Trixie21

So what is your impression of Icon ? How did you feel about the ship after actually being onboard versus how you expected to feel about it?

I've very much enjoyed this thread - thank you to everyone who took some time out from their cruise to post pictures and thoughts. I've just watched a 1 hour video tour of Icon on YouTube from someone who was on the cruise and was fully expecting not to like the ship , but was actually , in their own words , completely blown away by it and totally in love with it. This was a couple with no kids. On watching the tour video , I must say I was quite blown away by it as well. We are a couple with no kids and have sailed on every class of Royal Caribbean ship over the years . In recent years we have come to prefer the smaller ships for the atmosphere. But Icon seems to actually have loads of spaces for adults and loads of nooks and crannies where you could get away from it all and read a book or whatever. The overlook area in particular is stunning. And the pearl cafe area is beautiful. In fact the whole ship looks stunning and very well thought out. No doubt there will be some things which don't work as well as planned , but they will have the opportunity to fix those with Star and the next one. Icon is expensive - there is no getting away from it. But I have seen some good deals with travel agents with flights from here in the UK included . We are actually looking now at booking Icon or Star just for the ship, and we never thought we would be. Just our thoughts on what we have seen so far- not sure what the general consensus is.

We had a booking on Jewel for this year out of Amsterdam to Iceland and Ireland (11 day cruise) which was around £4000 for the 2 of us. We had to cancel it due to a continuing medical issue my wife has. I've been looking at the price for next year for a virtually identical cruise in a balcony cabin on Jewel. £11000. Who in their right mind would pay that for a balcony cabin? Could they actually be selling any? And the price keeps going up as it was around £7500 a few months ago when I first started looking at it and I thought that was bad lol!

We had to cancel an Iceland cruise on Jewel this year because my wife was ill. It was around £4000 from memory. The same cruise for next year in the same grade of room is over 10k. Not sure what is going on there. We have booked our first celebrity cruise instead (after 14 Royal cruises in a row) - just under £4000 for the same basic itinerary on the Apex - a brand new edge class ship. In no hurry back to Royal at current pricing. We will be shopping around all lines from now on to get the product we want , the itinerary we want at a price we feel is fair.

We are excited to try something different , and Apex looks pretty stunning from the images I have seen.

We've done 14 Royal cruises in a row and have just booked our first celebrity because it was miles cheaper for the itinerary we wanted than Royal - and the celebrity cruise is on Apex while the Royal was on Jewel which is one of their older ships ( which we actually really like ). We eat a few slices of the pizza over the course of a cruise and find it OK but nothing more than that. I am not stingy by any means , but I would not pay for it , and I agree with the poster who said that sadly, RCL are risking devaluing a great brand.

Yep , she does exactly the same thing. Or if she doesn't fancy anything else I go down and bring her up a bowl and some milk to the room.

Again thanks for the reply. Sounds like we will be quite alright on the Apex. Carol would just probably be looking for either toast , bacon or eggs for breakfast- hopefully those are easy enough to have gluten free. She will be bringing her own cereal which she likes.

Thank you , thats encouraging.

@What A Market Did you visit the buffet at all on your cruise? Just wondered how the selection was and specifically the gluten free selection. My wife is celiac - (lucky her) and has other gastric issues which means she can only eat very small amounts of specific foods when she feels hungry - preordering dinner in the MDR is difficult because she may not be able to eat it - just depends on the day. Going to the buffet is better from that point of view - I assume it is possible to get a chef to walk you round the buffet and tell you what is gluten free , or even prepare you something from scratch?

That makes sense because I had the option of choosing between early , late or anytime when booking.

Thanks for posting these - much appreciated. were you able to order off any of the menus in any MDR?

Hi Following your thread as we have now Apex booked for next year. Would you be able to post copies at some stage of menus from the 4 main dining rooms ? Juwt one days to give me an idea of what they are like. Thank you for taking the timeout from your cruise to do this live thread!

First time on Celebrity next year - we have the Apex booked (couldn't decide between Sky Princess and Celebrity Apex so booked both lol) I have read a bit on various threads about dining on Edge class. 4 main dining rooms- part of the menu the same in each , part unique to that dining room (correct me if I am wrong about anything please). Does anyone have a link to the menus in the 4 main dining rooms?. And I have read that you can actually get items off any of the menus in any of the dining rooms - is that correct and if so how does that work? Do you have to ask for the menus for the other dining rooms ? I have read conflicting information about seating - my booking showed an option for select , early or late. Does that actually exist? We chose early 6pm as that is our preferred time for dinner , but someone said on the beyond that there is only select dining - are the 2 ships different?

Me too lol And I don't actually see Icon as just an amusement Park. That is certainly a large element of it , but when you look at the detail of the ship I think they have tried to create areas to suit everyone.