We sailed the Independence of the Seas May 17-24, 2015 for our 10 year wedding anniversary. This was my 4th cruise and my hubby's 2nd. I have been on 3 with Royal and 1 with Carnival. I've been on the Majesty, Freedom, and now Independence of the Seas. Freedom and Independence are sister ships in the same class so the layout was pretty much the same. But I did notice some distinct differences between the two. The staff on Freedom were way more friendly and the service overall was better. In particular, the waiters and bartenders on Indy just seemed to be in a bad mood most of the time. I greatly missed the waiters that used to walk around poolside with drink trays. I asked one waiter what happened, why were those gone and I was told it was because of the drink packages. Now that a lot of people are buying the drink packages, there's no incentive for the waiters to earn extra tips because they already tack on an 18% gratuity to your drink package total. So you had to get up and go to one of the bars by the pool (sometimes only one was open) and then wait a long time to get a drink. I had read in other reviews that the wait times for drinks had gotten a lot longer on Royal ships, but I had hoped maybe that wouldn't be our experience. Well, it was. Everywhere we went we found ourselves waiting, and waiting, for drinks. And the service was lacking. I think there was maybe only 1 or 2 bartenders in the entire 7 days that made me feel welcome at all. Such a change from Freedom, where the service was one of the high points of our trip. Another change that I noticed: less shows and activities, things to do on the ship. Freedom had more things going on during the day and at night. We often found ourselves just strolling around looking for something to do in the evenings after dinner. Dinner was another sore point, but it was self inflicted to some degree. I chose the early dinner, assigned seating. We had done that on previous cruises and enjoyed meeting our table mates. Not the case on this cruise. The first night there were 4 other people and the second night that changed to just us and 2 other people: a man and his elderly father. While they were lovely people, nothing against them, we were just not comfortable sitting with them and hearing the same stories over and over. Lesson learned: next time book the My Time Dining. The food was average in the dining room and less than average in the Windjammer buffet. The buffet was really lacking in variety and the food just didn't taste so good. I can't eat hamburgers & pizza every lunch and dinner, and a lot of what they had out was food like that. Our cabin was lovely, an ocean view on Deck 2. Hubby and I both slept wonderfully. Plenty of room for the two of us and all our stuff. The room and ship overall were clean. We did have a couple days where there was a strong paint odor on our deck only, but I think that is because they were painting/repairing things. It wasn't a huge deal.

The ports we stopped at were Labadee, Falmouth Jamaica, Grand Cayman Cayman Islands, and Cozumel. For me Jamaica was the highlight of our trip. We climbed Dunn's River Falls and had a blast. We also saw interesting caves there. If you get the chance, definitely check out Dunn's River Falls. It is a beautiful spot and a lot of fun. Labadee was a beach day, and we found the beach to be very rocky. We didn't find out til later that night that there was another nicer beach we could have gone to on that island, that was kind of hidden. I'll have to remember that if we ever go back. Cayman was absolutely gorgeous. We had no excursions planned, just hopped in a taxi and went to Royal Palms, section of 7 Mile beach. There was a restaurant/bar there, and chairs you can rent. It was probably the most beautiful beach I've ever seen, white powdery sand and crystal blue water. Everything that you can imagine, and then some. We are already talking about going back to Grand Cayman, making a trip just there. It was such a pretty place and I wish we had time to see more of it. We saw Mayan ruins in Cozumel and that was really interesting. Then we went to a beach for a quick swim and ate some authentic Mexican food at the Tiki hut on the beach, it was delicious.

As I said, I found the entertainment on the ship to be extremely lacking. But there was one exception: Synergy Band. This live band, with lead singer Katrina Love, was excellent. They were so much fun. High energy, got you up and dancing. The lead singer was so entertaining. We made a point to go to whatever bar they were playing at. The main shows they had in the theater were very lackluster in my opinion. One night they had a juggler. Really? A juggler? That's it? Wow. The standard Love & Marriage game with the newlyweds and couples married a long time was fun. The comedian they had the first night was hilarious. But no big production shows, no musicals/dancing. We missed the ice shows but I had seen one on the Freedom, so wasn't a big deal. And then one night there was a Pool Party with music and dancing, which was fun. But when they brought out the food for this party, after making a big deal about how there would be food, it was just cold pizza from the pizza place on Deck 5, Sorrento's. Really RCCL? Just cold pizza? I remember being on the Majesty and them serving full-on buffets and even a Midnight Chocolate party. Seems those days are gone. And another things I didn't like is how they nickel & dime you now. Everywhere you look on the ship they are trying to sell you something. And even though we paid $800 for the premium drink package, my husband was told that a Cafe Mocha after dinner would cost extra, that it wasn't covered by the package. That's just one example, we found many things like that. But overall we had fun. It was much needed time for the two of us without any kids or work. And I would still go on another cruise for sure. But after this one, I'm inclined to maybe check out other cruise lines.