Bungee trampolining with virtual reality and laser tag on a cruise ship. The revamped Independence of the Seas has these things and more!!

So I’ve just got back from a mini cruise on Independence of the Seas, a perk of the job luckily and I have been lucky enough to sample some of the new delights that they have put on-board in their recent refit.

As always, living in Southampton I was wowed by the size of the ship on arriving at port. It is bigger than the majority of ships that come into the port, so easily recognizable.

So what did I think?

The first question for me regarding this was whether I would ENJOY the size and the razzmatazz that Royal Caribbean had to offer, in truth my feelings were mixed. I felt even though on the outside it was beautifully made I wasnt a fan of the style of the ship in truth, I prefer something a bit more classically stylish and less razzmatazz. For families its absolutely perfect but would I go on a ship like this for a relaxing holiday?

Possibly not.

Saying that this might also have been to do with it being a 2 night sailing mini cruise which does pull in the more booze cruise elements so that was at play as well.

Size wise once the public areas filled up they really filled up which made for a great atmosphere in some of the bars and the promenade but would be interesting to see on a longer cruise if the crowds would thin out a bit . 

I didn’t have a reference point from before the refit as hadn’t been on Indy but Royal have extended the cabin capacity and areas did feel packed and there were also some teething problems around restaurant queuing and service times with organisation. This made it a question of whether they were trying to pack too many people on now with the extra cabins and capacity? Its fair to say though with new areas for the crew to get used to, more passengers there is a lot more that could go wrong so fair enough to expect it to take a couple of sailings after refit for everyone to find their feet.

The boarding was busy but pretty well ordered and once onboard the ship it felt new, you could smell the paint in some places that had been fixed up.

As I said in my pre cruise post (found here) the things I was excited about were mostly the new fun features but once on deck we went to have a look at the Fish and Ships bar and to get a drink for sailaway. I was a little surprised that it was a chargeable thing to be honest considering it is plain old fish and chips but they did look good fish and chips quality wise and it doubled up as a bar so there was a clamor to get in there and get a drink so suspect this was a good new feature and a bit of a multi tasker.

So what were the other features that I liked? The flowrider surfing experience was something I’ve seen previously on Voyager of the Seas and it’s still impressive, it was way to cold for me to give that a go when we had time in Le Havre however so just watched on as someone else froze to death on there!

Instead I had a go at the virtual reality trampoline Skypad. It was an interesting experience, one I might add in that I was hampered a bit by my gammy football knees so I didn’t jump very high according to my colleague Adrian so there’s my excuse, ha!  Anyway it was actually really hard to gauge how high you were jumping with the head set on but it was fun and they had a set of three games you could do. Mine was a space blasting game so you had to bounce and point your head towards things coming towards you to shoot them, I think I was concentrating harder on that than the bouncing!!! (excuse no 2)

After that I was determined to give the laser tag a go, strangely they had set this up over the ice skating rink where we had seen a performance the night before (this also doubles up as the Studio B nightclub at night). I have to say this was awesome fun and the highlight of the trip for me. Basically an excuse to run around in a bouncy castle shooting people with lasers!

My competitive edge took over and I was top of the leader-board and advised a career in the army might have been better than as a travel agent, even if the opposition involved quite a few small children.

The much vaunted escape room is something we didnt get to do but feedback I heard was that it was very good as well

Another highlight of the trip was the Behind the Scenes ship tour we got to do. We went behind the scenes in the galley area, a nice experience for me considering my background in the kitchen. To see how this operated it was more of a factory production line than the sort of kitchen I was used to but fascinating nonetheless. We also went to the waste disposal room and saw how things get crushed and broken down and finally to the control room which was the highlight for me. There was a whole wall of switches which was basically the circuit board for the whole ship. I resisted the urge to shut everything down!!! Finally to the bridge, I was actually not as impressed as I thought I would be, assuming in my  innocence that there would be a hot tub and pool table up there . There wasnt, (clearly Im not cut out to be cruise ship captain) just a few more screens and some maps and so on but still a fantastic experience to get up and see these things!

So all in all I would say the revised Independence of the Seas is an absolute must do for children (and young at heart adults as well) purely for the first at sea features they have brought onboard.

Below is a link for Independence of the Seas cruise ex Southampton for the rest of this year. Be one of the first to give it a try!

Independence of the Seas 2018 deals