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Symphony of the Seas

The 6,680-passenger, 2,200-crew-member Symphony of the Seas set sail in 2018 and features 18 decks packed with activities.

For heart-pounding fun, travelers will find a surf simulator, an indoor ice skating rink, two 40-foot rock walls, a zip line and a 10-story slide. Meanwhile, relaxation seekers can unwind in the spa, sip cocktails made by robotic bartenders or stroll through the Central Park -inspired neighborhood.

Onboard snacks and meals are served at 20 quick-service and sit-down eateries. The Main Dining Room is where the ship's traditional, complimentary dinners are provided nightly, but specialty options like a steakhouse, a bistro and a Johnny Rockets outpost are also available. What's more, cruisers can dine at Jamie's Italian, a restaurant helmed by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver.

After filling up on gourmet fare, passengers can retreat to their cabins, all of which include work desks, flat-screen TVs and minibars. Guests can choose from 149-square-foot Interior Staterooms, some of which have virtual balconies with real-time views of the ocean, or opt for upgraded cabins with furnished balconies and up to 1,524 square feet of space. Select suites also feature two bedrooms, whirlpool tubs and dining rooms.

Symphony of the Seas departs from Cape Liberty, New Jersey, Miami , Fort Lauderdale, Rome and Barcelona for sailings throughout the Caribbean and Europe.

U.S. News Insider Tip: If you’re on one of the 19 Royal Caribbean ships that have a FlowRider, like Symphony of the Seas (which has two!), reserve a private lesson with a pro. For a small fee, you'll save yourself some embarrassment and get more ride time. – Skye Sherman, Contributor

Odyssey of the Seas

Launched in July 2021, the Odyssey of the Seas holds 5,498 passengers and 1,550 crew members. Royal Caribbean's latest ship is the first Quantum Ultra Class vessel to sail in the United States. As a member of this class, Odyssey of the Seas offers standout amenities like RipCord by iFLY, billed as the only skydiving simulator available at sea, and the FlowRider, a 40-foot-long surf simulator. There is also the North Star observation capsule, which hoists guests 300 feet above sea level over the cruise ship to enjoy unparalleled views below. 

In addition to these thrilling activities, the ship comes equipped with standard facilities like pools, an arcade, a spa, a fitness center with classes, kids clubs and shopping venues. There are also 15 dining options, ranging from Japanese fare to all-you-can-eat buffets to Starbucks. For drinks, the ship offers nine bars and lounges, giving passengers plenty of places to enjoy libations. Entertainment options include theatrical performances, live music, a casino, outdoor movie nights and more. 

As far as cabins go, cruisers can choose between Interior, Ocean View, and Balcony staterooms, as well as suite accommodations and new Virtual Balcony rooms. These technologically advanced cabins feature floor-to-ceiling displays that project real-time views of the sights and sounds from the outside of the ship. 

Odyssey of the Seas sails to ports in Europe, as well as to various destinations in the Caribbean from Fort Lauderdale, Florida and Cape Liberty, New Jersey.

Wonder of the Seas

Wonder of the Seas, which embarked on its maiden voyage in March 2022, holds 7,084 passengers and 2,204 crew members. The ship measures 1,188 feet long and 215 feet wide, and it weighs 235,600 gross tons. It surpasses its sister ship, Symphony of the Seas , as one of the largest cruise ships in the world.  

Guests can enjoy plenty of thrill activities on board, such as the Ultimate Abyss – a 10-story dark tunnel slide – or the 40-foot-long FlowRider surf stimulator. The ship also offers a fitness center, shopping venues, rock climbing, a carousel and clubs for kids and teens. When it's time to dine, cruisers have the option of 21 dining venues ranging from Italian fare to Southern cuisine. Travelers can also indulge in a few cocktails at 14 bars and lounges.

Accommodations include Interior, Ocean View, Balcony and Suite staterooms. If you're looking for something more spacious, check out the ship's all-new Suite Neighborhood. Located on the upper decks, these suites offer guests ample private quarters to recharge during the cruise. Amenities included in the exclusive suites include priority boarding, a members-only dining facility and a dedicated check-in line. For families, the new neighborhood may be of particular interest because it features the Ultimate Family Suite. The family suite offers two floors of space with stunning ocean views, in-suite movies and video games and a kids slide between the floors.  

Wonder of the Seas sails from Orlando , Florida, to ports in the Caribbean.

Allure of the Seas

The 6,826-passenger Allure of the Seas, unveiled in 2010, is among the largest cruise ships in the world. There are a whopping 2,054 crew members on board to cater to passengers' needs. Along with signature line amenities like rock climbing walls and ice skating rinks, the ship houses seven unique neighborhoods with a variety of activities, shows and dining options. The ship underwent a $165 million refurbishment in 2020, which added approximately 50 new staterooms, the Ultimate Abyss (the tallest slide at sea), redesigned kids and teens spaces, new dining venues and more.

Other standout features include a zip line that descends 10 decks, two surf simulators and a science lab. Plus, with 19 dining options – and a Starbucks at sea – every member of the family will be satisfied.

In terms of lodging, about 65% of cabins feature balconies, and all staterooms are appointed with TVs and minifridges. Interior staterooms are the most economical option, but those who splurge on Suites are granted larger balconies and concierge service. Crowd-free areas might be difficult to find due to the outrageous capacity of the ship, but some recent cruisers praise the nonstop activity and entertainment. 

Allure of the Seas departs from Miami, Orlando, Florida, and Galveston , Texas, for sailings in the Caribbean.

Harmony of the Seas

Welcoming up to 6,687 passengers and 2,200 crew members, Harmony of the Seas is one of the largest cruise ships in the world. Launched in 2016 and tuned up in 2021, the ship features Royal Caribbean staples like surf simulators and rock climbing walls, as well as innovative amenities like the Ultimate Abyss (a 10-story slide) and three multistory waterslides. Plus, while younger passengers play in the arcade or at age-appropriate clubs, adults can relax at the spa or sip cocktails at multiple bars and lounges.

After working up an appetite, guests can choose from 20 dining options. Past cruisers especially praised the multitude of specialty restaurants, which range from Mexican to Japanese fare and require reservations and an additional fee.

When it comes to lodging, Harmony of the Seas offers a wide variety of cabin categories, with more than 70% of cabins featuring balconies. While Interior staterooms are the most economical choice, those looking for a little more space and luxury should consider upgrading to a Suite, which range from Junior Suites to four-bedroom Villa Suites. While all cabins offer flat-screen TVs and minibars, suites include access to a private restaurant, lounge and sun deck.

Harmony of the Seas sails from Miami and Galveston, Texas , to destinations throughout the Caribbean.

Mariner of the Seas

Introduced in 2003 and overhauled in mid-2018, Mariner of the Seas features passenger favorites like the Escape Room, the Izumi Japanese restaurant and a surf simulator. During the ship's refurbishment, Royal Caribbean also added 100 new staterooms, updated cabins and public spaces and added fan-favorite restaurant Jamie's Italian by chef Jamie Oliver.

Though the 4,000-passenger ship features a 1-to-3 crew-to-passenger ratio, recent cruisers said the vessel still maintains a high level of customer service. When it comes to dining, the ship offers 11 venues, including a multilevel main dining room. The ship's 10 bars and lounges and onboard entertainment, which includes Broadway-style shows, earn a consistent nod of approval from past cruisers. Kids have plenty of age-appropriate entertainment, too, including youth programs and teen lounges. Mariner of the Seas touts three pools and six whirlpools. These areas of the ship attract a high concentration of children.

Past travelers were generally complimentary of the staterooms. Similar to its sister ships, Mariner of the Seas offers four stateroom categories: Interior, Ocean View, Balcony and Suite. All staterooms include flat-screen TVs and Wi-Fi accessibility. 

Mariner of the Seas departs from  Orlando , Florida, and Galveston, Texas, for sailings in the Caribbean, Bermuda and the  Bahamas .

Adventure of the Seas

Adventure of the Seas (first launched in 2001) underwent an extensive renovation in January 2018. It boasts modern amenities like an outdoor movie screen and Wi-Fi (for an extra fee). Other highlights include an ice skating rink, a surf simulator and a rock climbing wall. 

There are seven dining venues across the ship, the newest of which is the Izumi Japanese specialty restaurant. While adults can relax at the ship's nine bars and lounges, youngsters can mix and mingle at age-appropriate youth clubs and a teens-only disco. Among other onboard amenities, Adventure of the Seas features an abundance of pools and whirlpools, including an indoor/outdoor pool and lounge area exclusive to adults called the Solarium.

When it comes to lodging, recent cruisers found staterooms to be comfortable and spacious. Cabins come in four categories – Interior, Ocean View, Balcony and Suite – and about 60% offer ocean views. The ship's 2018 revamp brought with it new Interior and Ocean View staterooms, as well as a new Suite Lounge. While it may be difficult to find quiet spaces on the 3,807-passenger ship, recent guests were still complimentary of the service on board and the 1-to-3 crew-to-guest ratio. 

Adventure of the Seas sails to various destinations in the Caribbean from Fort Lauderdale , Florida and Orlando , Florida. The ship also completes transatlantic voyages.

Oasis of the Seas

The 6,771-passenger Oasis of the Seas saw an extensive refurbishment in late 2019, unveiling the line's first dedicated karaoke venue, a live music space with a large dance floor, brand-new dining options (including a barbecue restaurant), three waterslides, new bars and more. 

While this ship is not for those seeking secluded spaces, most cruisers say the seven distinct onboard neighborhoods make up for that. The behemoth ship features designer boutiques and larger staterooms than other ships in the fleet.

Like other Royal Caribbean vessels, Oasis of the Seas offers four cabin categories: Interior, Ocean View, Balcony and Suite. Interior rooms average about 150 square feet, while Suite category cabins can span anywhere from 287 to 1,524 square feet and include added amenities like Jacuzzis and expansive balconies.

While recent cruisers were impressed with the ship's abundant amenities, they noted that with 2,109 crew members, there aren't many tailored onboard experiences – especially when the ship is filled to capacity. Oasis of the Seas caters to those looking for nonstop onboard action.

Oasis of the Seas sails from Miami , Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Barcelona and Rome to destinations in the Bahamas , the Caribbean, Europe and the Mediterranean. The ship also offers transatlantic voyages.

U.S. News Insider Tip: On Oasis-class ships, stop at Vitality Café for protein shakes and fresh juices. – Skye Sherman, Contributor

Ovation of the Seas

The 4,905-passenger, 1,500-crew-member Ovation of the Seas features a skydiving simulator, an observation pod that hovers 300 feet above the sea and a bionic bar where robots mix cocktails. Other highlights include a rock climbing wall, a surf simulator, an outdoor movie screen and upscale boutiques like Cartier.

After working up an appetite, passengers can take their pick of 16 eateries, including six signature restaurants that require reservations and an additional fee. Many recent cruisers praised the cuisine, from the main dining room buffet to the Italian menu created by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver.

Travelers were also mostly complimentary of the staterooms, 75% of which boast balconies. The ship offers Interior, Ocean View, Balcony and Suite category accommodations, all of which are equipped with flat-screen TVs, safes and sitting areas. Even those staying in Interior rooms can catch a glimpse of the sea with virtual balconies that give a real-time view of the ship's location.

The most common drawback, according to cruisers? You're likely to encounter long lines and crowded common areas. Some recent travelers also felt the service was not as good as expected. 

Ovation of the Seas sets sail from Vancouver ,  Honolulu , Seattle  and  Sydney  for itineraries in Alaska, Australia, Hawaii and the South Pacific.

Vision of the Seas

Most recently updated in late 2018 (with the exception of routine maintenance in 2022), the 2,514-passenger, 742-crew-member Vision of the Seas offers Royal Caribbean staples like diverse dining venues and nonstop entertainment. Past cruisers especially praise the ship's appealing decor and the Solarium, an adults-only pool and lounge area. 

