things here on this trip report. If you have question, just ask. I’m old school and I still believe in the old adage, there’s no such thing as a dumb question. You can’t know everything in the beginning. We were all newbie at one time or another. You gotta start somewhere. So ask if you don’t understand…

[JamesEM]

Thanks for the walk down the 70/80's musical memory lane, I wounder if the missing YMCA Indian is another RCL cut back or if he was sick.