Disney Cruise Line v. Royal Caribbean's Anthem of the Seas comparison

[HappilyEverAfter80]

Did they not have a Flow Rider? That's surprising. I had thought they were on all the newer ships.

YES! Thanks for the comment, Anthem does have a single Flowrider, but I didn't think of it as a water slide/ride, but it kinda is I guess.
I edited the post. Thanks!

 

[we"reofftoneverland]

Yeah, I know, but it's really hard planning out far enough to get those darned connecting rooms!! I'm a planner, but 2019 is not on my radar, without knowing the school and dance recital calendars. 2018 we're going on an extended family cruise in the summer that's already booked. I was looking for stuff for Thanksgiving 2017 week for just my 4, and it's far too late to book connecting rooms for everything I've been pricing out (and my kids are elementary/middle school, so near-but-not-connecting isn't a good option yet). I don't have the school calendar beyond 2017-18, so I'm stuck. And I would LOVE to just take the kids out of school but the middle schooler would have a heart attack. Some days I wonder why the heck I stopped homeschooling! There just aren't enough connecting rooms, it seems, esp since people book those rooms but don't actually want the one connected to them.

We just go ahead and book and hope for the best with the school calender. Deposits are refundable (except some on Carnival).

 

[mevelandry]

Side note on ice cream... From what I remember in april on the Wonder, the self-serve was not open all day but from 11 AM to 10 or 11 PM and they were back order on the strawberry/banana and blueberry/mango flavors twice during our 3 nights cruise. I remember being a bit irritated by that. LOL (I love my ice cream)... I don't remember that happening on past cruises.

 

[hanscarlet]

Wow those pools!! That adult area is amazing!

 

[Club Disney Chandler]

Thanks again for posting all this. It's really nice to have a thread devoted to one single cruise line and how it compares to DCL. I love that there's no RCCL bashing, just sharing of information. Now we just need someone to start a thread like this with X, NCL, and MSC.

 

[Dug720]

Thanks again for posting all this. It's really nice to have a thread devoted to one single cruise line and how it compares to DCL. I love that there's no RCCL bashing, just sharing of information. Now we just need someone to start a thread like this with X, NCL, and MSC.

And Princess. I can do Princess but not until next April.

 

[TestingH2O]

Pool towels. Each pool on Anthem has an area where you check-out as many towels as you like using your SeaPass card. There was never a line here, but it was a bit of a pain. If you don't return the towels by end of the cruise you are charged $25 each. Were guests walking off with these towels?

I like how easy it is to get towels on DCL, but I have heard that they lose 100's of towels on each trip especially with people taking them on shore excursions. I would imagine a $25 charge helps reduce that number significantly. I don't care how expensive the cruise was, I don't think that gives anyone the right to walk off with the pool towels.

Outdoor pools on Anthem of the Seas

That main pool looks quite deep. It's a little frustrating that DCL doesn't have an actual deep pool, but are there very shallow ones for smaller kids on the Anthem, or do kids who aren't strong swimmers stay on the edges and the splash areas?

Oh yeah, and does RCL provide life jackets? DD is swimming now but I felt much better that she had a jacket on our first trip.

 

[we"reofftoneverland]

Wow those pools!! That adult area is amazing!

Are u booked with msc? We booked with them for next year on the Seaside (dropped a dcl cruise when we did it). We are a bit apprehensive but the price was insanely low. Actually, I think part of why we are apprehensive is because the price is so low. Just does not seem real.

Sorry I just realized I quoted the wrong person! Meant to quote ClubDisneyChandler

 

[thumpery]

We just got off a 5 night cruise on Anthem of the Seas to Bermuda. This was our first Royal Caribbean after 4 Disney Cruises in less than 3 years. I want to do a mini trip report but from the perspective of someone who has only cruised with DCL. Usually I try not to compare and enjoy all our vacations, but I know with the prices of DCL increasing, trying other lines is on a lot of people minds. After only cruising on DCL one naturally wonders how other lines stack up.
If I was solely doing a Royal Caribbean or DCL trip report you would not see much criticism or complaining, as overall we loved all our cruises. But because I want to compare and contrast our experiences on both, some negative may get pointed out.
Ultimately these will be my family's experiences and opinions, but I hope this will help others decide if they want to sway from DCL, or maybe not for a few years yet.