In terms of food, travelers can choose from the main dining room, the buffet and several casual eateries. Cruisers recommend springing for a meal at the ship's specialty restaurants, which range from the Chops Grille steakhouse to the Izumi Asian venue. Food in the main dining room received mixed reviews, but travelers praised the service around the ship.

When it comes to daytime activities, guests can try rock climbing, swim in the pools (which can become crowded) or play games in the casino. There are also sushi- and cupcake-making classes available.

In terms of lodging, Vision of the Seas touts four staterooms categories: Interior, Ocean View, Balcony and Suite. Interior cabins range from 136 to 252 square feet, while Suites on the opposite end of the spectrum range from 243 to 1,140 square feet. Opt for a balcony-equipped Suite and you'll enjoy cushier extras like whirlpool bathtubs. All cabins include amenities like flat-screen TVs and vanity areas. 

Vision of the Seas departs from Baltimore for itineraries in the Caribbean, New England and Canada.

Disclaimers about ship ratings: A ship’s Health Rating is based on vessel inspection scores published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). If a ship did not receive a CDC score within 22 months prior to the calculation of its Overall Rating, its Health Rating appears as N/A; in such a case, the ship’s Overall Rating is calculated using the average Health Rating of all CDC-rated ships within the cruise line. All ship Traveler Ratings are based on ratings provided under license by Cruiseline.com.

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If you’re a fan of large-scale resorts, Royal Caribbean might be your ideal cruise line. Their vessels are larger than any other seafaring ships and they’re brimming with an unparalleled selection of restaurants, bars, entertainment zones, and attractions that exceed what you’d find on other cruises or even at some of the largest land-based resorts. Take for example their enormous Oasis-class ships, which feature a plethora of pool areas, water play zones, rock climbing walls, surfing simulators, mini-golf courses, basketball courts, and even zip lines on just the top deck. Inside, you’ll find full-sized spas, sprawling casinos, and theaters offering Broadway-quality shows with famed performers. Some Royal Caribbean ships even go as far as to include ice skating rinks. If this sounds like too much to fit on a ship, remember that their biggest vessels stand 18 decks high, measure almost 1,200 feet long, and can host nearly 7,000 passengers. Essentially, these ships are comparable to the mega-resorts found in places like Las Vegas or Orlando, but with one distinctive twist – they float.

The Fleet of Royal Caribbean

With the highest passenger capacity worldwide, Royal Caribbean stands out with a fleet of 26 ships offering more than 94,000 berths. The fleet includes the five largest cruise ships globally: Wonder of the Seas, Symphony of the Seas, Harmony of the Seas, Allure of the Seas, and Oasis of the Seas. Each can host over 6,600 passengers. Collectively known as the Oasis class, these ships are unmatched in size, amenities, and passenger capacity. Another ship, Utopia of the Seas, is set to join this class in 2024.

However, the Oasis class is not the only heavy hitter in Royal Caribbean’s fleet. It also includes five large Quantum Class ships and three sizable Freedom Class ships, each capable of accommodating between 4,500 and 5,600 passengers. Counting these, Royal Caribbean operates 13 of the world’s 30 largest cruise ships .

The company also owns five slightly smaller Voyager Class vessels, each with a capacity of around 3,800 passengers. In total, the 18 ships from the Oasis, Quantum, Freedom, and Voyager classes form Royal Caribbean’s large-ship category.

The remaining eight vessels, spread across two classes, are comparatively smaller, with a maximum capacity of about 2,500 passengers. These smaller, typically older ships offer routes to destinations less accessible to larger vessels. They appeal to Royal Caribbean fans who prefer a more intimate cruising experience and are willing to forego some onboard amenities. These ships are generally more cost-effective on a per-day basis.

Despite their smaller size, these vessels still provide a substantial array of restaurants, bars, entertainment options, and attractions.

In just over a year, Royal Caribbean intends to launch a series of ships even larger than the massive Oasis-class. Dubbed the Icon class, this series will include at least three ships, each weighing over 250,000 tons.

Itinerary and Destinations

Royal Caribbean delivers a worldwide cruising experience, with a primary focus on the Caribbean and Europe. In the summer months, nearly half of its fleet is usually assigned to voyages in the Caribbean, Bahamas, and Bermuda, whereas about six to seven ships are dispatched to Europe. Alaska also welcomes the arrival of three to four ships each summer.

When the winter season rolls around, an even larger number of ships sail to the Caribbean, with some also journeying to Asia and Australia.

Recently, Royal Caribbean has allocated one or more ships specifically for cruises aimed at Chinese tourists, with Spectrum of the Seas, one of the line’s newest vessels, operating from Shanghai and Tianjin, China (the port for Beijing).

In North America, the main launch points for Royal Caribbean ships encompass PortMiami, Port Canaveral, Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, and Tampa in Florida; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Galveston, Texas; Bayonne, New Jersey (one of the ports for New York City); Baltimore; Boston; Seattle; Vancouver, British Columbia; and Seward, Alaska. In 2021, departures from Barbados were added to the itinerary.

In Europe, most Royal Caribbean ships set sail from Southampton, England; Amsterdam; Copenhagen; Stockholm; Barcelona; Civitavecchia, Italy (the port for Rome), and as of 2021, Ravenna, Italy, which took over from Venice as a home port.

Who travels with Royal Caribbean?

Royal Caribbean is known for its large, energetic mega-ships that offer a resort-like experience, making it an ideal choice for those who enjoy stays at places like Disney World or grand Las Vegas resorts. The ships are replete with dining and entertainment options, some even offering over 20 unique dining locations. But the experience isn’t only about bustling activities; they also provide tranquil spots for relaxation. For instance, you can immerse yourself in a book in the tree-filled Central Park area on Wonder of the Seas, while others enjoy the ship’s varied pool areas not far above.

The cruise line’s designers have skillfully crafted these ships to accommodate thousands of people without ever feeling overcrowded. They are outfitted with numerous attractions, including vast waterslides and bumper car pavilions, making them particularly appealing to families, including multigenerational groups.

However, Royal Caribbean doesn’t just cater to families; their ships have something for everyone. They attract a wide demographic ranging from couples of all ages to solo travelers, with solo cabins being added to more ships recently.

Customers from various income backgrounds find Royal Caribbean attractive due to the availability of smaller, affordable cabins, casual dining options, and a range of bars and onboard attractions, making the ships universally appealing and accessible to those on a budget.

Furthermore, the ships feature luxury suites, restaurants, and services that cater to luxury-seeking travelers. Royal Caribbean executives claim that if all the suites on their ships were to form a separate business, it would be the largest luxury cruise line in the world. Despite the diverse clientele, one common thread among all Royal Caribbean cruisers is their shared love for a vibrant, bustling resort experience.

Accommodations and Living Quarters

Renowned for its wide array of onboard accommodations, Royal Caribbean offers a unique living experience at sea. The ships provide a multitude of cabin options, with some offering up to 34 different categories. These range from budget-friendly, windowless interior cabins that are a compact 149 square feet, making them an ideal choice for the budget-conscious traveler, to expansive multi-room suites that are over ten times larger.

These lavish accommodations are designed for affluent travelers who appreciate the mega-ship experience over a traditional luxury ship. Among these are the impressive Royal Loft Suites on Oasis-class ships, which cover two decks and provide sweeping views across the upper part of the ship.

Additionally, depending on the ship, those staying in premium suites can expect a host of perks. These include personal butler services provided by ‘Royal Genies’, exclusive access to a private restaurant, a suite lounge and sun deck, reserved seating in entertainment venues, and prioritized boarding and disembarkation. This range of options ensures that every guest can find an accommodation that suits their needs and preferences, enhancing their cruise experience.

Culinary Experiences and Dining Options

Royal Caribbean’s culinary experiences and dining options offer a vast array of choices to suit every palate. While some of their smaller ships have a more modest selection, the majority of vessels in their fleet offer an extensive lineup of dining venues that can feel almost overwhelming.

Their Oasis-class ships stand out with over 20 dining options, from casual Johnny Rockets diners to high-end restaurants offering six-course tasting menus. Each ship features a main dining room and a casual buffet eatery, known as the Windjammer Café or Marketplace, where meals are part of the fare. The dining room offers flexibility with My Time Dining or Traditional Dining for those who prefer a fixed table and dinner time.

Additional complimentary dining venues on certain ships include Sorrento’s pizza parlors, Solarium Bistro with its Mediterranean flair, and Cafe Promenade coffee bar.

For a special treat, each ship boasts at least one specialty restaurant, such as Chops Grille Steakhouse, Italian eateries Giovanni’s Table or Jamie’s Italian, and the seafood-focused Hooked Seafood. Other options might include Izumi’s sushi, Vintages wine bar, Wonderland’s creative cuisine, and Playmakers Sports Bar & Arcade. Some ships even feature a full-service Starbucks.

Private dining venues are available on some ships exclusively for suite guests and top-tier Crown & Anchor Society members. While these specialty venues typically charge a flat fee, some operate on an a la carte basis.

For guests who plan to indulge in several specialty restaurants during their cruise, discounted meal packages are available.

Recreational Activities and Entertainment

Royal Caribbean stands unrivaled in the cruise industry with its vast array of onboard entertainment and activities. Their largest ships house an impressive variety of performance venues, from theaters to comedy clubs, a plethora of deck-top amusements, expansive casinos, full-service spas, and even ice-skating rinks. Additionally, the number of bars, lounges, and nightspots available is almost beyond imagination.

Performance Venues and Productions

The theatrical entertainment provided by Royal Caribbean is a standout feature that consistently amazes guests with the quality and grandeur of performances, all on a cruise ship. The line’s largest vessels are equipped with state-of-the-art theaters, comparable to those on Broadway, hosting renowned productions such as “Hairspray” on Symphony of the Seas and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Cats” on Oasis of the Seas. Despite some shows being slightly shortened (though many approach two hours in length), and the casts not being Broadway’s top-tier performers, the productions maintain high quality. Remarkably, these shows come at no additional cost, unlike the expensive Broadway shows in New York City.

Adding to the allure are the ice-skating shows performed in onboard rinks found on 13 of Royal Caribbean’s ships. These interior rinks, surrounded by stadium seating for up to 775 spectators, showcase breathtaking performances by Olympic-level skaters – a testament to Royal Caribbean’s claim of employing more world-class professional skaters than any other global company.

Furthermore, guests on Oasis-class ships can enjoy mesmerizing aerial and water shows in the 735-seat outdoor “aqua theaters”. Quantum-class ships present Two70, an extraordinary theater space equipped with advanced technology, where multi-sensory shows combining singing, dancing, and acrobatics take place.

Comedy clubs are a regular feature on some ships, and live music can be enjoyed in several venues every night. Notably, the two-story Music Halls on Quantum-class ships have won the hearts of many guests.

Additional Indoor Features and Pursuits

Beyond the diverse entertainment offerings, Royal Caribbean ships are filled with a myriad of spaces where guests can unwind and have fun at any time of the day or night. This includes an impressive selection of bars, lounges, and nightlife venues.

Every ship in the Royal Caribbean fleet features a casino, with the larger vessels boasting expensive gaming areas. For instance, the Casino Royale on Oasis of the Seas is home to 450 slot & video poker machines, 27 table games such as blackjack, roulette, and craps, a poker room, and even its bar. The casinos on the remaining four Oasis-class ships offer similar extensive facilities.

The Voyager, Freedom, and Oasis-class ships, numbering 13 in total, also have Royal Promenades. These indoor areas, akin to malls, host some of the most distinctive bars at sea, along with dining options and retail stores.

For example, the Royal Promenade on Oasis of the Seas features the Bionic Bar, where a robot serves drinks, and the innovative Rising Tide Bar, which elevates between the Royal Promenade and the outdoor Central Park area three decks above while guests enjoy their beverages. It also houses a British pub, a karaoke lounge, a Latin-themed venue, and the line’s signature Schooner Bar, located one deck above in a balcony area.

The Quantum-class ships, totaling five, showcase a smaller version of the Royal Promenade known as the Royal Esplanade, which transitions into another indoor space named The Via.

