Quick Review - Indy 8 day Eastern Carib March 14, 2015

[Toddcan]

Just got off the Indy 8 day Eastern Route. Posting a quick review, and some things I noticed/learned.

 

Boarding Date: Sat March 14, 2015

Ship: Independence of the Seas.

Route: Eastern Carib (Ft. Lauderdale- St. Marten - St. Kitts - San Juan - Labadee - Ft. Lauderdale)

Cabin: 9406 (Aft Balcony - cat E1 (I think))

 

PreCruise

Stayed at the Hyatt Place 17th St Convention Center. VERY nice hotel with a full breakfast included. Rate was $182/night, which was booked only though valuetrips.com (many links for this in the Fla departure forum). You could book a shuttle to the port, but we took a taxi. The fare was $12.00 before tip. They also have a shuttle to pick you up from FLL airport if you arrive before 10pm. Highly recommended at that price!

 

Embarkation

Very quick and painless. Arrived at port approx 10:45am. Taxi dropped us off at the baggage porters with our luggage. Got in line, and waited maybe 20-30 minutes. Saw a sign saying "Boarding will start at appox 12:30pm". Doors opened at approx 11:00-11:15 am (was too excited to look at my watch). Walked up to the check in desk - no line at all for either the Gold line, or the normal line- walked right up. The Platinum+ lines were busier. Finished check in within 5 minutes. Agent said boarding will start approx 12:30pm It was now approx 11:30. However, we walked right onto the ship!

 

Cabin

Really missed our Junior Suite from last year. The balcony on our cabin (9406) was awesome - facing aft - had 2 loungers and 2 chairs. However, once we had the JS last year - could not help but notice the reduced space - especially with the bathroom(shower stall) and closet and in cabin seating. I would pay $50 more per person per day for a JS now. Really have a great appreciation for the JS now.

 

The cabin was still great though! Very adequate. Room attendant was great - but we used the "Please Make Up Room" and "Do Not Disturb" cards religiously (at his request). Had towel animals 4 of the 8 nights. I asked for ice on day 2 - he kept the ice bucket full twice per day for the rest of the cruise without any more conversation about it - nice touch.

 

Beds are wonderully comfortable! Love the memory foam topper, or whatever they add.

M&M

The CC M&M was awesome! It was nice to put a face to some of the screen names from our roll call! We had a small gift exchange afterwards too.

 

Royal had a few trays of pastries, coffee, water, etc and gave away small trinkets to everyone, and had a raffle where 12-15 items were raffled off. Bottles of wine/champagne. Internet packages. Art work, etc. I was impressed. One family, cruising for the first time, won 4-5 items.

 

Dining/Food

Ate at Johnny Rockets (x2), Chops (x2), Giovanni(x1), and the rest in the MDR.

 

LOVE JR. Love the fries&rings. The "#12 burger is awesome" - burger with a spicy kick. Milkshakes were awesome! (BOGOF with Gold or higher) Cover charge: $5.95 pp

 

Chops was also great food. shrimp cocktail was huge, and out of this world! Filet Mignon both times - perfectly done! Dessert was amazing- tried the Red Velvet Cake (better than I remembered!). However... I am not sure I will book it next time - at $70 per couple - it's not $70 better than the MDR. Our reservations were 6:30 and 7:00, and the restaurant was about 60% full - so they are filling the seats well enough.

 

Giovanni's -not a fan. Didn't like Portofino's either. Not a fan at all of their dessert menu. Will not eat there again. Main meal was OK - I didn't see anything that appealed to me, so I ordered the steak - was good, but I was thinking of a nice Italian dinner. Personal preference - I hear a lot of people love this place. Not for us.

 

MDR - we were totally impressed! The menu's were quite appealing. Lobster night was great! Good selection, good desserts.

 

Promenade Cafe Coconut Ranger cookies are oddly addictive! Found ourselves grabbing them 3-4 times during the cruise as we were walking by late at night.

 

One thing I found very interesting is the dress code notes in the Compass. Only the Speciality Restaurant section had a request not to wear short pants. In the MDR section - all it said was "Bathing Suite attire and bare feet are not allowed". Nothing about shorts. I guesstimate 10-15% wore shorts to dinner. The exception was formal night - there were very few shorts. Didn't bother me a bit, but I did take notice of the wording in the compass.

 

Internet:

I saw unlimited internet for one device for $120 for the 8 days. I went to the Internet Online section and sat at one of the computers to sign up. With my gold discount, I got 10% off - niice. But, after signing up, I tried logging in with my tablet - no go! If you sign up in the internet online area (on a wired computer), - the package does not include WIFI. Did not know that.

 

I went to customer relations desk for clarification. They refunded my amount, and I signed up on my tablet. However, the 10% deal was not offered anymore. I didn't even notice, and I signed up - Charging the full $120. I went back to customer desk, and they took off the charge. I could no longer sign up - not sure why. I went back to my cabin to get my smart phone - maybe there was a problem signing up multiple times on one device. I was able to sign in. Because of all of the hassle (most my fault), they actually comped me internet for the week one two devices ($180 value). Good thing is was free, because in our cabin (deck 9 aft), the reception was spotty. If I was on the balcony, or in the cabin, it would lose signal about every 4-5 minutes, and automatically log back in with no problem. However on deck at the pool, it was decent reception. Very slow though - pics took a long time to load. I tried to long into speedtest.net, but this did not work as they could not fund a nearby network to test from. If I was paying $180 per seek for this coverage in our cabin, I would have been upset. Perhaps he recognized that I was in the aft, and coverage was going to be spotty. If internet is important to me next cruise (I loved it!), I will likely book a JS on the hump area. :)

 

Promenade/Shopping

Indy store selection sucks! Very few logo items - crummy Tshirt selection. Lots of british candies. Luckily this was out second time on the Indy, and I had all the stuff we wanted.