We just did a 7 night to Bermuda on Anthem of the Seas in May. We are seasoned DCL cruisers but really wanted to go to Bermuda. Who would have thought DCL would have added it to their itinerary, which by the way we booked. I'm interested to read your report. It is in our human nature to compare, which we did.

 

[thumpery]

Next up: Stateroom
Anthem of the Seas is a newer ship, so I was expecting modern, fresh decor.
Still, I was a bit worried as we absolutely loved our Disney staterooms, especially the last one category 4b - a larger verandah room.
First walking to our stateroom, I thought... oh oh.. no decorated doors. No cute little portholes on the doors. No Disney music in the hallway... the doors were solid dark wood tones, nothing nautical about them. It's a very clean look, but also a bit dark for my taste. The odd door had a single door magnet on it, be it Happy Birthday or Bonne Voyage - you could order these before sailing from in-room gifts, similar to DCL. You use your SeaPass (KTTW) to open the door, or you could buy a wow band. Sort of similar to a magic band, I believe they were $4.95 to buy. We didn't as I didn't like the design.
Once inside the stateroom, I was relieved as it was actually very nice. We had a verandah stateroom, category D2. It was 198 sq feet plus 55 sq foot balcony. I would say length-wise it was like Disney but it seemed more narrow.
Immediately I noticed a couple of hairs on the bathroom floor and being the OCD nerd I am, I wiped down all surfaces with disinfectant wipes. They were still clean after so our stateroom was clean, but like I said.. couple hairs.. some dust on the glasses by the fridge. It was little things like this that told me.. ok this is NOT DCL.
I'm sure others would never notice this, but after cruising with the Mouse what can I say.. my expectations were high. I also checked out the toiletries they had in the bathroom. Seemed like some were half-full! There was shower gel, lotion, shampoo and conditioner. Smelled good but I didn't use any of it.
What else about the bathroom.. it was a single bathroom with a nice glass shower, pretty good size, very modern clean lines. Towels were nice and white but not nearly the quality of DCL towels. No Royal Caribbean logo on them. It's ok, but despite myself I was looking for the little details that would make me say... wow Royal..
Oh and the mini-bar was not stocked, it was emptied which was great for us. I did find the previous passenger's sushi in the fridge though... yuck.
Our stateroom attendant came around and introduced himself, very nice man. But clearly NID- not into details

What I really loved about our stateroom. I loved the closet storage. Instead of being in a narrow hallway by the door like on DCL there were 2 closets on either side of the bed. There was also overhead storage. I took one closet and my DH and DS the other.
One of the closets had the safe in it, it was exactly the same as DCL.
In addition to the storage around the bed, there were several drawers near the desk. Above the desk there were several outlets and 2 USB ports.
We found the storage design and capacity very smart and efficient. Even more so than on DCL.
The other thing that is nice about Royal's stateroom is that the bed separates if you have two people that want to sleep apart. We had ours together and it was very comfortable with good quality linens.
My DS was bummed there was no bunk bed, he slept on the sofa bed which actually turned into a double bed.
Finally, the TV is much bigger than on DCL and it also swivels out of the wall.
There were on demand movies, but most had a charge.
We mainly watched the same things as at home..CNN, NBC etc. Even on DCL we don't watch much TV but my DS would watch movies sometimes.

Here are some photos of our stateroom. If I had to give edge to either line, it's a very slight one to DCL. Mostly because of the little details. But very very slight edge. Many things like closets and tv was better on Anthem.

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We had a category D1; Loved it! Storage was awesome. Nice touch was the automatic nightlight in the bathroom!

 

[thumpery]