These Quantum-class ships also house an indoor activity hub called The SeaPlex. This space includes a bumper car pavilion that transforms into a roller rink when not in use, and also serves as a “circus school” offering flying trapeze lessons. Other activities at the SeaPlex include air hockey and table tennis.

For guests seeking a more serene and luxurious experience, each Royal Caribbean ship is equipped with a spa. Some of these spas are notably spacious, featuring more than two dozen treatment rooms and thermal areas complete with hot stone chairs, rainforest shower zones, saunas, and steam rooms.

Attractions on the Top Deck

The thrill of a Royal Caribbean cruise truly comes to life on the upper decks, where guests are treated to a plethora of unique experiences not found on any other seafaring vessel.

Swimming pools are a given – with the larger ships boasting an impressive number of them. The Oasis-class ships, for example, come with three distinct pool areas and a water play zone specifically designed for children’s enjoyment. Furthermore, more and more Royal Caribbean ships now feature water parks replete with sizable waterslides.

But the fun doesn’t stop there. These ships also host a range of entertainment-focused attractions including massive rock climbing walls, surfing simulators, zip lines, mini-golf courses, and basketball courts, to name just a few. Some of the newer ships even offer skydiving simulators – large acrylic tubes that mimic the adrenaline rush of skydiving.

Oasis-class ships go a step further, featuring an outdoor Boardwalk area furnished with a beautifully hand-carved carousel.

Among the most remarkable features on the deck-top of Royal Caribbean ships are the North Star rides found on Quantum-class vessels. These extraordinary attractions, arguably the most unique ever conceived for a cruise ship, involve giant mechanical arms topped with glass-enclosed capsules that take passengers soaring above the ships for a breathtaking view.

While the North Star ride is generally free, it can also be booked for special events like weddings at an additional fee.

Child-oriented Programs

Royal Caribbean prides itself on having one of the most all-encompassing child-friendly programs on the high seas, catering to kids from as young as 6 months up to 17 years old.

The cornerstone of this program is Adventure Ocean, a hub for free daily supervised activities for children from 3 to 12 years old. Kids are categorized into three age groups: Aquanauts (3-5 years), Explorers (6-8 years), and Voyagers (9-12 years). Each group enjoys a variety of age-appropriate activities such as scavenger hunts and arts and crafts. Many ships feature dedicated areas tailored for these separate groups.

While the complimentary activities wrap up at 10 p.m., parents have the opportunity to keep their kids at Adventure Ocean until 2 a.m. for an additional fee, turning it into a monitored Late Night Party Zone.

Additionally, Royal Caribbean runs a Royal Babies nursery program for children aged 6 to 18 months, which includes engaging classes for both children and their parents, helmed by early childhood experts. The Royal Tots program, aimed at 18-month to 3-year-olds, provides 45-minute interactive play sessions with appropriate activities and toys. Both programs are managed by trained youth staff. Many ships also offer short-term babysitting services at the nursery for an extra charge.

For the older kids, Royal Caribbean offers specialized teen and tween programs on ships for those aged 12 to 17. Some ships, like the Quantum-class vessels, even have a designated area known as The Living Room, equipped with games and a widescreen TV for socializing, in addition to a teens-only disco called Fuel.

What is the cost of a Royal Caribbean cruise?

To appeal to a wide variety of people, Royal Caribbean provides a broad selection of cabin types at different price levels. For a typical voyage, travelers might find an entry-level cabin priced around $100 per person per night, while a luxury suite could cost five to ten times as much.

For example, as of the time this guide was created, a two-bedroom Grand Suite on the Harmony of the Seas for a seven-night Caribbean cruise in January 2024 was being offered at $3,010 per person, assuming two people sharing. This is more than six times the price of the most economical inside cabin (which was priced from $481 per person, also based on two sharing). Balcony cabins for the same cruise were starting at around $683 per person, again with double occupancy.

It’s vital to understand the “based on double occupancy” condition. Similar to most cruise lines, Royal Caribbean’s pricing is per person, not per room, and the majority of cabins are priced on the assumption of two occupants. However, for solo travelers, the cruise line does make available a small selection of cabins on some ships that are priced for single occupancy.

Booking Procedure

The process of booking a cruise involves a series of decisions, starting from your preferred cabin type to the ship and itinerary you choose. If you are sure about all these aspects, you can directly book your cruise through RoyalCaribbean.com. However, given the numerous choices to be made during this process, we recommend seeking the services of an experienced travel agent specializing in cruises. Such an agent will understand your unique interests, travel style, and preferences, guiding you to choose the perfect cruise line, ship, itinerary, and cabin. They can also provide invaluable assistance if any issues occur before, during, or after your journey.

If Royal Caribbean is your cruise line of choice, consider finding a travel agent who specializes in this brand. Such an expert would be familiar with all 34 cabin categories and ideally, have firsthand experience inspecting the ships.

Whether you choose to use a travel agent or not, remember to make the most of your credit card spending when paying for the cruise. Opt for a credit card that offers bonus points for travel purchases. For instance, the Chase Sapphire Reserve card gives 3 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar on travel and dining (excluding the annual $300 travel credit), while the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card offers 2 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar on travel (and 3 points per dollar on dining).

In Conclusion

In conclusion, Royal Caribbean has not attained its position as the world’s largest cruise line by passenger capacity by chance. Its consistent ability to enthrall customers with magnificent, resort-like ships brimming with a wide variety of entertainment and activities is a testament to its success.

For those who enjoy the grandeur of large resorts, you’ll certainly find pleasure in Royal Caribbean’s biggest vessels, particularly the immense Oasis-class ships. On the contrary, if your preference leans towards the charm of small boutique hotels or if you simply enjoy less crowded spaces, this cruise line may not align with your tastes.

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I went on 2 of Royal Caribbean's largest and newest cruise ships. I enjoyed them, but they're not for everyone.

• I've sailed on Royal Caribbean's newest and largest cruise ships, Wonder of the Seas and Icon of the Seas.
• Both mega-ships are jam-packed with amenities, dining options, and people.
• They might not be for you if you want a quiet cruise to unique destinations.  

Before booking a vacation at sea, travelers should always research the best cruise line and ship for their needs.

If you're looking for an ultra-cheap and fast trip, try Margaritaville at Sea . Craving something more upscale? Consider Oceania Cruises.

And if you're looking for high-end sailing to unique destinations, I'd suggest avoiding Royal Caribbean's mega-ships .

Royal Caribbean has become synonymous with giant, family-friendly cruise ships

According to its current expansion plan, by 2028, about a third of Royal Caribbean's fleet will consist of mega-ships.

The latest addition, the 1,196-foot-long and 248,663-gross-ton Icon of the Seas, set sail in January, unseating its less than two-year-old predecessor, Wonder of the Seas , as the world's largest cruise liner.

Together, the two vessels can accommodate a whopping 19,238 people — 4,554 crew and 14,684 guests.

At almost all times of the year, these throngs of travelers can be seen running around the ships' eight neighborhoods, lining up for waterslides, and indulging at a combined 29 bars and 48 eateries.

I've attended complimentary sailings on Wonder and Icon, the longest being three nights on the latter. From their colorful pool decks to their inescapable crowds, as a solo adult traveler, I was equal parts entertained, overwhelmed, and overstimulated the entire time.

But admittedly, I had fun. I do love a good waterslide — and Wonder has three of them, while Icon has six.

If you plan on cruising with your children — and if they, like me, love activities like rock climbing and mini-golfing — Royal Caribbean's mega-ships could be your best option.

Its two largest and newest vessels are jam-packed with things to do. They each have more than 20 dining options and dozens of unique activities, a shortlist of which includes ice-skating rinks, ziplines, and shopping mall-like walkways.

But don't expect a peaceful retreat. The rowdy bar-hopping adults and screaming children at the water playground aren't exactly conducive to a relaxing vacation.

Mega-vessels might not be for you if you want a quiet, itinerary-focused cruise

If you want a relaxing and upscale vacation — maybe one that doesn't involve crowds of children — Royal Caribbean's behemoth vessels shouldn't be your top choice.

There are many ways to have a luxury vacation on Icon of the Seas . But unless you want to pay for upcharged amenities at every turn, you might be better off spending more upfront to reserve a more premium cruise line — especially if you're interested in cruising for the destinations, and not the ships.

After all, like most of Royal Caribbean's largest vessels, both Icon and Wonder are exclusively sailing in the Caribbeans.

Many desirable destinations like French Polynesia have set restrictions on cruises , including limits on ship size, amid concerns of pollution and overcrowding.

If stopping at these ports — or really anywhere outside the Caribbean — is at the top of your vacation wish list, you'll have to prioritize a smaller Royal Caribbean ship or go with higher-end companies like Oceania , Silversea, and Regent Seven Seas.

You might not get a waterpark, but at least you'll get a quieter vacation to destinations no mega-ship will likely ever be allowed to visit.

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I spent $2,000 for 7 nights in a 179-square-foot room on one of the world's largest cruise ships. Take a look inside my cabin.

• I booked a stateroom on Royal Caribbean's Wonder of the Seas, one of the biggest cruise ships.
• For $2,000 a week, the 179-square-foot cabin had a private bathroom, a king-size bed, and a view.
• I thought I'd feel cramped in the room, but it had everything I needed and left no space unused.

In April 2022, I cruised on board Royal Caribbean's Wonder of the Seas . At the time, it was the largest cruise ship in the world , but the title has since been replaced by Royal Caribbean's Icon of the Seas .

During my voyage, the ship sailed to Roatán, Honduras; Cozumel and Costa Maya in Mexico; and Royal Caribbean's private island in the Bahamas .

For $2,000, I spent seven nights in an ocean-view stateroom on deck eight. The cruise was on sale, as it was originally priced at $3,000. Take a look inside the 179-square-foot space.

My room was a mid-tier cabin at the front of deck eight.

I booked a mid-tier room — a step above interior staterooms , which have no window. It's a category below staterooms with a balcony , and two steps below a suite.

My cabin was on the same deck as Central Park, an outdoor space with 20,000 plants.

I thought it was the most relaxing area on the ship, so I enjoyed being close by.

When I stepped inside my stateroom, I was surprised at how big it felt.

Right away, I thought the cabin made great use of a small space.

To operate most of the electricity in the room, I had to insert my room key into a slot on the wall.

I appreciated the energy-saving system.

On one side of the room, I had a mirror and a desk with several outlets to charge electronics with USB, American, and European ports.

I thought the desk was useful for eating, as well as storing daily flyers about the day's events.

Next to the desk, a set of drawers included a cabinet with a minifridge inside.

The desk drawers were mostly empty aside from a hair dryer, which I didn't end up using.

Across from the desk, I had a couch positioned in between two closets.

Inside each closet, I found a rack of hangers, shelving, and a small safe. I thought it was plenty of space for a weeklong journey

Next to the couch and desk area, a small bathroom used clever storage hacks, like placing the trash can and toilet paper under the counter.

In the bathroom, there were two glasses, a bar of soap, and a two-in-one hair and body wash.

At the top of the shower, a pullout clothing line was useful for drying my bathing suits.

Each night, my stateroom attendant replenished towels and brought flyers and schedules for the next day.

Sometimes, the towels were folded creatively to look like animals.

I noticed that my king-size bed at the back of the room was actually two twin beds pushed together.

All Royal Caribbean cabins come with this configuration, according to its website , so they may be separated for additional guests. I often woke up in the crevice.

A large flat-screen TV was mounted across from the bed with storage hooks below.

Skinny nightstands on either side of the bed held lamps, charging ports, and a room phone on one side.

Because I booked an ocean-view room, I was able to look out over the front of the ship from a window above my bed.

The window was equipped with an electronic shade that could be opened during the day for grand views and closed when I was ready to sleep.

While I thought the room might have been a tight space for a couple with a lot of luggage or a family, it was just right for me.

And watching the sun rise over the Caribbean Sea from the comfort of my room was the best part.

