Cruise Tips

A crew member told me there were 9,700 people on board Legend of the Seas when I spent a week sailing on the world’s biggest cruise ship. That’s around 7,200 guests plus another 2,500 crew.

That sounds like far too many people to fit comfortably on one ship, right? Before we went, I genuinely wondered whether the whole experience would feel crowded, chaotic and exhausting.

By the end of the week, I had my answer.

This Was My Second Cruise On Legend Of The Seas

I’d actually sailed on Legend of the Seas before, but under very different circumstances. My first trip was a preview sailing before the ship entered normal service, with a (relatively!) small number of travel agents, journalists and content creators on board.

On that first cruise, there were hardly any children either. So while I’d seen what the ship had to offer, I hadn’t really experienced what it was like during a normal family cruise.

This time was very different. We were sailing in August with thousands of families on board, and every cabin was occupied.

Some of my concerns looked justified almost immediately. By 9am, rows of sun loungers had already been claimed with towels, while two of the ship’s six water slides stayed closed for the entire cruise. On some days, only two slides were operating, which meant queues could stretch to an hour.

But what surprised me over the following seven days was how rarely the ship actually felt overwhelmed by all those people.

Embarkation Was Much Easier Than Expected

Getting more than 7,000 passengers onto one ship sounds like it should be chaotic, but embarkation in Barcelona was incredibly quick. We barely queued and were on board before we knew it.

My first job was to open the Royal Caribbean app and book the shows, which immediately caused a slight panic because many of the times we wanted were already showing as unavailable. I booked whatever was left and assumed we’d just have to work around it.

As it turned out, that wasn’t really necessary. The shows themselves were never as full as the app suggested, and we eventually managed to see everything we wanted.

We sailed on 30th August, which turned out to be an unusually good week for us. Most children in the UK were about to return to school, but mine weren’t due back until 7th September, and going just one week later saved us more than £1,000 on the cruise fare alone. Flights were considerably cheaper too.

It also meant there were very few British families on board. Most guests seemed to be Spanish, which made sense given that we were sailing from Barcelona and Spanish schools generally return later than those in the UK.

Announcements and some entertainment were in both English and Spanish, and the queuing culture was a little different from what I’m used to. At drinks machines, people tended to gather around rather than form an orderly line, and elevators could occasionally become a bit of a free-for-all.

As a British person who has effectively been trained from birth to queue properly, it took a little getting used to, but it wasn’t a major issue.

Most Activities Were Much Easier To Use Than I Expected

One of my biggest questions before the cruise was whether we’d actually be able to use everything we’d paid for.

Legend of the Seas has an almost ridiculous number of activities, including Crown’s Edge, rock climbing, ice skating, mini golf, the FlowRider surf simulator, a carousel and the huge Category 6 water park.

With 7,200 guests on board, I assumed there would be long queues for everything. There weren’t.

The kids used the climbing wall, tried the FlowRider and played mini golf without any real problems. My daughter also became slightly obsessed with the carousel in Surfside, where the animals are ducks rather than horses.

Apparently, riding one duck wasn’t enough. She needed to try every single one. Fortunately, there was barely ever a queue, so she managed it.

The kids also loved the ice skating. You can only reserve one skating session through the app, but if people don’t turn up for their booked slot, the crew will often let other guests take the spare spaces.

Ours ended up skating three times during the week simply by turning up and asking if there was room.

That became a useful lesson for the rest of the cruise too. If something appears fully booked in the app, it is still worth checking in person because people reserve activities and then change their plans all the time.

We Never Found Skipper The Dog

One thing Royal Caribbean promotes quite heavily on its Icon Class ships is the resident dog.

Legend of the Seas has a Golden Retriever called Skipper, whose official job title is Chief Dog Officer, and naturally my children were desperate to meet her.

Unfortunately, her appearances aren’t listed in the daily programme. From what I’d heard, you simply have to get lucky and happen to bump into her somewhere around the ship.

We tried.

We looked around Central Park, the AquaDome and the Royal Promenade, and spent quite a lot of time keeping an eye out in quieter areas where we’d heard she sometimes appeared. We even found Skipper’s toilet.

But during our entire seven-night cruise, we never actually saw Skipper. So if your children have seen the adverts and are imagining that they’ll spend the cruise hanging out with a Golden Retriever, I definitely wouldn’t choose the ship for that reason alone. You might see her, but there’s no guarantee.

Read more: Why Royal Caribbean Has Dogs Working Onboard Its Cruise Ships

Doing Things At The Wrong Time Really Helps

One of the biggest tricks on a ship this size is doing things when everyone else isn’t.

