Anthem of the Seas to Bermuda Trip Report

We have the Merrytime Cruise this fall and plan to do a land trip to Hawaii so I'm with you...we like to mix up land and cruise!

How exciting! Which ship? We are not booking another DCL this year (unless we go last minute Dec/Jan) as we did the Disney Fantasy Oct 2016... now with this Anthem cruise under our belt, we want to do more land.
Hawaii is on my radar too, I was so hoping DCL would release cruises to Hawaii....but we have to do Europe before Hawaii as I have an 80 year old grandmother there I haven't seen since 2000.... :(
 
How exciting! Which ship? We are not booking another DCL this year (unless we go last minute Dec/Jan) as we did the Disney Fantasy Oct 2016... now with this Anthem cruise under our belt, we want to do more land.
Hawaii is on my radar too, I was so hoping DCL would release cruises to Hawaii....but we have to do Europe before Hawaii as I have an 80 year old grandmother there I haven't seen since 2000.... :(


Just a quick one on the Dream...but I'm going more for the Merrytime than the ship and location! Not that CC won't be awesome.....

Then yes, I would say Europe should be first!
 
Just a quick one on the Dream...but I'm going more for the Merrytime than the ship and location! Not that CC won't be awesome.....

Then yes, I would say Europe should be first!

We've done a Very Merry time cruise on the Magic Dec 2015 and enjoyed it quite a bit. I can still smell the mulled wine they had in the atrium :drinking1
 
I thought of one more thing....Crown and Anchor point basis is better than Castaway Cay. I much prefer that they count each night as a point instead of each cruise. And suites are doubled so I really think that's a more fair way to give status.
 


Summary:

Please note that this is for the Anthem only. Each ship and each class of ships has different features. What we had on Anthem won't exist on the Serenade probably because its an older ship. Shows, food, restaurants, etc are all different on each class of ships.


Check in - Disney. It was a quick check in on RCL but the waiting and unfriendly staff put DCL ahead. I see fellow passenger had a different experience later in the day so maybe this was dependent on time of day.

Lunch/Buffet - tie. Both have banquet quality food. I don't think that either one was better than the other. Again, we aren't foodies but we found the food to be comparable.

Ice Cream - Disney. RCL had ice cream but it always seemed to need a refill and you only ever got 3 choices, chocolate, vanilla and strawberry. And some of the days, Vanilla wasn't even an option. But almost every time we went to the station, one of them needed to be refilled and it was beeping for at least 45 min. Its also not open for as long as Disney is either.

Shopping - Disney. This is personal preference but we don't care about the fancy shops. Some do probably. But I prefer more the regular people kind of shopping vs expensive Jewelry/watches, etc. It was also strange to walk into The Shop (RCL labeled items) and see an entire section, about the size of the clothes and merchandise, was alcohol and cigarettes. I know they sell both on DCL but its in a separate shop away from the regular merchandise and I prefer it that way. The two times I bought something in The Shop I was behind someone buying alcohol and pissed that they couldn't just open it right then and start drinking it. They didn't' realize they had to wait til they got off the ship to drink it. I've never had that problem on DCL or have to explain to my 8 yo why those men were so upset.

Shows - Disney. Again personal preference but when you are traveling with a kid, you want them to enjoy it too. Since the only show she could go to was Spectra's and it was based before her time, this ship was not kid friendly as far as shows were concerned. Now, we take note that some class ships might be better than others but this ship in particular was not our cup of tea.

Indoor Pool - Royal. Obviously because Disney doesn't have one. That was a huge point for us since the weather was so dreary.

Overall food choices - edge to Royal. This comes with a ** because you have to pay for those choices. BUT you paid less for the cruise overall so you can afford to throw in a couple of paid for food items.

Drink Choices - Royal. With the freestyle machines (again, I don't know if those are on all the ships or just Quantum class) that makes the drink choices much larger for soda drinkers. We both got the Coke cups and used them quite a bit. We did enjoy having more choices than coke, diet coke and sprite on DCL. But again, this was something you had to pay for. I had wondered if you could get water easily outside of the WJ and the answer is yes. They had a water machine with ice in the Cafe Promenade.

Information/Apps - Disney....just slightly. We found most crew members on RCL to be annoyed by our presence. They would give us information when asked or would help when needed but it was rarely done with a smile on their face and they most certainly didn't care if you existed or not. Many times the Compass didn't give the full picture of where something was or for how long it would take. And the app was nice in that you could make reservations and see your account balance, it didn't give locations on the app of where things were sometimes. So I feel like the DCL app was a hair better and the Navigator is better than the Compass.

