An Iconic Cruise: Iconic Eats
Everyone who follows cruise news knows that one of the things that has taken a hit in the cruising industry is the quality of food. The complimentary food options available across most family friendly cruise lines has generally gone down as cruise lines push their specialty dining options. While Carnival is not known generally for their quality of food, they are known for having a variety of complimentary quick service food options, many of which are thought to be pretty good. When designing the Icon of the Seas, many wondered if Royal Caribbean would take a page out of Carnival’s book and add some more complimentary food options. Also, would the food on Icon match it’s high price tag?
With Icon, Royal Caribbean has not only added many new complimentary eating areas but has also plussed the complimentary options that they are known for. For example, for breakfast, we found the Surfside Eatery (which was a good substitute for the quieter breakfast option of the Solarium only more kid friendly) that worked well for our family. For lunch, the Aquadome Market was a delicious complimentary option. We could get an Asian bowl, a bowl of Mac, maybe a sandwich, and then a crepe for dessert. For some snacks or a mid-day meal, we found Base Camp up on Deck 16 to be a nice place for some chicken tenders, a smash burger, pretzel bites and fries. We found a lot of great new complimentary options that made it very easy to find some tasty bites throughout the day.
I can’t forget to mention the usual complementary options found in Park Cafe (located in Central Park), the Pearl Cafe (which replaced Café Promenade) and Sorrentos (which I don’t enjoy but one of our kiddos ate half of a cheese pizza there one night). And, of course there is the El Loco Fresh where you can grab some tacos, burritos and some nachos. For dinner, the Main Dining Room provided us with the expected delicious offerings and excellent service by a dedicated staff. Every night we would get the delicious Indian dishes, and we let our server know that we liked it spicy the first night so he had some chili flakes waiting for us every night after that. The Windjammer on board the Icon certainly did provide us with a plussed experience. The rumors are true that you can find lobster, shrimp, crab, steak and even a chocolate fountain in the Windjammer. We were definitely appreciative of all the new, fun complimentary food options.
Awhile back, we had purchased the Ultimate Dining Package for our Icon cruise because we figured that we would want to try out all of the specialty dining options. Many of them we had tried before and many of them did not appeal to our kids, so we decided to cancel it and book some individual specialty dining options. For our son’s 14th birthday, we made reservations at Giovanni’s (our family’s favorite place to eat). Christopher and I went to Izumi for lunch during an at sea day and had some of our usual favorites. At both restaurants, we experienced the same quality of food and service that we have come to expect from Royal’s specialty dining restaurants. On Day 7, we had an unexpected extra At Sea day due to bad weather so we went to Giovanni’s wine bar for lunch and just grabbed a few items off their simplified menu. This along with a tasty wine flight made our lunch quite enjoyable. I highly recommend sitting at the wine bar to get some good eats and tasty beverages.
Overall, we really enjoyed all of the food options available on board of Icon, and we are glad that we had seven whole days to experience it as fewer would not have been enough. Especially if cruising with kids, I would say that you could easily be satisfied with the complimentary options available on Icon. I know that we were.
