balearia cruise reviews

Balearia Caribbean

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BALEARIA CARIBBEAN: All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go (with Photos)

• Mon - Mon 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
• Tue - Tue 9:00 AM - 2:00 PM
• Wed - Fri 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
• (0.24 km) Hilton Fort Lauderdale Marina
• (0.51 km) Renaissance Fort Lauderdale Marina Hotel
• (0.64 km) Pier Sixty-six Resort
• (1.40 km) Lago Mar Beach Resort & Club
• (1.68 km) Fort Lauderdale Marriott Harbor Beach Resort & Spa
• (0.25 km) G Bar & Grill
• (0.28 km) Olive & Sea
• (0.27 km) Antea Lobby Bar & Lounge
• (0.46 km) 15th Street Fisheries
• (0.27 km) The Waterway Room

Balearia Caribbean

Top ways to experience nearby attractions

Most Recent: Reviews ordered by most recent publish date in descending order.

Detailed Reviews: Reviews ordered by recency and descriptiveness of user-identified themes such as waiting time, length of visit, general tips, and location information.

Also popular with travellers

BALEARIA CARIBBEAN: All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go (with Photos)

• Mon - Mon 09:00 - 17:00
• Tue - Tue 09:00 - 14:00
• Wed - Fri 09:00 - 17:00
• (0.24 km) Hilton Fort Lauderdale Marina
• (0.51 km) Renaissance Fort Lauderdale Marina Hotel
• (0.64 km) Pier Sixty-six Resort
• (1.40 km) Lago Mar Beach Resort & Club
• (1.68 km) Fort Lauderdale Marriott Harbor Beach Resort & Spa
• (0.25 km) G Bar & Grill
• (0.28 km) Olive & Sea
• (0.27 km) Antea Lobby Bar & Lounge
• (0.46 km) 15th Street Fisheries
• (0.27 km) The Waterway Room

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Baleària   Reviews

In the Ferry Service category

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Reviews 4.0.

5,468 total

Most relevant

Everything was great

Everything was great, the parking in Denia is excellent, all the staff were lovely, the facilities were very clean and smart. The ferry left and arrived early!

Date of experience : November 18, 2023

Reply from Baleària

Good morning and thanks for traveling with Baleària! We celebrate that you enjoyed the journey and the excellent attention of our team. We will love having you on board soon. All the best. Baleària Customer Experience

Staff on board very approachable

Staff on board very approachable, clean and tidy boat and good communication on tannoy Can’t wait until my next trip

Date of experience : August 30, 2023

Bad staff messed up our family day

Bought a ticket with the family. 4 Children and me and my wife for a nice day Formentera. Arrived at the spot to embark half an hour before departure as requested by Balearia. Only the driver could stay in the car, the rest of the family must walk to the ferry. Ended up not entering the ferry because of no space for the car. Staff threatened to call the police if I would not drive back from the boat. Informed them there is family on board (kids 5.7.9 and 11years old). No response by the staff. Take the next boat was the cure. This was not a Balearia boat so had to buy new tickets for me and the car. Tried the helpdesk. Connected with the English speaking desk. On hold for 20 minutes twice. No answer. In the end had to take slow boat of Balearia somewhere else in the harbour. Dat Formentera started with a sh..(excuse me for my frensh here) treat by Balearia and staff. Feel very mistreated with no possibility to connect with the company. The robot of the website did not help at all eighter. What a bad experience.

Date of experience : April 23, 2023

Hello, Thanks for your comment. We are sorry if your experience with us has not been up to your expectations and we apologize for it. We take note of the inconveniences you mention in order to improve and we want you to know that we will work to prevent them in the future. Passenger satisfaction is our priority. We hope to have you on board again. Greetings. Baleària Customer Experience

Lovely Eco Ship

Lovely Ship , clean , very quiet, lovely staff anf the top deck is fantastic with sunloungers, soft seats & a DJ -Recommend

Date of experience : July 23, 2023

Well organised crew onshore and onboard

Well organised crew onshore and onboard, very pleasant staff, who all looked well groomed and helpful and friendly, overall a good experience, aside the Rice/paella in the canteen, which I took back and without hesitation was swopped for roast chicken, only negative was the outside seating on top deck, needs some attention, as many seat pads missing or ones still there are grubby/scruffy, deck pool not functioning. Special thanks to Jorge the medical guy who helped me after a minor accident.

