There are a fair number of mixed reviews on the key program on Royal Caribbean ships, with at least one major cruise personality telling people to steer away from it. I thought giving it a honest review was a worthy topic. Even though we have used it before on smaller ships and had mixed feelings about it, we'd figured we'd give it another shot and purchased it on Icon of the seas.
First here are the benefits, and a first glance all these are fair to good benefits, but when packaged up, they can either dissuaded you from the program or entice you into purchasing it. For instance, the biggest cost and driver for the program is probably the internet package. I believe if you have no intention of having internet on the ship for the full duration of your trip, the key quickly becomes overpriced for all the other benefits. But if you do want internet for the full duration of the trip here is where I firmly believe that the extra benefits will add up enough to make it worth it.
I would say the next most important benefit of the key is convenience and time it saves on embarkation and debarkation days. Again, for smaller ports or ships you can debate how much this saves but with Port Miami and Icon of the Seas, I feel like this saved us at least two hours the first day and a good hour the last day.
So how did it save time on embarkation day? Well, if you are like us, we love to get on the ship as soon as possible to start our trip and the key was a big help on Icon. If you are not a suite guest and like priority boarding this is a huge advantage of the key program. We showed up at 10:40am at the port and stepped on Icon at 10:55am. It was a breeze and there were a ton of lines already at that time for the non key passengers. In addition, I crazily stayed up to midnight the day we could check into the cruise and at 12:08am in the morning and the first available time slot was 12:00pm to 12:30pm that day. Based on the lines both in cars to get to the port and lines waiting for people to be checked in, I firmly believe that we would not have made it on the ship until after 1pm.
The next benefit was we used was the key lunch where we were also able to drop of our carry-on luggage in the main dining room (these actually beat us to our room when we got to our room at 1:30pm). The lunch was objectively good. I must say on other ships this key lunch disappointed me, so I had low expectations going in but this meal was very good and the service was excellent. There aren’t may options on the menu but they modified both my order (I cannot stand their French fries – don’t get me started) and my son, who just wanted a plain old cheeseburger with American cheese and they accommodated both our asks. And it was generally quick, we had all three courses in about 45 minutes so that we could get back to explore the ship.
Here is where the rest of the benefits are hit or miss depending on what you are doing on the ship. The reserved seating for shows is a nice feature, but in most cases the seats they reserve are not the best seats. For instance, at the aqua-theater the seats that were saved for us were on the side of the stage which were one of the worst views for the show. And the priority times for rock climbing and flow rider are nice if you like those things, but they are pretty niche and geared more towards kids.
The last two key benefits that we used were the exclusive á la carte breakfast and choice departure. The breakfast was good, nothing to write home about, and we really had nothing to compare it to because we didn’t go to the main dining room all cruise up until then. For departure the benefit of having your bags out in the baggage area first and in the easiest spot to access them is a nice benefit and let us quickly find our bags and get to our rideshare.
So, all in all, I think the key program was worth it on Icon of the seas. If you plan to get the internet package and getting some extra time savers and conveniences during your cruise is a plus for you then I think it is worth it. If you are okay with lines and leaving some things up to chance, maybe it isn’t worth if for you. Let me know what you guys think in the comments.