Review: Royal Caribbean Utopia of the Seas embraces nonstop party from Port Canaveral

Royal Caribbean's Utopia of the Seas begins sailing from Port Canaveral with stops at the line's popular private Bahamas island Perfect Day at CocoCay.

There is a time and place to relax on a cruise ship, but Royal Caribbean’s Utopia of the Seas figures its guests will sleep when they get home.

Leaning into short three- and four-night Bahamas trips, each with a stop at the cruise line’s private Bahamas island Perfect Day at CocoCay, the line is combining its newest ship with its most popular port of call for what it dubs “The World’s Biggest Weekend.”

“You’re going to leave this ship with a couple of days, exhausted. That is our mission — all weekend,” Royal Caribbean International President and CEO Michael Bayley said during a preview cruise ahead of the ship’s debut Friday with paying customers.

The behemoth ship is the second largest in the world behind Icon of the Seas that debuted out of Miami in January, but it’s the largest ever to sail from Port Canaveral and the first time Royal has assigned a new ship short itinerary duties.

As such, the line has taken the 18-deck, 236,473-gross-ton ship with room for 5,668 guests based on double occupancy and crammed the days with shorter, punchier live shows and a cavalcade of parties and live music.

The sixth Oasis-class ship takes on all the best aspects of its recent predecessors including the three-slide water park The Perfect Storm, FlowRider surf simulator, rock climbing wall and the 10-deck twisting dry slide The Ultimate Abyss.

A sign of amping up things where it can, Royal added rollers and extended the length of the slide for an even faster run with stretches of tube that alternate from pitch black to psychedelic flashing lights to translucent for a brain-thumping ride.

The high energy also flows into all three of its main entertainment venues which lean into song, dance and acrobatic spectacle married with technology for quick-hit performances that run under an hour. That means leaving behind the longer-running Broadway or other original stage productions found on Royal’s longer cruises.

“I don’t think we could sit in a theater for 90 minutes here,” said Christi Coachman, Royal Caribbean’s vice president of entertainment. “Because obviously that’s that’s our key timeframe, 90 minutes, with all of the other things that we want to experience.”

That said, the Royal Theater hosts a show called “All In” that takes all the technological toys Royal has developed over its last decade of stage productions and combines them into a journey thematically tied as global musical hotspots, running from Studio 54 in New York to a neon-lit Miami to Burning Man in California and a gothic masquerade ball in Venice — all dipping musical toes across different eras.

“In the theater, it was all about hit ’em hard, all about technology. We have drones, we have performers flying, we have incredible video projection, lasers,” Coachman said, while also using a technology that tracks performers’ positions through sensors that trigger interactive video or laser projection.

Unique to Royal Caribbean are both the ice skating show venue and the AquaTheater that combines divers, synchronized swimmers, slackliners, aerialists and dancing amid jets and fountains of water.

For Utopia, the AquaTheater show embraces Gen-X with a show titled “Aqua80Too” that leans into 80s hits with one seamlessly mashing up Phil Collins’ “Sussudio,” Eddy Grant’s “Electric Avenue” and Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough.” One number with slackliners gleefully bounce to the beat of a medley from the Beastie Boys, David Bowie, Kool & The Gang, Sugar Hill Gang and Young MC. A more poetic aerobatic performance beautifully mixes U2’s “With Or Without You,” Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush’s “Don’t Give Up” and Thomson Twins’ “Hold Me Now.”

Children of the 80s will approve.

The hardest show conceptually to get one’s head around may be one of the most impressive artistically. The ice show titled “Youtopia” features skaters in a series of quick-change outfits with impressive choreography under an intense projection system that interacts with the skaters zipping around the small rink performing jumps, spins and turns.

“This is my definition. When you think about Utopia, what is the definition of Utopia? It’s perfect place. It’s ideal perfection, and what does that mean to you?” Coachman asked. “So why is it ‘Youtopia’ — Y-O-Utopia? So is that the perfect car, the perfect house, the perfect love? And candy, because that’s perfect, because there’s a whole section on candy. So it’s really kind of what Utopia perfection means to you.”

The shows, though, almost play second fiddle to the arsenal of musical options on board.

“We’ve noticed guests on three- or four-day cruises, many times, as incredible as the shows are, they much rather gravitate toward loud music … They’re here to have fun,” said Allison Rider-Davidoiu, director of headliner entertainment, live music and enrichment.

The ship has 29 of more than 200 entertainment staff dedicated to music.

“The energy is definitely, you know, we amp it up,” Rider-Davidoiu said. “So it’s one of our entertainers, still incredibly talented, but maybe a bit more upbeat than what you would experience in a 14-day cruise or a seven-day cruise.”

She said there are still moments of more chill music across the ship, such as the French violin and guitar duo Enchanté that migrates to more calm venues such as the greenery found in Central Park.

“There’s a lot of parties. There’s a lot going on. Everything’s super loud everywhere, but sometimes you need that alternative,” she said.

She’s not wrong about the parties. The ship now employs staff called party influencers that can be found among the sundry celebrations such as the Rezolution Dance Party held in the ice skating rink venue so the projection system casts onto those on the dance floor.

There’s also a fraternity-themed party called Royal Kappa-Chi, a silent toga party, poolside plunge party and the sail-away party.

“Utopia is a taste, right, of what possibly you could experience on maybe a longer itinerary,” Coachman said. “It was really important not only to continue to create the family experiences, because that’s very important for our brand, but also to go in a little bit of a different direction and have one party after the other to where you don’t ever stop.”

So amid the parties, live music, comedy shows, game shows and performances are all the other things that Royal Caribbean can shoehorn in into the world’s second largest cruise ship.

That includes more than 40 places to eat and drink including what has already become a crowd-inducing new bar concept called the Pesky Parrot on the Promenade deck. It’s what Royal calls a Caribbean-inspired Tiki concept.

Bayley enjoyed telling the story of the Pesky Parrot’s origins.

“Somebody came up with the idea of, well, why don’t we have like a drunken parrot,” he said. “And so the pesky parrot really is this parrot, you know, is getting on in life, likes a few drinks, and as the day progresses, the parrot kind of becomes a little belligerent, rude. … You come on vacation, it doesn’t need to be serious. It’s just meant to be stupid. Some things can just be plain stupid. And you know, you go in a bar and this parrot just starts mouthing off at you.”

The line is bringing a live parrot named Brian on board for the first revenue sailing.

New cruise line dining experiences make you forget you’re on a cruise

Another venue unique to the ship is a themed dining concept called “Royal Railway — Utopia Station.” It builds off the thematic Empire Supper Club introduced on Icon of the Seas, but adds theme park-esque elements to mimic a train trip complete with digital screen projections of passing landscapes, piped in track sounds and vibrating seats.

The first railway trip is themed to the Wild West and has actors playing out a train heist during a 90-minute dinner. Future sailings will tackle other themes, such as the Asian Silk Road, along with shorter offerings tied to things such as wine tastings and holidays.

Bayley said he expects the line to do well offering this size ship in the Central Florida market.

“One of the reasons we put this brand new Oasis class into this market is that we really expect to see a certain amount of demand coming from tourists who are going in for … some kind of combo. They’re doing Disney or Universal or doing something in Orlando, and then they can tag on,” he said. “What kids wouldn’t be happy with that idea. … I wish I was a kid. That’s pretty good.”