Let's do Dining next, this will probably be long, hope you don't fall asleep

BREAKFAST and LUNCH

First of all let me say there are a LOT more options and places to eat on Royal Caribbean, especially on their newer bigger ships. Anthem is not an exception.
Disney Cruise Line has the "Cabanas" buffet and Royal Caribbean has the "Windjammer Marketplace"
Windjammer is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner all served buffet style. On embarkation day I had no intention of going there for lunch as I heard it was crazy, but DS wanted to and foolishly we gave in.
When you walk in, there is a hand washing station with soap and water.
Windjammer was a mad house to say the least. Ok yes I know Cabanas is busy too on embarkation but the Windjammer was really something else. I didn't really take pictures in there because it was hard to move around. We finally found a table and then went to get some food. Windjammer at least on Anthem has a different layout than Cabanas. There are several food stations all over the place. One had salads and condiments, one was breads and pastries, international flavours, world kettle, pasta station, American etc.
So I start walking around trying to read the signs above and bumping into people every few seconds because the stations were spread out sort of like pepperoni is on pizza There was no flow and this created traffic jams all over. But ok, I wasn't super bothered by this. Cabanas has a better flow.
Then I noticed that most and I do mean most dishes were near empty or empty. Pizza dish? Empty. Mashed potatoes? Empty. I do understand this was crazy embarkation day lunch (around 2 pm at this point) but come on. It took us 20 min to load up our plates. All I can think of is that they must have way less people working there than on DCL. Cabanas while also very busy on the first day, everything was replanished quickly.
Food variety was very good overall in the Windjammer. Taste was ok, nothing amazing, good variety, but I did not find shrimp like in the cabanas or sushi. Two items I really like. It's ok, slightly annoyed at this point (and it takes a lot to annoy me )I looked at DS and said: we are not coming here again for lunch. DH pointed out it's probably better after the first day.. well it wasn't. We tried it again for one of the breakfasts and another lunch. Slightly less busy and the dishes were at least half-full but overall the Windjammer was a place I avoided.
I would imagine dinner isn't busy and I should have gone in there to check it out then, but we didn't eat any of the dinners in there.
There was an outdoor seating area in the buffet , but it was maybe 69 that first day and cloudy so it wasn't a great option. Oh and no utensils on the tables, had to go back again and search for them, they were in bins near the food stations.
In addition to the Windjammer, just like on DCL they had one main dining room restaurant open for breakfast and lunch, but with more limited hours. We had breakfast in the Grande restaurant one morning and it was very good, tasty and fast service.
Then there is Cafe @Two70, my fav spot to have breakfast and lunch. It was next to a venue called Two70 which was an incredible space. It served many purposes but during breakfast and lunch you could sit in there and eat while enjoying the wall-to-wall ocean view from the very back of the ship.
Breakfast in Two70 had such items as egg on an English muffin, breakfast burrito, hot and cold cereals, yogurt parfaits, bagel bar with various fixings including smoked salmon and capers.
For lunch there was a variety of grilled sandwiches such as Rueben, Royal's famous roast beef sandwich with horseradish on a cumin roll, panini, wraps, soups and a salad bar. It was rarely busy in there and the food was tasty. Cafe at Two70 is another included option.
I believe the closest option to cafe Two70 on the Oasis class is Park Cafe.
There is also Sorrentos Pizza - it was on deck 4 of the Royal Esplanade.
Also included and I believe Sorrentos is on most Royal ships.
Cafe Promenade also in the Royal Esplanade is also included and you could get cold sandwiches and cookies there. I didn't have a craving for pizza once so I didn't try Sorrentos. It should be located on the pool deck in my opinion. Also included is a Dog House with various saussages, hot dogs and warm sauerkraut, grilled peppers and fried onions. Dog House is located inside the Seaplex centre, Oasis class has it too on the Boardwalk. I'm not a big hot-dog person but everything was actually very good there.
The options to eat seemed endless, as in addition to what I already mentioned, there were several specialty restaurants serving lunch and dinner.

DINNER - You had a choice of traditional, early or late dining and also MY TIME which we had and prior to sailing I was confused about because you still made reservations in the cruise planner for MY TIME, except you could eat a different time each night from 5:30-9:30 pm. I reserved some nights around 7 and some at 8 depending if we had other plans. In reality, we just showed up whenever we felt like it and we were seated within 5 min, but keep in mind we were a party of 2 or 3 when DS came with us, so if you are a party of 8, the wait may possibly be longer. If you were on traditional set times, you dined on deck 3 in either Grande or Chic dining room, your restaurant and table # would be printed on your Sea Pass, and each day you would have the same servers and table mates, but also same restaurant. No rotation here like on DCL.

With MY TIME, you dined on deck 4 in either Silk or American Icon Grill. Each restaurant had a different decor, we liked all of them but there was no elaborate theming and obviously no Disney music...
Unsure if we would do another Royal cruise before we went, I chose MY TIME to mainly try it out.
There was also MY TIME FAMILY dining where I think you dined at 5:45 with kids and 40 min into the dinner service kids got picked up by the adventure ocean staff. Similar to what DCL does at late dining only.