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Crying Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship Ever

Seven agonizing nights aboard the Icon of the Seas

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Updated at 2:44 p.m. ET on April 6, 2024.

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MY FIRST GLIMPSE of Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, from the window of an approaching Miami cab, brings on a feeling of vertigo, nausea, amazement, and distress. I shut my eyes in defense, as my brain tells my optic nerve to try again.

The ship makes no sense, vertically or horizontally. It makes no sense on sea, or on land, or in outer space. It looks like a hodgepodge of domes and minarets, tubes and canopies, like Istanbul had it been designed by idiots. Vibrant, oversignifying colors are stacked upon other such colors, decks perched over still more decks; the only comfort is a row of lifeboats ringing its perimeter. There is no imposed order, no cogent thought, and, for those who do not harbor a totalitarian sense of gigantomania, no visual mercy. This is the biggest cruise ship ever built, and I have been tasked with witnessing its inaugural voyage.

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“Author embarks on their first cruise-ship voyage” has been a staple of American essay writing for almost three decades, beginning with David Foster Wallace’s “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” which was first published in 1996 under the title “Shipping Out.” Since then, many admirable writers have widened and diversified the genre. Usually the essayist commissioned to take to the sea is in their first or second flush of youth and is ready to sharpen their wit against the hull of the offending vessel. I am 51, old and tired, having seen much of the world as a former travel journalist, and mostly what I do in both life and prose is shrug while muttering to my imaginary dachshund, “This too shall pass.” But the Icon of the Seas will not countenance a shrug. The Icon of the Seas is the Linda Loman of cruise ships, exclaiming that attention must be paid. And here I am in late January with my one piece of luggage and useless gray winter jacket and passport, zipping through the Port of Miami en route to the gangway that will separate me from the bulk of North America for more than seven days, ready to pay it in full.

The aforementioned gangway opens up directly onto a thriving mall (I will soon learn it is imperiously called the “Royal Promenade”), presently filled with yapping passengers beneath a ceiling studded with balloons ready to drop. Crew members from every part of the global South, as well as a few Balkans, are shepherding us along while pressing flutes of champagne into our hands. By a humming Starbucks, I drink as many of these as I can and prepare to find my cabin. I show my blue Suite Sky SeaPass Card (more on this later, much more) to a smiling woman from the Philippines, and she tells me to go “aft.” Which is where, now? As someone who has rarely sailed on a vessel grander than the Staten Island Ferry, I am confused. It turns out that the aft is the stern of the ship, or, for those of us who don’t know what a stern or an aft are, its ass. The nose of the ship, responsible for separating the waves before it, is also called a bow, and is marked for passengers as the FWD , or forward. The part of the contemporary sailing vessel where the malls are clustered is called the midship. I trust that you have enjoyed this nautical lesson.

I ascend via elevator to my suite on Deck 11. This is where I encounter my first terrible surprise. My suite windows and balcony do not face the ocean. Instead, they look out onto another shopping mall. This mall is the one that’s called Central Park, perhaps in homage to the Olmsted-designed bit of greenery in the middle of my hometown. Although on land I would be delighted to own a suite with Central Park views, here I am deeply depressed. To sail on a ship and not wake up to a vast blue carpet of ocean? Unthinkable.

Allow me a brief preamble here. The story you are reading was commissioned at a moment when most staterooms on the Icon were sold out. In fact, so enthralled by the prospect of this voyage were hard-core mariners that the ship’s entire inventory of guest rooms (the Icon can accommodate up to 7,600 passengers, but its inaugural journey was reduced to 5,000 or so for a less crowded experience) was almost immediately sold out. Hence, this publication was faced with the shocking prospect of paying nearly $19,000 to procure for this solitary passenger an entire suite—not including drinking expenses—all for the privilege of bringing you this article. But the suite in question doesn’t even have a view of the ocean! I sit down hard on my soft bed. Nineteen thousand dollars for this .

The viewless suite does have its pluses. In addition to all the Malin+Goetz products in my dual bathrooms, I am granted use of a dedicated Suite Deck lounge; access to Coastal Kitchen, a superior restaurant for Suites passengers; complimentary VOOM SM Surf & Stream (“the fastest Internet at Sea”) “for one device per person for the whole cruise duration”; a pair of bathrobes (one of which comes prestained with what looks like a large expectoration by the greenest lizard on Earth); and use of the Grove Suite Sun, an area on Decks 18 and 19 with food and deck chairs reserved exclusively for Suite passengers. I also get reserved seating for a performance of The Wizard of Oz , an ice-skating tribute to the periodic table, and similar provocations. The very color of my Suite Sky SeaPass Card, an oceanic blue as opposed to the cloying royal purple of the standard non-Suite passenger, will soon provoke envy and admiration. But as high as my status may be, there are those on board who have much higher status still, and I will soon learn to bow before them.

In preparation for sailing, I have “priced in,” as they say on Wall Street, the possibility that I may come from a somewhat different monde than many of the other cruisers. Without falling into stereotypes or preconceptions, I prepare myself for a friendly outspokenness on the part of my fellow seafarers that may not comply with modern DEI standards. I believe in meeting people halfway, and so the day before flying down to Miami, I visited what remains of Little Italy to purchase a popular T-shirt that reads DADDY’S LITTLE MEATBALL across the breast in the colors of the Italian flag. My wife recommended that I bring one of my many T-shirts featuring Snoopy and the Peanuts gang, as all Americans love the beagle and his friends. But I naively thought that my meatball T-shirt would be more suitable for conversation-starting. “Oh, and who is your ‘daddy’?” some might ask upon seeing it. “And how long have you been his ‘little meatball’?” And so on.

I put on my meatball T-shirt and head for one of the dining rooms to get a late lunch. In the elevator, I stick out my chest for all to read the funny legend upon it, but soon I realize that despite its burnished tricolor letters, no one takes note. More to the point, no one takes note of me. Despite my attempts at bridge building, the very sight of me (small, ethnic, without a cap bearing the name of a football team) elicits no reaction from other passengers. Most often, they will small-talk over me as if I don’t exist. This brings to mind the travails of David Foster Wallace , who felt so ostracized by his fellow passengers that he retreated to his cabin for much of his voyage. And Wallace was raised primarily in the Midwest and was a much larger, more American-looking meatball than I am. If he couldn’t talk to these people, how will I? What if I leave this ship without making any friends at all, despite my T-shirt? I am a social creature, and the prospect of seven days alone and apart is saddening. Wallace’s stateroom, at least, had a view of the ocean, a kind of cheap eternity.

Worse awaits me in the dining room. This is a large, multichandeliered room where I attended my safety training (I was shown how to put on a flotation vest; it is a very simple procedure). But the maître d’ politely refuses me entry in an English that seems to verge on another language. “I’m sorry, this is only for pendejos ,” he seems to be saying. I push back politely and he repeats himself. Pendejos ? Piranhas? There’s some kind of P-word to which I am not attuned. Meanwhile elderly passengers stream right past, powered by their limbs, walkers, and electric wheelchairs. “It is only pendejo dining today, sir.” “But I have a suite!” I say, already starting to catch on to the ship’s class system. He examines my card again. “But you are not a pendejo ,” he confirms. I am wearing a DADDY’S LITTLE MEATBALL T-shirt, I want to say to him. I am the essence of pendejo .

Eventually, I give up and head to the plebeian buffet on Deck 15, which has an aquatic-styled name I have now forgotten. Before gaining entry to this endless cornucopia of reheated food, one passes a washing station of many sinks and soap dispensers, and perhaps the most intriguing character on the entire ship. He is Mr. Washy Washy—or, according to his name tag, Nielbert of the Philippines—and he is dressed as a taco (on other occasions, I’ll see him dressed as a burger). Mr. Washy Washy performs an eponymous song in spirited, indeed flamboyant English: “Washy, washy, wash your hands, WASHY WASHY!” The dangers of norovirus and COVID on a cruise ship this size (a giant fellow ship was stricken with the former right after my voyage) makes Mr. Washy Washy an essential member of the crew. The problem lies with the food at the end of Washy’s rainbow. The buffet is groaning with what sounds like sophisticated dishes—marinated octopus, boiled egg with anchovy, chorizo, lobster claws—but every animal tastes tragically the same, as if there was only one creature available at the market, a “cruisipus” bred specifically for Royal Caribbean dining. The “vegetables” are no better. I pick up a tomato slice and look right through it. It tastes like cellophane. I sit alone, apart from the couples and parents with gaggles of children, as “We Are Family” echoes across the buffet space.

I may have failed to mention that all this time, the Icon of the Seas has not left port. As the fiery mango of the subtropical setting sun makes Miami’s condo skyline even more apocalyptic, the ship shoves off beneath a perfunctory display of fireworks. After the sun sets, in the far, dark distance, another circus-lit cruise ship ruptures the waves before us. We glance at it with pity, because it is by definition a smaller ship than our own. I am on Deck 15, outside the buffet and overlooking a bunch of pools (the Icon has seven of them), drinking a frilly drink that I got from one of the bars (the Icon has 15 of them), still too shy to speak to anyone, despite Sister Sledge’s assertion that all on the ship are somehow related.

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The ship’s passage away from Ron DeSantis’s Florida provides no frisson, no sense of developing “sea legs,” as the ship is too large to register the presence of waves unless a mighty wind adds significant chop. It is time for me to register the presence of the 5,000 passengers around me, even if they refuse to register mine. My fellow travelers have prepared for this trip with personally decorated T-shirts celebrating the importance of this voyage. The simplest ones say ICON INAUGURAL ’24 on the back and the family name on the front. Others attest to an over-the-top love of cruise ships: WARNING! MAY START TALKING ABOUT CRUISING . Still others are artisanally designed and celebrate lifetimes spent married while cruising (on ships, of course). A couple possibly in their 90s are wearing shirts whose backs feature a drawing of a cruise liner, two flamingos with ostensibly male and female characteristics, and the legend “ HUSBAND AND WIFE Cruising Partners FOR LIFE WE MAY NOT HAVE IT All Together BUT TOGETHER WE HAVE IT ALL .” (The words not in all caps have been written in cursive.) A real journalist or a more intrepid conversationalist would have gone up to the couple and asked them to explain the longevity of their marriage vis-à-vis their love of cruising. But instead I head to my mall suite, take off my meatball T-shirt, and allow the first tears of the cruise to roll down my cheeks slowly enough that I briefly fall asleep amid the moisture and salt.

I WAKE UP with a hangover. Oh God. Right. I cannot believe all of that happened last night. A name floats into my cobwebbed, nauseated brain: “Ayn Rand.” Jesus Christ.

I breakfast alone at the Coastal Kitchen. The coffee tastes fine and the eggs came out of a bird. The ship rolls slightly this morning; I can feel it in my thighs and my schlong, the parts of me that are most receptive to danger.

I had a dangerous conversation last night. After the sun set and we were at least 50 miles from shore (most modern cruise ships sail at about 23 miles an hour), I lay in bed softly hiccupping, my arms stretched out exactly like Jesus on the cross, the sound of the distant waves missing from my mall-facing suite, replaced by the hum of air-conditioning and children shouting in Spanish through the vents of my two bathrooms. I decided this passivity was unacceptable. As an immigrant, I feel duty-bound to complete the tasks I am paid for, which means reaching out and trying to understand my fellow cruisers. So I put on a normal James Perse T-shirt and headed for one of the bars on the Royal Promenade—the Schooner Bar, it was called, if memory serves correctly.

I sat at the bar for a martini and two Negronis. An old man with thick, hairy forearms drank next to me, very silent and Hemingwaylike, while a dreadlocked piano player tinkled out a series of excellent Elton John covers. To my right, a young white couple—he in floral shorts, she in a light, summery miniskirt with a fearsome diamond ring, neither of them in football regalia—chatted with an elderly couple. Do it , I commanded myself. Open your mouth. Speak! Speak without being spoken to. Initiate. A sentence fragment caught my ear from the young woman, “Cherry Hill.” This is a suburb of Philadelphia in New Jersey, and I had once been there for a reading at a synagogue. “Excuse me,” I said gently to her. “Did you just mention Cherry Hill? It’s a lovely place.”

