We have sailed on Princess, NCL and Carnival but RCC is our favorite cruise line. We love the Oasis class, Allure, however, we were taking my mom on her 80th birthday celebration and wanted a shorter sail, so decided on Independence of the Sea. We sailed on Thanksgiving (11/24-11/28) with one port call in Cozumel.

Embarkation was easy, but Port Everglade is under construction so the ramp to the ship was quite steep rather than the zip zag approach usually used. This was quite difficult for my mom to navigate. We ended up getting her a wheel chair and found that the ship is not wheelchair friendly to the extent we would have liked, but what can you do? We would normally take the stairs to avoid the 'rush hour' crowding, but had to endure it with a wheelchair in tow- and had to wait for an elevator that wasn't already crowded as the wheelchair needed room....we did a lot of waiting.

We chose the Solarium for our sunning and found it a free for all trying to get a lounge chair. People had their personal effects on everything but no one was there. I saw one spot and went for the lounge and the woman on the lounge next to it threw her towel (she was using it as a pillow) down on the chair as I went to sit on it saying it was 'reserved for her friend'. Children were in the solarium area, and it was ok because 'they are well behaved'. Yes, but they are taking up the seats and swimming in the kids pool...We don't drink a lot, but do like a refreshing drink while sun bathing. Where were the servers? The one day we did track one down, he took off with our room card and never came back. We had to go 'in search of' to find him. He was in the back behind the bar (on break I guess?), came out with our drinks and room card 45 min after we ordered AND tracked him down and we had to still give a Service charge of 18%! Seriously? Read more