Date of experience : July 09, 2023

This is one of the best companies Ive travel by boat with

This is one of the best companies I’ve traveled with. The crew were amazing the food was fantastic . Clean and very well looked after . This is a company I strongly recommend to use . Clean toilets in Spain Strongly recommend the vip 40 euros free drink delivered to you along with welcome food . Great Wi-Fi . Do the vip it’s well worth it

Date of experience : October 08, 2023

¡Buenos días y gracias por viajar con Baleària! Celebramos que hayas disfrutado de la travesía y de la excelente atención de nuestro equipo. Nos gustará mucho seguir contando con tu confianza en tu próximo viaje. Un saludo. Baleària Customer Experience

Worst ferry ever

I have been on many ferries, but this ferry is the worst. The food is realy bad and cold. I bought a food coupon and on board they tell you drinks are not include in the food coupon. WLAN is (what the information says) for free only for WhatsApp. But not working. They have no area to walk the pets probably. The space where everybody is allowed to have the pets outside the cage is approx 3x3m. People were sleeping infront of the dog station so when you enter or exit with your dog it's a drama every time. They advertise with very important pet (VIP) service, but in every other ferry i have been the service was on a different level. On this ferry you are only allowed to visit your dog every 4 hours for 15min. How is it possible that with Armas or Fred Olsen Ferries you are allowed to visit your dog anytime? I had 2 pieces of sponge as a "bed" with me and the crew members told me it is forbidden to sleep on the floor. The hell?! Seriously? I bought a ticket including a seat and I am not allowed to sleep infront of my seat in my "bed" on the floor? But people are allowed to "camp" infront of the dog area? Never experienced something like that on other ferries. First and last time I bought a ticket for this floating piece of trash. I feel robbed and discriminated. What a trip...

Date of experience : May 25, 2023

boat is excellent but requirement to be…

boat is excellent but requirement to be one hour before departure means next time we will take flight

Date of experience : August 09, 2023

Had better experience with other…

Had better experience with other operator on same crossing days before. In Valencia you get dumped in a commercial dock. No taxis, or immediate access to public transportation.

Date of experience : November 24, 2023

Nothing but an absolute waste of time

Nothing but an absolute waste of time! We arrived in the port in plenty of time for the 10am departure time only for the staff at customs to say that our new license plate was invalid, despite use having all of the necessary paperwork with us to approve the private licence. The guy said he would sort it out but didn't bother until I had to physically get down and remind him of it. After we had finally gotten through security - which had taken 2 hours - we had found out that the 10am boat was delayed for 5 hours!! There was no prehand warning, no excuse and not even an explanation; we were expecting to arrive in Algeciras at roughly 1-2pm and didn't leave the port until 3pm. And if that wasn't enough of a waste of time, the ferry had found a way to complete the impossible and make an hour (hour and a half at most) trip 3 hours long!! In usual Balearia fashion, we did not receive any updates or excuses; just 3 hours of wondering and confusion. At quarter past 7 in Spain time, we had finally seen the light and exited the ferry...only to be told by the staff to park in lines. Naturally, we weren't told why but what we do know if that the decided the empty the parked cars not in a first come first served basis, but rather in a controversial reverse order. You would expect things to finally be moving along, but we were faced with more lines and more waiting. And even after all this waiting, all this hassle, all this stress, the staff had no sense of empathy or compassion for us: they rounded us up like animals. What was supposed to be a quick trip across the sea turned into a half day nightmare. As I'm writing this review, the time is exactly 8pm and I don't even expect to leave this port in an hour's time. The hotel that we had booked for the night won't be reached until at least 11pm, possibly midnight. The swimming pool and the cafeteria they have in the hotel will be closed by the time I arrive. I have read up on the other reviews they have on this website and notice that all of their Spanish trips seem to have astounding reviews full of praise, why is that? Was I just unlucky this time or is there a consistency between how they treat their Moroccan trips? All I know is that today was deplorable and I (as well as everyone else on this trip) deserves full compensation for this complete waste of time. Word of advice, try packing swimming shorts if you plan to travel with Balearia. I find swimming across to be faster.

Date of experience : August 20, 2023

Everything good

Everything good, the price, the timetable, the employees and very professional and friendly people at the office at Ibiza.