Nightlight - Royal. Again this may be ship specific but the light in the bathroom had one small section that would stay on when you turned the light out to serve as a small nightlight when the bathroom was otherwise dark. I appreciated that for nighttime bathroom trips. :)

Storage in the room - Anthem. The layout of the room was more thought out than any Disney ship I've been on.

Room Key/Wowbands - Slight to Royal. You don't get your room key at check in, they are outside your room when you get on the ship. A part of me didn't like this because who's to say that some creeper wouldn't take one of the keys and was waiting in your room for you. Supposedly only one key was outside the room but in our case, all 3 were out there. So my advice is that if one of the keys is missing...be on guard walking in. BUT we really liked the wowbands. Similar to the magic bands but thinner and you couldn't choose a fancy color like magic bands, we still liked them. It was nice to have since we needed them for almost everything we did.

Room noise - Slight to DCL. Only because we could sometimes hear our above neighbor walking. Never had that problem on any of the 4 DCL ships.

Ship Decor - Anthem. I went specific to Anthem because again, other ships may not be this pretty. I still love the classic style of the Dream and Fantasy (the true comparison to Anthem) but Anthem was a very pretty ship.

Shower - Anthem. I enjoyed not having a shower curtain cling to me.

3rd bed - DCL. Now, I've read reports that our setup may not have been the norm (see Happilyeverafter's report above) but for us, the winner was DCL.

Activities-Adult: Tie

Activities, Kid: Tie. Anthem had roller skating, bumper cars, indoor pool but DCL has characters, scavenger hunts, crafting activities,etc.

Pizza: Royal

Internet: DCL. Personal preference here. We get the smallest package on DCL. Just enough to make sure our house sitter/pet sitter to our 13 year old westie is doing ok. Not much surfing. So yes, Voom was faster but it was double the price. So I go with DCL because we don't need it to be exceptional.

Pool Towels: DCL. I didn't like checking the towels in and out...but the wowbands came in handy for that.

Smoking areas: DCL. See my rant above.

Bathroom cleaning: DCL. Although my bathroom was clean for the most part, the toilet bowl brush cleaner was left in the bathroom. I didn't like that. I have never seen the cleaning supplies on our 4 DCL cruises. We also had to ask for more toiletries and I've never had to do that on DCL. Even in the later cruises when they stopped giving you a new set each day, when they saw we were low, more was left. I had to ask for new ones this cruise.

Outlets: Slight to RCL. The Dream and Fantasy have a better outlet situation than the classics do but RCL had slightly more outlets and even USB ports which was a nice touch. Again, probably specific to the newer RCL ships.


So that's it for me! I hope someone finds this useful and be sure to ask questions if you have any!

Nice review and thanks for sharing. I completely agree about the pool towel situation and every time I go on RCCL it annoys me. I also prefer the Disney app as it includes messaging versus charging like Royal does. Looking forwards to my Anthem cruise. Your review is helping to build my excitement.
 
Nice review and thanks for sharing. I completely agree about the pool towel situation and every time I go on RCCL it annoys me. I also prefer the Disney app as it includes messaging versus charging like Royal does. Looking forwards to my Anthem cruise. Your review is helping to build my excitement.


I'm glad it was helpful! Despite me liking Disney over Anthem, I still enjoyed our time on her. She's a beautiful ship with a lot of fun things to offer. I think our family might be happier on a different class of ship but that doesn't make this vacation any less exciting and fun. Have a great time on your cruise!
 
I'm glad it was helpful! Despite me liking Disney over Anthem, I still enjoyed our time on her. She's a beautiful ship with a lot of fun things to offer. I think our family might be happier on a different class of ship but that doesn't make this vacation any less exciting and fun. Have a great time on your cruise!

Thanks! I know what you mean about liking Disney over Royal. But like you I still plan to have fun!
 


I want to thank you for writing this report. I was also looking for trip reports prior to going on the cruise. We just took the same 5 night cruise on July 15th and your trip was very helpful for a preview of what to expect.
 
I want to thank you for writing this report. I was also looking for trip reports prior to going on the cruise. We just took the same 5 night cruise on July 15th and your trip was very helpful for a preview of what to expect.


I'm so glad it was helpful! I had such a hard time planning ours since there wasn't a lot of info out there so I hoped to help others in the future and glad it actually worked for you! Hope you had a great time on your cruise!
 
