Background I shall attempt to give a good and descriptive review regarding my recent experience on RCCL's Independence of the Seas 8 --day Eastern Caribbean cruise. For some background, the cruisers consisted of a family of five, two adults and three children ages 15, 17, and 22. We had an owner's suite for the parents and two inside cabins (that adjoined each other) for the children. Now a bit of history is needed as to why we had two inside cabins instead of just one....originally, we had my nephew and another family friend who were going to join us, and so had an inside cabin that holds (4) and an inside cabin that holds (2). However, at the last minute both the family friend and my nephew backed out. Because it was already past the deadline for returning any funds, we decided to just leave things as is with the girls in one room and my son in the other by himself. This was allowed as we had someone over 21 who was related to him in an adjoining cabin. The cabins were slightly down the hall from our suite. We are repeat cruisers, and have been on both NCL and RCCL ships in the past. Our C&A status was gold for this cruise but now platinum since we have finished.

Travel to Port

We reside on the West Coast, and as such we departed and scheduled our arrival one day early. The cruise departed on a Saturday, so we flew in and arrived by Friday evening. We booked the Hyatt Pier 66, with two rooms adjoining. We did not use the cruise pre-cruise air service, but booked ourselves and we had no issues other than it being a very long flight and day, which was expected. We were able to gather our luggage and proceeded outside FLL where we were able to get a mini-van cab within a short period of time that would fit all of us. The cab fare from FLL to the Hyatt for all 5 of us was $19. We ended up giving him $30 total due to the amount of bags he had to lift. We had no issues at the Hyatt checking in. A porter took our luggage up and they upgraded the kid's room to a junior suite to give them some more space and to give us an adjoining room. The rooms were clean, decent and the pool and hot tub were welcome diversions after the long flight. We had a decent meal at the hotel restaurant to celebrate our arrival. Overall, while the hotel and dinner was what I consider "pricey", the service was good and the hotel staff was friendly and very courteous. In the morning, we skipped breakfast (although the hotel does have a fairly extensive buffet for approx. $20 per person, and a sit down made to order breakfast menu, also what I consider pricey), as we knew we would be getting on the ship shortly. We checked out at 11:30am to head to the port and were pleased to find that the hotel offered van service directly to the pier and conveniently it was outside and waiting even though we had plans to call a cab. The fare was $11 per person, plus a tip so we ended up paying $60. While I also thought this was a bit spendy, considering the baggage and the convenience we were fine paying it. We arrived at the port at 11:45, and this is where the chaos started... Read more