Date of experience : September 08, 2023

Enjoyable sailing.

Booked a seat and didn’t like it as I’m tall. Stewardess got me a cabin and it was excellent. Made my trip very bearable

Date of experience : November 19, 2023

I toke their ferry from algeciras to…

I toke their ferry from algeciras to tanger yesterday, it was a nightmare, they are very slow, the ferry takes a while to come, a while to loads the vehicles into the ferry and when we arrived , it takes a while to unload , bkoz all the cars have to reverse inside the ferry to leave ....

Date of experience : July 30, 2023

Hola, Gracias por tu comentario. Lamentamos que tu experiencia no haya sido totalmente satisfactoria, esperamos que sigas confiando en nosotros en tu próximo viaje. Por nuestra parte, vamos a seguir trabajando en la mejora continua teniendo en cuenta todas vuestras propuestas para ofrecer las mejores experiencias y travesías para nuestros clientes. Un saludo. Baleària Customer Experience

Horrible policies and customer service

We were refused boarding a ferry even though 2 minutes were still left of boarding. We arrived 15 minutes before departure just as indicated in the email and when we got there we were denied entry. We travelled 2 hours to the port only to have to return, and we could bot do our excursion because we were leaving the follow day.

Date of experience : September 28, 2022

Hola, Gracias por tu comentario. Sentimos si tu experiencia con nosotros no ha estado a la altura de tus expectativas y nos disculpamos por ello. Tomamos nota de los inconvenientes que mencionas a fin de tomar las medidas que resulten necesarias para mejorar. No tengas duda alguna de que trabajaremos para evitarlas en el futuro. La satisfacción de los pasajeros es nuestra prioridad. Esperamos tenerte a bordo nuevamente. Saludos. Baleària Customer Experience

Great experiance

Great experiance, we travel with dogs. The outside area was to hot, it must be coverd, the floor is to hot to walk on for the dogs. Also not much space for the dogs outside to go to the toilet, no clean water to clean the floor . For the rest all was great.

Date of experience : August 22, 2023

Ya son varias veces que en el Salon…

Ya son varias veces que en el Salon Executive hay tuido continuo de personas chillando, riendo e incluso entran menores. Cuando entra un tripulante hay silencio por supuesto, pero no hay un solo cartel o aviso de SILENCIO En la escala de Ibiza no se recogen vasos ni platos de los pasajeros que bajan. Cada vez peor

Date of experience : October 22, 2022

Crew membres was good butVery Bad Trip

Crew membres was good butVery Bad Trip, one toilet for 300 perdons, no possibility to get a cabin, and even if possible, they asked 250 euros. No shower available, It's a shame to pay 1200 euros (1 person + 1 car) and receive this behaviour and this lack of service...As Algérian, WE are not respected.

Date of experience : October 30, 2022

Avoid ! Unprofessional

Terrible. Boats cancelled and changed all the time. Unprofessional company. Free coffee not given.

Date of experience : June 08, 2023

Poor communication

Bad communication. Any question sent on chat triggered automatic sending of the ‘checkin’ tickets, I got over 100 messages. I stopped looking. Short time before boarding they sent another message with my seats, but by then I stopped checking. Still, none of my tickets scanning worked, printed or electronic, even if the booking appeared in they system. No information about changing boats or harbour, or where to get info. I was lucky to find their office and to find out I need to either get on a bus, but not likely my bikes would fit, or cycle to the new boarding point, not far, but not planned, not communicated.

Date of experience : November 05, 2022

Delay 1h30 without any information

Didn't reveive any notification about the 1h30 delay of the Ferry Kerry in Ibiza Terminal. Had to wait to enter parking and then wait hours before boarding. No comment given by the parking operator and no excuse inside the ferry.

Date of experience : October 08, 2022

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Grand Bahama - Fort Lauderdale

Fort Lauderdale - Grand Bahama

Fort Lauderdale - Bimini

Bimini - Fort Lauderdale

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Grand Bahama Delegations

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Grand Bahama Island

There is something for every interest on Grand Bahama Island. 

Bimini Island

To get a taste of the Bimini Bliss we recommend to do the following while in the island.

New route between Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico

We will connect the ports of San Pedro de Macorís (Dominican Republic) and Mayagüez (Puerto Rico) with a daily ferry service after summer 2024.