With MY TIME We ate in either Silk or American Grill and like I said we just ended up showing up whenever and being seated promptly. We were also asked which dining room we wanted to be in. The 2 restaurants are across from one another. Because we had MY TIME dining and dined in one of the 2 restaurants, and also had breakfast in the Grande dining room once as well as Chic, so we ended up eating in each dining room.

Now the 2 most important aspects: Food quality and service in the main dining rooms.
To my surprise, service was EXCELLENT. I was worried having different waiters each night thinking they wouldn't care but I have to say service was on par with DCL's in the main rotational restaurants. Not only were ALL our waiters super friendly, service was fast and efficient. We were always out of the restaurant within 1 hr 15 min. When I say "always" I mean 4 times, so again maybe we lucked out. Royal does say to allow up to 2 hours for dinner. Both DH and I commented that service in the main restaurants was top-notch and just as good as or maybe even better than DCL as we usually had really slow dinner service on DCL. Great but slow. Just no magic tricks or anything like they do on DCL on Anthem. We were ok with that.
Each night there was a different menu with some options that you could pay for, if you wanted. For example there was a NY strip steak and grilled shrimp entree on the regular menu, or there was a paid filet mignon and lobster option.
I will be honest, food itself was a bit of a let down in the main restaurants. I felt like everything was better on DCL. We tried some of the same appetizers like escargot or French onion soup, and it was just OK. There were a couple of things that were very good, like a crab cake appetizer. 90% of main dining room food was just OK. If I'm feeling generous and we are not a picky family nor are we foodies.
Steak I ordered was unedible.
My beloved crème brûlé desert that I love on DCL was not really good on Anthem. Looked the same, but didn't taste good. Grand Marnière desert was better. Our waiters seemed genuinely interested in feedback and were always coming back and checking on us. We never left hungry, but no meal was a standout.
We ate at one specialty restaurant, Jamie's Italian. It was EXCELLENT. Food quality and taste and service. They make fresh pasta there on site everyday. Everything we ate at Jamie's was a definite step up from anything we had on DCL but again it's not an included option.
DH wanted to try one of the other specialty restaurants like Chops Grille but I wanted to experience the complimentary options first so the only specialty dinner we did was at Jamie's.
If it was a longer cruise we would have definitely tried Chops Grille which is a specialty steak house. Anthem also has a Wonderland specialty restaurant loosely themed after Alice in Wonderland, it's supposed to be an experience to eat there. I can't really explain it as we didn't but you can find info about it online. Izumi is a small sushi place ($).
There is also Johnny Rockets burger joint up on the pool deck where you could get burgers, fries and milkshakes for fairly nominal fees. We didn't try this either.
Overall Anthem of the Seas has more dining options than any DCL ship, and while the main dining rooms were pretty and service was great, food was nothing special. The Windjammer buffet food was OK but the layout and craziness of it was a turn-of. Loved Cafe Two70 in terms of food and ambiance of eating inside Two70. Beats anything on DCL.
One area which is also better on DCL in terms of convenience is the pool-side quick service. Other than Johnny Rockets which is a paid option on Anthem there was nothing like DCL has near the pools. I forgot to mention there is also a Solarium Bistro which was complimentary and open for lunch and dinner but it was in the adult only pool area. It's supposed to have healthier food options and it's a small buffet for lunch and salad buffet for dinner and a-la-carte entrees. Didn't get a chance to eat there, again there was only so many places we could try on a shorter cruise.

I apologize I didn't take many pics of the restaurants and the ones I did have people in it... but tnshsms has a nice trip report from the same cruise and she posted a lot of photos. Honestly though even if I had photos of the food, I can tell you everything looked great, but wasn't (in the main restaurants).
Below are a couple showing inside of the Two70 Cafe and Two70 where you ate, entrance to Jamie's Italian and Wonderland.
Doghouse was modeled after a NY street style hot dog cart.

Any specific dining questions, please ask.
I will write about the drinks and dreamworks character dining in a separate post.

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I totally agree about Windjammers. On our cruise the Captain came on over the microphone requesting anyone not eating to remove themselves from the area to make room for others. The food options were often empty like you stated. Only saw shrimp the last night on the cruise and never ever saw fresh berries. Two70 was a much better option. They list a shrimp option salad on the menu board. You have to ask for it and the server has to go underneath the counter to retrieve it. Each time we requested we only got 4. We did not like having up charges listed on the menu in the main dining rooms for certain items. That nickel and diming effect.

