I tried out Royal Caribbean's Star Class: Here's what I thought

I recently had a chance to try out Royal Caribbean's top suite experience star class. What did I think about it? And do I think it's worth it? I'm going to share my thoughts up next. Hey everybody. It's Matt from real green blog.com and you know, they say go big or go home, or at least I think people still say that. I'm not sure, but anyway, when it comes to suites, you can either go into the suites or you can really go into the suites. And I decided to finally dip my toe into Royal Caribbean's top tier suite offerings known as the star class. So at the very top of Royal Caribbean's real suite program is star class, which offers guest sailing in real Caribbean's most spacious and well appointed rooms, the best benefits across the fleet, the Royal suite class is offered on Oasis and quantum class ships only. So this includes Oasis of the seas, allure of the seas, harmony of the seas, symphony of the seas, wonder of the seas, quantum anthem, innovation of the seas. So what exactly is star class? If you're wondering, well, this is really the best of the best when it comes to what a suite experience is all about and guests staying in a star classroom, receive a wide array of amenities, perks, and services on board. Now, here are some of the basics of star class. You get a dedicated check-in line. Priority boarding access to the coastal kitchen restaurant for breakfast, lunch, and dinner bathrobes, upgraded bathroom amenities, Duke Santa mattress, fret linens in room, Mr. Coffee, tea service, complimentary boom, high speed wifi for every single person. That means you get one individual device plan for each person in the room, concierge service, access to the suite lounge, exclusive signature activities, a complimentary mini bar stocked with Coca-Cola beverages and water, laundry and ironing services, priority departure, a complimentary beverage package, complimentary specially dining, and access to, I think the most important thing, the Royal genie. Now, again, this is the top suites on the particular ships that I mentioned earlier. So we're talking about a handful of rooms and this includes The Royal loft suite, the four bedroom villa suite, the owner's loft suite, the grand loft suite, the one bedroom owner's panoramic suite, two bedroom grand panoramic suite, star loft suite, two bedrooms, spacious aqua theater suite with large balcony, two bedroom aqua theater suite with large balcony and the ultimate family suite. But of course, when we're talking about the star class amenities, we're talking about the Royal genie and arguably the best perk of staying in the star class room is your own Royal genie all suites within the star class tier will receive the Royal genie experience. It's hard to explain what the Royal genie is, but basically his or her job is to craft experiences and curate your entire vacation around what you and your family want. They offer their guests VIP experiences all around the ship. Now there are many services offered by the Royal genie. And to be perfectly honest with you, there is not a complete list of what the genie can do for you. We'll get a little more into that when I talk about my thoughts on it, but here are some top services that are offered by the Royal genie exclusive access to private shore excursions, VIP seating, signature activities, and more before they open to anybody else. They can also help coordinate in suite parties, such as surprise parties, cocktail hours, and more. They'll also keep your suite stocked with your favorite snacks and drinks, expedited boarding and departure personal shopper to help purchase things on board the ship and provide a personal photographer to remember the cruise due to the exclusive nature of these services, the Royal genie cannot be extended to friends and family members on the same selling who are not selling as a star class. Yes. And in the weeks before the sailing, the Royal genie will reach out to you. In fact, two weeks before the cruise. So they usually will send you an email to confirm the arrival via email. In addition, they actually send you a questionnaire to get to know you a little bit better. And then closer to the sale. And we also let you know how they can contact you and also arrival instructions for getting on there. So that's the basics of star class. But what do I think about star class? Do I think it's worthwhile? Obviously it is a suite experience. When I talk about any suite on any Royal Caribbean ship, I always tell folks, this is not about necessarily breaking even. It's not saying you're going to spend X amount of money and then get all that back in terms of value. You're splurging. It's like booking a first class ticket on an airplane. You don't get there any faster. You just get to enjoy the experience a little bit more, and it's going to cost you for that. Same is generally true of suites. And of course the star class experience itself, but this is the very much the top of what Royal Caribbean offers. And quite frankly, this is about as close as you're ever going to get on a Royal Caribbean ship to an all inclusive experience. Now, not everybody wants an all inclusive experience, but the nice thing about staying in star class is pretty much everything is included with your cruise, right? There are some obvious things that are not included, like souvenirs, the spa, the arcade, but that's usually not included any land-based all inclusive. We're talking about opportunities to spend money on the ship, drinks, specialty restaurants, internet access. That's all included in the experience. And the real genie is really what makes it certainly just offering, Hey, we're going to include a bunch of these things that you would have otherwise paid extra for. That'd be cool. But the real genie is really what it's all about. And what's great about the real genie is it basically is crafted to what you and your family are looking to do. Now, for me, this was a bit of a learning curve to it. The role genie experience that I mentioned a little bit earlier is not the same for everybody. Meaning it's not just here's a laundry list of things you can possibly choose from here. You go to certainly the genie will clue you in on some things they can do, but it's a little bit of self exploration and discovery when it comes to what the genie can or cannot do for you. As an example, we didn't realize about day two or three, the real genie can bring Starbucks to our room. One of the nice things about staying in a star class room is Starbucks. Yes. The actual Starbucks coffee. Is included in your star class fair and the genie can actually bring you coffee every morning. So you don't have to go downstairs, wait in line and bring it back. You just tell your genie through the WhatsApp application. Hey, can we please have Starbucks coffee at 9am? Can you also bring up some bagels, cream cheese and what have you. And they can do that. When you get back from a shore excursion, we started having the real genie bring us actually chips, salsa, and guacamole from support have ready in our room when we arrived. