The Worlds Biggest Cruise Ships: 7 Days Onboard

I've just disembarked to cruise on one of the biggest cruise ships in the world that can hold well over 8,000 people. The ship I was sailing on was Symphony of the Seas. She cost $1.3 billion to build and is as long as 16 tennis courts. I've been cruising since I was a child, but this ship blew my mind in every single way possible. I saw and did things that I never, ever could have imagined would happen at sea. Even with all the time in the world, I never could have dreamt up the things that happened on this ship. Something about the mega ships has always interested me. I was already a fan of cruising, so I hoped that a really big ship would just be everything that I loved, but on a grander scale. That said, I was worried that the ship would feel overwhelming, and I didn't know if it would be so busy that it would be impossible to do the things that I wanted to do. Royal Caribbean are very much a family cruise line too, so I knew that there would be thousands of children on board. Literally thousands. When I saw that the ship was sailing from Barcelona, which isn't too far from my home in England, I decided this would be my chance to give it a go. The cruise wasn't cheap, but I hoped that I would get what I paid for. We boarded in Barcelona and set sail for a seven-night cruise, cruising the Mediterranean. I'd heard about the ship having an ice skating rink, zip lines, theatres, surf simulators and even a park in the middle before I boarded, but nothing could have prepared me for when the bus was pulling up alongside the ship. For context, Symphony of the Seas is as high as 18 buses standing on top of each other, or 30 buses stood in a line. Embarkation was very fast, it was very easy. Royal Caribbean are very keen on their technology, so they have an app where I'd already uploaded my security photo and I'd attached my credit card before we got to the ship. All they had to do in the terminal was scan the QR code in the app and match it to my passport. You would think that as this ship had over 6,000 people boarding that it would take ages, but I think between the door and embarking was a maximum of 10 minutes. I've been on cruises in the past with a sixth of as many passengers where embarkation has taken two or three hours, so this was a great sign and it did put my mind at ease a little bit about the number of people on this ship. We were boarding the ship a little later than planned because our flight was changed and then delayed, but the positive of that was that our cabins were already ready when we got to the ship. After a quick stop at our master station, we found our room up on deck 11 and I got my first look at what Royal Caribbean call a neighbourhood. The neighbourhood that my cabin looked over was called the Boardwalk and I was blown away by this space. The two slides, they just looked amazing and beyond that there was an area called the Aqua Theatre. I was so excited to get to see shows here later in the cruise. I'd heard things about people flying through the air, people being upside down, diving and I couldn't quite believe those things were happening on a cruise ship, but that really was the theme of this ship. I couldn't believe something was possible and then the ship surprised me every single time. It was a little after 2pm that we boarded the ship and having started our journey at 5am, we were getting pretty hungry. Cruise ships are all about the food of course, so we headed up to the buffet on deck 16. It turned out that the buffet did close at 2, which was a shame, but I'm still glad that we went up there and had a look around because it gave us our first look at Central Park. When you hear a cruise ship park, you might think of a room with a few plants in it, but my goodness, this area looked cooler than any park I've ever been to on land. As my tummy was still rumbling, we decided to head on with our quest for food. We went to the main street and found Sorrento's Pizza, which is included in the cruise fare, and it's open from midday until 3am. It was very busy in there and I hoped that it wouldn't be this crowded for the rest of the cruise. I think it's just because it was embarkation day, the buffet was closed and the fact that they were embarking guests meant that there wasn't the normal seating area to the side of Sorrento's, but I'm happy to report we never saw it this busy again. I had a couple of slices of pizza, with ketchup of course, which tasted so good. I do often get comments that say that ketchup shouldn't go with pizza, but if it doesn't go with pizza, why is there a ketchup machine here in a place that only serves pizza? I think Royal Caribbean agree with me. In Sorrento's is a couple of drinks machines and as I had bought the drinks package, I would be able to use these throughout the cruise. In the central street, we found the area where we could pick up the cups for the machines and had our first of many drinks. I paid $13 per day for my soda package, but if you were to come on board and buy it, it would be $19 per day, so it's definitely worth pre-booking if you know that you will want it. The drinks package meant that we could