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Balearia Caribbean

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Most Recent: Reviews ordered by most recent publish date in descending order.

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Balearia Caribbean - All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go (2024)

• Mon - Mon 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
• Tue - Tue 9:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.
• Wed - Fri 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
• (0.24 km) Hilton Fort Lauderdale Marina
• (0.51 km) Renaissance Fort Lauderdale Marina Hotel
• (0.64 km) Pier Sixty-six Resort
• (1.40 km) Lago Mar Beach Resort & Club
• (1.68 km) Fort Lauderdale Marriott Harbor Beach Resort & Spa
• (0.25 km) G Bar & Grill
• (0.28 km) Olive & Sea
• (0.27 km) Antea Lobby Bar & Lounge
• (0.46 km) 15th Street Fisheries
• (0.27 km) The Waterway Room

Balearia Caribbean

Top ways to experience nearby attractions

Most Recent: Reviews ordered by most recent publish date in descending order.

Detailed Reviews: Reviews ordered by recency and descriptiveness of user-identified themes such as waiting time, length of visit, general tips, and location information.

Also popular with travellers

Balearia Caribbean - All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go (2024) - Tripadvisor

• Mon - Mon 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
• Tue - Tue 9:00 AM - 2:00 PM
• Wed - Fri 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
• (0.24 km) Hilton Fort Lauderdale Marina
• (0.51 km) Renaissance Fort Lauderdale Marina Hotel
• (0.64 km) Pier Sixty-six Resort
• (1.40 km) Lago Mar Beach Resort & Club
• (1.68 km) Fort Lauderdale Marriott Harbor Beach Resort & Spa
• (0.25 km) G Bar & Grill
• (0.28 km) Olive & Sea
• (0.27 km) Antea Lobby Bar & Lounge
• (0.46 km) 15th Street Fisheries
• (0.27 km) The Waterway Room

Balearia Bahamas Express

Review Highlights

“ The ride going to Freeport was a bit choppy but crew was ready to assist any passengers that were experiencing sickness . ” in 2 reviews

“ or if you want a groupon make sure you have someone that can go to the port for booking purposes. ” in 2 reviews

“ 1 departs Port Everglades for Grand Bahama & the other departs Port of Miami for Bimini. ” in 4 reviews

Location & Hours

Suggest an edit

Port Miami - Terminal J 1120 Caribbean Way

Miami, FL 33132

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Overall rating

I wish I had checked Yelp to see the horrible reviews and I never would have taken this. First of all, the checkin process in Fort Lauderdale is stupid and a waste of time. I did the checkin process online but if you don't PRINT a paper copy of it they make you wait in a line for over an hour. And yes they are hardcore about cutting you off, you cannot show up late to this. Once inside, it is like being at a really low budget DMV with 100s of ppl crowded like cattle. If you're germ phobic, forget about it. The duty free shop DOESNT take credit cards (?!). Also, the stairs on/off are very steep so if you have any knee/hip issues maybe want to think twice. On the way back, we waited 2.5 hours in Customs. Since there only is one return boat per evening, you would think they would have more Customs agents meeting the boat with 100s of ppl. Overall, it was not a great experience. Next time, I will fly on Silver Air.