 

[HappilyEverAfter80]

Side note on ice cream... From what I remember in april on the Wonder, the self-serve was not open all day but from 11 AM to 10 or 11 PM and they were back order on the strawberry/banana and blueberry/mango flavors twice during our 3 nights cruise. I remember being a bit irritated by that. LOL (I love my ice cream)... I don't remember that happening on past cruises.

I actually remember Disney Magic having very limited flavors too when we sailed, maybe 3? Disney Fantasy had quite a few... and different ones too.
Anthem had vanilla, strawberry and chocolate IF they had all 3, or a swirl mix of 2 - like strawberry/chocolate, vanilla/strawberry. Most often they were out of vanilla.

 

[HappilyEverAfter80]

I like how easy it is to get towels on DCL, but I have heard that they lose 100's of towels on each trip especially with people taking them on shore excursions. I would imagine a $25 charge helps reduce that number significantly. I don't care how expensive the cruise was, I don't think that gives anyone the right to walk off with the pool towels.



That main pool looks quite deep. It's a little frustrating that DCL doesn't have an actual deep pool, but are there very shallow ones for smaller kids on the Anthem, or do kids who aren't strong swimmers stay on the edges and the splash areas?

Oh yeah, and does RCL provide life jackets? DD is swimming now but I felt much better that she had a jacket on our first trip.

Interesting about the towels... I'd rather DCL implement a system like Royal's (which wasn't all that bad, just less convenient) then keep raising the cruise fares!

I don't recall the actual depth of the pool, but it wasn't super deep. There were tons of kids in the pools, some in life jackets - which yes they were provided, and I went back to edit this info, thanks for the reminder!
The splash area was more like a wading pool and there is also a shallow wading pool under the retractable glass roof.

 

[HappilyEverAfter80]

We had a category D1; Loved it! Storage was awesome. Nice touch was the automatic nightlight in the bathroom!

Aha! I knew I forgot something! LOVED this night light, I edited my post on the stateroom

 

[HappilyEverAfter80]

We just did a 7 night to Bermuda on Anthem of the Seas in May. We are seasoned DCL cruisers but really wanted to go to Bermuda. Who would have thought DCL would have added it to their itinerary, which by the way we booked. I'm interested to read your report. It is in our human nature to compare, which we did.

I priced out Bermuda on the Magic for next October, exact same itinerary for a cat 6 was more $1800 more for my family. I think cat. 6 actually has some whitewall, so our D2 balcony on Anthem was actually nicer.
We have sailed on both the Disney Magic and now Anthem.... is it worth that much more?

 

[cadien]

Thanks again for posting all this. It's really nice to have a thread devoted to one single cruise line and how it compares to DCL. I love that there's no RCCL bashing, just sharing of information. Now we just need someone to start a thread like this with X, NCL, and MSC.

I can help with an NCL thread. That's all we've done so far. Can't compare it to Disney until April. (So far away!!)

 

[cadien]

And Princess. I can do Princess but not until next April.

Okay, that is a funny coincidence. April both times.

 

[tinkerone]

Nice touch was the automatic nightlight in the bathroom!

That was the one thing on Oasis that I fell in love with totally!! I always travel with a nightlight and that was the first time I have not had to pull it out, the lighting was amazing and so appreciated.

 

[Happy100]

I took a RCCL cruise on LOS this past April and I notice you mention some of the same differences I noticed. I was wondering if they were just specific to LOS but it doesn't appear to be after reading your review. Thanks for taking the time to write this review.

 

[HappilyEverAfter80]

I like how easy it is to get towels on DCL, but I have heard that they lose 100's of towels on each trip especially with people taking them on shore excursions. I would imagine a $25 charge helps reduce that number significantly. I don't care how expensive the cruise was, I don't think that gives anyone the right to walk off with the pool towels.



That main pool looks quite deep. It's a little frustrating that DCL doesn't have an actual deep pool, but are there very shallow ones for smaller kids on the Anthem, or do kids who aren't strong swimmers stay on the edges and the splash areas?

Oh yeah, and does RCL provide life jackets? DD is swimming now but I felt much better that she had a jacket on our first trip.

I was just looking at some of the outdoor pool pics again and I can see the main pool is 5 feet 5 inches deep.
The other ones were more shallow.