Royal Caribbean caters to families, and its newest ship, Icon of the Seas, does that in a spectacular fashion.

The world’s largest cruise ship has all the usual bells and whistles that Royal Caribbean’s largest ships have become known for, but it takes these to a larger degree. 

These amenities include the largest water park at sea as well as the cruise line’s trademark FlowRider surf simulator, along with the largest ice rink at sea, a spectacular rock wall, and Crown’s Edge, a sort of zipline that enables passengers to sail over the sea.

Icon of the Seas also offers a new neighborhood, Surfside, which caters to families. Highlighted by a giant flamingo guarding its entrance, the area features bright colors, a carousel, and a variety of included and added-fee dining and drinking options.   

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Two of those beverage options, the Lemon Post Bar and Desserted, a milkshake bar, highlight a new approach for the cruise line. Both of those locations feature a mix of adult beverages with alcohol alongside mixologist-created nonalcoholic drinks.

It’s an approach to give nondrinkers and teens a way to have a bar-like experience without the alcohol. The idea also fits into current dry trends, where mocktails have become popular with millennials.

This isn’t Royal Caribbean offering virgin pina coladas or selling kids Shirley Temples. It’s a dedicated beverage program that the company plans to eventually expand across the entire fleet.   

Royal Caribbean wants to bring families together

Speaking at a media event on Icon of the Seas, Royal Caribbean’s head of beverages, Ed Eiswirth, said that the cruise line wanted to make the bars on the ship a family affair while delivering an elevated experience to passengers whether they are drinking alcohol or not.

When cruise lines sail out of U.S. ports, they use 21 as the legal drinking age. They do, however, allow underage passengers to be in bars. In many cases cruise-ship bars are also entertainment venues featuring musicians, trivia and other events. 

Eiswirth worked with a team of three mixologists to create the bar menus for the entire ship. That includes a number of new venues including Rye & Bean, a coffeehouse bar in the ship’s Aquadome.

That location offers classic coffee drinks along with elevated beverages that go well beyond the very popular espresso martini. The menu also offers tea-based concoctions including a Chai Old Fashioned and Bigo Bobbo, a rum-based tea drink that features boba pearls. 

Rye & Bean also has two mixologist-created zero-proof drinks that are unique to the venue.

Eiswirth said that the cruise line had work to do on its nonalcoholic-beverage menu on its other ships. He called fixing that “priority 1A” now that Icon of the Seas has launched.

Beverages are a very good business for Royal Caribbean

With Royal Caribbean’s dynamic demand-based pricing, adults pay somewhere between $60 and $100 a day for the company’s Deluxe Beverage Package. RCL also sells a beverage package that includes everything aside from alcoholic beverages, as well as a soda package that’s the cheapest option.

Since the soda package costs $12.99 per day, getting a nondrinker or someone who is not 21 to upgrade to the Refreshment Package (around $30-$35 per day) is a big bottom-line change for the cruise line. 

On most ships, however, that’s not an easy upgrade to justify, especially for kids too young to drink coffee (since specialty coffees are part of the Refreshment Package), but Icon of the Seas has high-end, alcohol-free cocktails at every bar.

That could help Royal Caribbean build on its already-growing revenue from passengers’ onboard spending.

“We had record yields for the quarter driven by new hardware, record pricing in the Caribbean and Europe, as well as onboard revenue rates that were up about 30%,” Royal Caribbean CEO Jason Liberty said during the company’s third-quarter earnings call.

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