As it turned out, the couple now lived in Fort Lauderdale (the number of Floridians on the cruise surprised me, given that Southern Florida is itself a kind of cruise ship, albeit one slowly sinking), but soon they were talking with me exclusively—the man potbellied, with a chin like a hard-boiled egg; the woman as svelte as if she were one of the many Ukrainian members of the crew—the elderly couple next to them forgotten. This felt as groundbreaking as the first time I dared to address an American in his native tongue, as a child on a bus in Queens (“On my foot you are standing, Mister”).

“I don’t want to talk politics,” the man said. “But they’re going to eighty-six Biden and put Michelle in.”

I considered the contradictions of his opening conversational gambit, but decided to play along. “People like Michelle,” I said, testing the waters. The husband sneered, but the wife charitably put forward that the former first lady was “more personable” than Joe Biden. “They’re gonna eighty-six Biden,” the husband repeated. “He can’t put a sentence together.”

After I mentioned that I was a writer—though I presented myself as a writer of teleplays instead of novels and articles such as this one—the husband told me his favorite writer was Ayn Rand. “Ayn Rand, she came here with nothing,” the husband said. “I work with a lot of Cubans, so …” I wondered if I should mention what I usually do to ingratiate myself with Republicans or libertarians: the fact that my finances improved after pass-through corporations were taxed differently under Donald Trump. Instead, I ordered another drink and the couple did the same, and I told him that Rand and I were born in the same city, St. Petersburg/Leningrad, and that my family also came here with nothing. Now the bonding and drinking began in earnest, and several more rounds appeared. Until it all fell apart.

Read: Gary Shteyngart on watching Russian television for five days straight

My new friend, whom I will refer to as Ayn, called out to a buddy of his across the bar, and suddenly a young couple, both covered in tattoos, appeared next to us. “He fucking punked me,” Ayn’s frat-boy-like friend called out as he put his arm around Ayn, while his sizable partner sizzled up to Mrs. Rand. Both of them had a look I have never seen on land—their eyes projecting absence and enmity in equal measure. In the ’90s, I drank with Russian soldiers fresh from Chechnya and wandered the streets of wartime Zagreb, but I have never seen such undisguised hostility toward both me and perhaps the universe at large. I was briefly introduced to this psychopathic pair, but neither of them wanted to have anything to do with me, and the tattooed woman would not even reveal her Christian name to me (she pretended to have the same first name as Mrs. Rand). To impress his tattooed friends, Ayn made fun of the fact that as a television writer, I’d worked on the series Succession (which, it would turn out, practically nobody on the ship had watched), instead of the far more palatable, in his eyes, zombie drama of last year. And then my new friends drifted away from me into an angry private conversation—“He punked me!”—as I ordered another drink for myself, scared of the dead-eyed arrivals whose gaze never registered in the dim wattage of the Schooner Bar, whose terrifying voices and hollow laughs grated like unoiled gears against the crooning of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.”

But today is a new day for me and my hangover. After breakfast, I explore the ship’s so-called neighborhoods . There’s the AquaDome, where one can find a food hall and an acrobatic sound-and-light aquatic show. Central Park has a premium steak house, a sushi joint, and a used Rolex that can be bought for $8,000 on land here proudly offered at $17,000. There’s the aforementioned Royal Promenade, where I had drunk with the Rands, and where a pair of dueling pianos duel well into the night. There’s Surfside, a kids’ neighborhood full of sugary garbage, which looks out onto the frothy trail that the behemoth leaves behind itself. Thrill Island refers to the collection of tubes that clutter the ass of the ship and offer passengers six waterslides and a surfing simulation. There’s the Hideaway, an adult zone that plays music from a vomit-slathered, Brit-filled Alicante nightclub circa 1996 and proves a big favorite with groups of young Latin American customers. And, most hurtfully, there’s the Suite Neighborhood.

I say hurtfully because as a Suite passenger I should be here, though my particular suite is far from the others. Whereas I am stuck amid the riffraff of Deck 11, this section is on the highborn Decks 16 and 17, and in passing, I peek into the spacious, tall-ceilinged staterooms from the hallway, dazzled by the glint of the waves and sun. For $75,000, one multifloor suite even comes with its own slide between floors, so that a family may enjoy this particular terror in private. There is a quiet splendor to the Suite Neighborhood. I see fewer stickers and signs and drawings than in my own neighborhood—for example, MIKE AND DIANA PROUDLY SERVED U.S. MARINE CORPS RETIRED . No one here needs to announce their branch of service or rank; they are simply Suites, and this is where they belong. Once again, despite my hard work and perseverance, I have been disallowed from the true American elite. Once again, I am “Not our class, dear.” I am reminded of watching The Love Boat on my grandmother’s Zenith, which either was given to her or we found in the trash (I get our many malfunctioning Zeniths confused) and whose tube got so hot, I would put little chunks of government cheese on a thin tissue atop it to give our welfare treat a pleasant, Reagan-era gooeyness. I could not understand English well enough then to catch the nuances of that seafaring program, but I knew that there were differences in the status of the passengers, and that sometimes those differences made them sad. Still, this ship, this plenty—every few steps, there are complimentary nachos or milkshakes or gyros on offer—was the fatty fuel of my childhood dreams. If only I had remained a child.

I walk around the outdoor decks looking for company. There is a middle-aged African American couple who always seem to be asleep in each other’s arms, probably exhausted from the late capitalism they regularly encounter on land. There is far more diversity on this ship than I expected. Many couples are a testament to Loving v. Virginia , and there is a large group of folks whose T-shirts read MELANIN AT SEA / IT’S THE MELANIN FOR ME . I smile when I see them, but then some young kids from the group makes Mr. Washy Washy do a cruel, caricatured “Burger Dance” (today he is in his burger getup), and I think, Well, so much for intersectionality .

At the infinity pool on Deck 17, I spot some elderly women who could be ethnic and from my part of the world, and so I jump in. I am proved correct! Many of them seem to be originally from Queens (“Corona was still great when it was all Italian”), though they are now spread across the tristate area. We bond over the way “Ron-kon-koma” sounds when announced in Penn Station.

“Everyone is here for a different reason,” one of them tells me. She and her ex-husband last sailed together four years ago to prove to themselves that their marriage was truly over. Her 15-year-old son lost his virginity to “an Irish young lady” while their ship was moored in Ravenna, Italy. The gaggle of old-timers competes to tell me their favorite cruising stories and tips. “A guy proposed in Central Park a couple of years ago”—many Royal Caribbean ships apparently have this ridiculous communal area—“and she ran away screaming!” “If you’re diamond-class, you get four drinks for free.” “A different kind of passenger sails out of Bayonne.” (This, perhaps, is racially coded.) “Sometimes, if you tip the bartender $5, your next drink will be free.”

“Everyone’s here for a different reason,” the woman whose marriage ended on a cruise tells me again. “Some people are here for bad reasons—the drinkers and the gamblers. Some people are here for medical reasons.” I have seen more than a few oxygen tanks and at least one woman clearly undergoing very serious chemo. Some T-shirts celebrate good news about a cancer diagnosis. This might be someone’s last cruise or week on Earth. For these women, who have spent months, if not years, at sea, cruising is a ritual as well as a life cycle: first love, last love, marriage, divorce, death.

Read: The last place on Earth any tourist should go

I have talked with these women for so long, tonight I promise myself that after a sad solitary dinner I will not try to seek out company at the bars in the mall or the adult-themed Hideaway. I have enough material to fulfill my duties to this publication. As I approach my orphaned suite, I run into the aggro young people who stole Mr. and Mrs. Rand away from me the night before. The tattooed apparitions pass me without a glance. She is singing something violent about “Stuttering Stanley” (a character in a popular horror movie, as I discover with my complimentary VOOM SM Surf & Stream Internet at Sea) and he’s loudly shouting about “all the money I’ve lost,” presumably at the casino in the bowels of the ship.

So these bent psychos out of a Cormac McCarthy novel are angrily inhabiting my deck. As I mewl myself to sleep, I envision a limited series for HBO or some other streamer, a kind of low-rent White Lotus , where several aggressive couples conspire to throw a shy intellectual interloper overboard. I type the scenario into my phone. As I fall asleep, I think of what the woman who recently divorced her husband and whose son became a man through the good offices of the Irish Republic told me while I was hoisting myself out of the infinity pool. “I’m here because I’m an explorer. I’m here because I’m trying something new.” What if I allowed myself to believe in her fantasy?

“YOU REALLY STARTED AT THE TOP,” they tell me. I’m at the Coastal Kitchen for my eggs and corned-beef hash, and the maître d’ has slotted me in between two couples. Fueled by coffee or perhaps intrigued by my relative youth, they strike up a conversation with me. As always, people are shocked that this is my first cruise. They contrast the Icon favorably with all the preceding liners in the Royal Caribbean fleet, usually commenting on the efficiency of the elevators that hurl us from deck to deck (as in many large corporate buildings, the elevators ask you to choose a floor and then direct you to one of many lifts). The couple to my right, from Palo Alto—he refers to his “porn mustache” and calls his wife “my cougar” because she is two years older—tell me they are “Pandemic Pinnacles.”

This is the day that my eyes will be opened. Pinnacles , it is explained to me over translucent cantaloupe, have sailed with Royal Caribbean for 700 ungodly nights. Pandemic Pinnacles took advantage of the two-for-one accrual rate of Pinnacle points during the pandemic, when sailing on a cruise ship was even more ill-advised, to catapult themselves into Pinnacle status.

Because of the importance of the inaugural voyage of the world’s largest cruise liner, more than 200 Pinnacles are on this ship, a startling number, it seems. Mrs. Palo Alto takes out a golden badge that I have seen affixed over many a breast, which reads CROWN AND ANCHOR SOCIETY along with her name. This is the coveted badge of the Pinnacle. “You should hear all the whining in Guest Services,” her husband tells me. Apparently, the Pinnacles who are not also Suites like us are all trying to use their status to get into Coastal Kitchen, our elite restaurant. Even a Pinnacle needs to be a Suite to access this level of corned-beef hash.

“We’re just baby Pinnacles,” Mrs. Palo Alto tells me, describing a kind of internal class struggle among the Pinnacle elite for ever higher status.

And now I understand what the maître d’ was saying to me on the first day of my cruise. He wasn’t saying “ pendejo .” He was saying “Pinnacle.” The dining room was for Pinnacles only, all those older people rolling in like the tide on their motorized scooters.

And now I understand something else: This whole thing is a cult. And like most cults, it can’t help but mirror the endless American fight for status. Like Keith Raniere’s NXIVM, where different-colored sashes were given out to connote rank among Raniere’s branded acolytes, this is an endless competition among Pinnacles, Suites, Diamond-Plusers, and facing-the-mall, no-balcony purple SeaPass Card peasants, not to mention the many distinctions within each category. The more you cruise, the higher your status. No wonder a section of the Royal Promenade is devoted to getting passengers to book their next cruise during the one they should be enjoying now. No wonder desperate Royal Caribbean offers (“FINAL HOURS”) crowded my email account weeks before I set sail. No wonder the ship’s jewelry store, the Royal Bling, is selling a $100,000 golden chalice that will entitle its owner to drink free on Royal Caribbean cruises for life. (One passenger was already gaming out whether her 28-year-old son was young enough to “just about earn out” on the chalice or if that ship had sailed.) No wonder this ship was sold out months before departure , and we had to pay $19,000 for a horrid suite away from the Suite Neighborhood. No wonder the most mythical hero of Royal Caribbean lore is someone named Super Mario, who has cruised so often, he now has his own working desk on many ships. This whole experience is part cult, part nautical pyramid scheme.

