Royal Caribbean Cruises Reviews 

I recently booked a family holiday on Icon of the Seas (9–16 May) to celebrate my 40th birthday, and my experience so far has been extremely disappointing.

The main reason we chose this cruise was the onboard waterpark, which is heavily promoted in Royal Caribbean’s advertising as a key feature for families. However, after booking, I discovered (through passenger groups and recent reviews) that 5 out of 6 waterslides are currently closed, and that the main pool has also been closed for significant periods, leading to overcrowding in the remaining areas.

This was not disclosed at all during the booking process.

This is not a minor issue — the waterpark is clearly a major selling point of the ship. If around 90% of those facilities are unavailable, that is something customers should be told upfront. Instead, I had to find this out myself through Facebook groups, which is completely unacceptable.

When I contacted customer service, the response made things worse:
• One advisor questioned why I hadn’t asked if the slides were open when booking — which is frankly ridiculous. Customers shouldn’t have to ask whether the ship’s main attractions are unavailable.
• Another advisor said booking agents may not be aware — which I do not accept, given these issues have reportedly been ongoing for over a month.

I was also told they need to “listen to the call” before responding. That’s fine — they will clearly hear that no mention was made of any closures during the booking.

To make matters worse, I tried calling a UK customer service number and was asked to choose between “pre-boarding” and “post-boarding.” When I selected pre-boarding, I was told the line was only for people who had already completed their cruise. This says a lot — it suggests customers are not being properly informed beforehand, are experiencing issues onboard, and are then pushed into complaints after the trip.

From what I can see online, many customers are then offered future cruise credit, rather than a proper resolution.

On top of this, the terms and conditions link in my booking confirmation doesn’t even work, meaning I can’t properly review my cancellation rights. That is unacceptable when customers are being asked to make time-sensitive decisions.

This has left us in a difficult position — we don’t even know whether to book flights, as we’ve lost confidence in the holiday entirely.

This trip was meant to be a special 40th birthday celebration and was chosen carefully as I am disabled, with the expectation that a cruise would provide a straightforward, accessible experience. Instead, it has caused stress and uncertainty before we’ve even travelled.

Overall, this feels like a lack of transparency and poor customer service, and I expected far better from Royal Caribbean.

Cancelled my cruise two days before departure and was promised a full refund in writing. Three months later, I’m still waiting for part of it. Very poor communication and failure to honour their own refund commitment.

I recently had a disappointing customer service experience. Due to scheduling conflicts, i requested a one-time courtesy change to my cruise date. While i understand companies operate under specific policies, I was hoping for some level of flexibility given the situation. Unfortunately, my request was denied without any accommodation or alternative solution. What stood out the most was not just the decision itself, but the lack of empathy or willingness to consider a one-time exception. In an industry centered around hospitality and customer experience, this felt particularly discouraging. I respect the need for consistent policies, but I believe there is also value in building long-term loyalty. As it stands, this experience has impacted my perception of the company, and I would encourage others to carefully review change and cancellation policies before booking. I hope Royal Carribean considers incorporating more flexibility into their customer service approach in the future

I tried the royal carribean sprite and i think it was DISHSOAP!!! DISHUSTING! the rest was good so 2 stars.

1 of 6 water slides working on theor crown jewel ship, Icon. Mis-assigned the 2 adjoining rooms I had booked for our family months ago. Still nothing from them to address the issues after multiple attempts to contact their service team, both through their app and on the ship. TERRIBLE first experience with Royal Caribbean. If we could disembark now and optimize the rest of our family vacation on a land experience we would do it in a heartbeat. Instead trapped here. Absolutely terrible. We’ll be vocal about this experience with RC, forever.

This was the best cruise i’ve been on. The lighting is nice and the rooms are clean. The housekeeper does a great job cleaning up the room. I like when gives towel animals very creatively made. I also enjoyed the food but there wasn’t much halal food so only ate some foods. My favorite was french fries and salmon best combo. At the 6th day, they gave lobster and it tasted amazingly well. Also, the free drinks was nice like the strawberry-kiwi combo. The royal cup had free cola drinks which was nice. I would recommend lowering prices because my dad bought a watch but found the same one on Amazon which was cheaper. I also loved the countries that we went to. The water park was great but can you add smaller hight pools because I could not go 4.9 feet down. Also can you add a bigger water playground and the slide isn’t fast. Can you add smaller waterslides and add more water slides. Last thing I would recommend is adding a lot of dry slides at playgrounds. This cruise was still great though. I played no internet games and watched tv when I was bored. I liked the live tv episodes of Spongebob. Really nice cruise to be honest.

