I Spent 8 Days on The World’s Biggest Cruise Ship

I’ve just disembarked from a cruise on the world’s largest cruise ship, which holds well over 9,000 people at a time.

The ship is made up of 8 different neighbourhoods – each one like a floating city and more mind-blowing than the last.

From ice skating with drones to incredible diving shows, this ship shocked me in every way possible. It’s hard to believe that all of this is on a cruise ship and that it floats, but it does.

The ship I was on board is called Legend of the Seas, she’s brand new and cost two billion dollars to build.

She’s actually so big that each lifeboat holds 450 people. That’s the same as some small cruise ships hold in total.

I’ve spent the last 8 days on board trying to work out whether this ship was non-stop fun or a floating, crowded, expensive nightmare.

Like any cruise, it didn’t go exactly to plan, but I did get to meet a dog and the child who both work onboard the cruise ship.

I’ve wanted to cruise on a huge ship like this for years, but the massive ships are usually always in the Caribbean, far away from me in England, which makes it very expensive.

When I saw that this brand-new cruise ship was going to be in Europe, I knew I had to give it a go.

It wasn’t cheap by any stretch of the imagination, but this was my chance.

It did mean booking the cruise during the school summer holidays, which really felt like I was throwing myself into the deep end. I was worried that the ship would feel really busy and overwhelming with kids everywhere.

I thought that we might have to wait for everything, and I didn’t know if I’d be able to do everything that I wanted to do onboard.

I didn’t actually know if I’d see the ocean at all on this ship, and that is a big part of cruising for me.

I flew to Rome to board the cruise ship, and given how many other passengers were boarding, I was ready for long queues.

I was very pleasantly surprised and because we’d already checked in using the Royal Caribbean app all they had to do was to scan a QR code and check our passports.

In total, including going through security, embarkation took around 20 minutes, and plenty of smaller cruise ships could learn a lot from this. I hoped that this would be a sign of things to come.

I knew that Legend was a big ship, but seeing her beside me really drove that home.

It was like standing next to a massive building that I couldn’t see the top of, and I was up quite high myself too. I wasn’t on the ground – I was so excited to get onboard.

We boarded and walked straight into the central street where we found this huge Pearl.

This area is really impressive by itself, but when you realise that there is a park on top of this part of the street, then a pool deck on top of that, it’s hard to get your head around. 

There were loads of crew members around, welcoming everybody on board and answering any questions we all had. Questions like ‘How do I get to the waterslides?’ Even after 8 days onboard, I still had questions like that. 

I asked about the soda package and wasted no time in heading to one of the bars where I picked up my soda cup.

Pre-cruise, I’d booked a soda package, which meant that I could have unlimited soda from the machines that they had all over the ship.

It cost £11.25 ($15) per day when I booked it, and I would definitely get my money’s worth.

Armed with an orange-flavoured Diet Coke, I headed to my cabin, looking at all of the bars and shops as I walked along the central street. 

We boarded a little after 2pm so our cabins were already ready, we dropped off our bags and decided to head up and out.

The sun was shining, and there was music playing everywhere. It was a great feeling.

We wandered around the main pool deck, called Chill Island and headed towards Thrill Island at the back.

Here we found the largest waterpark at sea and could look down into an area called Surfside. I felt like my eyes had to unlock new colours to see everything on this ship. It was so colourful and fun. 

Surfside is where they have a lot of activities for kids. They have a splash area, arcade, carousel, and lots of other things.

My hope was that the majority of the kids would all be in these kinds of areas because I didn’t have any plans on spending a lot of time there.

Given that it was the summer school holidays, I knew that there would realistically be a couple of thousand children onboard, and I was prepared for that. 

Beyond the waterslides, I found the adults-only area with a pool, bar and seating up the side.

This is called the Hideaway, and looking back at the ship from here was the most amazing sight.

Legend of the Seas is a lot wider than most cruise ships, and it really felt it. It honestly felt like a small cruise ship would fit in the space here in the middle. 

On other Royal Caribbean ships, they have a pool at the back where they do diving shows, but on Legend that is in the dome right at the front.

The dome makes this class of cruise ship instantly recognisable, and I had booked this show before I boarded the ship.

I’d also booked an ice-skating show and wanted to make sure I got to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

It is a full-on West End-style musical, and Charlie is played by a boy who got the job at just 11.

I was expecting to have to get there very early to get a seat, but before heading to the diving show, I decided to get some food.