I just read your trip report as I am leaving on the anthem on Sept. 9th and this is my first ever cruise. My group has our final meeting in a week to get all the information as we are taking a bus to and from the port.

The one question I have been trying to find answer for was the minibus to Horseshoe Bay. Did you get that right at the port? I think that is what we are going to do as it might be cheaper and faster.
 
I just read your trip report as I am leaving on the anthem on Sept. 9th and this is my first ever cruise. My group has our final meeting in a week to get all the information as we are taking a bus to and from the port.

The one question I have been trying to find answer for was the minibus to Horseshoe Bay. Did you get that right at the port? I think that is what we are going to do as it might be cheaper and faster.

Yes we did! It was actually quite easy. You disembark, walk thru a building where they do random bag checks, then walk maybe 1/4 mile to the street where there will be mini buses and taxis waiting for you. There were a couple of different places the buses would go so just make sure you pick the right bus. It is Cash only so be prepared for that. And we did tip as well. But as you can see we did both the bus and the minibus and the minibus was totally the way to go if all you want to do is go to Horseshoe bay.
 
Maybe this would help..... I drew arrows for you to see where you would go. So its really close.
 

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Maybe this would help..... I drew arrows for you to see where you would go. So its really close.

Thanks for the info. My group is having our meeting next week to get all the information before the cruise, so I can talk with my friends that are going with me see what we want to do.
 
Great report! Very detailed. I am thinking of taking a cruise to Bermuda in 2019. I love DCL but I would like to check out other cruise lines. Would you go on another Royal cruise (not sure if you mentioned it in your report)?
 
Great report! Very detailed. I am thinking of taking a cruise to Bermuda in 2019. I love DCL but I would like to check out other cruise lines. Would you go on another Royal cruise (not sure if you mentioned it in your report)?


YES! We actually booked a dummy cruise while on the cruise for a future RCL on an Oasis ship in 2019. We don't know for sure what we'll do in 2019 but we already had 2018 plans (Hawaii) but we wanted to keep the options open. We don't plan on going on that class of ships again for a while...maybe when the kid is a bit older....I'd prefer to try a different class that might have more things the kid would like (although she LOVED rollerskating). Not all RCL ships are created equally and I think its hard to compare the entire line to DCL because of that. Each class has something different to offer. Just because Quatam might not be our speed right now, doesn't mean that someone in a different place in life might not enjoy it. Its just knowing what works for you and that's why I hoped to help those who don't know what they want with the trip report. I don't think anyone knows what they will like until you can have some insight on what the ship is like and what worked for us.

If you have never been to Bermuda then go! It was a great trip and we enjoyed ourselves. I know DCl does that same path now and I'm unsure of the pricing so I can't speak for that but I probably would have chose DCL had that been an option when we went. But again, that might not be whats good for you family. Good luck with your decision and have fun with the planning!!
 
YES! We actually booked a dummy cruise while on the cruise for a future RCL on an Oasis ship in 2019. We don't know for sure what we'll do in 2019 but we already had 2018 plans (Hawaii) but we wanted to keep the options open. We don't plan on going on that class of ships again for a while...maybe when the kid is a bit older....I'd prefer to try a different class that might have more things the kid would like (although she LOVED rollerskating). Not all RCL ships are created equally and I think its hard to compare the entire line to DCL because of that. Each class has something different to offer. Just because Quatam might not be our speed right now, doesn't mean that someone in a different place in life might not enjoy it. Its just knowing what works for you and that's why I hoped to help those who don't know what they want with the trip report. I don't think anyone knows what they will like until you can have some insight on what the ship is like and what worked for us.

If you have never been to Bermuda then go! It was a great trip and we enjoyed ourselves. I know DCl does that same path now and I'm unsure of the pricing so I can't speak for that but I probably would have chose DCL had that been an option when we went. But again, that might not be whats good for you family. Good luck with your decision and have fun with the planning!!

We priced out the 5 night Bermuda on DCL (opening week) and I have it check my Anthem/Disney comparison report but pretty sure Magic was $1800 more for our family of 3!
Same itinerary, I was comparing the 6a category on the Magic so it was actually a better room on Anthem.
 
We priced out the 5 night Bermuda on DCL (opening week) and I have it check my Anthem/Disney comparison report but pretty sure Magic was $1800 more for our family of 3!
Same itinerary, I was comparing the 6a category on the Magic so it was actually a better room on Anthem.


That is quite the price difference!!
 

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