This was our first ever cruise, we spent a fair bit of time researching different cruise company's and reading reviews on here, we are a family with 3 teenagers and my wife is in a wheelchair so we needed a range of activities, once we settled on Royal Caribbean and the Independence of the seas we then had to choose a stateroom we were offered the family ocean view on deck 9 which sleeps 6 so we booked it, but after some more research we discovered the same stateroom on deck 8 was much bigger so we switched.

We traveled to Southampton the day before and stayed in a travelogde, on embarkation day we arrived at 10am after ten minutes we were unloaded, parked and in departures and onboard by 11am, we headed for the top deck to start our excited first look and we were not disappointed it was huge and spotless clean, soon after we headed for the windjammer which was a little busy but nothing like others have stated.!!

My wife and I love the London west-end shows so we went to everyone onboard and all were very good infact we would have paid to see any one of them even our sons started to go. Our youngest joined the teens club so we never saw him he loved it there was always something for them to do, we spent most evenings in the pyramid lounge as the rock band (Rock the Boat) were just great and the quiz in between there performance was good fun for all. There was so much to do you should never be bored. My wife went to the spa she had three treatments and was never pressured into buying anything. Read more