There were so many included food options on the ship it was often hard to choose, the main ones being the massive buffet which goes down both sides of the ship, the main dining room which is split over three levels, Sorrento’s Pizza in the main street and a couple of cafes and other fast food options.

In total, there are actually 28 places to eat onboard, although plenty of those do cost extra.

Royal Caribbean do have a mix of fixed and flexible dining times in the main dining room, and when I booked the cruise I picked early dining.

I was very happy to see that I was assigned the early slot and that it was 5:30 pm, which is my ideal dinner time.

I saw in the app that there was a dress code for the main dining room that said that shorts weren’t allowed, so I decided to just go to the buffet in my shorts instead.

It was very hot, and I really didn’t want to have to go to get changed. I would go to the main dining room later in the cruise, though. Mostly for the food, but also because I wanted to see if the dress code was really being enforced. 

Usually on a cruise, going to the buffet is seen as the backup option that isn’t as good, but that wasn’t my experience here at all.

As soon as we walked into the buffet, we were asked to wash our hands by crew members singing a “washy washy” song. I love how much emphasis Royal puts on handwashing. 

The buffet itself is split over two sides and is absolutely huge. I was really impressed with the food in here, not just how the food tasted but also how well it was presented.

The doughnut display was impossible to resist and I loved coming in here to get lots of fresh strawberries every day.

There was loads of space in the buffet, and it didn’t seem busy at all. That did go some way to make me less nervous about this ship being crowded, but only time would tell how that would actually be.

I assumed that most people were in the main dining rooms or the speciality restaurants that cost extra and that it would get busier in here on the sea days or for breakfast. 

After dinner it was time to head to the Aquadome where we would watch a show called Shockwave.

Walking into this room was the most amazing experience; it is absolutely huge.

This would be a really impressive venue anywhere in the world, but don’t forget that the AquaDome is on the top of a cruise ship. This is deck 15, and it just goes up from there.

Around the sides of the dome, behind the performing pool, was an area called the overlook.

It reminded me of a solarium, although there weren’t any pools here, just a bar and lots of very comfortable seats.

They had plug sockets here, and this was the most incredible place to come to see the view.

I wasn’t expecting to see the ocean a lot on this cruise, especially considering the fact that my balcony cabin had no ocean view because it faced inside the cruise ship. This area was a really pleasant surprise.

We arrived for the show around 30 minutes early because I was expecting it to be very busy, the crew scanned our cruise cards to check that we had booked, and we sat down.

There were waiters taking drinks orders and around 10 minutes before showtime they released the rest of the seats for those who hadn’t booked but wanted to see the show.

I was surprised that there were lots of seats left at this point, but there were. 

The show itself was phenomenal. The music was so much fun, the lighting, the whole room, the dancing, the diving…

Just when I thought I’d seen it all, they’d do something even crazier. At one point, somebody dove out of the circle at the top of the dome. Mind-blowing!

The show lasted around 45 minutes, and after watching incredibly fit people doing a lot of exercise, I decided to go get an ice cream on the pool deck.

With an ice cream in one hand and my soda cup in the other, I went to find the mini golf course, the climbing wall, and a ropes course called the Crown’s Edge.

Up on the top decks were little slides and a funny-looking plant pot. I found the main pool, which was huge, and another adult-only pool with a swim-up bar off to the side.

As I was taking this cruise in the Mediterranean in summer, I knew that it would be too hot for me to be sunbathing a lot. I was happy to see that even though the ship was so massive, there were lots of smaller areas and lots under cover with shade.

It felt more like seven cruise ships stuck together, rather than one cruise ship that had been stretched. 

When I got up in the morning, I headed to a park for lunch, a very normal sentence to say on land but not something you can often say at sea. That is what I did though. 

Central Park has over 30,000 real plants and a team who look after them.

Also in this area there are bars, shops and a cafe. This fast became one of my favourite places onboard, and I would be here every day.

In the cafe, all of the food is included in the cruise fare, and they had sandwiches, salads, fruit, cakes and cookies that you could just pick up.

I was very surprised to see packets of crisps. I’ve been on 87 cruises now, and I’ve never had a packet of crisps. A few odd ones at the buffet perhaps, but never whole packets. I made sure that I made the most out of them!

Given that this was a sea day, I was very surprised to find that I had lots of choice when it came to tables in the park.