From the June 2014 issue: Ship of wonks

“The toilets are amazing,” the Palo Altos are telling me. “One flush and you’re done.” “They don’t understand how energy-efficient these ships are,” the husband of the other couple is telling me. “They got the LNG”—liquefied natural gas, which is supposed to make the Icon a boon to the environment (a concept widely disputed and sometimes ridiculed by environmentalists).

But I’m thinking along a different line of attack as I spear my last pallid slice of melon. For my streaming limited series, a Pinnacle would have to get killed by either an outright peasant or a Suite without an ocean view. I tell my breakfast companions my idea.

“Oh, for sure a Pinnacle would have to be killed,” Mr. Palo Alto, the Pandemic Pinnacle, says, touching his porn mustache thoughtfully as his wife nods.

“THAT’S RIGHT, IT’S your time, buddy!” Hubert, my fun-loving Panamanian cabin attendant, shouts as I step out of my suite in a robe. “Take it easy, buddy!”

I have come up with a new dressing strategy. Instead of trying to impress with my choice of T-shirts, I have decided to start wearing a robe, as one does at a resort property on land, with a proper spa and hammam. The response among my fellow cruisers has been ecstatic. “Look at you in the robe!” Mr. Rand cries out as we pass each other by the Thrill Island aqua park. “You’re living the cruise life! You know, you really drank me under the table that night.” I laugh as we part ways, but my soul cries out, Please spend more time with me, Mr. and Mrs. Rand; I so need the company .

In my white robe, I am a stately presence, a refugee from a better limited series, a one-man crossover episode. (Only Suites are granted these robes to begin with.) Today, I will try many of the activities these ships have on offer to provide their clientele with a sense of never-ceasing motion. Because I am already at Thrill Island, I decide to climb the staircase to what looks like a mast on an old-fashioned ship (terrified, because I am afraid of heights) to try a ride called “Storm Chasers,” which is part of the “Category 6” water park, named in honor of one of the storms that may someday do away with the Port of Miami entirely. Storm Chasers consists of falling from the “mast” down a long, twisting neon tube filled with water, like being the camera inside your own colonoscopy, as you hold on to the handles of a mat, hoping not to die. The tube then flops you down headfirst into a trough of water, a Royal Caribbean baptism. It both knocks my breath out and makes me sad.

In keeping with the aquatic theme, I attend a show at the AquaDome. To the sound of “Live and Let Die,” a man in a harness gyrates to and fro in the sultry air. I saw something very similar in the back rooms of the famed Berghain club in early-aughts Berlin. Soon another harnessed man is gyrating next to the first. Ja , I think to myself, I know how this ends. Now will come the fisting , natürlich . But the show soon devolves into the usual Marvel-film-grade nonsense, with too much light and sound signifying nichts . If any fisting is happening, it is probably in the Suite Neighborhood, inside a cabin marked with an upside-down pineapple, which I understand means a couple are ready to swing, and I will see none of it.

I go to the ice show, which is a kind of homage—if that’s possible—to the periodic table, done with the style and pomp and masterful precision that would please the likes of Kim Jong Un, if only he could afford Royal Caribbean talent. At one point, the dancers skate to the theme song of Succession . “See that!” I want to say to my fellow Suites—at “cultural” events, we have a special section reserved for us away from the commoners—“ Succession ! It’s even better than the zombie show! Open your minds!”

Finally, I visit a comedy revue in an enormous and too brightly lit version of an “intimate,” per Royal Caribbean literature, “Manhattan comedy club.” Many of the jokes are about the cruising life. “I’ve lived on ships for 20 years,” one of the middle-aged comedians says. “I can only see so many Filipino homosexuals dressed as a taco.” He pauses while the audience laughs. “I am so fired tonight,” he says. He segues into a Trump impression and then Biden falling asleep at the microphone, which gets the most laughs. “Anyone here from Fort Leonard Wood?” another comedian asks. Half the crowd seems to cheer. As I fall asleep that night, I realize another connection I have failed to make, and one that may explain some of the diversity on this vessel—many of its passengers have served in the military.

As a coddled passenger with a suite, I feel like I am starting to understand what it means to have a rank and be constantly reminded of it. There are many espresso makers , I think as I look across the expanse of my officer-grade quarters before closing my eyes, but this one is mine .

A shocking sight greets me beyond the pools of Deck 17 as I saunter over to the Coastal Kitchen for my morning intake of slightly sour Americanos. A tiny city beneath a series of perfectly pressed green mountains. Land! We have docked for a brief respite in Basseterre, the capital of St. Kitts and Nevis. I wolf down my egg scramble to be one of the first passengers off the ship. Once past the gangway, I barely refrain from kissing the ground. I rush into the sights and sounds of this scruffy island city, sampling incredible conch curry and buckets of non-Starbucks coffee. How wonderful it is to be where God intended humans to be: on land. After all, I am neither a fish nor a mall rat. This is my natural environment. Basseterre may not be Havana, but there are signs of human ingenuity and desire everywhere you look. The Black Table Grill Has been Relocated to Soho Village, Market Street, Directly Behind of, Gary’s Fruits and Flower Shop. Signed. THE PORK MAN reads a sign stuck to a wall. Now, that is how you write a sign. A real sign, not the come-ons for overpriced Rolexes that blink across the screens of the Royal Promenade.

“Hey, tie your shoestring!” a pair of laughing ladies shout to me across the street.

“Thank you!” I shout back. Shoestring! “Thank you very much.”

A man in Independence Square Park comes by and asks if I want to play with his monkey. I haven’t heard that pickup line since the Penn Station of the 1980s. But then he pulls a real monkey out of a bag. The monkey is wearing a diaper and looks insane. Wonderful , I think, just wonderful! There is so much life here. I email my editor asking if I can remain on St. Kitts and allow the Icon to sail off into the horizon without me. I have even priced a flight home at less than $300, and I have enough material from the first four days on the cruise to write the entire story. “It would be funny …” my editor replies. “Now get on the boat.”

As I slink back to the ship after my brief jailbreak, the locals stand under umbrellas to gaze at and photograph the boat that towers over their small capital city. The limousines of the prime minister and his lackeys are parked beside the gangway. St. Kitts, I’ve been told, is one of the few islands that would allow a ship of this size to dock.

“We hear about all the waterslides,” a sweet young server in one of the cafés told me. “We wish we could go on the ship, but we have to work.”

“I want to stay on your island,” I replied. “I love it here.”

But she didn’t understand how I could possibly mean that.

“WASHY, WASHY, so you don’t get stinky, stinky!” kids are singing outside the AquaDome, while their adult minders look on in disapproval, perhaps worried that Mr. Washy Washy is grooming them into a life of gayness. I heard a southern couple skip the buffet entirely out of fear of Mr. Washy Washy.

Meanwhile, I have found a new watering hole for myself, the Swim & Tonic, the biggest swim-up bar on any cruise ship in the world. Drinking next to full-size, nearly naked Americans takes away one’s own self-consciousness. The men have curvaceous mom bodies. The women are equally un-shy about their sprawling physiques.

Today I’ve befriended a bald man with many children who tells me that all of the little trinkets that Royal Caribbean has left us in our staterooms and suites are worth a fortune on eBay. “Eighty dollars for the water bottle, 60 for the lanyard,” the man says. “This is a cult.”

“Tell me about it,” I say. There is, however, a clientele for whom this cruise makes perfect sense. For a large middle-class family (he works in “supply chains”), seven days in a lower-tier cabin—which starts at $1,800 a person—allow the parents to drop off their children in Surfside, where I imagine many young Filipina crew members will take care of them, while the parents are free to get drunk at a swim-up bar and maybe even get intimate in their cabin. Cruise ships have become, for a certain kind of hardworking family, a form of subsidized child care.

There is another man I would like to befriend at the Swim & Tonic, a tall, bald fellow who is perpetually inebriated and who wears a necklace studded with little rubber duckies in sunglasses, which, I am told, is a sort of secret handshake for cruise aficionados. Tomorrow, I will spend more time with him, but first the ship docks at St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Charlotte Amalie, the capital, is more charming in name than in presence, but I still all but jump off the ship to score a juicy oxtail and plantains at the well-known Petite Pump Room, overlooking the harbor. From one of the highest points in the small city, the Icon of the Seas appears bigger than the surrounding hills.

I usually tan very evenly, but something about the discombobulation of life at sea makes me forget the regular application of sunscreen. As I walk down the streets of Charlotte Amalie in my fluorescent Icon of the Seas cap, an old Rastafarian stares me down. “Redneck,” he hisses.

“No,” I want to tell him, as I bring a hand up to my red neck, “that’s not who I am at all. On my island, Mannahatta, as Whitman would have it, I am an interesting person living within an engaging artistic milieu. I do not wish to use the Caribbean as a dumping ground for the cruise-ship industry. I love the work of Derek Walcott. You don’t understand. I am not a redneck. And if I am, they did this to me.” They meaning Royal Caribbean? Its passengers? The Rands?

“They did this to me!”

Back on the Icon, some older matrons are muttering about a run-in with passengers from the Celebrity cruise ship docked next to us, the Celebrity Apex. Although Celebrity Cruises is also owned by Royal Caribbean, I am made to understand that there is a deep fratricidal beef between passengers of the two lines. “We met a woman from the Apex,” one matron says, “and she says it was a small ship and there was nothing to do. Her face was as tight as a 19-year-old’s, she had so much surgery.” With those words, and beneath a cloudy sky, humidity shrouding our weathered faces and red necks, we set sail once again, hopefully in the direction of home.

THERE ARE BARELY 48 HOURS LEFT to the cruise, and the Icon of the Seas’ passengers are salty. They know how to work the elevators. They know the Washy Washy song by heart. They understand that the chicken gyro at “Feta Mediterranean,” in the AquaDome Market, is the least problematic form of chicken on the ship.

The passengers have shed their INAUGURAL CRUISE T-shirts and are now starting to evince political opinions. There are caps pledging to make America great again and T-shirts that celebrate words sometimes attributed to Patrick Henry: “The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people; it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.” With their preponderance of FAMILY FLAG FAITH FRIENDS FIREARMS T-shirts, the tables by the crepe station sometimes resemble the Capitol Rotunda on January 6. The Real Anthony Fauci , by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., appears to be a popular form of literature, especially among young men with very complicated versions of the American flag on their T-shirts. Other opinions blend the personal and the political. “Someone needs to kill Washy guy, right?” a well-dressed man in the elevator tells me, his gray eyes radiating nothing. “Just beat him to death. Am I right?” I overhear the male member of a young couple whisper, “There goes that freak” as I saunter by in my white spa robe, and I decide to retire it for the rest of the cruise.

I visit the Royal Bling to see up close the $100,000 golden chalice that entitles you to free drinks on Royal Caribbean forever. The pleasant Serbian saleslady explains that the chalice is actually gold-plated and covered in white zirconia instead of diamonds, as it would otherwise cost $1 million. “If you already have everything,” she explains, “this is one more thing you can get.”

I believe that anyone who works for Royal Caribbean should be entitled to immediate American citizenship. They already speak English better than most of the passengers and, per the Serbian lady’s sales pitch above, better understand what America is as well. Crew members like my Panamanian cabin attendant seem to work 24 hours a day. A waiter from New Delhi tells me that his contract is six months and three weeks long. After a cruise ends, he says, “in a few hours, we start again for the next cruise.” At the end of the half a year at sea, he is allowed a two-to-three-month stay at home with his family. As of 2019, the median income for crew members was somewhere in the vicinity of $20,000, according to a major business publication. Royal Caribbean would not share the current median salary for its crew members, but I am certain that it amounts to a fraction of the cost of a Royal Bling gold-plated, zirconia-studded chalice.

And because most of the Icon’s hyper-sanitized spaces are just a frittata away from being a Delta lounge, one forgets that there are actual sailors on this ship, charged with the herculean task of docking it in port. “Having driven 100,000-ton aircraft carriers throughout my career,” retired Admiral James G. Stavridis, the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, writes to me, “I’m not sure I would even know where to begin with trying to control a sea monster like this one nearly three times the size.” (I first met Stavridis while touring Army bases in Germany more than a decade ago.)

