Royal Caribbean has spent years building one of the strongest loyalty programmes in cruising, and for its most dedicated guests the perks can be genuinely valuable.
Free drinks, laundry, lounge access, priority benefits and special dining privileges are all part of the reason some cruisers keep coming back again and again. The more you sail, the more you get back, and eventually the very highest-status guests can end up with benefits that make a big difference to the onboard experience.
But there’s an obvious problem with any loyalty programme that keeps adding more people at the top.
What happens when too many guests qualify for the perks that are supposed to feel exclusive?
Recent Harmony of the Seas Sailing Highlights Issues
Some of Royal Caribbean’s most loyal cruisers have been left fuming aboard Harmony of the Seas after finding out that a perk they expected to use throughout their cruise is heavily restricted.
The ship left Barcelona on 26th July 2026 for a rare 13-night summer transatlantic sailing to Port Canaveral, and it has attracted a huge number of Royal Caribbean regulars.
According to Jordan from JJ Cruise, there were around 250 Pinnacle Club members onboard, along with just under 200 Masters-level casino players.
Both groups would normally have the opportunity to dine in Coastal Kitchen, the restaurant primarily reserved for suite guests. But with so many eligible passengers onboard, there simply wasn’t enough room for everyone.
Only Around 50 Pinnacle Guests Are Getting Access
According to JJ Cruise, Masters players were told that they won’t be able to use Coastal Kitchen for dinner on this sailing, while only around 50 of the roughly 250 Pinnacle members onboard were given access.
That has understandably caused a lot of frustration. The cruise’s Facebook group has apparently been full of complaints, and Jordan said he also saw passengers getting angry about the situation around the ship.
For some of these guests, Coastal Kitchen wasn’t just somewhere they hoped to try once during the cruise. They had expected to dine there regularly and had planned their meals around having access, so finding out after boarding that they weren’t going to get in was a big disappointment.
The obvious alternative would be to book some speciality restaurants instead, but that wasn’t straightforward either. JJ Cruise says speciality dining was effectively full from the start of the sailing unless passengers had booked before the cruise or made reservations very quickly once onboard.
Jordan and Jared had bought the Unlimited Dining Package for around $25 per day, which is a great deal on a ship like Harmony of the Seas. But if you can’t actually get a table at the restaurants, then suddenly that value disappears pretty quickly.
For some of the guests who had expected Coastal Kitchen access, that leaves them relying more heavily on the Main Dining Room. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but I can see why somebody who has sailed enough with Royal Caribbean to reach Pinnacle, or spent enough in the casino to reach Masters, might feel disappointed when that wasn’t what they had expected on a 13-night cruise.
Want the best Royal Caribbean deal?
Get a free quote from Cruise Mummy’s trusted travel agent, with exclusive onboard credit and expert help at no extra cost.
Royal Caribbean Hasn’t Broken Its Own Rules
It’s important to say that Royal Caribbean hasn’t actually removed a guaranteed benefit here. Pinnacle Club access to Coastal Kitchen is subject to availability, and the Crown & Anchor terms specifically allow the cruise line to restrict access when there are too many suite guests and Pinnacle members onboard.
In those situations, Royal Caribbean can give priority to the Pinnacle members with the highest number of cruise points, which appears to be what is happening on Harmony of the Seas.
So technically, the cruise line is following its own rules. But I think there’s still a difference between knowing that a benefit is “subject to availability” and getting onboard to find out that around 200 other Pinnacle members are also competing for a very small number of places.
The bigger issue here seems to be communication. Royal Caribbean knew how many Pinnacle members were booked, how many Masters players were sailing and how many suite guests would be onboard, so this shouldn’t really have come as a surprise once the ship left Barcelona.
Royal Caribbean Surely Knew This Would Be A Problem
This is an unusual cruise in several ways. Transatlantic sailings often attract lots of experienced cruisers anyway, but this one is taking place in the middle of summer and JJ Cruise says there are more than 2,000 children onboard.
Harmony of the Seas has also just returned from a major refurbishment which added more cabins, increasing the number of passengers the ship can carry. With families filling many cabins to capacity, there are likely to be far more people staying in suites too, and those guests naturally take priority in Coastal Kitchen because the restaurant is part of the suite experience they have paid for.
None of that means Royal Caribbean could have somehow created hundreds of extra seats. But it does mean the cruise line should have had a pretty good idea before departure that Coastal Kitchen access for Pinnacle and Masters guests was going to be severely restricted.
An email before the cruise would at least have given people a chance to change their plans. They could have booked speciality restaurants earlier, bought a dining package with the situation in mind, or simply adjusted their expectations before they got onboard.
JJ Cruise says Masters players were given $200 onboard credit because they couldn’t use Coastal Kitchen, which I actually think is a fairly generous gesture. But it would still have been better if guests had known about the issue in advance rather than discovering it once the cruise had already started.
Some Guests Are Taking It Out On Crew
One part of this story that really doesn’t sit well with me is the suggestion that some passengers have been directing their frustration at crew members working in the restaurants.
Whatever you think about Royal Caribbean’s handling of this, the maître d’ at Coastal Kitchen hasn’t decided how many Pinnacle members should be allowed in. The crew member at Chops Grille hasn’t personally oversold speciality dining either.
If passengers think Royal Caribbean has handled the situation badly, then they absolutely have the right to complain. But that complaint needs to go to Royal Caribbean rather than the crew members who are simply having to enforce decisions made elsewhere.