I’m not sure if it was the fact that most people were up in the sun in the pools, but it really didn’t feel busy here at all. 

I filled my cup up from the soda machine and tried something called “Mello Yello”. I’ve never had that one before, but I think I tried at least 50 different drinks during this cruise – it was fantastic.

All of the drinks you can see on the screen could be mixed with different flavours, so you could have Coke Zero with strawberry or orange, for example.

They had non-fizzy options too, and cold water, which was perfect. It was so hot I pretty much always had water or a soda with me. 

I loved not having to go to the bars to get a drink, although you can. The soda package also works at any of the bars and restaurants. 

In Central Park, they would often have live music, and I’d enjoy that from my balcony.

It was very easy to forget that I was on a cruise ship at all whenI was on my balcony. I definitely missed seeing the ocean, but I think if I had a cabin facing the ocean, that would have helped a lot.

I said I was throwing myself in the deep end with this cruise, and I definitely did in every way. 

Apart from the pools — I didn’t throw myself into any pools, and I didn’t try the FlowRider.

I successfully went on the FlowRider once in 2018, and I am still riding on that high. I have a 100% success rate for not falling off – but have no plans to try again to ruin that streak.

The water comes at you at 30 mph, and it’s really scary. At one point I saw some people who I assume were the instructors doing clever tricks. It was very impressive. There were a lot of very impressive people on this cruise. 

The FlowRider, the ropes course, the golf, the waterslides and the shows are all included in the cruise fare.

The cruise fare was not cheap, of course, given that it was a brand-new ship sailing during the summer holidays.

If I had gone to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in the West End, it would have easily been £100 for the seat that I had.

I again went to the theatre 30 minutes early expecting long lines, but there weren’t any at all.

I decided here that at some point I would go to reception to ask how many guests were on board because it really didn’t feel full to me.

The show was amazing: the costumes, the sets, every performer – fantastic.

I am always in awe when I see people who can act or sing or dance, but I was even more impressed when I found out that the main character was not played by an adult.

Our Charlie was played by a fantastic boy called Edward, who I was lucky enough to meet during the cruise.

He lives onboard for a month at a time, sharing the role with another boy. Edward lives onboard with his Dad and has a tutor who keeps him up to date with his schoolwork.

So not only is he doing a job that 99.9% of adults couldn’t do, he’s doing it while keeping up with school.

He shares a lot of behind-the-scenes content over on his Instagram, which is really interesting, so I’d definitely recommend you go check that out here: edwardjmjones

It was hard enough to get my head around being on this ship for a week – let alone for him, he calls this ship home.

It’s crazy to think that Edward isn’t actually the youngest employee on the ship, since Legend of the Seas has a Chief Dog Officer called Skipper.

I knew that Skipper didn’t do official meet-and-greets, but I was hopeful that I’d bump into her at some point while on the cruise. 

After being inside in the theatre, I decided to head outside onto the promenade deck to see the sea.

I’d come out here to sit on these chairs a lot and it wasn’t ever too busy here.

Most of the venues in the central street didn’t have any ocean view, and this was a good way to see the ocean without having to go up to the top. 

I was happy to see that the promenade deck is a loop and that it actually goes right to the gym.

I didn’t go in the gym during this cruise, but I did walk up a lot of stairs.

Legend of the Seas has a lot of lifts, but I prefer to leave those for people who need them, and so I only walked during this cruise.

That might sound like it’d be impossible given the ship’s size, but I found that because the venues were staggered quite nicely, I never had to walk more than 10 flights of stairs at a time – which I’m very happy to do.

I was mostly walking between different soda machines or food venues anyway.

When I’d go to the soda machine at Sorrentos, I’d usually pick up a piece of pizza too – it would almost be rude not to.

They don’t have a ketchup machine here, which was sad; they do on the other Royal Caribbean ships.

I never saw a queue here at all, and even on the sea days there were plenty of tables available outside.

It’s weird to say outside because it’s inside, but it’s outside the shop. Outside the shop and under the park.

The only time I really saw crowds was when they had a parade in the central street on a sea day – and even then it wasn’t as busy as I expected.

The people in the parade were the performers from the different shows onboard, and there were loads of them.

They each represented different countries and performed a few songs. It was great fun, and I’m glad that I went to see it.

As quickly as it started, it was over, and that was just the kind of thing that casually happens on a Royal Caribbean cruise. You’ll just be sitting somewhere, and all of a sudden there’s a parade or some event happening. 