Today, I decide to head to the hot tub near Swim & Tonic, where some of the ship’s drunkest reprobates seem to gather (the other tubs are filled with families and couples). The talk here, like everywhere else on the ship, concerns football, a sport about which I know nothing. It is apparent that four teams have recently competed in some kind of finals for the year, and that two of them will now face off in the championship. Often when people on the Icon speak, I will try to repeat the last thing they said with a laugh or a nod of disbelief. “Yes, 20-yard line! Ha!” “Oh my God, of course, scrimmage.”

Soon we are joined in the hot tub by the late-middle-age drunk guy with the duck necklace. He is wearing a bucket hat with the legend HAWKEYES , which, I soon gather, is yet another football team. “All right, who turned me in?” Duck Necklace says as he plops into the tub beside us. “I get a call in the morning,” he says. “It’s security. Can you come down to the dining room by 10 a.m.? You need to stay away from the members of this religious family.” Apparently, the gregarious Duck Necklace had photobombed the wrong people. There are several families who present as evangelical Christians or practicing Muslims on the ship. One man, evidently, was not happy that Duck Necklace had made contact with his relatives. “It’s because of religious stuff; he was offended. I put my arm around 20 people a day.”

Everyone laughs. “They asked me three times if I needed medication,” he says of the security people who apparently interrogated him in full view of others having breakfast.

Another hot-tub denizen suggests that he should have asked for fentanyl. After a few more drinks, Duck Necklace begins to muse about what it would be like to fall off the ship. “I’m 62 and I’m ready to go,” he says. “I just don’t want a shark to eat me. I’m a huge God guy. I’m a Bible guy. There’s some Mayan theory squaring science stuff with religion. There is so much more to life on Earth.” We all nod into our Red Stripes.

“I never get off the ship when we dock,” he says. He tells us he lost $6,000 in the casino the other day. Later, I look him up, and it appears that on land, he’s a financial adviser in a crisp gray suit, probably a pillar of his North Chicago community.

THE OCEAN IS TEEMING with fascinating life, but on the surface it has little to teach us. The waves come and go. The horizon remains ever far away.

I am constantly told by my fellow passengers that “everybody here has a story.” Yes, I want to reply, but everybody everywhere has a story. You, the reader of this essay, have a story, and yet you’re not inclined to jump on a cruise ship and, like Duck Necklace, tell your story to others at great pitch and volume. Maybe what they’re saying is that everybody on this ship wants to have a bigger, more coherent, more interesting story than the one they’ve been given. Maybe that’s why there’s so much signage on the doors around me attesting to marriages spent on the sea. Maybe that’s why the Royal Caribbean newsletter slipped under my door tells me that “this isn’t a vacation day spent—it’s bragging rights earned.” Maybe that’s why I’m so lonely.

Today is a big day for Icon passengers. Today the ship docks at Royal Caribbean’s own Bahamian island, the Perfect Day at CocoCay. (This appears to be the actual name of the island.) A comedian at the nightclub opined on what his perfect day at CocoCay would look like—receiving oral sex while learning that his ex-wife had been killed in a car crash (big laughter). But the reality of the island is far less humorous than that.

One of the ethnic tristate ladies in the infinity pool told me that she loved CocoCay because it had exactly the same things that could be found on the ship itself. This proves to be correct. It is like the Icon, but with sand. The same tired burgers, the same colorful tubes conveying children and water from Point A to B. The same swim-up bar at its Hideaway ($140 for admittance, no children allowed; Royal Caribbean must be printing money off its clientele). “There was almost a fight at The Wizard of Oz ,” I overhear an elderly woman tell her companion on a chaise lounge. Apparently one of the passengers began recording Royal Caribbean’s intellectual property and “three guys came after him.”

I walk down a pathway to the center of the island, where a sign reads DO NOT ENTER: YOU HAVE REACHED THE BOUNDARY OF ADVENTURE . I hear an animal scampering in the bushes. A Royal Caribbean worker in an enormous golf cart soon chases me down and takes me back to the Hideaway, where I run into Mrs. Rand in a bikini. She becomes livid telling me about an altercation she had the other day with a woman over a towel and a deck chair. We Suites have special towel privileges; we do not have to hand over our SeaPass Card to score a towel. But the Rands are not Suites. “People are so entitled here,” Mrs. Rand says. “It’s like the airport with all its classes.” “You see,” I want to say, “this is where your husband’s love of Ayn Rand runs into the cruelties and arbitrary indignities of unbridled capitalism.” Instead we make plans to meet for a final drink in the Schooner Bar tonight (the Rands will stand me up).

Back on the ship, I try to do laps, but the pool (the largest on any cruise ship, naturally) is fully trashed with the detritus of American life: candy wrappers, a slowly dissolving tortilla chip, napkins. I take an extra-long shower in my suite, then walk around the perimeter of the ship on a kind of exercise track, past all the alluring lifeboats in their yellow-and-white livery. Maybe there is a dystopian angle to the HBO series that I will surely end up pitching, one with shades of WALL-E or Snowpiercer . In a collapsed world, a Royal Caribbean–like cruise liner sails from port to port, collecting new shipmates and supplies in exchange for the precious energy it has on board. (The actual Icon features a new technology that converts passengers’ poop into enough energy to power the waterslides . In the series, this shitty technology would be greatly expanded.) A very young woman (18? 19?), smart and lonely, who has only known life on the ship, walks along the same track as I do now, contemplating jumping off into the surf left by its wake. I picture reusing Duck Necklace’s words in the opening shot of the pilot. The girl is walking around the track, her eyes on the horizon; maybe she’s highborn—a Suite—and we hear the voice-over: “I’m 19 and I’m ready to go. I just don’t want a shark to eat me.”

Before the cruise is finished, I talk to Mr. Washy Washy, or Nielbert of the Philippines. He is a sweet, gentle man, and I thank him for the earworm of a song he has given me and for keeping us safe from the dreaded norovirus. “This is very important to me, getting people to wash their hands,” he tells me in his burger getup. He has dreams, as an artist and a performer, but they are limited in scope. One day he wants to dress up as a piece of bacon for the morning shift.

THE MAIDEN VOYAGE OF THE TITANIC (the Icon of the Seas is five times as large as that doomed vessel) at least offered its passengers an exciting ending to their cruise, but when I wake up on the eighth day, all I see are the gray ghosts that populate Miami’s condo skyline. Throughout my voyage, my writer friends wrote in to commiserate with me. Sloane Crosley, who once covered a three-day spa mini-cruise for Vogue , tells me she felt “so very alone … I found it very untethering.” Gideon Lewis-Kraus writes in an Instagram comment: “When Gary is done I think it’s time this genre was taken out back and shot.” And he is right. To badly paraphrase Adorno: After this, no more cruise stories. It is unfair to put a thinking person on a cruise ship. Writers typically have difficult childhoods, and it is cruel to remind them of the inherent loneliness that drove them to writing in the first place. It is also unseemly to write about the kind of people who go on cruises. Our country does not provide the education and upbringing that allow its citizens an interior life. For the creative class to point fingers at the large, breasty gentlemen adrift in tortilla-chip-laden pools of water is to gather a sour harvest of low-hanging fruit.

A day or two before I got off the ship, I decided to make use of my balcony, which I had avoided because I thought the view would only depress me further. What I found shocked me. My suite did not look out on Central Park after all. This entire time, I had been living in the ship’s Disneyland, Surfside, the neighborhood full of screaming toddlers consuming milkshakes and candy. And as I leaned out over my balcony, I beheld a slight vista of the sea and surf that I thought I had been missing. It had been there all along. The sea was frothy and infinite and blue-green beneath the span of a seagull’s wing. And though it had been trod hard by the world’s largest cruise ship, it remained.

This article appears in the May 2024 print edition with the headline “A Meatball at Sea.” When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

Royal Caribbean cruise ships ranked by size from biggest to smallest — the complete list

Are you looking for the most activity-packed, megaresort-like Royal Caribbean cruise ships at sea? If so, you'll want to get on one of the biggest Royal Caribbean cruise ships.

The biggest Royal Caribbean cruise ships are, by nature, the Royal Caribbean ships with the most pools, waterslides and other deck-top activities, as well as the most onboard restaurants, bars and showrooms. They have the biggest casinos and spas among ships in the Royal Caribbean fleet as well as the most cabins and suites — and the most variation in cabin and suite types.

With room for 6,000 passengers or more, the biggest Royal Caribbean ships are truly massive resorts like you find at such landlocked destinations as Orlando and Las Vegas. If you're in the "bigger is better" camp when it comes to a resort experience, these are the Royal Caribbean ships for you.

For more cruise guides, news and tips, sign up for TPG's cruise newsletter .

Still, Royal Caribbean doesn't just operate massive vessels. The Miami-based cruise giant also operates quite a few relatively small cruise ships that carry just 2,000 or 3,000 people and have a much more intimate feel. In some cases, these vessels are just half or a third of the size of Royal Caribbean's biggest ships. These ships, notably, have far fewer deck-top activities and interior venues than the biggest Royal Caribbean cruise ships.

The smallest Royal Caribbean cruise ships are best for vacationers who like a more intimate, less crowded resort experience.

Related: The 6 classes of Royal Caribbean ships, explained

To ensure you end up on the right Royal Caribbean ship for you, it pays to study which Royal Caribbean ships are the biggest and which are the smallest before booking.

Here is every Royal Caribbean ship currently in operation ranked from biggest to smallest.

1. Icon of the Seas

Maiden voyage: 2024 Size: 250,800 gross tons Passenger capacity : 5,610

2. Wonder of the Seas

Maiden voyage: 2022 Size: 235,600 gross tons Passenger capacity : 5,734

3. Symphony of the Seas

Maiden voyage: 2018 Size: 228,081 gross tons Passenger capacity: 5,518

4. Harmony of the Seas

Maiden voyage: 2016 Size: 226,963 gross tons Passenger capacity: 5,479

5. Oasis of the Seas

Maiden voyage: 2009 Size: 226,838 gross tons Passenger capacity: 5,602

6. Allure of the Seas

Maiden voyage: 2010 Size: 225,282 gross tons Passenger capacity: 5,484

7. Spectrum of the Seas

Maiden voyage: 2019 Size: 169,379 gross tons Passenger capacity: 4,246

8 (tied). Ovation of the Seas

Maiden voyage: 2016 Size: 168,666 gross tons Passenger capacity: 4,180

8 (tied). Anthem of the Seas

Maiden voyage: 2015 Size: 168,666 gross tons Passenger capacity: 4,180

8 (tied). Quantum of the Seas

Maiden voyage: 2014 Size: 168,666 gross tons Passenger capacity: 4,180

11. Odyssey of the Seas

Maiden voyage : 2022 Size: 167,704 gross tons Passenger capacity: 4,284

12. Freedom of the Seas

Maiden voyage: 2006 Size: 156,271 gross tons Passenger capacity: 3,926

13 (tied). Independence of the Seas

Maiden voyage: 2008 Size: 154,407 gross tons Passenger capacity: 3,634

13 (tied). Liberty of the Seas

Maiden voyage: 2007 Size: 154,407 gross tons Passenger capacity: 3,798

15. Navigator of the Seas

Maiden voyage: 2002 Size: 139,999 gross tons Passenger capacity: 3,388

16. Mariner of the Seas

Maiden voyage: 2003 Size: 139,863 gross tons Passenger capacity: 4,000

17. Explorer of the Seas

Maiden voyage: 2000 Size: 137,308 gross tons Passenger capacity: 3,286

18 (tied). Voyager of the Seas

Maiden voyage: 1999 Size: 137,276 gross tons Passenger capacity: 3,602

18 (tied). Adventure of the Seas

Maiden voyage: 2001 Size: 137,276 gross tons Passenger capacity: 3,114

20 (tied). Jewel of the Seas

Maiden voyage: 2004 Size: 90,090 gross tons Passenger capacity: 2,191

20 (tied). Serenade of the Seas

Maiden voyage: 2003 Size: 90,090 gross tons Passenger capacity: 2,143

20 (tied). Brilliance of the Seas

Maiden voyage: 2002 Size: 90,090 gross tons Passenger capacity: 2,142

20 (tied). Radiance of the Seas

Maiden voyage: 2001 Size: 90,090 gross tons Passenger capacity: 2,143

24. Enchantment of the Seas

Maiden voyage: 1997 Size: 82,910 gross tons Passenger capacity: 2,252

25. Rhapsody of the Seas

Maiden voyage : 1997 Size: 78,419 gross tons Passenger capacity: 1,998

26. Vision of the Seas

Maiden voyage: 1998 Size: 78,340 gross tons Passenger capacity : 2,050

27. Grandeur of the Seas

Maiden voyage: 1996 Size: 73,817 gross tons Passenger capacity: 1,992

What is the biggest Royal Caribbean ship?

