Royal Caribbean's Star of the Seas review
Royal Caribbean's Star of the Seas represents the cruise line's most advanced ship design, but it's also a near-exact duplicate of Icon of the Seas with all the same strengths and weaknesses. The family features are spectacular, the flow between neighborhoods works perfectly, and the attention to detail in cabin design is remarkable. Yet one major problem that plagued Icon remains completely unaddressed on Star.
TravelHost's Come Cruise With Me Editor in Chief Daniel Kline and his travel agent partner, Postcard Travel Planning's Dennis Post, recently sailed on Star of the Seas and provide an honest assessment of what Royal Caribbean got right and what frustrating design flaw they inexplicably repeated in the video below. A full transcript follows below.
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An Icon Class clone with the same strengths and weaknesses
Transcript:
Dan Kline: Hello there cruisers. I am Dan Kline, editor in chief of Travel Host. Next to me is Dennis Post, co-owner of Postcard Travel Planning. We are going to talk about the biggest, the greatest, not technically the largest cruise ship in the world. Star of the Seas.
Why not the largest? Because I feel like all the cruise lines have gotten together and decided they're not going to make that claim anymore.
If you notice at Celebration Quay, Carnival is not saying that's the largest pool. They're calling it a lagoon so they're not stepping on Royal Caribbean's claim. So I think as an industry, there might be some agreements about kind of ending that. But Star of the Seas, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, is a copy, an exact copy of Icon.
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It has a little bit different art. Everything else is pretty much the same. Now. That's again, that's like saying, "Hey, that clone of Michael Jordan's pretty good at basketball. Oh, but he might have a gambling problem." And then what's the gambling problem on Star of the Seas? It's the same problem we had on Icon.
The adult pool is a disaster. It is called Hideaway. You have to walk down a flight of stairs to get there. Something Amy Post right now on her new knee could not do. And when you get there, there's very few places to put your stuff.
I know it's something I complain about all the time, but there's no cubbies. There's few chairs. A lot of the chairs are in the direct sun, so you don't want to put your phone there. And it's a beautiful infinity pool that when I was there with six people, there were only five hundred on board, was great. I can't imagine what it's like with 6000 people on board.
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A minor flaw they fixed a little bit in now that the Swim and Tonic bar, which is a swim up bar, is now adults only, but those bars are not that close to each other.
So this is a family cruise ship. Water slides, things to do everywhere. Rooms are spectacular. There's USB ports everywhere. They have not spared a detail. I think one of the things is when you see the top cruise ships- We were lucky enough we were on MSC World America. I was on Norwegian Aqua. We're on Carnival Celebration right now. We've seen some of the greatest cruise ships in the world, and I think it's fair to say that that Jason Liberty, Michael Bailey, Jay Snyder, the team over at Royal, they know how to design a cruise ship.
There's flow everywhere. It really, really works. You could be in the Promenade and end up in Central Park and you don't feel like you've walked it. So we're going to talk more about that ship. We'll talk more about this ship we're on, Celebration, as we sort of go through our week here.
Until then, I am Dan Kline. He is Dennis Post, come cruise with us soon.
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Make a free appointment with Come Cruise With Me's Travel Agent Partner, Postcard Travel, or email Amy Post at amypost@postcardtravelplanning.com or call or text her at 386-383-2472.
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This story was originally published May 30, 2026 at 9:27 AM.