Independence of the Seas Review

Made traveling with a 1 year old easy!

Review for the Western Caribbean Cruise on Independence of the Seas
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Panda417
2-5 Cruises • Age 40s

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Sail Date: Dec 2018
Cabin: Junior Suite
Traveled with children

We always travel RC, but we chose this ship because it was affordable and had a Royal Tots program with a nursery. Getting on the ship was super easy and hassle free. We went straight to the Windjammer for some food and we found it very easy to find food to feed my 15 month old. We had done baby led weaning so she had been on solids for awhile now. But even newly eating solid food babies will be find at the windjammer. Anything we couldn't find (such as milk and straws) we just asked and it appeared :) The Nursery opened at 1pm for the open house and registration. We were there early and on line just like many other parents. We registered our daughter, signed the paperwork and reserved time slots for her to be dropped off. The nursery is open from 9am until at least midnight. It may have been later, but we never used it after dinner. We only brought our daughter there for a couple hours each day. She had a blast there and the girls in the nursery were just so amazing and so sweet. The other great thing about this ship was the open play space for the toddlers. It was great! A safe place for our daughter to run around, meet some new friends (if other kids were there) and burn off energy. The open play area was open from 9am to 5pm. One nice thing was that the toys were cycled each day so it never got boring :)

On this cruise we decided to get a junior suite so we would have the tub. There are ways around not needing a tub, but I found that it made it easier for us to have the tub and the extra space. We had a pack-n-play delivered to our room and that took up a bunch of space too. But the suite was just enough space for her to run around. Oh I forgot to mention, we were able to borrow toys from the nursery to bring to our room!! They have several bags of toys that are free to borrow and you can trade them in for different bags if you want. We kept our bag the whole time because she liked the toys a lot. This little thing that they offer was priceless. So with the room being big enough we were able to let her run around and play. We moved the glass table behind a chair in the corner so she couldn't get to it and hurt herself. Of course all of the drawers are reachable by her, but she left them alone. Our daughter also loved going on the balcony and since it was all covered with glass, we didn't have to worry about her falling through. The stateroom was basically as childproof as you could get :) Having the balcony was nice and we thought we would use it more during nap time, but we ended up napping too hahaha

We took our daughter out to the splash pad one day. I didn't realize that the area for the babies was a really tiny area so I got "yelled" at to move to the baby area. But the baby area is plenty big when there are only a few babies and the parents there. There is even water slide for the babies. It was a perfect size. We would send her down on her belly feet first and even at the bottom in the pool of water, it wasn't too deep that she was under water. She had so much fun!!

Cabin Review

Junior Suite

Cabin J3

The cabin was nice and roomy. The closet was huge. There was not really anything special about the cabin. It is the same as a balcony room except it is wider and longer. The big difference is the bathroom. There is more space and it has a tub, which was something we wanted since we had the baby.

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