have unlimited soda from the bars on board and also from these machines. We headed up to the top deck and it was here that I was really able to get an idea of the scale of this ship. We walked around the area with the slines and the pools and this part almost felt like a normal cruise ship, just for a brief moment, until you notice this huge area in the middle. If this was a smaller cruise ship, this would probably be it, but beyond these pools, there are more pools and then there's still huge areas at the front and the back that I hadn't seen yet. To walk around this ship is almost half a mile. There was a sail away party happening up here as we sailed away from Barcelona and we headed backwards to have a look at the sports court. By backwards, I mean to the back, not us going backwards. Here we found a full-size basketball court, a golf course, two flowriders and the top of the slides that we'd seen earlier. I hoped that I would be able to get up the courage to have a go on the slide before the cruise was over, but I definitely wasn't making any promises. I have been on the flowrider before on Independence of the Seas and I managed to get all the way to my knees and I was so happy with that. The water comes at you at 30 miles per hour and it might look as though the bottom is squishy, but it is very hard when you fall off. And it is when you fall off, not if you fall off. There are signs that literally say that. It was tiring walking around the top deck and it was so hot, so we decided to head to the buffet for some dinner. The buffet opened around 6 p.m. and I was really impressed with the size of it, considering how many other food options there are. In total, there are nine included places where you can eat on board, which is just crazy. On a lot of cruise ships, you'll find that it's just the buffet and the main dining room, but you could eat in a new place every single day and I was determined to try as many as I could. The buffet was split into three sections with two on the sides and one part at the back. It was quiet when we visited, probably because we were relatively early for dinner. There was bar service in the buffet too and it was always really fast. I'd never been sat down more than a minute or two before a waiter came over to ask me if I wanted a drink. And sometimes multiple waiters would come and ask me if I wanted a drink. It was really nice. They also have free water, tea, coffee and juice in here all of the time. You can just get it. Although we retired from our 5 a.m. start, I knew that I wanted to go to the theatre to see Hairspray. I'd booked the show on my phone in the app and made sure that I arrived early. I wanted a good seat. All of the theatre shows are included in the cruise fare, but you do need to book your space. I suggest doing it as soon as you get on board, but if you don't have a space and it's fully booked, you can still show up and you'll still be able to get a seat. Some people just book everything and then they don't cancel and they don't show up, which I think is pretty annoying. I think, really, it should have a confirmation, you know, an hour before, please just confirm you're still going. And then if not, they release your seats. There were lots of empty seats during our performance, as you can see here. I knew that Royal Caribbean had won award after award after award for their entertainment and their theatre shows, and it did not disappoint. The show was about an hour and a half long and it was every bit like watching it on Broadway or in the West End. The singers and the dancers were incredible. I never saw a foot out of place, and the props and the sets were amazing. I'm somebody who likes lots of colours and special effects to keep me interested, and this show had that and loads more. The only thing I didn't like about the show was how Royal Caribbean don't ever close the door to the theatre, which meant that we had people constantly coming in and out of the show. I understand you might want to sneak in late and sit at the back, or there may be a couple of you who need to leave throughout the show and that's totally fine, but we had full families of six or seven people who would come in an hour late and then decide they wanted to sit right in the middle, so everyone has to stand up so they can get in. That's annoying for me, and I can't imagine how annoying it is for the performers. If I had my way, the doors would close when the show starts and it would be like a shop. It would have a shutter that comes down and people could come in and they could try and slide underneath if they were at the last minute. Actually, I totally understand why that's a bad idea, but still, I'm on team close the doors. Later in the cruise, we also saw a show called Flight, Dare to Dream, and during this show, a literal plane flew over my head. Not a paper plane, a huge plane with a guy inside. The visual effects were incredible. We decided to head to bed after this show, but I knew that I still hadn't seen the majority of this ship. I hadn't seen the park, the ice skating rink, the solarium, any of the restaurants or the bars. If I was to estimate, I think at the end of day one, I'd probably