If most guests are planning a lazy morning and activities later in the day, we’ll usually do the opposite. We’d get the active stuff done early, then slow down later when more people started appearing.

For most things, this worked brilliantly, but the big exception was the water park.

Category 6 has six slides, and I’d been especially keen to try them because I’d broken my toe on my previous Legend of the Seas cruise and hadn’t been able to use any of them.

This time, two months later, I was finally ready!

Unfortunately, two of the slides never opened during the entire week, and they also looked like two of the best ones.

Some days were even worse, with four of the six slides closed. That meant hundreds of people who had planned to spread themselves across a six-slide water park were suddenly being funnelled onto just two.

That’s when the queues became ridiculous. At times, the wait was around an hour for a single slide. We’d stand there for 20 minutes, barely move, then decide it simply wasn’t worth it.

The slides themselves were good, but I don’t think any water slide is good enough to justify standing in the sun for an hour without a hat or sunglasses.

We tried going at around 8pm one evening because the water park stays open until 9pm. The queue was shorter, but then we discovered another problem: once the sun starts going down, standing around soaking wet gets surprisingly cold.

Eventually, we found the perfect time: 9am.

As soon as the slides opened in the morning, the weather was already warm and there was hardly anybody waiting. We could actually enjoy them rather than spend half the morning standing in a queue.

So, if Category 6 is important to you, go as soon as it opens.

I wouldn’t book Legend of the Seas purely for the water park, though. The slides are excellent when they’re operating, but our cruise proved that you can’t assume all six will be available.

Some Of The Paid Extras Were Surprisingly Good Value

Crown’s Edge worked out much better. It normally cost around $45 per person on our sailing, which I thought was pretty expensive for something that only lasts a couple of minutes.

On embarkation day, though, Royal Caribbean was offering it for just $17 each, so I booked all four of us straight away. And we loved it.

That became something of a theme during the cruise. Royal Caribbean has a reputation for upselling once you’re on board, and there is certainly no shortage of opportunities to spend extra money, but some of the offers were genuinely very good.

One day, a chef approached us while we were eating in the Windjammer and offered us a discounted galley tour. We got 30% off, the kids went free and it included a bottomless brunch afterwards.

I had seven mimosas, so I definitely wasn’t complaining about the value!

We also saw speciality restaurants discounted by as much as 50%, which led to one of the strangest things about sailing with 7,200 guests…

Some of the paid restaurants were virtually empty!

The Restaurants Were Much Quieter Than I Expected

One evening, we ate at Pier 7 in Surfside. It cost just $25 per adult, while the children could order from the adult menu free of charge, which I thought was an excellent deal.

Apparently, nobody else agreed, because we were the only people in the restaurant for the entire evening.

It felt incredibly strange to be on the biggest cruise ship in the world, surrounded by thousands of passengers, yet sitting in a speciality restaurant completely by ourselves.

Perhaps speciality dining would have been busier on a sailing with more American guests. Maybe European passengers were simply less inclined to pay extra when so much food was already included?

Whatever the reason, overcrowding certainly wasn’t a problem there. And the venue where I expected it to be worst – the buffet – was nowhere near as bad as I’d imagined either.

Thousands of people all trying to eat breakfast at the same time sounds horrific, but we never struggled to find a table in the Windjammer.

It could look busy when we first walked in, but the restaurant is enormous. We’d simply carry on towards the back and almost always find somewhere.

There’s also another buffet that I think many families overlook. Surfside Eatery is smaller and has less choice than the Windjammer, but it was quiet almost every time we visited. If you just want to get the kids something quickly without walking around a huge buffet looking for somewhere to sit, it’s really useful.

We Hardly Used The Main Dining Room

We ate very well throughout the cruise, despite only going to the main dining room once. The meal we had there was good, but as a vegetarian I still think Royal Caribbean’s main dining menus can be a little restrictive.

The line used to have a separate vegan menu, which gave you plenty more options. Now, you may only have one or two vegetarian choices on the standard menu. If that night’s main option happens to be something you don’t like, you’ll need another plan.

Fortunately, Legend of the Seas makes that very easy. Sorrento’s was probably our most visited dining venue because the pizza is excellent, while El Loco Fresh became another regular stop for tacos, nachos and quesadillas.

Pearl Cafe is also very easy to miss. It’s tucked away behind The Pearl and is brilliant when you want to grab something quickly without going anywhere near the buffet.

Legend Of The Seas Works Brilliantly For Kids

One thing I really like about the ship is how playful it feels. There are slides that take you from one deck to another in places such as Surfside and near the pool decks. They serve absolutely no practical purpose beyond being much more fun than using the stairs.

