Skip to content
CruiseReadRun a Booking Check

Royal Caribbean

all 30 ships charted · 8 classes

What holds on every Royal Caribbean sailing, whichever hull it is. The rates, the package rules and the age bands are the line's, not the ship's — so an advisor reads them once here rather than on each of 30 ship pages.

Nothing below is written twice. Every paragraph on this page is the same value the ship pages read — the money block is literally the same object, not a copy of it, so a rate change is one edit and this page cannot fall out of step with the 30 hulls.

01

Money

Verified

The rates and the structural rules. Whether a package is worth buying depends on the sailing, and that call lives in the Booking Check.

Gratuities
$18.50 per person, per day, added to the folio automatically.
Drink package
$75 per person, per day, plus 18% added at checkout — about $88.50 all-in.
Before you price it
Two things before you price this. The 18% gratuity is added at checkout rather than included, so the real daily cost is about a fifth above the headline — and if one adult in the stateroom buys the alcohol package, every guest of drinking age in that stateroom has to buy it too. For a couple where only one drinks, that doubles the bill. The non-alcoholic packages can be bought individually, so that's the way round it.
Specialty dining
Book it in the Cruise Planner before you sail — reservations close about two days out, and the dining-package holders all book their times onboard, so the 6:30 to 8:00 slots and the sea-day nights go first.
02

Line policy

Set by the line and true of every hull in the fleet. A section this line has not had factored out of its ship records is absent rather than approximated.

Kids' clubs and age bands

Adventure Ocean runs Aquanauts 3–5 (potty-trained only), Explorers 6–8 and Voyagers 9–12, with separate teen spaces for 12–14 and 15–17. The nursery covers 6 to 36 months but is not on every ship — check the specific hull rather than assuming.

What childcare costs

Adventure Ocean is free for 3 to 12 year-olds until 10pm, then the late-night party runs 10pm to 1am at $15 per hour per child. The nursery is $9 an hour between 9am and 6pm and $12 an hour from 6pm to midnight. All three went up in October 2025, so an older quote will be low.

Where minors may be berthed

No guest under 21 gets a stateroom without an adult 21 or older in that same room — the guardian minimum is 21 here, not 18. On sailings out of North America there's a waiver that's looser than Carnival's: the child can be in a stateroom that connects to the guardian's, or is adjacent to it, or is directly across the hall opening onto the same hallway. Connecting is not required, so don't over-restrict the inventory. Underage married couples and active-duty US or Canadian military are separate exceptions, both needing proof. Sailings originating in Europe, South America, Asia or Australia use different thresholds — check the departure region.

Embarkation

Check-in opens 45 days before sailing and arrival windows are picked then, in half-hour slots from about 10:30am to 2:30pm — first-come first-served, so the client who checks in on day 45 gets the early boarding and the one who waits gets 2pm. Turn up inside the window: early arrivals wait outside the terminal and late ones board with a later group. How hard it's enforced varies by port.

Attraction restrictions

The FlowRider needs 52 inches to bodyboard and 58 inches to stand up on a flowboard, which catches families out — a child can ride it lying down and not standing. The rock wall is age 6 and up with a signed waiver, and 6 to 12 need supervision. Where there are Perfect Storm slides they run a 48-inch minimum with under-12s supervised.

Deck numbering

Deck 12 is often good but doesn't get an automatic yes, and the reason is a numbering trick: Royal skips the number 13, so the physical deck directly above 12 is numbered 14

Fleet-wide money traps

  • From 15 March 2026 the Deluxe and Refreshment packages no longer include the Coca-Cola Freestyle cup — it's $4.99 onboard now. Only the Classic Soda package still includes it. Anyone who booked before that date was grandfathered, so a repeat client may be comparing against what they got last year.
  • Voom Wi-Fi is priced per device per day, not per cabin — roughly $18 to $38 a day each, and materially cheaper pre-cruise. A family of four assuming one household plan is in for a real shock.
  • Room service is $7.95 per order plus 18%, so about $9.40 a delivery. Continental breakfast is still free.
  • The Key costs roughly $26 to $50 per person per day and every guest aged 6 and over in the stateroom has to buy it — the same all-or-nothing structure as the drink package.
  • One 750ml bottle of wine per drinking-age guest on embarkation day, and $15 corkage if they drink it anywhere public. Anything bought in port is held until the last night.
  • Taxes, fees and port expenses sit outside the fare and vary by sailing. A free-cruise certificate never covers them, and that's a conversation to have before deposit rather than at final payment.
03

Classes

How much a class actually behaves as one thing — the reason not to quote a sister ship from memory.

04

The fleet

Every hull on the line, and whether it carries a read.

05

Sources and verification

What the line's money block was signed against, and what the policy above was checked against.

What has been signed off

  • MoneyVerified

    An operator has checked this against the line's own deck plans and policy pages and signed it.

Checked against

7 sources for this ship. Sourcing is recorded per ship rather than per block, so this list stands behind all three sections above — it does not tell you which source backed which call. Prices and policies go stale; the date is when someone last looked.

  1. Gratuity rise to $18.50 / $21.00, effective 1 November 2024

    CHECKED 2026-08-18

  2. Every legal-drinking-age guest in the stateroom must buy the package

    CHECKED 2026-08-18

  3. The 18% package gratuity is added at checkout, not included

    CHECKED 2026-08-18

  4. Freestyle cup dropped from Deluxe and Refreshment, 15 March 2026

    CHECKED 2026-08-18

  5. International age policy and the connecting/adjacent/across-the-hall waiver

    CHECKED 2026-08-18

  6. Adventure Ocean and nursery pricing changes, October 2025

    CHECKED 2026-08-18

  7. Check-in opens 45 days out; arrival windows are first-come first-served

    CHECKED 2026-08-18