Vision of the Seas has no waterslides.
No surf simulator. No roller coaster. No ice rink.
She launched in 1998, and she is one of the smallest ships Royal Caribbean still sails.
We booked her again anyway.
Our very first cruise was a 5-night run out of Baltimore to Bermuda in June 2025, and it turned two guys from Philly into cruise people. This October we are sailing the exact same ship on the exact same itinerary.
That should tell you most of what you need to know. But here is the long version: what the ship was actually like, where we spent our time, the one thing that genuinely annoyed us, and what we are doing differently the second time around.
Our Vision Of The Seas Sailing At A Glance
Five nights, round-trip from the Cruise Maryland Terminal in Baltimore, one full day docked in Bermuda at the Royal Naval Dockyard.
Ocean view room on Vision of the Seas
We stayed in an oceanview cabin on deck 3 and bought the drink package.
No specialty dining, no shows, no excursions booked through the ship. We wanted to see what a cruise felt like before we started adding things onto it.
Getting To Cruise Maryland Terminal From Philadelphia
Baltimore is about an hour and a half from us, which is the entire reason we ended up on this ship in the first place.
No flights. No hotel the night before. A friend drove us down, another friend picked us up when we got back, and we never paid a cent for parking.
Baltimore, Maryland cruise port
If you live anywhere between Philly and DC, that math is hard to beat.
We got to the terminal a little early, which I had braced myself for after reading horror stories about people baking in a check-in line for two hours. It never happened. The terminal was not crowded, the line moved, and the whole process from curb to gangway felt genuinely smooth.
For a first cruise, that mattered more than I expected. If embarkation is chaos, you spend the first four hours of your vacation stressed.
Tip: Royal Caribbean gives you a check-in window for a reason. Showing up hours before it opens does not get you on board faster, it just means you stand around longer. We break down the whole boarding-day sequence in our guide to what actually happens on embarkation day.
Our Oceanview Cabin On Deck 3: Was It Worth It?
We were on deck 3, near the elevators.
Everyone warns you about elevator noise. We never heard a thing. Not once, not at 2am, not at any point in five nights.
The cabin itself was small and simple and completely fine. It is a 1998 ship and the room does not pretend otherwise.
Here is my honest take, and it is probably not the take you expect from a cruise blog.
We should have booked an interior.
We were barely in that room. We slept there and showered there and that was about the extent of it. The window was nice, and I liked having a sense of where the ocean was, but I could not tell you it was worth the price gap over an inside cabin on a port-heavy five-night sailing.
We wanted a little bit of a view. We got one. I am just not sure we needed it.
That said, we do not regret skipping straight past the balcony category on this ship. If you are weighing that upgrade, we ran the numbers on whether a balcony cabin actually earns its cost in a separate piece.
Dinner In The Aquarius Dining Room Every Single Night
The Aquarius Dining Room is Vision’s main dining room, and we ate there every night of the cruise.
Same time, right around 5pm. We went down on day one, confirmed our reservations for the whole week, and then never thought about dinner again.
Main dining room was absolutely beautiful
That one small piece of admin was the best thing we did on the entire ship.
Because we ate at the same time each night, we ended up with the same waiters all week. And those guys were the single best part of the cruise.
They learned what we drank. They learned what we liked. By night three they were bringing out extra appetizers they thought we should try, unprompted.
Having extra appetizers and dinners was a huge plus!
On the last night of dinner, one of them pulled out an acoustic guitar and sang for the dining room.
I was not expecting to get emotional about a cruise ship dinner service. That is exactly what happened.
What we learned: Sort your dining out on day one. Ten minutes at the dining room desk on embarkation afternoon locked in our whole week and got us the same crew every night. It is the highest-return ten minutes on the ship.
The Windjammer Never Felt Like A Fight
The Windjammer is the buffet, and on the big ships it has a reputation for being a full contact sport at lunchtime.
Windjammer was also one of our favorites, always had seating
On Vision it was not.
