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This is the 3^rd time that I have sailed on the Harmony of the Seas, and it was a celebration cruise to celebrate my husband’s 60^th birthday.  We selected this ship given that it was leaving out of Galveston, Texas and would be an easy place to get to if we had others joining us from the East Coast.    Turns out all 19 of us on our celebration cruise flew in from California and Nevada.   It was still a shorter distance vs departing from Florida and we really did not want to cruise the Mexican Riviera from Los Angeles. 

Getting to Galveston is a bit of a trek though. You fly into Houston and there are two airports, Hobby is about an hour away and Intercontinental/Bush airport is about 90 minutes away.   We had flown into Intercontinental/Bush on United and had a private car service waiting for us to take us to Galveston.  We also few in 2 days before the cruise which was a good decision.   Our travel day was long given that Reno does not have nonstop flights to Houston every day and we had to go through Denver.   This gave us a day to sleep in and then explore Galveston. The rest of our group all flew in the day before and most had uneventful travels, but our other 8 from Reno had a delay of 3 hours and didn’t get to the hotel until close to 8pm.  They all had pre-arranged car services or shuttle vans, so at least getting to the hotel was easy and smooth.

We all stayed at the Tremont Hotel in Galveston.  This is part of the Marriott brand as one of their Autograph Collection resort hotels.  It is historical and we had a beautiful room without any upgrade, which was surprising.  We ate our dinner at the hotel restaurant that night and then brought a bottle of wine back to our room where we could relax and get a good night’s sleep. 

The day of the cruise, we all met up in the lobby for our noon shuttle.  The shuttle offered by the hotel was $15 per person and can accommodate 14 people.   It worked out perfect to book the shuttle entirely for our group and the other 5 people took an Uber SUV to the port.  We all arrived at a similar time so that we could easily take our group photo and board the ship. 

The check-in process in the new Royal Caribbean terminal was super easy and what a beautiful terminal.  For whatever reason, most of us received the Express Pass, which resulted in slightly shorter check-in lines.  But we did not wait very long at all for the few that did not have the Express Pass.   If you completed your online check-in properly, it was just a quick scan of your bar code and look at your passport and you were clear to board.

The ship has not changed much.  Our previous sailings were in 2016 and 2017 and this ship has gone through updates and refurbishments, so I did not notice any wear and tear or signs of aging.   The cabins were much more spacious that I recalled from our previous sailing, and I felt as though the layout for the closet might have been different.   We had two closets on each side of the couch and several drawers, so we did not lack for space at all.   The safe is still very small and does not fit even the smallest of laptops, but we’ve been on very few ships that will accommodate a laptop.   Our bed was comfortable, certainly not our bed at home but no aches, pains or complaints but coming home to our bed was welcomed.   The pillow was decent and that can always be a make or break for me.  I like pillows that can be mushed, not too fluffy but conforming. 

Service on board Harmony of the Seas was great, which is somewhat surprising as there were 6200 guests on board. We really did not wait around to be served at any of the bars or on the sun decks.   We never made it to breakfast in the buffet or the dining room.  We ordered room service breakfast one night for the next morning and it was just OK- but we have come to expect that with room service at a time of day when many people are ordering so that they can get off the ship for excursions.   We had lunch in the Windjammer Café on the day of embarkation with everyone and it was a little chaotic with people but not too bad, other days the line to get in was unappealing, so we opted for the adult only Solarium Bistro or made a quick trip to the Promenade Café or Park Café for sandwiches or wraps instead.   We always brought these items to the sun deck and ate outside.  Our dinners were very good.   We dined in the main dining room 4 times, and we also enjoyed 3 nights in the Specialty Dining venues:   Chops Grille, Izumi Hibachi and Jamie’s Italian.  All our dinners were very good.  We also had amazing service though our server in Jamie’s Italian was a little on the slow side and we did have a show to get to that evening.   We also frequented Sorrento’s for Pizza on an almost nightly basis.  When your dinner is at 5pm and you’re still enjoying the onboard entertainment at midnight, you are a little hungry for a midnight snack.   We figure since we miss Breakfast, the pizza is our breakfast. 