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. A lot of it is simply thinking about, let me ask the genie what they can do for this particular experience. I mean, it really runs the gamut of major things and minor things. Here's the minor things we did. We went to go do ice skating, the free skating on board, real creamy chip, my daughter did not have to go sign up or wait in line. We bypassed the entire line. We were in the first group, whatever group we wanted. Actually, we just told them the time we wanted to be there. And we were escorted through certainly for shows. You have reserved seating, whether it's a comedy show or a show in the main theater or in the Aqua theater, you have seats available for you. You just tell the genie what time you want to show up there and they reserve the seats for you. On the bigger scale, you can do a lot of other cool things. We had actually on one of our C days, we had lunch served in our balcony with a Indian cuisine fair. The genie knew that I liked Indian food and they brought out Indian food to have served right on our room. In addition, the kids actually loved every evening having specialty restaurant food delivered to the room. So that way they could eat on their pace. We could then drop them off at adventure ocean. And then my wife and I could enjoy some time alone at dinner elsewhere on the ship. The real genie was really incredible. In fact, one of the best things the real genie did was for adventure ocean before the cruise, he signed my kids up every night for the times we wanted, which as a parent with limited capacity right now in adventure ocean was worth its weight in gold. That was absolutely phenomenal. On one of the days we were on board the ship, we actually had an ice cream social on board in which the genie arranged for an entire tray of ice cream and toppings to be brought to our sweep to enjoy in there. And that's really just the basics of it. I talked to a lot of other guests who have done star class before, and they've done private parties in their room. They've done all sorts of crazy things, including bringing specialty restaurant food back to your room. And just, it really does run the gamut in terms of what is offered. So is it worth it? Well, like all things in life, it depends on number one, how much you're paying. The cost for a star class suite is not cheap, by the way. You're definitely going to be in the five figures when you're talking about booking a star classroom. Now it can really run the gamut. Some of the star classrooms can be certainly somewhere in the ballpark of, I would say between 10,000 and $15,000 to start with. And then they can really run up to 20, 30, $50,000. It really depends on, of course, the type of room of what we're talking about time of year, you all know that. So the price is really all over the place. And quite frankly, I did not book a star class room up until this point because the price was just prohibitively expensive. I like a lot of fine things in life. I like splurging on many things, but paying the costs for my family to go on a seven night cruise that I could have also used to pay for a new car was a bit much for me, and certainly it's going to depend on of course your means and what you determine is worthwhile. For this particular cruise, we were able to book this cruise many years in advance and lock in a very reasonable price for the four of us to enjoy our first star class experience without a shadow of a doubt, the Royal genie is incredibly cool. They can really personalize your visit to be unlike anything else you've ever done on a cruise. I've been on many, many, many cruises, and I quickly understood why everyone loves getting a Royal genie when they go to star class, because it just makes the whole thing easier. You don't have to plan anything in advance and it allows you to truly be able to enjoy the cruise experience as you see fit and the genie has a lot of pull when it comes to getting you in places and arranging different things. It was really nice. And I got to say having the genie and just having that personalized experience was truly a nice plus for our family. Really enjoyed it, but is it worth the money? So in the interest of full disclosure, we booked a Aqua theater, two bedroom suite for a seven night cruise on a harmony of the seas and paid $12,704. That's again for four people, two adults, two kids over seven nights. That's a lot of money, but I thought it was actually a pretty reasonable price given that it was a holiday sailing over Thanksgiving and the fact that were four of us included on there. So I got to say that I really did enjoy that whole experience. That being said, would I do star class again? Of course, but only for the right price. I'd be the first to admit that paying another $10,000 on top of that, which is not an unreasonable or unusual price when it comes to our class, I probably would not do sometimes it's just a little bit too much to do. Again, this is not about cost balance. This is not about your return on investment and saying, Matt, if you did all this stuff on your own, if you bought the drink package and wifi and you know, did all these other things, you know, it would equate to, or come even with what you pay for the star glass. It's never going to be that you should never look at it that way. You've got to look at it like buying a Rolex, like buying first-class airfare or like buying, I guess, a Ferrari. I don't have a Ferrari, but I'm going to assume that's the case in that it is a way to treat yourself and say, you know what, I'm just going to splurge it's worth it for our family. And we're going to go for it. Certainly some people might say 20,000 is worth it. Some people might say 12,000 is worth it. And some people might say, none of that is worth it. You should pay $2,000 and just call it even, and then enjoy the cruise and save the money for something else. I don't know that you're right or wrong on that one. This is just comes down to, again, the means of which you have access to and how you determine how you want to treat yourself. If you are looking for the most absolute top way to splurge on a Royal Caribbean cruise and truly feel like you are someone really special and almost like royalty, the star class is the way to go. Oftentimes people say we're celebrating a special occasion. We're retiring. We graduated, we got married. How do we truly go all out? How do we have a very memorable, wonderful cruise experience that truly will stand out from all the others. It's hard to go wrong with star class. I can see and understand now why a lot of folks truly do it for our family. We loved it. We really did enjoy it. I'm not sure we're going to do it every single time. In fact, I know we're not going to do it every single time going forward, but for the right price, I do think star class can be a fantastic experience and a way to really, again, splurge, treat yourself going forward. Let me know in the comments below, if you've done star class before, what you think about it. And if you think ultimately it is worthwhile, I'd love to know in the comments below your thoughts on the entire process, if you liked this video, hit the like button, subscribe to our channel by hitting the subscribe button and that little bell icon right next to it, that way YouTube lets you know we have a brand new video to share. This has been Matt from Royal Caribbean blog.com. And we'll talk again real soon.