The food was good, not spectacular. But we always found a seat. Every single time.
That is not a small thing. On a ship carrying roughly 2,000 guests instead of 5,000, the buffet is just a buffet. You walk in, you get food, you sit down.
The Midnight Pizza In The Solarium
Sorrento’s is Royal Caribbean’s pizza counter, and on Vision-class ships it lives inside Park Café, tucked into the adults-only Solarium.
It is open late. It is free. And after a night in the casino, a slice of that pizza is genuinely one of the great pleasures in cruising.
We went back most nights. I have no defense for this and I am not offering one.
Park Café is also one of the more underrated included venues on the ship. Sandwiches, salads, grab-and-go stuff, all at no extra charge, all in the quietest corner of the ship. It is the kind of thing new cruisers walk past for three days before someone tells them about it, which is why we made a whole list of the free stuff most people never find.
The Two Bars We Kept Coming Back To
The Schooner Bar became our spot without us ever deciding it would.
It is the nautical-themed piano bar, all rope and dark wood, and it just has an atmosphere that pulls you in. Trivia runs there during the day, live music at night. We kept ending up there and we never once regretted it.
We loved the Schooner bar, one of our go to spots!
Then there is the Viking Crown Lounge, up on deck 11.
It is dim, it is a little fancy, and it looks out over the pool deck and the ocean. It has a completely different feel from the rest of the ship, more of a proper lounge than a cruise bar. Spectacular is the word I keep landing on.
We did buy the drink package on this sailing, and for us it was the right call. Not because we drank a heroic amount, but because it let us try things. If you are not sure whether you would actually get your money back, the honest answer depends entirely on how you drink.
Read more: We do the actual math on whether a cruise drink package is worth buying, including the break-even point most people get wrong.
The Solarium Is The Best Space On The Ship
The Solarium is the adults-only area, and I want to be very clear about something.
It was actually adults only.
We did not see a single kid in there all week. On a lot of ships, that rule is a suggestion. On Vision, it held.
It has a pool under a glass roof, hot tubs, the Park Café, its own bar, and a level of quiet that the rest of the ship does not have. If you are cruising without kids, this is where you will spend your sea days.
Now for the one thing I did not love.
The adults-only hot tubs were crowded, a lot. There were multiple times we walked up, saw every seat taken, and just stood there waiting for someone to leave.
That is the tradeoff of a smaller ship. Fewer people overall, but also fewer hot tubs, and the good ones get claimed.
Heads up: If the Solarium hot tubs matter to you, go early in the morning or during dinner. Mid-afternoon on a sea day, you are getting in line.
The Pool Deck, The Movie Screen, And The Casino
Both main pools were great. Not crowded, not chaotic, no chair-hog war zone.
They played Wicked on the big screen by the pool one night and we watched the whole thing from a deck chair in the dark, out at sea. It cost nothing and it is one of the memories that stuck.
On Vision of the Seas watching the movie Wicked
The cruise director was fantastic, which is not a thing I would have predicted caring about. A good one changes the energy of the whole ship.
The casino was a blast. I think we came out roughly even across the week, which by casino standards means we won.
Just know going in that the casino is not the only thing quietly reaching for your card. Onboard spending adds up in places most first-timers do not see coming, and we listed the costs nobody warns you about after our first sailing.
Vision Of The Seas Vs Oasis Of The Seas
We have now sailed both ends of the Royal Caribbean size spectrum, so here is the comparison we wish someone had shown us before we booked anything.
| Vision of the Seas | Oasis of the Seas | |
|---|---|---|
| Debuted | 1998 | 2009 |
| Size | Around 78,000 gross tons | Around 226,000 gross tons |
| Guests (double occupancy) | Roughly 2,000 | More than 5,000 |
| Big-ticket attractions | Rock climbing wall, pools, Solarium | FlowRider, zip line, AquaTheater, Central Park, Boardwalk |
| Dining venues | Fewer, simpler | Far more, including free venues Vision does not have |
| Crowds | Barely noticeable | Manageable, but you feel the numbers |
| Best for | Ports, quiet, repeat visits | The ship as the destination |
Neither one is “better.” They are answering different questions.