This is my story on a failed Caribbean cruise back in December 2025 Xmas week.

Due to unforeseen delay at the Toronto airport that took around 1.5 hours to clear the 🇺🇸 security checks.. I missed my scheduled flight to NJ for the cruise boarding call. After taking the next available flight down, I made it to the cruise port just in time to see the cruise ship 'Odyssey of the seas' leaving out to sea.

I then decided to catch a long 12+ hours expensive bus ride down to Orlando Florida to hopefully catch the ship there at their next stop since there were no available train tickets at the time.

After getting to the Orlando airport and booking myself a shuttle service to the port of call for the next day when the cruise ship was scheduled to arrive for an 8 hours stay. I was then contacted by the shuttle service and was advised that I won't be able to board the cruise ship in Orlando or any other port of call locations after that due to some ridiculous 🇺🇸 laws in place.

So the entire cruise trip was a failure and a waste of time and money. I ended up staying in Orlando for that Xmas week and it wasn't cheap of course as a tourist costing similar as the cruise itself.

I contacted Royal Caribbean a few times already on my situation and they have agreed on the phone to refund me around $860 for certain taxes and fees but not on the cost of the cruise itself. The only refund amount I saw was around $35 back in January. No actual full refund on the amount that they claimed that they'll do to date.

This was supposed to be my 1st cruise ever and this really unfortunate experience is not a good 1st impression on a new customer like me. I'll surely think 2-3x beforehand going forward if someday I ever consider using them on any cruise trip.

If anyone is thinking about going on a cruise, use Royal Caribbean at your own risk and make sure that you don't miss your cruise ship from the start. Otherwise you may go through what I did and good luck on getting any money back.

Beware!!! I am currently on a royal Caribbean cruise and they mischarged me at the casino by hundreds of dollars in one day. I stated they had done so and they told me that they would investigate it. I stated I would like to see the camera footage that shows me charging that to my room and they said they could not show me that but they looked and it was correct per video. I know how much I spend per day in the casino. I don't know what my next steps will be. I'm not accepting that.

Beware of deceptive sales tactics. I’ve been cruising with Royal Caribbean for decades and was told when I booked a recent cruise that if a better deal came along I could switch without penalty. I’ve taken advantage of this in the past without issue but when a better rate became available, they would not switch me to the lower promotional offer. So don’t fall for the “you have nothing to loose by booking now since you can switch later if we lower the rates” sales pitch. They wanted $500 to change it. This is a change in policy that they are not telling you about and are still using the same tactics to get you to commit early. I couldn’t believe it and spoke to several customer service reps to correct it, without success. I went so far as emailing and escalating it to upper management with the same answer - we apologize but no resolution offered. Buyer beware, sadly this company has change. My ask was simply to offer me the currently available promotion.
I booked the Brilliance of the Seas, 9/21/26 sail date.

I am filing this complaint due to extremely poor customer service both at the port and afterward when trying to resolve the issue.

We were scheduled to board a cruise departing from Los Angeles and were driving from San Diego. Due to a major car accident causing unexpected delays, we arrived approximately 10 minutes after the check-in cutoff time. However, when we arrived, the ship was still at the port and the boarding gate was still open.

Despite this, we were denied boarding and not given any reasonable assistance or flexibility at the port. The ship had not yet departed, yet no effort was made to accommodate the situation.

Following this, I spent approximately three hours on the phone with customer service (from 3:30 PM to 6:30 PM) trying to resolve the issue. I called six separate times, and each time the call was disconnected before any resolution could be reached. I did not receive any callback, despite the repeated disconnections.

During one of the calls, a representative verbally confirmed that we would be eligible for a refund. However, due to the repeated call drops, I never received any written confirmation, and no follow-up was provided.

This experience reflects a serious lack of customer support—both at the port, where no reasonable accommodation was offered despite the ship still being present, and through customer service, where I was unable to get consistent or reliable assistance.

I am requesting that the company honor the refund that was verbally confirmed or provide an appropriate resolution such as a future cruise credit.

We booked a mediterranean cruise for our grandson's high school graduation gift with another couple prior to the problems in Iran. After seeing missiles being sent over to Cyprus and Turkey we decided it was far too dangerous to go forward with the cruise that was to take place the end of June.

We called RC and asked for a refund of all moneys, and although we fully understood that the $750 deposit was noted as non-refundable, we had expected some consideration because of the circumstances involved. We were told the only thing they could is to apply the $750 to a future cruise, but only if we paid an additional $100 per person! Not knowing when the Iran situation would be resolved we decided we didn't want to lose an additional $300 on top of the $750.