seen about 20% of the ship. I was determined to see as much as I could during this cruise, but I'm convinced that you could spend seven days on board and miss entire areas if you weren't looking. Luckily, I have my to-do list with lots of things that I wanted to see. One thing that I'm always happy to see is my cat Hudson, who's right here. Hello. Say hello. Our second day on board Symphony of the Seas started with the donut from the buffet, which I think is a strong start. There were lots of options too, of course, but donuts did become my go-to. The buffet was open until 11am, which is fantastic. On some ships, it'll close at 9 or 10, which really just doesn't suit me at all. Most of the time, we would take our breakfast, we would eat it outside, and we would sit by the pool. This gave us a chance to look around and see where we were, and also at this time, the temperature was still bearable. We took this cruise during a heatwave called Cerberus, where countries like Italy and Greece were sharing country-wide warnings. I'm from the UK, and we are just not built for the heat at all. If people from Greece were saying it was too hot, I knew that that would be too hot for us. When I boarded the ship the day before, I noticed a bar in the central street that looked a little bit strange. There was a sign on the entrance that said, next flight time, and I knew I had to see what that was about. I could see where the bar would move up, and I could see some plants at the top. As we hadn't seen the park yet, this seemed like a great way to get there, on a moving bar. I have to admit, I did expect it to be faster than it was. I wasn't expecting it to be like a lift, but of course I thought there would be some noticeable movement. There really wasn't any. This is a video of me on the platform when it's moving, but you just can't tell. Still, it was great fun, and I liked how the people in the main street would stop and look at us go. When we got to the top and into position, they opened the doors, and we were free to explore Central Park. This was another one of those moments that really took my breath away. The park was beautiful, and the fact that it was inside a cruise ship, it is just impossible to get your head around that. It was really warm and humid, and I could hear the birds chirping. These are, of course, recordings of birds, but it did make it feel very peaceful and very relaxing. We took a stroll around the park, as we often did, and took the time to have a look at what was there. There were a few restaurants, a bar, and a cafe, and we would often sit outside this cafe in the day, or we would wander around here at night when it was all lit up. They had clearly paid a lot of attention to detail with things like these benches and this art. Our channel mascot, Captain Hudson, enjoyed it a lot, too. The cafe that is in Central Park is also included in the cruise fair, so we decided to stop here for lunch. The most popular thing to get here is the beef sandwich with gravy, and they have pre-made sandwiches and fruit, too. There was also a couple of soda machines here, too, which was great, but if we didn't have the cups, we could still get a drink in a regular grown-up cup at the bar. You didn't have to use these cups, but I did appreciate having them. I would often fill up my cup if I was going back to my cabin, and then I could enjoy a drink on the balcony. There were so many drink options to choose from, too. All the ones you would expect, like Coke and lemonade, but they also had things like Dr. Pepper, cream soda, ginger ale, and all of them can be customized. So sometimes I would mix different ones together, and make a kind of fruit salad drink. Why not? It was here that I found the first cookies of the cruise, and I'm very happy to report that the cookies were brilliant, and they're also available in the buffet and the promenade cafe. I think these may be my favorite cookies at sea now. I think so. I think they've overtaken celebrity. To walk off our lunch, we decided to find the promenade deck and to do a few laps. It was great because it was out of direct sunshine, and it went all the way around the ship. There are a few areas off to the side where you could do things like shuffleboard or table tennis, and there were these encouraging rhymes all the way around. This part that just says, spend it now, you may not last. To me, it definitely sounds like a threat, but it's actually about not using all of your energy up at once, pacing yourself. The view from here wasn't great. It was mostly the side of lifeboats, but I do appreciate a promenade deck that goes all the way around. Promenade decks did used to be a very important part of cruising, but in recent years, they've kind of fallen out of fashion. One thing that this promenade deck has that I've never seen on a cruise ship before is that the gym actually opens straight onto the deck. I never stepped foot in the gym during this cruise, but I imagine that if you wanted to go for a run and then do something else in the gym, this would be a great way to do that. While wandering around the promenade deck, I was able to peer into the main dining room. We picked early