Surfside itself is bright, colourful and designed completely around families, although I think much of it is probably best for children under around eight. Mine were nine and eleven when we sailed, so they’re starting to outgrow parts of it.

Adventure Ocean was a different story, though. They’ve used plenty of kids’ clubs on previous cruises, and both said this was one of the best they’d experienced.

Even the entrance has interactive screens that make the whole thing feel more exciting before they’ve actually reached the club. And what surprised me most was how easy it was to get them in.

Adventure Ocean operates on a first-come, first-served basis, and you can’t reserve sessions in advance. I’ve sailed on ships before where arriving after the session has started means being told it’s already full, so on a ship carrying thousands of children, I expected queues of parents waiting outside the doors.

That never happened. Not once during the week were our children turned away.

Sometimes my son went several times in the same day, and we’d arrive an hour after a session had started to find there was still space. Impressive!

Would it have been the same a week earlier, right in the middle of the British school holidays? I don’t know. But on our sailing, Adventure Ocean was remarkably easy to use.

WOW Bands Were Worth Buying For The Kids

We also bought both children WOW Bands for $15 each, and I found them genuinely useful because they allowed the kids to move around the ship with a little more independence. They could go and get themselves a snack or head somewhere nearby without constantly needing one of us beside them.

Using the Royal Caribbean app, we could also keep an eye on where they were. On a ship this enormous, giving tweens or teenagers some freedom without completely losing track of them was easily worth $15 to me.

I would set some spending rules first, though! There are plenty of shops aimed at children and they’re not cheap. The same applies to the arcade, where games cost around $3.50 each on our sailing.

I’ve heard stories of children running up enormous bills because parents didn’t realise purchases were being charged straight to the cabin account. You have to be careful.

Fortunately, there was so much else to do that we never really felt the need to use the arcade anyway.

The Sun Lounger Situation Was Annoying

The pool decks were one area where the number of passengers did occasionally become noticeable.

Early in the morning, everything was lovely and quiet. By around 9am, though, plenty of sun loungers already had towels on them.

Not people. Just towels.

One morning, several loungers had been left like this for well over an hour, so I asked a crew member whether she could remove the towels. And she said she couldn’t.

I then asked what would happen if I moved them myself. She smiled and said: “then I wouldn’t see anything”. So I moved them.

About an hour later, two people came back and were absolutely furious. They said they’d only gone for lunch for an hour and believed they should have been allowed to reserve the loungers while they were away.

(They had definitely been gone longer than that.)

But I think that exchange highlighted the bigger issue. A lot of people simply don’t realise that leaving a towel on a lounger while you disappear for lunch isn’t really okay.

There weren’t many obvious signs during most of our cruise, and I didn’t hear regular announcements warning people not to reserve loungers. If you’re used to hotels where guests put towels down in the morning and return hours later, you might assume the same rules apply at sea.

The problem is that a cruise ship doesn’t have enough poolside loungers for every guest. If you’re not using one for an hour or two, somebody else should be able to.

Interestingly, Royal Caribbean became much stricter about this on our final day, which was our only sea day. Signs suddenly appeared around the pool deck stating that loungers couldn’t be reserved, and it made a noticeable difference.

Even with everyone on board, we still managed to find somewhere to sit, get into the hot tubs and find quieter areas away from the busiest pools.

So although all those abandoned towels initially looked like proof that the ship was overcrowded, the reality was more complicated.

Based on our overall experience though, you might not get a lounger directly beside the pool, but there were always other places available.

Read more: 11 Ways I Beat Chair Hogs On Cruises

The Ship Is Very Good At Hiding 7,200 Guests

This, for me, is the biggest reason Legend of the Seas works. It’s not simply enormous. It’s divided into so many different areas that everyone naturally spreads out.

One family might be in Surfside, while another is watching the ice show. Some guests are wandering through Central Park or the Royal Promenade, while others are in Category 6, Adventure Ocean, the casino, the FlowRider, Crown’s Edge or one of dozens of restaurants and bars.

You almost never have all 7,200 passengers trying to use the same space. There were several points during the cruise when we genuinely looked around and wondered where everyone was.

Sometimes It Barely Feels Like A Cruise Ship

There is a downside to that design, and that is that Legend of the Seas is very inward-facing.

Many of its main public areas look into the ship rather than towards the ocean, and you can spend surprisingly long periods on board without actually seeing the sea.

Whether that’s a good or bad thing will depend entirely on what you want from a cruise. If your favourite thing is sitting somewhere quiet and watching the ocean go past, there are other ships I’d choose first.

Likewise, if you want sea views every time you sit down for lunch, Legend isn’t necessarily the best fit. But if you want to wake up every morning wondering which of 50 different things you’re going to do first, that’s where this ship makes far more sense.