It took me quite a few days to realise that I could walk up behind the Pearl Cafe and could get to Central Park from here.

You can actually see down into the central street through part of this, which is mind-blowing. There we go, I said it again. If ever there’s a cruise ship that deserves to get called mind-blowing, it is this one.

I headed onto the main dining room next. My table number was printed on my cruise card, along with which deck.

I was assigned a table on deck 4, and we were shown to our table by the waiters waiting by the front doors.

We could have had dinner in the main dining room every night if we wanted to, but we ended up coming three times for a taste of Italy, Asia, and the Caribbean.

The menus could be viewed in the app before coming too, so I always knew what I wanted to have.

I was particularly impressed with the allergen QR code. I’ve never seen one of those on a cruise ship before but am very used to seeing them on land.

After scanning it, you could see which dishes contained egg, for example. The crew did always ask about allergens, but it’s nice to be able to look at it yourself.

The food itself was great, and the portions were perfectly sized for me. It was always hot, the service was fast, and our waiters were great.

The restaurant itself was beautiful too, and when we came for lunch, which is open seating, we had a table by the window.

It was almost a surprise when I saw the ocean – like – “oh yeah! We’re on a cruise”. I forgot about that… 

This certainly wasn’t the kind of cruise where you sit around with a book and look at the ocean. It was nonstop entertainment.

I hadn’t even found the ice skating rink yet, which is crazy. The ship is so huge that it was hiding an ice skating rink from me like it was nothing. I knew I had a show to see there tomorrow, so I’d have to find it sooner or later. 

At dinner, I’d say more people were in shorts than trousers despite the dress code rule, so I wish Royal Caribbean would just get rid of it. 

We headed next to duelling pianos, and my last cruise before this was onboard Norwegian Epic, where I saw a very similar show.

The difference here, though, was that there was a row of kids at the front jumping up and down. I will say though, the kids on this cruise never caused us any problems at all.

They were generally really well behaved and spent time in places where I wasn’t.

Duelling pianos was great fun, and karaoke was another common thing to do in the evening.

They’d have trivia and game shows, and there were, of course, the classic cruise ship attractions like going to the casino.

It cost me $3 to add my usual $10 to my casino account – which seemed very cheeky. That just meant I lost $13 instead of the usual $10 I lose every time I cruise.

The casino is split into two levels, with the lower level non-smoking and the upper level smoking. 

Gambling isn’t really my thing when I cruise, but one thing I did enjoy was finding the little ducks that other guests had hidden around the ship.

One of the cabins on my deck had a duck postbox where you could exchange ducks, and if I found any around, I’d rehide them or put them in the postbox.

This wasn’t a thing when I was a kid and cruising, but if it was, I would have loved waking up to find a duck in my postbox. What a weird sentence!

I wasn’t looking for a duck, though; what I was really looking for was a dog, and I got very lucky and did manage to spot her when she was walking across the Aquadome.

I’m quite used to seeing guide dogs on cruise ships who are hard at work, so you can’t touch them, so it was strange to see a dog I was allowed to stroke. 

I took this photo, and it made me miss my dog Rolo so much. He’s a street dog from Romania and the best boy.

When I saw Skipper in the Aquadome, I was there to get a snack from the Aquadome market.

This was from “Seoul Mate” and was a Bulgogi bowl. The scallion pancake was really nice too. It didn’t look that photogenic, but you’ll have to trust me, it was great. 

This area was like a food court, and here they had a little model of the original Legend of the Seas, which was launched by Royal Caribbean in 1995.

It’s quite fun to watch the launch videos of the original Legend of the Seas. At the time, she was so big and exciting. The ship had a rock-climbing wall AND a mini-golf course, which was mind-blowing for her time.

She now sails as Marella Discovery 2 for the British cruise line Marella.

She’s a great ship, and I had a lovely time on her, but she is tiny and could fit in the middle of the new Legend.

She certainly didn’t have an ice skating rink.

Have a closer look at the older ship, compared to the new Legend of the Seas, in the article below:

I Cruised On The New And Old Legend Of The Seas. They Couldn’t Be More Different

Heading to Surfside at the back and then going down, I found the ice skating rink called Absolute Zero.

During the day, anybody can ice skate, and I’m pretty sure they do laser tag in here too.

I was on board for 8 days but still couldn’t see and do everything this ship had to offer – I did give it a good go, though. 