RC would rather lose future fares for 5 people then refund $750,... 4 months prior to the cruise date, plenty of time for them to sell the cabins. That's a poor business model in my opinion.

I love cruise my teen daughter and my 8 year son get lot fun time participating in various activities staff are very friendly… there so many activities programs you can’t even attend all of them.. room service lot of food options… we got complete relaxation

I wouldn't give not even a star!!! Very bad experience, bad food, rude staff, in a word --- VERY VERY BAD , DO NOT BOOK!!!!

Really liked Royal Caribbean, have been sailing with them for 8 years and 17 sailings for both me and my wife.
Things were going great we were getting to be diamond plus Crown and Anchor members and Prime in their casinos. Then starting May of 2025 things came to an end, they started changing our points in both the Crown and Anchor and Casino. We stopped getting offers. We keep calling and they keep telling us they are going to fix this. They tell us things like 3 to 5 days all the way up to 6 to 8 weeks but at the end of their self directed time limits they have not fixed anything and they just give us another time limit. We have called, emailed and personally complained to every one from guest services to casino hosts, we even sent 3 emails to Michael Bayley the CEO. Our letter to the BBB was met with we are working on it at which point the BBB dropped the case. What they didn't tell the BBB is we have been working on it for almost a year. I am finally to the point right now were I am done, I will try and collect what I was promised and move on to another cruise line. What a waist of 8 years and a lot of money trying to build up points in their casino and Loyalty rewards.

Flew from Spain to join a Royal Caribbean cruise (Freedom of the Seas, Jan 24), and the experience was extremely disappointing.

We missed 50% of the itinerary (Grand Cayman) due to a medical emergency, which we understand can happen. However, the alternative provided (Freeport, Bahamas) was not comparable at all.

We had to spend extra money just to access a beach:

$140 taxi
$20 local access fee
Additional excursions ~$80 per person

Despite reporting everything onboard, we received only ~$10 compensation.

Customer service responses have been generic and unhelpful, simply referring us to insurance instead of taking responsibility.

Very poor customer experience for a company of this size. Be aware if you are booking a cruise expecting premium service.

I went on an 8-day cruise with a family member. Although we stayed in the same room, we had two different accounts financially. I deposited 400$ into my account, and she deposited $110 into hers. At the end of the cruise, I received a bill for $528, and she received one for over $900. I figured, "That's fine, they can charge the extra $128 to my card on file." Nope. Turns out they lumped all the cash into one payment and applied it to my family member's account, and I got the full bill. When I called customer services to explain the situation so they could fix it, they told me, "We are not responsible for that. Work it out with your family member." Not responsible? Uh uh, you made the mistake, and now I have to fix it? Horrible company, I will never cruise with them again.

We purchased premium beverage packages on our cruise expecting convenience, accessibility, and added value. In reality, key elements of the package (such as smoothies and protein shakes) were not available when they were actually needed – for example in the mornings before leaving the ship on port days. The only venue offering them opened too late, making a significant part of the package practically unusable.

Breakfast service was also poorly organized. In a large dining area, only one bar station served fresh orange juice, resulting in long queues every morning. Service was inconsistent, and at times we were told we could not order multiple items (such as a cappuccino and orange juice) at the same time, which made no sense and was handled differently by other staff.

Overall, having a premium package provided no real advantage – in fact, it often felt like a disadvantage due to waiting times and unnecessary restrictions.

What is most concerning is how the complaint was handled afterwards. The entire issue was dismissed based on “internal logs,” without properly considering the actual guest experience or the practical usability of the service.

This creates a clear gap between what is marketed and what is delivered.

This experience is not worthy of the Royal Caribbean brand, and based on this, I would strongly advise future guests to carefully reconsider purchasing the beverage package.

Due to a port closure, which obviously we as customers don't control, Royal Caribbean changed the itinerary knocking out two of the countries we would have visited and taking us to two others we had no interest in. A port closure making the cruise worthless to us is not our fault, yet Royal Caribbean showed no empathy or desire to compensate us for the inconvenience. We wanted to cancel the trip, but would have lost the thousands of dollars spent. They didn't care about us as customers, only the money.

Brutal policies and horrible customer service, we are never cruising with Royal Caribbean again.

I am an Emerald crown society for RC. I am not recommending this line to cruise. They do not care about customers service anymore. I had a bad experience in a cruise done at the end of 2025 and had another bad experience in a cruise already booked and not able to cancel. Do not cruise with RC.

Customer service and breach of consumer rights