The biggest Royal Caribbean cruise ship is the just-unveiled Icon of the Seas . Measuring 250,800 gross tons, it's not only the biggest Royal Caribbean ship but also the biggest cruise ship ever built by any line. It's loaded with more bars, restaurants, theaters and deck-top attractions than you'll find on any other ship at sea.

Icon of the Seas is the first in a new series of ships at Royal Caribbean that are bigger than anything seen before. The series is called the Icon Class.

How big is Icon of the Seas?

At 250,800 gross tons, Icon of the Seas is more than 6% larger than Royal Caribbean's 1-year-old Wonder of the Seas , which previously was the biggest ship in the Royal Caribbean fleet (and the biggest ship operated by any line). Icon of the Seas can carry up to 7,600 passengers — a new record for a passenger ship. That's about 7% higher than the maximum capacity of Wonder of the Seas, which can hold up to 7,084 passengers.

The bigger passenger capacity is partly due to the ship's greater focus on family travelers. Icon of the Seas was built with a lot more cabins that have plenty of extra bunks to accommodate families with many children. It also has more amenities geared toward families. This includes a new-for-the-line outdoor "neighborhood" called Surfside dedicated to families with young children.

What is the smallest Royal Caribbean ship?

The smallest Royal Caribbean cruise ship is Grandeur of the Seas. Measuring just 73,817 tons, it's just a third the size of Icon of the Seas.

Grandeur of the Seas dates to 1996, a time when cruise ships were built far smaller than they are today and with far fewer venues. At 27 years old, it's the oldest vessel in the Royal Caribbean fleet and probably will be phased out sometime in the next few years.

Except for a rock climbing wall, Grandeur of the Seas has none of the gee-whiz Royal Caribbean top-deck attractions found on newer Royal Caribbean vessels, such as skydiving simulators and giant water parks. For the most part, its top deck is lined with pools, whirlpools and sunning areas, as is typical for ships built in the 1990s.

That said, Grandeur of the Seas has a loyal following among Royal Caribbean fans who prefer smaller and more intimate ships.

Are bigger Royal Caribbean ships coming?

Royal Caribbean currently has three new cruise ships on order, all of which will be among its biggest cruise ships ever — if not the biggest.

The first to arrive in July will be Utopia of the Seas , the sixth and final vessel in the line's iconic Oasis Class series. Launched in 2009 with the debut of Oasis of the Seas, the Oasis-class ships have dominated the world of mega-size cruise ships since that year. At the time the class began rolling out, the vessels were around 40% bigger than the next-biggest cruise ships, and they have continued to be the biggest and most amenity-laden ships in the world ever since.

Utopia of the Seas is expected to be roughly the same size as Wonder of the Seas, Royal Caribbean's second-biggest cruise ship. But it'll be smaller than the line's biggest ship, Icon of the Seas.

Royal Caribbean also has two more vessels similar to Icon of the Seas on order from shipyards for delivery in 2025 and 2026, respectively. Both ships are expected to be as big or bigger than Icon of the Seas.

Related: The ultimate guide to Icon of the Seas itineraries, attractions and more

What's the difference between bigger and smaller Royal Caribbean ships?

Royal Caribbean's biggest ships have room for many more onboard venues and attractions than Royal Caribbean's older ships. That makes them more alluring for vacationers who prefer a big, bustling megaresort experience to a stay at a smaller resort.

On Royal Caribbean's biggest Oasis-class vessels, for instance, you'll find three separate main pool areas, a kiddie splash zone, surfing simulators, a miniature golf course, a basketball court and even a zip line. And that's just on their top decks. Inside the vessels, you'll find more lounges, bars, restaurants and shops than you can imagine — plus huge casinos, spas and showrooms with Broadway-style shows. They even have indoor ice skating rinks.

The line's new Icon of the Seas has a similar array of amenities.

Related: The ultimate guide to Royal Caribbean

Royal Caribbean's smallest ships are a half to a third smaller than the Oasis Class and Icon Class vessels and lack many of the above features. They have a much more intimate feel, at least in the pantheon of relatively big, mass-market ships, and they hold far fewer people. While Oasis Class and Icon Class ships can hold more than 5,400 passengers at double occupancy, the line's four oldest vessels (known as the Vision class) are only designed to carry about 2,000 passengers at double occupancy.

Royal Caribbean's smallest ships are a good choice for someone who wants to try Royal Caribbean but isn't eager to travel with huge crowds. The smallest ships in the Royal Caribbean fleet thus appeal to a subset of Royal Caribbean fans who prefer more intimacy in a cruise vessel and don't mind giving up some onboard amenities to get it. They are also often less expensive on a per-day basis for cruisers.

Related: Don't miss out on these Royal Caribbean loyalty perks

Additionally, because of their size, the smallest Royal Caribbean ships can operate itineraries to places that aren't as easy for big ships to visit. Not all ports in the world can handle a ship the size of Icon of the Seas.

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6 Best Cruises Out Of Port Canaveral

By Zachary Laks | Published on April 9, 2024

It's time to start planning your next big vacation. Whether you're looking for a weekend getaway, a family-friendly vacation or an extended voyage, you'll find cruises out of Port Canaveral, Florida that tick all your boxes.

When considering one of the cruises out of Port Canaveral, plan extra time before and after your sailing to soak up all the fun that the area has to offer. There's so much to do in Orlando that you could stay for several days and never get bored — music to your ears if you're traveling with children. One of the best things about Orlando cruises is that you have your choice of theme parks to round out your vacation. They're expansive and immersive escapes into playful worlds, not unlike a great cruise. I love tacking on an extra day or two at an Orlando theme park, usually before my cruise departs. I always appreciate the days of racking up thousands of steps traversing a theme park before boarding a cruise, where I know I'll be able to lounge on a deck or relax in a hot tub.

Not far from Port Canaveral, the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex is a great place to spend a day admiring the vast scope of NASA. The center offers one-of-a-kind immersion into space exploration, including the chance to strap into a rocket launch simulator for an adrenaline-pumping thrill.

For those seeking a more peaceful retreat before boarding their cruises out of Orlando, Port Canaveral is near the white sands of Cocoa Beach. Spend the day enjoying calm, low waves — great for year-round swimming, learning to surf and kayaking alongside manatees and dolphins. Or take a seat on an airboat ride through the wetlands for encounters with alligators and, depending on the season, bald eagles, herons and osprey.

Ready to book a cruise to Port Canaveral? Here are the six best cruises from Port Canaveral.

1. Best For A Long Weekend

Set to launch in the summer of 2024, Utopia of the Seas ℠ will be the sixth Oasis Class ship, Royal Caribbean's class of ships packed with adventure and entertainment. The new ship will focus on three- and four-night cruises from its year-round home port in Port Canaveral, with onboard upgrades that include reimagined pool decks, a Giovanni's℠ Italian Kitchen that spans two decks (try the osso buco!) and the new Pesky Parrot tiki bar, serving fruity cocktails on the Royal Promenade. This itinerary  to the Bahamas on Utopia of the Seas ℠ is the best for a long weekend exploring the highlights of The Bahamas, with a day in Nassau followed by a day at Perfect Day at CocoCay , Royal Caribbean's private island destination.

2. Best For Beach Lovers

This exquisite itinerary to the Southern Caribbean on Adventure of the Seas ® routes you to the farthest corner of the Caribbean for some of its best beaches. Sailing on the Adventure of the Seas ® for eight nights from Port Canaveral, you'll stop in ports such as Oranjestad, Aruba; Willemstad, Curaçao; and Kralendijk, Bonaire. Each port will welcome you with easily accessible, powdery sand beaches primed for world-class swimming, snorkeling and diving. You'll have your pick of 86 dive sites at Bonaire National Marine Park with more than 350 recorded fish species known to frequent the waters.

3. Best For A European Adventure

Transatlantic sailings make for such a special vacation, and this 13-night Transatlantic Azores itinerary on Adventure of the Seas ® packs four remarkable ports into the crossing. You'll cruise the Atlantic for the first nine days, living it up on a ship that is packed with ways to play and relax. You'll arrive in idyllic Tenerife in the Canary Islands on the tenth day. Immerse yourself in the local Spanish culture by spending part of your day exploring the Museum of Nature and Archaeology or the Basilica de Candelaria shrine. The cruise continues to Lanzarote, Canary Islands, where picture-perfect colonial mansions line cobblestone streets, then on to the adventurous mountain island of Madeira, Portugal before completing your journey in the charming streets of Lisbon, Portugal.

4. Best For Private Island Getaways

This unique Port Canaveral cruise itinerary  to Bermuda and Perfect Day at CocoCay on Adventure of the Seas ® visits both of Royal Caribbean's private destinations, where paradise is just steps away from the ship. On an eight-night journey, this ship will first cruise to Labadee, the cruise line's private peninsula adventure park and beach. Soak up this private spot by relaxing on the beach, enjoy the destination's signature cocktail specialty, the Labadoozie (a fruity rum cocktail) or opt for a zip line ride that will send you soaring over the ocean. The next private island destination is Perfect Day at CocoCay, Royal Caribbean's oasis in The Bahamas. Here you'll port within short distance of pristine beaches, a thrilling water park and countless ways to unwind beneath the palm trees. There's also a stop in Bermuda, home to pink-sand beaches and rum swizzles.

5. Best For Foodies

Foodies will delight in fresh, authentic Caribbean dishes on this itinerary to the Western Caribbean and Perfect Day at CocoCay on Wonder of the Seas ® . In Cozumel, Mexico you'll find lunch specialties featuring locally caught seafood, often grouper and red snapper fried on a plate with rice and a vibrant salad. In Roatán, Honduras, ceviche is the local favorite, along with fried plantains and baleadas — tacos made with soft flour tortillas. The ship's final port is Puerto Costa Maya, Mexico, a charming fishing village where the salbutes  (fried corn tortillas topped with shredded chicken) make a great appetizer to the catch of the day, served hot off the grill.

6. Best For Variety

This seven-night Eastern Caribbean itinerary  on Wonder of the Seas ® is a top choice if you want to change things up and go on a unique adventure in each port. Your first destination is Philipsburg, St. Maarten, where you can tour the island on an ATV, sample rum from a local distillery or end the day with a sunset horseback ride on the beach. When the ship arrives in the U.S. Virgin Islands at Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, head straight to Magens Bay, often short-listed as one of the world's most beautiful beaches. Or dive into a snorkeling tour to get face time with some sea turtles and coral reefs. On your final stop, Royal Caribbean's Perfect Day at CocoCay, everyone in your group can enjoy a seemingly endless array of activities. If the beach is calling, grab a spot on one of the many cushy beach loungers close to a bar serving up island cocktails that go great with the ocean view. For the adventurous ones, Daredevil's Peak® waterslide is North America's tallest and promises an adrenaline rush.

Encompassing ports of paradise and incredible culture, Orlando cruises are the ideal vacation getaway. Start planning your island escape from Port Canaveral now .

Cruise From Orlando

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PERFECT DAY AT COCOCAY

FAMILY GETAWAY

WESTERN CARIBBEAN

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