03/08/2026
My review of the largest cruise ship in the world🛳️⚓️
Royal Caribbean’s Star of the Seas
7 night Western Caribbean
🛟Embarkation: Port Canaveral
We had a little later boarding time (1:30) and had rented a car in Orlando. We dropped off the car at Budget around 12:30 and they shuttled us over to the port. Dropped off our luggage with the porters and headed to check in. Check in was a breeze and the terminal wasn’t too crowded. We got on the ship, checked in at our muster station and headed to our room.
Rating: A
🛏️Stateroom: We booked an inside stateroom on deck 9 forward. The room was pretty small and I didn’t love the layout. There was ample closet space for hanging clothes, but no drawers anywhere! Only two baskets under a shelf in the closet. The bed was comfortable and I liked the shower space better than some other cruises. The one thing I don’t love about Royal is the stateroom host only visits once per day, but ours took great care of us and the distilled water extension cord we had requested (for Jeremy’s CPAP) were in the room when we arrived. Noise was only an issue a couple of times throughout the week - overall it was fairly quiet.
Rating: B
🛳️Ship Overall: Star of the Seas is a beautiful ship and very well laid out. I was concerned because it was so large (over 7500 passengers) it would be crowded and congested, but it really wasn’t at all. It wasn’t hard to learn our way around and very easy to navigate. The Royal Promenade and Surfside areas were much larger than the Oasis class ships and even when a lot of people were milling about, it didn’t feel overly crowded. There were multiple pools - we hung out at the Hideaway adult-only area most of the time. The main pool was closed multiple times for cleaning due to both vomit and excrement and there were lots of complaints about that from other passengers. The “smart” elevators are the best thing ever.
Rating: A
🍽️Food & Beverage: We only ate at the buffet (Windjammer) for breakfast and it was good. Dinner in the main dining room was also pretty good and the service was excellent. We did try two specialty restaurants for dinner - Hooked (seafood) and Izumi (hibachi) and they were both amazing - highly recommend. We don’t really drink much but we did try a few non-alcoholic frozen drinks from the bar and they were also really good. There are so many different options to choose from on this ship - we never got around to them all!
Rating: A-
🎵Entertainment: The main production show in the Royal Theater was a full, Broadway-style production of Back to the Future: the Musical which was very well done. We had missed this show at home when they came to the Tennessee Theater so I’m happy we got to experience it on the ship. They also had a stage version of The Price is Right and the audience was able to play (for a fee) which was fun. We also enjoyed a fun ice-skating show called SOL and an incredible water show called Torque in the AquaDome. Unfortunately we missed the comedy show and CrazyQuest. The little game shows in the smaller venues were just ok - we didn’t really enjoy them much.
Rating: A-
🗾Itinerary: Stops were Perfect Day at CocoCay, Cozumel, Roatan & Costa Maya. The Western Caribbean isn’t our favorite itinerary but we still had a great time. The weather was incredible all 7 days so we got super lucky there.
Rating: B+
🧑✈️Staff: Excellent. Very good service from everyone we encountered. Our room steward took care of everything we needed. Bar staff and servers we encountered were always friendly and helpful.
Rating: A+
💬Overall thoughts: While Royal Caribbean isn’t our favorite cruise line, we would ABSOLUTELY choose to sail again on Star of the Seas. There are LOTS of kids and teens around but because there are so many adult only areas we were able to mostly avoid them. This ship would be perfect for families with children of all different ages as well as multi-generational families. There is truly something for everyone on this ship.