One of my favourite quieter places was the AquaDome at the front of the ship. During the daytime, it was often incredibly peaceful and became one of my favourite places to relax. Then, in the evening, it completely transforms…

The Entertainment Is Some Of The Best I’ve Seen At Sea

The AquaTheater performances inside the AquaDome are absolutely incredible, with divers launching themselves from high above the pool.

Then there’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

This wasn’t just my favourite show on the cruise. It’s one of the best shows I’ve ever seen at sea, and probably one of the best I’ve seen anywhere. I’ve seen quite a few by now, so that’s high praise!

The ice skating production is brilliant too, and having skated on the same rink ourselves earlier in the cruise really makes you appreciate how talented the performers are.

Legend of the Seas also has an America’s Got Talent show featuring performers connected with the TV series, which was excellent.

The biggest compliment I can give the entertainment is that I’d already seen all of these shows on my previous Legend cruise… and I went back to watch them all again.

There wasn’t a single one where I thought, “I’ve seen that already, I’ll do something else.”

And remember all those unavailable reservations when we first boarded? They weren’t a problem at all. The shows themselves were never completely full. People reserve seats and then don’t turn up, so even if the app says something is fully booked, I’d still go to the venue and ask.

We got into everything we wanted.

Our Balcony Cabin Worked Well For Four

We stayed in a traditional ocean-view balcony cabin with a proper outside balcony rather than an Infinite Balcony where the window lowers.

I’ve stayed in Royal Caribbean cabins overlooking the inside of the ship before, but personally I prefer being able to step outside and see the sea.

Now, I’ve got to be honest: for four people, the cabin wasn’t enormous. The sofa converted into a double bed for the children, which I don’t think is ideal. I really don’t understand why Royal Caribbean seems to prefer double sofa beds over bunks in so many family cabins, because two children sharing a bed isn’t always practical.

Our cabin steward left the sofa bed made up throughout the cruise, which reduced the floor space quite a bit. I’m sure he would have folded it away each morning if we’d asked, but we didn’t really want to make extra work for him.

He did make some excellent towel animals, though!

Most importantly, the cabin was incredibly quiet. That’s worth checking before you book because on my previous Legend cruise, I’d stayed directly underneath Crown’s Edge and could regularly hear people screaming as they went past above the cabin.

A quick look at the deck plans before choosing your room can make a big difference.

We Barely Got Off The Ship

Probably the most unusual thing about our cruise was that we hardly went ashore, and for the most part that was by design.

Normally, if I’m sailing around the Mediterranean, I want to explore the destinations. That’s a huge part of the appeal.

But on this cruise, every time we arrived in port it felt like we had to make a choice: do we go out and explore, or stay on the enormous ship we’ve paid all this money to experience? Most days, we stayed, and it was brilliant.

The activities were quieter, the pools were calmer and we could make much better use of everything while thousands of other guests were ashore.

On one day, we did use the tender boats and I was impressed by how easy the process was. You could reserve a tender time through the app if you needed to get off at a specific time, but there was still plenty of availability on the morning itself.

I would say that, if visiting as many different destinations as possible is the most important part of your holiday, Legend of the Seas probably wouldn’t be my first choice.

There’s nothing wrong with the itinerary, to be clear. It just feels slightly wasteful to pay so much for a ship like this and then spend most of your days away from it. For me, Legend makes much more sense when the ship itself is the destination.

So, Did 9,700 People Feel Like Too Many?

For most of the week, I kept waiting for the moment when I’d decide that Legend of the Seas was simply too crowded, and it never really came.

The sun lounger situation was annoying, and the water slide closures were disappointing. Royal Caribbean definitely needs to get that sorted because running two slides in a water park designed for six creates annoying queues.

There were occasional moments when it was obvious that thousands and thousands of other people were on board. But those moments were the exception.

We never struggled to find somewhere to sit, didn’t spend ages waiting for elevators and the kids were never turned away from Adventure Ocean. We managed almost every activity we wanted to do without long queues and saw every show we wanted.

Even on our only sea day, the ship never felt uncomfortably busy, and there were actually several occasions where we looked around and asked, “Where is everyone?”

That’s probably the most impressive thing about Legend of the Seas. Royal Caribbean hasn’t just built an enormous ship and filled it with thousands of people. It’s built enough different places for those people to spread themselves around.

We had a fantastic week, and I was genuinely sad to get off.

I’ve now sailed on Legend of the Seas twice. Would I pay to sail on her for a third time? Absolutely.

I do want to try one of their smallest ships though, to compare…

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