dining before the cruise, and we were assigned table 930. I hope that this wouldn't be a shared table, although I have had really good experiences table sharing in the past. Normally when I cruise, I want to spend time with the people that I've gone on the cruise with. When I was peering through the windows, I was able to find my table, and it was a table for two. The app told me that today was formal night, so I wasn't planning on going to the main dining room, as this is where the dress code is enforced, and we really didn't fancy getting dressed up when it was well over 30 degrees Celsius. That is 86 Fahrenheit if you're from the US, the Cayman Islands, or Liberia. I think this is even more true for men who have to wear trousers in the formal night dress code, which just seems mean. If I had my way, shorts would be okay even on formal night. If skirts and dresses are okay, I think shorts, nice shorts, should be too, but that is a conversation for another time. Royal Caribbean's app was very good, and we could use it to see the daily schedule, our onboard account, and to work out what was happening where. There's also a chat messenger in the app, so you can message other people on the cruise for free, which is very good. When you're at sea, you can't really use your phone unless you buy Wi-Fi, so this is a really good way to keep in contact with whoever you're cruising with. In addition to the nine included places to get food on board, there were also nine restaurants that are called speciality restaurants. These cost a little bit extra, and we decided to have our dinner in one called Johnny Rockets. I know Johnny Rockets is a common thing in the US, but it hasn't made it to the UK yet, and I was really craving some of those onion rings. As we had some time before dinner, we decided to explore this central street. Here we found lots of shops, a bar called On Air where they often did trivia, and a pub. Being a Brit, I was naturally drawn to the pub, so we decided to stop and have a drink so that I could catch up on my emails. I had bought an internet package pre-cruise, which although it wasn't cheap, it was worth it to me. I managed to get all the work that I needed to get done on this cruise, and my internet was normally around seven or eight megabits. That's still about 50 times slower than my internet at home, but for a cruise ship, that's pretty good. Normally you're sort of stuck around one or two, if you're lucky. I did manage to do a live stream on the internet from my cabin, which worked okay. Sometimes the quality was better than others, but overall it did work. I loved sitting in the chairs to the side, as I could watch people wandering along the promenade. From here, it really was impossible to tell that you were on a cruise ship. I did wonder if the whole cruise would feel like this. It was bizarre. I often hear criticisms of cruise ships that you're disconnected from the ocean, and I've never really felt that on a cruise before, but on this ship, I definitely did. It felt as though the ship itself was the destination, and Royal Caribbean did confirm that on one of my Instagram posts. There wasn't really any need to go outside. After all, if I went in to go shopping or go to the park, all of that was on board. I did get off the next day, though. One day, when I was sat here in the pub, a parade started on the street. I had no idea that this was the plan. I just all of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye, started seeing pirates and vikings running up and down the street. I was amazed by how many people were in the parade, but I suppose if you add together all of the theatre dancers, the ice skating teams, and the aqua teams, that is a lot of people. Royal Caribbean definitely don't scrimp on their entertainment. Heading up to the schooner bar, we took part in our first trivia. There were multiple trivias happening every day on board, and the themes ranged from things like musicals to cartoons to Star Wars. We didn't do particularly well, but not terribly. I love looking at the menus in here because they had historical pictures of old Royal Caribbean ships on them. They did have a piano in here. There was one other place where I saw a piano on this ship that you would never expect to see a piano. It was in the lift, because why not? Lift, of course, being a Britishism for what a lot of people call an elevator, but that is far too simple to be your Britishism of the week. Here's a more interesting one. In British English, the bottom of a building, the one that is on the ground, we call the ground floor. Then it goes ground floor, one, two, three. The first floor is the first floor up. I know in a lot of countries, you just start on one. You don't have a ground floor. Our dinner in Johnny Rockets was good. I tried their veggie burger and I ate my body weight in onion rings. I think onion rings are underappreciated. We should start an onion ring appreciation society. From our table outside, we could watch people wandering up and down the boardwalk. Some people would have a go on the merry-go-round and others would play Jenga at the playmaker's bar. We did have a game later in the cruise and I