LEFT US & 75 OTHER PASSENGERS ABANDONED IN BIMINI Where to even start.. this company is a complete scam, left us and over 75 other passengers stranded on Bimini this past Sunday 7/11/2021. If i could give them 0 stars i would.. They let us stand in line for over two hours in the sun in front of the casino only to board the tram at 5:25pm to then be told to show our boarding pass which now had to have a yellow check mark that stated we were "checked in", none of the other passengers that had left previously were told this & it just so happened that the last three trams leaving were all forcefully pulled off the tram and our luggage's thrown to the ground. The tram operator proceeded to yell cruses at us, turned off the tram and sat there while he said he wasn't f**king taking us anywhere. We then all walked to the ferry dock were they had it chained up the gate & we heard over the security walkie talkie that the boat was full & no more passengers were to be accepted. The locals were yelling at the security to please let us in that this would hurt their local businesses if the word spreads. They forcefully demanded us to leave the main gate & instructed us to visit their office. When the Balearia staff finally arrived at 7:15pm they showed up with two members of the civil defense, two police officers & a security which all were purposely flashing their firearms at us & telling us to calm down or they "would make us calm down". When they finally let us into their office it was to literally laugh in our faces and tell us that we would NOT be receiving a refund & that we would need to purchase another ticket for Wednesday's fair at a cost of $169.00 plus our hotel fees. I pulled one of the Balearia employees aside and gave him $20.00 for him to tell me the truth, apparently they had over booked their day trip passengers and return home from Friday passengers. They came up with the excuse of a "check in" process that did not exists, which the concierge from the Hilton confirmed this to be true. They left us on the island with no phone number to call, no proper representation & were told if a complaint was made to the embassy in Nassau, CBP or Homeland Security that we would be banned from the ferry. Avoid this ferry at all costs!!! We ended up having to charter a flight back at the cost of $1700, plus the additional cost of another night at the Hilton!! This company is an absolute joke!! The ferry did NOT leave Miami in time, we arrived at Bimini at 12pm, once you arrive they leave you on the ship for another 2 hours with the AC off while they unload cargo. They WILL do the same to you because they can!! The company is registered to the country of Cyprus, they do not care about stealing from you and leaving you abandoned in a foreign country because they know no legal action will be taken. After taking an Uber from the airport back to the dock to pick up my car, i approached the dock supervisor for Balearia and requested the address for administration. They head quarters is literally a warehouse in the middle of ft lauderdale. One gentleman told me their main operation is out of Cyprus and no one could help us get a refund there. Attached is a picture of their headquarters & their address is 3300 NW 13th Ave, Ft Lauderdale Fl 33315 Extremely unprofessional, they hang up the phone when you call, please do yourself a favor and just spend the money flying to Bimini

Be careful with what you read about the "Fast Ferry." The estimated travel time was to be 2 hours but turned out to be 3 1/2 hours even in calm seas and beautiful weather. Guess they were saving fuel by going slower. Pre-departure, much emphasis was put on arriving at the terminal on time or you would be locked out and left behind. After arriving 1 1/2 hours early we then were treated to almost an hour late departure. Also, we had paid $50 extra for "first class" which afforded us priority boarding. Didn't happen. They opened the gate and it was a free-for-all to get in. Our first class standing was also to provide us a "snack." That turned out be a so called ham sandwich with a paper thin slice of meat and a soft drink. As you can see, a joke for $50. When we returned home we complained and received absolutely zero response. Considering a credit card dispute now. Buyer beware!!!!

It does not deserve even one STAR. I thought I would let your readers know that yesterday, August 9, my family of four were to ferry to Bimini out of Port Everglades at 9:00 am. By 12:30 pm they asked all the day-trippers to line up to get a refund since they would not have enough time on the island. Next, at 1:30pm they asked all the people traveling to Freeport (I had no idea people were also going there) to line up because their trip was being cancelled. Most of them seemed to be islanders and were going to be stuck in South Florida until Tuesday. A little later, they made the announcement that everyone going to Bimini would depart at 8:00pm. I should have gone with my gut instinct and gone back home, but we were really looking forward to vacationing in Bimini. Needless to say, there we are again, and at 7:15 they make the announcement that we would not be embarking that evening. At this point they brought in about 5-6 armed customs agents to quell the angry and disappointed passengers. No one at Balearia knew what was going on; they blamed it on customs and customs blamed it on Balearia. They kept repeating that it was a problem with the freight that was being loaded onto the ship. I am sure there is a very strict process to things being loaded on to a ship, but to me it is obvious that the company Balearia feels that merchandise is more important than people. I am keeping my fingers crossed we will get a full refund.

