Quick review of Indy

[hawkfanI]

Sitting in the Ft. Lauderdale airport waiting to catch a flight home so I have a couple hours to kill! I'll try to keep this short and the opinions will be based on previous cruises with Celebrity.

Embarkation: Went smoothly, porters took all checked luggage from the bus and presented to our room later in the day. We were onboard by noon, cabins weren't ready until 12:30. Had lunch at the Windjammer.

Dining: Windjammer is a zoo, totally unorganized, hundreds of people vying for tables at the same time. Food quality was OK but there was no variety in the menu at breakfast and lunch, same thing everyday.

 

Just called to board our flight to Atlanta, I'll finish there!

[NorbertsNiece]

Looking forward to reading the rest of your review. Have to agree about the table situation in WJ. When Indy is full you have to juggle your eating time to even see the tables let alone sit down or find someone from your group who has already sat down.....

[hawkfanI]

OK, made it to Atlanta, Wifi charge here is $7.95 per day, its a little expensive but we have a 5 hour layover so what else you going to do?

I'll finish with dining: We ate at the dining room only twice, both on formal nights which were Monday & Thursday on our 6 day cruise. Food there was good but not great. Monday they offered a "filet of beef" which I think most of took as a steak but instead it was several slices of beef which looked and tasted like it probably was prime rib in a previous life. Thursday was lobster night. One thing I'll say good for them was that they brought you as many lobster tails as you wanted. After I finished my meal our waiter came around offering more so, I had one more. I think one couple in our group actually had 4 lobster tails. the steak entree' and the pasta entree', obviously large eaters. Tuesday night we ate at Portifino's. The food was really good but not really served in the Italian fashion we had experienced on the Grand Princess specialty restaurant. The wait staff barely had time to serve our meals let alone be social. Wednesday we pretty much skipped dinner altogether, our group was worn out from a day at Tequila Beach. Friday night we ate at Chops. The waitress brought out a table with a platter of all the meats they were offering. They were some really nice looking cuts of meat. Wife and I had the New York strip since we had the filet in Portifino's. Side/vegetables were brought out family style so you could pick and choose as you wanted. Probably the biggest difference between Portifino's and Chops is that we felt service was difinitely a cut above in Chops! Comparing the overall experince between Celebrity and RCCL was the dining experience and service. After being on two Celebrity cruises RCCL was a disappointment.

Cabin: We had cabin 1702 aft. Probably the best cabin we've had on a cruise. Balcony was massive for a D1 cabin. Other than the suites, 1702 balcony was bigger than 1700 or 1704. Rooms were pretty consistent in size, the balcony made the difference here.

Overall ship! Beautiful!!! Definitely the most impressive ship I've been on. As you would expect, spotless everywhere. The grand promenade is impressive in size and decor. Probably the most frustrating part of the shop were the elevators. If you just want to move up or down a couple of decks just take the stairs because the elevators are slow and always tons of people waiting to get on one. I was kind of suprised by age of cruisers on this cruise. Much more of the 70+ crowd than I was expecting. More so than I remember being on the Celebrity cruises. Very few grade school children, a few that were in the teen/high school level.

Ports: We had a great excursion with Extreme Cave tubing, JP was our guide and he was as informed as he was entertaining. Before we got off the van before our zip line tour, he had everyone's name memorized.

Most of us were a little insecure with the zipline tour but the staff their were very professional and there was never any thought given to the safety of the tour. Next we did the cave tubing which was relaxing and really cool to be inside a cave/cavern for about 45 minutes in a fairly strong current. Only downfall here was that the water was as they told us "refreshing". On the way back JP stopped at little hole in the wall open air restaurant/cantina. Food there was excellent and reasonable.

Costa Maya: Got off the ship around 10:30 and walked the pier which was about a half mile to the tourist trap area. Walked around long enough to satisfy the women's need to shop and then headed to the back of the complex where a guy was offering a day at Tequila Beach for $50 ea. It's probably an expected routine but we were able to get him down to $20 each since there were 6 of us. We paid $3 each to catch a bus over to Tequila Beach and spent most of the day there enjoying all we could drink along with all of the appetizers we could consume. We were also able to get what they advertised as a 30 minute massage for $20, it was more like 40 minutes and was wonderful. The cheapest masage on ship was $129 for a half hour. After spending some time on the beach we walked about 200 yards where they had a variety of shops and bars to check out, which we did for about an hour. Thursday was Cozumel, we had booked a dune buggy cruise but it as so overcast and cold we opted to do some shopping and then return to the shop.

Dembarkation: All I can say is slow!! I think it really took longer to get off the boat than it did to get on. It was just crazy trying to get a cab. When picking up your luggage, spend an extra $10 and hire the porter. He really got us through the lines quickly!! If anyone has questions, please feel to do so. R-

[maggieq]

I am just learning now that the port of FLL is much different than MIA. I can't believe that they would start express debarkation much later than they do in MIA.....

 

For our cruise on the Indy, the website shows the ship getting into FLL at 6:30 a.m....this is earlier than the FOS or LOS in MIA....do you know of any reason why they would push debarkation back rather than make it the same as MIA?

 

Thanks.

[The Big Booper]

Any buffet restaurant on a cruise ship will be a zoo, especially on boarding day. Our method, we circle looking for a table, after we get the table, one of us sits (me) while DW gets her vittles then I go. She daintly nibbles, I vacuum.:D

 

At least in the WJ, with all the redundant action stations there is never any big line waiting to get the food. We always walk deep into the WJ unless we see an open table in the mid areas.

 

Works for us, we DESPISE cafeteria lines such as on Princess and Carnival.

 

<edit> On the recent Indy TA, since the ship was still in Brit mode, we had changing fare for breakfast and lunch, as they rotated shephards pie, fish pie, etc at lunch. The same with breakfast. There are so many choices at breakfast, even the biggest nibbler could not have everything on their plate at one session. I think the OP was looking for rotating specialty dishes at breakfast which I don't think RCI does. You could go three days without repeating yourself at breakfast.

[hawkfanI]

Any buffet restaurant on a cruise ship will be a zoo, especially on boarding day. Our method, we circle looking for a table, after we get the table, one of us sits (me) while DW gets her vittles then I go. She daintly nibbles, I vacuum.:D

 

At least in the WJ, with all the redundant action stations there is never any big line waiting to get the food. We always walk deep into the WJ unless we see an open table in the mid areas.

 

Works for us, we DESPISE cafeteria lines such as on Princess and Carnival.

 

<edit> On the recent Indy TA, since the ship was still in Brit mode, we had changing fare for breakfast and lunch, as they rotated shephards pie, fish pie, etc at lunch. The same with breakfast. There are so many choices at breakfast, even the biggest nibbler could not have everything on their plate at one session. I think the OP was looking for rotating specialty dishes at breakfast which I don't think RCI does. You could go three days without repeating yourself at breakfast.

 

On our previous Celebrity cruises the staff was always available to find you a place to sit, not so on the Indy, you were on your own. Buffet's were always much more organized on the Celebrity as well. On the other hand I might mention, if you want to eat at Johny Rockets, they open at 2:00 we got there at 2:08 and they were full already, we had to wait about 35 minutes to get in. The food was great as was the entertainment but I don't think if I would have waited that long if we weren't the first in line after the after the initial filling. The host told us it would only be 15, 20 minutes tops.