was actually very impressed with how well we did. Maybe it was because it was so hot and so humid that the blocks just melted together. I don't know. Also on this bottom level, which was just below my cabin, was a hot dog stand where we got hot dogs later in the cruise, and also a sweet shop. The hot dogs are included, but the sweets aren't. It's the type of sweet shop where nothing really has a price. If you have to ask the price, then you can't afford it. I didn't have any. From here, we could see people rock climbing on the two rock climbing walls. They're included in the cruise fare too. And I had a chance to have a look around the Aqua Theatre. I had shows booked for later and I was so, so excited. I heard rumours that people would be flying upside down. I wasn't sure how much of that I could trust, but only time would tell. On this day though, I had a different kind of show booked and it was an ice skating show called 1977. It was so much better than I expected. When you say ice skating show, I tend to think of something like Dancing on Ice, where it's sort of couples dancing around, lifting each other up. And although that is very, very impressive, this show was so much more than that. The show started with a show of light put on by lots of little drones. And you know when things start like this, that it'll be a good evening. The ice skaters were incredible. I can barely skate in a straight line, so I was just amazed. And it wasn't even just the tricks that they could do, but there were loads of fast costume changes and how close they could skate to each other was incredible. The ice skating rink did feel pretty big to me, but it's inside a cruise ship and I'm sure it's small in comparison to other ice skating rinks. You can actually ice skate here too. And my goodness, I've said ice skating too many times. But you can do other things. You can also do game shows, you can do laser tag here too. It's not just for skating on the ice. A little later in the cruise, we saw another ice skating show and managed to get a seat in the front row. Being so close made me realise just how close these people's heads are when they're being swung around. It is terrifying, but it is incredible. Look at this. Oh my gosh. Luckily all I had to do was watch and drink my Diet Coke that I had in my bottle that of course I had brought with me. Up next on the schedule was the Silent Disco, which is a popular event with Celebrity and Royal Caribbean. I've been to lots in the past and basically what happens is you get these headphones and they play music on different channels. You can tune in to whatever channel you want. Each channel has a different song playing and you can see who is listening to what by seeing what colour their headphones are. Tonight's Silent Disco was happening in the boardwalk just below my balcony. We went for a little while and then decided to call it a night. I love people watching so I sat on my balcony with my cup filled up with soda and watched everybody else dance and sing. Although it is called the Silent Disco, it definitely wasn't silent. Everyone was singing so I could make out every single word and sometimes people would clap or stomp their feet along to the songs. It was great to see everybody else enjoying themselves and it felt as though I was a part of it without having to actually be a part of it. I could be in my pyjamas if I wanted and I like that. If you do need a quiet cabin I wouldn't recommend this one because even with the door closed we could still hear every word and we did hear the Aqua Show performances until around midnight. I have created a separate video about that cabin so make sure you check that out after this one. Your weekly piece of cruise trivia is that Symphony of the Seas was the first cruise ship to have a two-level suite aimed at families with a slide inside the cabin. It looks incredible and it costs between $45,000 and $80,000 per week and it is always sold out. They're selling it at that price. I can't help but think that the rest of your life would be disappointing after this. It would be so hard to go back to an inside cabin. The cabin also has a whirlpool on the balcony and it has these climbing things for the kids. They do have this down by the slide too but sadly I was too big to give it a go. One area that I'd heard a lot about but I hadn't seen yet was the solarium. I'd also heard about robot bartenders, a piano staircase, a famous employee called Chris and a Mexican restaurant. I put these on my tomorrow to-do list along with the Aqua Show and I remembered that I did also want to get off the ship. I was having so much fun on board that I almost forgot that the cruise ship was moving. Perhaps because of my cabin and the way that it was inward facing but this has definitely never happened to me on a cruise before. It was 34 degrees on 93 Fahrenheit when we decided to visit La Spezia. I had a message from a friend that I used to work with that said are you on that big ship? I'm in La Spezia. Talk about a coincidence. This was my friend from back home. We always joke about how hard it is to meet up when we're home because I'm always traveling but we managed to meet up in