Oasis is a resort you happen to sail on. Vision is a ship that takes you somewhere. If you want the full breakdown of the bigger one, we reviewed Oasis of the Seas after sailing her out of Cape Liberty.
Our Day In Bermuda: The Dockyard On Foot
We had one full day in Bermuda, docked at the Royal Naval Dockyard.
We did not book an excursion. We wanted to see the place on our own terms, at our own pace, on foot.
Bermuda is hands down one of our favorite ports!
Lunch was at the Frog & Onion, a pub right there in the Dockyard, and it was excellent. Good food, and the staff were the kind of friendly that does not feel like a job requirement.
Then we walked.
Glass Beach Is Worth The Walk
Sea Glass Beach sits out past the Dockyard on Ireland Island South, and it is unlike any beach either of us has been to.
The shoreline is covered in sea glass. Decades of broken bottles from an old naval dump, tumbled smooth by the water, in every color you can think of. The water itself is that impossible Bermuda blue.
Glass beach was a must see during our trip to Bermuda
We loved it enough that we went back the next morning before the ship left, hoping to catch the sunrise over the water.
The sun came up behind us, from completely the wrong direction.
It was still beautiful. We are still glad we did it. Sometimes the plan being wrong is not the same as the morning being wrong.
Tip: Wear water shoes. The beach is small rocks rather than sand, and the first few feet of the water are rough on bare feet. Once you are past that, it is smooth. And leave the glass where it is, because taking it is actually against the rules in Bermuda and the beach has been visibly stripped by people who ignored that.
One thing worth knowing before you go: the road out to the beach from the Dockyard is narrow with essentially no sidewalk, and it takes 20 to 30 minutes on foot. We were fine walking it. Plenty of people take the number 7 or 8 bus instead, and there is no shame in that.
Our one real complaint about Bermuda is that we did not get enough of it. One day was not close to enough.
What A Smaller Ship Actually Gets You
Here is the thing nobody told us before our first cruise.
The size of the ship changes the personality of the ship.
On Vision, we recognized faces by day three. Crew members remembered us. Nobody was fighting for a deck chair or queuing for an elevator or shouting to be heard.
It never felt overwhelming, and for two people who had never cruised before, that turned out to be exactly right. A first cruise on a 6,000-passenger megaship might have been a very different experience.
Formal night on Vision of the Seas
You give up a lot. No waterslides, no FlowRider, fewer restaurants, fewer big-production nights.
I would make that trade again.
What We’d Do Differently In October
We are back on Vision this fall, same itinerary, and we have a short list.
We are renting scooters in Bermuda. One day on foot showed us how much of that island we did not see, and we are not making that mistake twice.
Bermuda water is absolutely beautiful
We are going to the shows. We skipped the theater entirely last time because we were so happy just wandering the ship and watching the water, and that was a reasonable call for a first cruise. It is not a good enough excuse for a second one.
And we are getting to the Solarium hot tubs early.
Would We Sail Vision Of The Seas Again?
We already booked it, so the answer is not exactly suspenseful.
Vision of the Seas is old, small, and short on the flashy stuff that Royal Caribbean puts in its commercials. What she has instead is a crew that treats you like a person, a Solarium that is genuinely peaceful, a buffet you can get a seat in, and an itinerary that drops you in Bermuda for a day.
For a first cruise out of Baltimore, we would recommend her without hesitation. For a family with kids who want waterslides and rock walls and nonstop activity, look at a bigger ship and be honest with yourself about it.
We came home and immediately started planning the next one. That is the review.
Have you sailed Vision of the Seas, or cruised to Bermuda out of Baltimore? What would you tell someone doing it for the first time?