The Bigger Problem Is What Happens As Loyalty Grows
What makes this story more interesting than just one busy restaurant is that it highlights a problem all cruise loyalty programmes eventually have to deal with.
Royal Caribbean wants people to cruise again and again. Crown & Anchor is there to reward that behaviour, and it works because passengers gradually build up points, move through the tiers and receive better perks as they do.
The problem is that once somebody reaches Pinnacle, they stay there. Another guest then reaches Pinnacle, and another, and the number of people at the top of the programme keeps increasing.
That isn’t such a big problem when the benefit is something that can be given to everyone fairly easily, such as a discount or a drinks voucher. It becomes much harder when the perk relies on something with a fixed capacity, like a restaurant, lounge or priority area.
Coastal Kitchen is a very obvious example of that. There are only so many tables, and suite guests have to come first. If hundreds of Pinnacle and Masters guests are also eligible to use it, eventually the numbers just don’t work.
More People Are Starting To Cruise Younger
Cruise lines also have another issue to think about, which is that people are discovering cruising at a younger age.
Royal Caribbean in particular has spent years building ships that appeal to families and younger holidaymakers, with waterparks, surf simulators, huge entertainment venues and ships that are marketed as destinations in their own right.
Somebody who starts cruising regularly in their 20s or 30s could potentially have another 30, 40 or even 50 years in which to build up Crown & Anchor points. Obviously not everyone who sails on Icon of the Seas at 28 is going to become a Pinnacle member, but if Royal Caribbean keeps successfully turning younger cruisers into repeat customers, plenty eventually will.
That’s great for the cruise line in one sense because those are exactly the customers it wants to keep. It just creates an awkward problem later when more and more people qualify for benefits that were easier to offer when far fewer passengers had them.
Bigger Ships Don’t Solve Everything
Royal Caribbean can continue building bigger ships and carrying more passengers, but that doesn’t mean every loyalty benefit can grow at the same rate.
You can add hundreds of cabins and thousands of passengers to a ship, but you can’t necessarily make every exclusive restaurant, lounge or priority service much bigger without completely changing what makes it exclusive in the first place.
If half the ship has priority boarding, then priority boarding doesn’t really work. If hundreds of people qualify for an exclusive lounge, suddenly it doesn’t feel very exclusive. And if far more people qualify to use Coastal Kitchen than the restaurant can hold, somebody has to miss out.
Royal Caribbean’s own terms already recognise this, because they specifically explain what happens when too many eligible guests want to use Coastal Kitchen. That suggests the company is well aware that this can be a problem, even if Harmony of the Seas is an unusually extreme example.
Carnival Has Already Had To Deal With This
Carnival Cruise Line has already faced a very similar issue with its own loyalty programme.
When Carnival announced its new Carnival Rewards programme, it revealed that the number of Platinum guests had more than doubled between 2021 and 2024, while the number of Diamond guests had more than tripled.
On some Excel-class ships, Carnival said there were more than 1,200 Platinum and Diamond guests onboard at once. At that point, it becomes very difficult to give everyone benefits that still feel genuinely special.
Carnival’s answer was to completely rethink its loyalty programme. The new Carnival Rewards system moves away from simply accumulating cruise days for lifetime status and instead places more emphasis on spending, with guests generally needing to qualify again during set earning periods.
The announcement caused a huge backlash, particularly among long-standing guests who felt that the goalposts were being moved after years of loyalty. Carnival later softened some of its plans, including protecting lifetime Diamond status for guests who qualify under the old system by 31st August 2026.
The new Carnival Rewards programme launches on 1st September 2026.
Could Royal Caribbean Eventually Follow Carnival?
There’s nothing to suggest that Royal Caribbean is currently planning to copy Carnival, and I certainly wouldn’t read too much into one unusual transatlantic sailing.
But the underlying problem is the same. If more and more people reach the highest Crown & Anchor tiers, Royal Caribbean eventually has to find a way of making sure the benefits still work.
That might mean adding another tier above Pinnacle at some point, changing how many points are required, making certain perks dependent on how many points somebody has compared with other passengers onboard, or replacing some capacity-limited perks with benefits that are easier to offer to large numbers of people.
Royal Caribbean could also simply continue doing what it does now, which is restricting access when necessary and relying on the “subject to availability” wording.
That probably works perfectly well on most cruises. Harmony of the Seas just happens to show what it looks like when the system comes under real pressure.
Loyalty Programmes Can Become Victims Of Their Own Success
I actually think Royal Caribbean has one of the better cruise loyalty programmes, and some of the perks at Diamond, Diamond Plus and Pinnacle can be genuinely valuable.
The strange thing is that the more successful Crown & Anchor becomes, the harder some of those benefits are going to be to deliver.
Royal Caribbean wants people to become loyal customers and keep sailing for decades. But if enough of them do exactly that, eventually you end up with hundreds of “elite” passengers on the same ship all expecting access to something that only has room for a fraction of them.
For now, Harmony of the Seas looks like an unusually extreme example rather than the new normal.
But Carnival has already shown what can happen when the number of top-tier loyalty members grows faster than the benefits designed for them.
Royal Caribbean might not be at that point yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this becomes a much bigger conversation in the years ahead.
Want the best Royal Caribbean deal?
Get a free quote from Cruise Mummy’s trusted travel agent, with exclusive onboard credit and expert help at no extra cost.