a random part of Italy by accident. It's funny how things work out sometimes and this is my favorite port on this itinerary. It is lovely to wander along the harbor and along the front. Heading back to the ship we decided to check out the solarium. This was an adults-only area that we hadn't explored yet with a bar in the middle and what they call a bistro. We visited the bistro for lunch a little later in the cruise and it was basically like a cut down calmer version of the main buffet which could get pretty busy at peak times. I love the big windows and the decorations here and of course the cookies. There were always cookies here. The solarium was split over two levels and it felt a lot smaller than the solarium on Anthem of the Seas but we never struggled to get a seat here and it was a nice place to just relax with a drink. One of the few places on the ship that I felt like I could really see the ocean. Up near the solarium is an area that has vending machines where you can buy things like deodorants. On cruise ships the main shops can only be open when they're sailing for tax reasons so if you desperately need a new hairbrush or you need a charger you normally have to wait until the ship sets sail but with these you can buy these things at any time. There was also free phone chargers here complete with all of the wires and I've never seen that on a cruise ship before. For lunch we decided to go to a Mexican place called El Loco Fresh. It was a little outside buffet near the sports court where you could get burritos and tacos and nachos all those kinds of things. There was another drinks machine here too and snacks like melon which I enjoyed. There's something so nice about melon when it's so hot and I don't know what it is but I think it's just like a solid drink really isn't it? I decided by now it was time for me to brave the ultimate abyss slide. I've been looking at them for days and I'd read all of these posts that made it sound very very scary. I figured that I've been on loads of slides before and how scary could it be? It was actually a lot scarier than I expected not so much because of the speed but because it was in the dark and there were weird sort of alarm sounds going off. Picture being in a dark tunnel with red flashing lights and an alarm going off and that's pretty much it. It was weird and I'm glad I did it but I didn't rush back to do it again. In total the 92 foot drop only takes 13 seconds and you do go down in a little bag which is nice. It was comfortable, a comfortable slide. I also found the staircase on board that is a piano because why not? Apparently there's over 13,000 pieces of art on this ship some of which are interactive like this painting which is in the entrance to the main dining room. I'm not sure if this robot could be counted as art but it was good fun to watch. Personally I would never pay for a robot to make me a drink as it does cost extra but it is fun to watch other people's orders being made. Robot bartenders are becoming quite popular on cruise ships and MSC have them too. MSC's robot bartenders they're all called Rob for obvious reasons. We headed to the main dining room on deck five for our dinner and dinner here is included every single day. There's definitely no need to spend any extra on food on a cruise if you don't want to. We ended up eating in the main dining room for UK night and for Italian night. There was lots of choice on the menu and the food was always good. The portions were bigger than I found on a lot of other cruise lines and our waiters were always very friendly and very very helpful. I was wearing a red dress when I finally found the YouTube famous Chris Wong. Chris is a brilliant YouTuber who works on board in the casino and he shares what it's like behind the scenes working on a cruise ship. I recently watched a video where he talked about the Aqua show Hero and I was excited because I had that show booked for this evening. If you haven't already seen Chris's videos check them out they're really really interesting. I was excited to see the show but first I wanted to get changed out of my red dress as it was white night. On white night the suggested dress code is just to wear something white and I would say around half the guests participate in that. Hero was absolutely incredible. It was so energetic and there was so much to see. The performance didn't just happen in the pool but it also happened on tightropes above us and on this thing. I'm not sure what you would call this. We saw another Aqua show later in the cruise too called Aqua Nation and the strength and the rhythm of these performers is just bonkers. I tried to hold my breath while the synchronized swimmers were underwater to see if I could do it. I could just about hold my breath for that long and I wasn't doing anything. I was just sitting there. It definitely felt crazy that this was on a cruise ship but I think I have done something crazier. I actually went go-karting on a cruise recently where I raced around a track that is spread over three decks. To find out how that was and how I managed to do it without the speed limiter on, check out this video next. I'll see you over there!