After purchasing one of their Groupons to take their three hour ride to Freeport, Bahamas we finally decided when we wanted to go. Booking this trip was the stress of working with this company after having a hard time reaching them, then finally booking our trip they had the wrong date and returning on the same day. After speaking with a couple of their customer service representatives Balearia is definitely lacking customer service skills bad over the phone. I called to confirm our reservation a couple of days before travel since we had iffy confirmation when booking and the lady on the phone was very rude, then "couldn't locate our reservation"; all of which I felt she barely tried. Retrieving my confirmation number I had to call back again since the first lady couldn't help me..The second lady let me explain my problem all over again to tell me to call back in 5 mins because her "computer was having issues". By now we are feeling as if this is more of hassle then it is worth. My husband calls them one last time to try to sort out our dates and length of time there to get another headache but a confirmation of what we originally booked the first time, this time correct. The morning of our trip we both were expecting the worst when arriving to the port. {Parking is $15 a day} They advised us to arrive 3 hours early due to security and boarding an hour early on the boat. Security was a breeze along with checking in. The staff was friendly and very quick getting us through. Needless to say on our Saturday morning departing, we did not need to get there so early but we would rather be safe then sorry! (People were still arriving 20 mins before departure). The boat itself is clean and maintained although it is old we actually enjoyed our trip on it! The bar on board opened up at 9am! A relief! They also have lots of duty free items for purchase and casino games on board. A kitchen is on board as well that serves breakfast items, pizza, hamburgers, and such (I would avoid this as much as possible unless drunk :)). Also, if you are thinking of bringing your furry one then they have kennels for you to put them in. And a luggage spot so you can roam around the boat without carrying all your belonging with you at all times. They have a First Class area (I don't see the perks in this) that is closed off to others. For three hours it is a quick and easy ride on this boat! The one thing that might bother people (like my husband) is that when arriving in Freeport they have people that are only staying the day get off the boat first, then Bohemians, then the others staying overnight. This did not bother me but I can see both sides in how it could get under people's skin. It took us about 20-25 mins to get off the boat. Overall, this is definitely not a bad way to get to the Bahamas after booking but expect some hassle and headache when you decide to reach them in office for your reservation. We would do this again with another discount or Groupon but not paying full price.

See all photos from Samantha D. for Balearia Bahamas Express

After reading several reviews I was expecting a vomit filled, uncomfortable journey, so I was pleasantly surprised at a nice day. I had no problems booking my trip via email. Being a fairly seasoned international traveler, I was surprised by the ease of customs on both ends. I found the boat ride very pleasant, as it was clean and had decent amenities. I brought a book, an iPod and just watched out the window. There was a little bit of roughness when we hit a stormy patch, but it is summer after all. I enjoyed walking around the boat, wandering outside to the small deck, and winning $20 on slots. I wish I had more time on Grand Bahama Island, so next time I go, I may take advantage of a ferry ride/one night in a hotel offer they had. It is not a cruise, just a pleasant way to get to the Bahamas quickly and comfortably.

I never received my refund from Balearia regarding my daughters trip to Bimini. Therefore, I have been discussing filing a lawsuit against Balearia because they cancelled my round trip ticket to and from Bahamas in late May. They cancelled because of COVID-19 pandemic and refused my request for a refund. This was not right since the terms on the ticket promises a full refund for cancellations more than 7 days before sailing. If you were also refused a refund and would like to consider a lawsuit on a contingency, you may want to consider the lawyers at Diamond Kaplan & Rothstein, PA by emailing at [email protected] or call them by phone at 305-374-1920. I found them incredibly helpful.

We have been doing Hammerhead Shark dives with Bimini Undersea now for over 2 years, and they used FRS Caribbean for a majority of that time. We found out that in November that the contract had moved from FRS Caribbean to Balearia Caribbean, and we were concerned because of some of the reviews we read. We just finished the first Hammerhead Dive trip for this season, and we could not have been happier. The boat stuck to the published schedule which made our divers relaxed and had plenty of time to enjoy the food on the island, and relax before boarding to come back home, which was right on time as well. The dive was amazing, and the round trip service provided by Balearia Caribbean was wonderful. Thank you for doing a Great job. It made us look great to our customers, and ensured our continued use of your service in the future.

WORST CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE The people you deal with on the phone have no idea whats going on. I have been trying to book a trip from groupon since June 21 and have not been able to book. I called again today as a last ditch effort to safe my $120 and was hung up on when I asked for a manager. TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW---DO NOT USE THEM I would like the owner/manager to address the CUSTOMER SERVICE, we all know weather is out out your control.