Entertainment was good, though a few disappointments.  Many of the trivia and name that tune type of games were held in On Air and it’s a relatively small venue for the crowd that is interested in this type of activity. Also, most of them were early evening and in direct conflict with the 5-6pm dining times.   When our schedule did allow, we tried to get a seat, but it was impossible, so we gave up.    We did go to the Adult Comedy one evening in the small venue set up for these shows, but you must have a reservation, which we did, or you can use the standby line and most people that wanted to see the show did.  We also saw the Ice Show, the Water Theatre Show and The Production of “Grease” in the Grand Theatre.   We also enjoyed a late-night adult only Comedy shows on the last night in the Theatre.   We enjoyed guitar tunes in the Pub and some piano in the Schooner Bar a few evenings and we also enjoyed a few of the dance parties on the Promenade.  

70’s night was huge hit and given that several of us had costumes from a 70’s theme party last year, we got decked out for this and it was fun.   The dancing in Dazzles was disappointing.  We went one night, and the band was playing sleepy tunes, they finally played 2 dance songs at the end of their night.   We didn’t give them another chance which is very unlike us. 

Most of the afternoons, you could find us out on the sun deck.  We ended up usually sitting in the Adult Only Solarium area for a few reasons.  They have now tethered down the deck chairs on Deck 16 that overlooks the main pool area and the lounge chairs face inward.  Then across from those lounge chairs are regular chairs that face the ocean – but you are really facing the person in the chair across from you.   I like to view the ocean, with this set up you can’t really do that.  Also, because the chairs are tethered, you are right on top of the next person.  Granted the chairs were not full and you could easily find one and likely space out, you still could not turn it around.   The chairs in the Adult Only Solarium area were not tied down so we were able to move them around and they also faced out of the ocean.  It was nice being in the Adult Only area too as we did have a lot of kids on this sailing with 6200 passengers overall.

The Royal Caribbean app is very good and easy to use, though we did get a daily compass delivered to our cabin each night.  I usually like having the paper copy, but they crammed so much into the 4 pages that the font was too small to comfortably read- so much easier to view on the app.   Also, the app provided you with useful information before you sailed – like the theme nights.  You knew there would be a 70’s night, a white night, a Caribbean night, a formal night, a dress to impress night and then 2 casual nights.   We were supposed to have a Country night, but they changed that to Casual and then put the Country entertainment on the schedule of the formal night—so we changed after dinner into our boots, etc.  The Country dance party was fun but some of the line dance lessons were hokey.  However, they did a very good job of instructing and the set up was conducive to teaching a full house in Studio B (ice rink gets covered and becomes the dance floor).   The app would also let you know which dining venues were open, the hours, etc., same with the bars and lounges.   You could also add things of interest to your calendar, so you didn’t need to scroll through everything to see what you had planned next. 

This cruise had 3 ports of call:  Roatan, Honduras; Costa Maya, Mexico and Cozumel, Mexico.  We have visited all of these ports before, but we did explore a little bit.  We joined some of our group on a beach excursion to Big French Key in Roatan.  It was about a 30-minute bus ride and then a 10-minute boat ride to this little island for a day at the beach that included a nice lunch and time in he water and in the sun.   

We stayed on the ship in Costa Maya and then had lunch in Cozumel at Pancho’s Backyard, which is a tradition for us.   There are 2 locations now for Pancho’s and we opted for the newer location that was a 10-minute walk from our ship. 

Overall, we had a great cruise.  We had some first-time cruisers on our trip and they had a good time too.  The weather was beautiful for us, which was a gift given that Tropical Storm Alberto had come through before our sailing and did re-arrange some things for the previous sailing and as we disembarked the news was forecasting Hurricane Beryl as a Category 4 that could end up in the Gulf of Mexico in a few days.    We all feel very fortunate that our vacation weather was perfect – sure it was hot and humid, but it was clear, and we had very calm seas for the entire week.  

This was also our first large ship cruise since 2020 and it does take some getting used to with that many passengers.  Our last 2 cruises were Explora Journeys with 500 passengers on a ship that normally holds 900 and a River Cruise in Europe with 50 passengers on a ship that normally holds 181, so definitely a different experience but we love cruising and still love cruising on ships of all sizes.

To view photos from this cruise- click here:  2024 Harmony of the Seas

To Read my reviews of my previous cruises on Harmony of the Seas, please click here:  

2016 Harmony of the Seas

2017 Harmony of the Seas