 

We bought a nice Invicta watch for me, and Guess purses for my DW. The Invicta watch prices were "70% off retail", but since I had internet, I checked online. Prices on board are approx the same price (within $10) of the online prices- before shipping, so I felt good. DW swears the Guess purse prices were very good during their promotion. Not sure what a woman can do with over 12 different purses, but I have been married 29 years, and I know enough to realize that what I think doesn't matter - so I don't give a second thought to it :D

 

Pool Deck

Spent all of our time in the Solarium. Hot tubs were never full except for a few times on Sea Days. Pool was a lot warmer than I remembered - was very nice! Spent a lot of time here. Loved it. Didn't notice any real "chair hogs". We did notice several people around us who were in the same loungers all day. They would leave for 30 mins for lunch, and return - no problems. We spent one full day there from 9:30am until 3:30pm - and notice a lot of other people doing the same. When we wanted a sunny day for tanning for shorter periods, we went to deck 12 - lots of loungers up there - even at 1pm on a sea day.

 

Sprinkles frozen yogurt station had one side closed, but the line ups on the one side were not terribly long - if I remember, it opened up at 11am? Never more than 20 people in line when I noticed.

Cruise Director

Ricky Matthews was great! I liked him a lot more than Geoff Eaton from our last Indy cruise. Ricky is high energy. But, I think CDs are like food - different strokes for different folks.

 

Ports

St. Marten - booked the Bernard's Tour #1 (short one). I loved the French side more than the Dutch side. Spent some time in Marigot, the capital of the French side - had lunch at the BEST pastry shop I've ever ate at - even better than the multiple Paris pattiseries we've visited -the place was called Sarafina's. The milles feullies and pain au chocolate were both amazing. Stopped at Maho beach to see the KLM 747 land - VERY cool! Other than that - was not very impressed with St. Marten. But.. in all fairness, we did not spend any time in Phillpsburg shopping area - I hear it's decent.

 

St. Kitts - booked the ship's excursion on the Sugar Train Railway/Catamaran sail. This was amazing! Highly recommended! We've stayed on St. Kitts for a 2 week land vacation a few years ago, and loved it. Absolutely love St. Kitts!

 

San Juan - walked around town, did some shopping, and took a horse/buggy tour of the town ($40 total for 2 people - 20-25 min tour). There is a CVS drugstore across the street from the dock - we stopped there and grabbed some pop for our cabin - looks like a lot of other people go there too - most common items - munchies and drinks.

 

Labadee -Favorite port by FAR. Had a cabana (Nellies Over the Water #2). Was amazing. We got access to the Barefoot beach buffet for lunch - all we did was ask our attendant. Not sure if this is only by request, or standard procedure. I bought another 3 pcs of 3'x2' original art. I think this makes 9 pcs in total in our last 4 trips. Absolutely love Haitian art. I speak Haitian Creole, so it was nice to haggle in their mother tongue. This day was WAY too short for us. I could spend a week in Labadee. Water was a little too cloudy for any sort of snorkeling (mediocre on a good day)- so a floating mat was our activity of choice. Love, Love, Love Labadee.

 

Overall

The 8 day itinerary was perfect! I give this a 9/10

Edited March 23, 2015 by Toddcan

[graby5401]

Toddcan- Was Ajay your room attendant? We were in 9404 on our February 14 cruise.

[brew99]

Toddcan - great review. We were on the Indy as well and just returned today after a night in Ft Lauderdale. First time on RCI for us and was quite impressed. A few things stood out:

 

Not Over-crowded - even though this sailing was completely sold out (lots of school breaks including ours in Ontario), I rarely felt like the ship was too crowded. The pools were busy on sea days but not overwhelming. MDR was quite full but it did not detract from service. All other venues were easy to manage and find a seat.

 

Ship the right size - while massive, it felt manageable and well planned out. I have heard of others complaining of Oasis class being too big but the Indy felt just about right.

 

Great itinerary - when looking back in Sept/Oct I wanted an itinerary that offered interesting ports of call plus a private island type experience having previously been to Castaway Cay with Disney. Very happy with this itinerary and with Labadee.

 

Skip the Wifi - while it was a little painful it was good for us and our kids to be without for the week. For a quick fix, restaurants and bars in port offered free wifi to paying customers.

 

Food was really good all around - MDR quality of food was impressive and we liked both Chops and Giovanni's. Most of our group actually liked Giovanni's better than Chops.

 

Service - all around very good. MDR staff were excellent and everyone seemed in good spirits across the ship. An area for improvement however could be wait staff in some of the lounges and in the pub when sometime it seemed like they disappeared for a long time.

 

Overall, an excellent time!

[Ken at the beach]

Glad you had a great trip.:)

[Toddcan]

Glad you had a great trip.:)

 

Ken! I was thinking about you. In St. Marten, an AIDA ship from Germany was in port. All (most) of the balconies had hammocks - all the same style and colour, so it's certain that they come with, or are an option to the cabin.

 

How was yours?

[cruiseclues]

Absolutely Great Review...excellent info for a quick review & especially liked the WiFi info. :):):):)