Independence of the Seas Review
Way Too Long But Hopefully Helpful -- Spring Break, March 2014
Rating by category
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Our family of three – 60, 57 & 21 – took our first cruise on Royal Caribbean beginning March 15 after 4 previous cruises with Princess. Our choice to try RCI was based solely on timing and itinerary. We had one week available so the 8 night Eastern Caribbean cruise on Independence of the Seas gave us the most cruise time in our week. And our son had only done Western Caribbean trips. None of us were disappointed with our choice.
EMBARKATION – Against everyone’s better judgment, including our own, we took a chance and flew into Fort Lauderdale from Minneapolis on embarkation day without incident. We’d prearranged a taxi through All Stars Tours to ferry us from the airport to Pier 29 to catch up with our home for the next week. We were done at Baggage Claim by 1:30 and by 2:30 we were through cruise check-in, on board Independence of the Seas and investigating our stateroom with only one small hang-up. In reading some posts on Cruise Critic, we thought we could personally carry all of our luggage aboard. As aggressively explained by an individual outside the pier terminal that was not the case. We backtracked to the baggage porters with a little embarrassment to reluctantly surrender our large bags. Our checked bags appeared in our stateroom by 5:00 to a little relief.
CABIN -- We were able to secure stateroom 7408 on the starboard side after getting tipped to it by Cruise Critic reviews. We couldn’t have been more pleased at our luck in grabbing this cabin. The cabin wall to the outboard side is shared with a lightly used service stairway so there are only neighbors on one side. The width of that stairway is given to the balcony of this cabin resulting in a HUGE aft facing balcony. The balcony is equipped with two balcony chairs, a table and two deck lounge chairs with space left over. We moved the table from the cabin out to the balcony for extra stateroom floor space without overloading the balcony. Unlike the cabin one floor above with a hinged door to the balcony, 7408 has the expected full glass sliding door. To the starboard side, there’s a very large open porthole protected by a waist high railing for viewing in that direction. This cabin is classed as obstructed because of two poles planted in the balcony, but the balcony is so big we never found the poles to be any kind of problem.
Cabin Review
We were able to secure stateroom 7408 on the starboard side after getting tipped to it by Cruise Critic reviews. We couldn’t have been more pleased at our luck in grabbing this cabin. The cabin wall to the outboard side is shared with a lightly used service stairway so there are only neighbors on one side. The width of that stairway is given to the balcony of this cabin resulting in a HUGE aft facing balcony. The balcony is equipped with two balcony chairs, a table and two deck lounge chairs with space left over. We moved the table from the cabin out to the balcony for extra stateroom floor space without overloading the balcony. Unlike the cabin one floor above with a hinged door to the balcony, 7408 has the expected full glass sliding door. To the starboard side, there’s a very large open porthole protected by a waist high railing for viewing in that direction. This cabin is classed as obstructed because of two poles planted in the balcony, but the balcony is so big we never found the poles to be any kind of problem. The rest of the cabin was as great as the balcony. The doors to the shower are a big improvement over the shower curtains found on Princess. There’s room for a loveseat in the cabin in addition to the desk/vanity with chair. Speaking of the desk – the hairdryer is hardwired in a desk drawer. It’s there once you find it and that’s where it will stay. The refrigerator temperature is only cool and we found no way to adjust it. We asked our room steward to remove the items from the ‘frig, but all he could do was move the cans and bottles to a shelf in the cabin according to rule. We elected to keep the Pullman bed open all the time, and it took a few days to get adjusted to its located over the head end of the regular bed. We awoke one morning to a problem with the toilet, but it was fixed within an hour of contacting Maintenance. We wouldn’t hesitate a moment if we had the opportunity to have this same cabin again on a future cruise on Independence of the Seas.