The Icon of the Seas has a bunch of new “Neighborhoods” including Surfside, Chill Island, Thrill Island, the AquaDome and the adults only Hideaway. It also has the mainstay neighborhoods of Central Park and the Royal Promenade.
Today I would like to go into our first impression on the Surfside neighborhood. This is Royal Caribbean’s attempt at creating a place / hangout for families to be together. Overall, my family and I have mixed feelings about this neighborhood. There were a lot of positives in this area. Our 8-year-old loved the pool / splash area and Surfside bites quick service food was really good, but for a neighborhood that was supposed to be for the whole family, I think a few of things they did were not fully baked ideas or are just flat out odd.
My take on this neighborhood is that they wanted to add a pool and splashpad to the Boardwalk neighborhood from the Oasis class ships and brand it with some more family forward spaces, but some things hit and some were misses. For instance, the lemon post bar just seemed odd to me. They basically said “you can drink with your kids here”, by having fun sugary drink for the kids and also have a fully stock bar. In my opinion I would rather have had a more parents themed bar then the diluted middle ground of a bar that the lemon post is.
Also, they put a new specialty dining restaurant Pier 7 in this neighborhood, which I never thought was open on our sailing, but it must have just been that no one wanted to go into it. Again, here is where they moved Playmakers off of the Boardwalk and put it in an odd place outside of the teen club on Icon. Pier 7 I think might have been more appealing if they put it in the Promenade, but again this middle of the road, trying to appeal to both kids and adults fell flat.
This brings me to my overall feeling about this new neighborhood, is that there are some really fun spaces for the kids; the pool, splash area, carousel and slides but really there is not much to do for adults. Everything is either geared towards kids or a diluted version of something for adults. I found my wife saying, “take our son to surfside and meet me somewhere else in a few hours”. We never hung out in the space as a family, because there was nothing really to draw adults into staying there. The pool isn’t big enough for any adult to go in, so most of my time was spent either watching my kid in the pool or scrolling on the phone. There was no real adult thing to do while your kids are having fun.
Another interesting choice that I think makes the area odd is that they close the pools and splashpad down at 6pm. Which basically makes the area a bit of a ghost town at night. They did try to have some other events, like a silent disco at night but it just seems like they aren’t 100% sure what to do with the space. With such a prime area on the ship it is kind of a letdown to how the neighborhood has actually played out.
My Wife and I were lucky to be part of a focus group on Icon and even Royal had a lot of question about Surfside in general. I think this is the space that will have drastic changes on Star or the Seas. It makes sense to me to bring back the more complete Boardwalk concept and move the kiddie pool and splashpads up next to the Thrill Island on the top few decks. My guess would be that Pier 7 might either be swapped out for something else or a specialty diner location will be eliminated from the neighborhood (bring back Playmakers to this space please!).
Overall, this was one of my son's favorite places to go, but I think he would have had just as much fun if the splash area was up on the main pool deck and then my wife and I would have had some more centrally located things to do.
Let me know what you think of this neighborhood. Do you agree or think I’m being to hard?
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