Our cruise was 8 days long, and we had 3 sea days. We actually had a last-minute port change when it was decided that we couldn’t dock at Naples.

We got so close – as you can see here on my app and website, The Cruise Globe. We did a U-turn and went back in the opposite direction.

A couple of months ago, I launched my own agency at The Cruise Globe, and I have loved being part of the cruise booking process ever since.

If you would like to book this cruise or any other cruise, please get in touch with us.

It’s the best way to support me and this channel at no extra cost to you, and we have teams in the UK and USA.

Our Naples stop was replaced with Marseille, which suited me fine. I wasn’t planning to get off this time in Naples, and I didn’t get off in Marseille either.

I’d been to all of the ports on this cruise before, and the heat really made it quite impossible.

You might be thinking I’m just saying that because I’m from the UK but my friend Matt from Royal Caribbean blog said exactly the same, it was his worst cruise, just because of the heat. 

The ice skating rink was the most amazing cool room, and arriving 30 minutes early for the ice skating show meant that I had front row seats.

There were still spare seats for people who arrived with 5 minutes to go, but I’m glad that I was there early and was right at the front. 

We were able to film the show – as we were with all the shows onboard. 

Ice skating is really impressive anyway, but please remember that we were on a moving cruise ship at the time. 

The show was called Fusion, and the costumes and the music kept me entertained every second.

The ice skaters were so close to us and were all absolutely amazing.

They had people dropping down poles, dressing up as fish and dancing with drones.

The coloured drones really made this something else. It was completely awe-inspiring. If I had any brain left, it would have blown out completely!

It’s not just the ice skating that’s impressive; it’s the timing and coordination. Incredible, that’s the only word for it. 

I was always expecting to be amazed by the entertainment on this cruise, but I wasn’t expecting to be so impressed with how the ship handled the passenger numbers.

I went to reception when it was quiet one evening and they said that there were over 6500 people onboard.

That means that the ship was pretty much sold out, but not every 3rd and 4th bed in every cabin was being used. 

Find out more about that here:

A Sold Out Cruise Ship Usually Isn’t Actually Full – Here’s Why

The quality of the food also really surprised me. I’ve eaten a lot of cruise ship food over the years, but this food, particularly the buffet, was some of the best food I’ve had at sea in a long, long time.

This is now my favourite cruise ship buffet, without a shadow of a doubt. 

Given how much I paid for the cruise, I’m glad that was the case.

I had an inside-facing balcony cabin on this cruise, and with the prepaid gratuities it cost £1400 ($1900) per person.

By the time that I’d added on the flights and a night in a hotel pre-cruise in Rome, the total was £2250 ($3000) per person, based on two sharing.

Have a closer look at my unusual inside-facing balcony cabin here:

So in total, for the two of us to take this cruise cost £4,500.

It would have been cheaper if I didn’t do it in summer, of course, and if I didn’t cruise on a cruise ship that was only one month old. The flights were so expensive!

Legend has two sister ships that are very similar, and there are older ships that have the ice skating and diving shows too. 

It is always worth considering an older, sister ship to save money. Find out more about that here:

Before You Book a Cruise, Check The Sister Ships – Here’s Why

I paid an extra £170 ($230) for WiFi, which was really good.

I had no problems with it during the cruise at all, apart from it briefly dropping out while I was doing a live stream from my cabin – but that’s something I’m very used to when cruising.

I paid £90.08 for the soda package, which was well worth it, bringing my personal cost for this cruise to £ 2,510.08 ($ 3,400). 

It’s a lot more than I’d usually pay, but I’m really glad I took the chance and took this cruise.

Have a look more in-depth look at this mind-blowing cruise ship in the video below:

Royal Caribbean know what they’re doing. I get why they are the biggest cruise line in the world. 

To realise how truly crazy this megaship is, you need to watch this video next.

This is a video of the cruise I took onboard the original Legend of the Seas, which is now Marella Discovery 2.

She holds 1800 guests and is around a third of the size of the new Legend:

Before You Go:

Have a look at the differences between Icon class and Oasis class in the article below. Are Icon class really worth the extra money?

I Cruised On Symphony and Legend: Is Icon Class Really Better Than Oasis Class?

Find out how long it takes to walk from one side to the other on the biggest cruise ships here:

How Long Does It Take To Walk Across The World’s Biggest Cruise Ship?