In search of penguins we took a short 5 night cruise from Barcelona, the first of the 2013 season following her transatlantic crossing. Boarding was the quickest we have ever known , there was no one in the Diamond line and we were on board within minutes. Someone else we spoke with said it took over an hour so perhaps we just got lucky. We have cruised on Independence before so we were familiar with the layout and the facilities, but we have not cruised on RCI for approx. 4 years (having only cruised with X and ACC in recent years) so we were interested in seeing the changes and whether we liked them or not.

The first major changes were structural with the introduction of the big screen. It didn't seem to be used much, they were going to show movies in the evening but the weather was not good. DH got very excited when he saw that the Chelsea game was going to be live on Thursday evening until I reminded him we disembarked on Thursday morning.

New menus in the dining room , the options have been severely cut back; and there was no Videlia Onion tart any more, and no Indian options; however we didn't starve and the food was always hot and quickly served. Dinner in Chops was excellent as usual. And we got our burger fix in JRs. Windjammer is looking tired, and the melamine plates desperately need replacing. The apple juice at breakfast was so watered down to make it undrinkable. Read more