First of all I never even write reviews but this boat is horrendous. I dont know whether its understaffed? Or what? Starting off with their instructions. Says doors close at 7 am, boarding at 8 am and leaving at 9 to arrive at bimini at 11, we got there at 6 am, and didnt board this boat until 9 am. We didnt get to Bimini until almost 1 pm and * the lines to get off this boat are ridiculous. There is no system, everything is "we have to wait, we have to wait" ive never waited so much in my life. We met people during the process who were left by this ferry and not even compensated in any way and never received any type of email or explanation. The workers are so incredibly rude and disrespectful. We were supposed to be back in Miami at 8 pm but instead we pretty much once again "had to wait" and didnt disembark until 10:30 just to wait a ridiculously long line for customs almost 2 hours on a Sunday and 1 hour away from home because of this port. They used to have another ferry that was fast and efficient. Dont waste your time and money.

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Balearia Caribbean - All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go (2024)

• Mon - Mon 9:00 am - 5:00 pm
• Tue - Tue 9:00 am - 2:00 pm
• Wed - Fri 9:00 am - 5:00 pm
• (0.24 km) Hilton Fort Lauderdale Marina
• (0.51 km) Renaissance Fort Lauderdale Marina Hotel
• (0.64 km) Pier Sixty-six Resort
• (1.40 km) Lago Mar Beach Resort & Club
• (1.68 km) Fort Lauderdale Marriott Harbor Beach Resort & Spa
• (0.25 km) G Bar & Grill
• (0.28 km) Olive & Sea
• (0.27 km) Antea Lobby Bar & Lounge
• (0.46 km) 15th Street Fisheries
• (0.27 km) The Waterway Room

I tried Holland America's 'Have It All' package. For just $55 a day, my cruise felt way more luxurious.

• I tried Holland America Line 's Have It All package on a recent cruise to Alaska.
• For $55 per person per day, we got complimentary drinks, special meals, and other perks.
• The price was so worth it we already booked this package for future cruises. 

Cruise bookings are predicted to reach record levels this year, and travelers are especially interested in luxurious sailings.

But as many of us know, luxury doesn't always equate to value, even when it comes to upgrades and special packages.

So, on our recent cruise to Alaska, my husband and I put one of many cruise packages to the test: Holland America Line's "Have It All" package, which costs $55 per person per day.

It includes perks like a beverage package, ship credit for shore excursions, onboard WiFi, and dinner at specialty restaurants.

Here's why we found it to be such a great value we're going to add it to future cruises.

The beverage package was great, and it included special drinks without alcohol

The biggest perk of the "Have It All" package was the ability to order drinks without worrying about the bill at the end of the cruise.

Our previous cruises had us drinking only tap water, drip coffee, tea, and an occasional glass of wine with dinner to avoid any sticker shock at the end of the trip. We felt restricted in enjoying our vacation.

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But this time, we had the freedom to enjoy ourselves. The "Have It All" package we booked came with 15 drinks a day under $11. If you want a drink over $11, you only pay the difference.

The beverage package also covers non-alcoholic drinks. It was perfect for when we wanted espresso drinks for cold Alaska days or a bottle of water for a shore excursion.

The shore-excursion credit helped push us to have more fun

We knew we had to do a whale-watching excursion in Alaska, but didn't consider booking other excursions due to price. Many of the ones we were interested in cost over $100 per person.

But with the package, we each got credits to use toward shore excursions during our cruise. The value of the credit varies depending on the duration of your cruise — ours was less than 10 days, so we each got a $100 credit.

The $200 worth of credits made us feel more comfortable booking an incredible excursion to kayak the wild waters of Sitka.

We probably would've hesitated to book an excursion and missed an incredible experience if we hadn't felt compelled to use the credits in the package.

Specialty dining helped us celebrate our anniversary

Our "Have it All" packages each included at least one dinner at one of the ship's specialty restaurants. If you're on a longer cruise, this package would get you access to more dinners.

We used our credits to eat at the Pinnacle Grill, known for its premium steaks and intimate dining experience. Our anniversary dinner was extra special because of the access to premium dishes unavailable in the main dining room, five-star service, and a luxurious setting.

WiFi kept us connected

The package included WiFi, which really came in handy as we shared photos with friends and family throughout our trip.

We were able to use the internet to search for whatever we needed and research the highlights to visit at the next port of call.

We've already booked the package for future cruises

For less than what a few drinks cost per day, the package helped us relax, have fun, and enjoy each port of call with a shore excursion. Plus, we got to indulge in the ship's specialty restaurants.

We loved it so much we've already purchased this same package for three future cruises.

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Crying Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship Ever

Seven agonizing nights aboard the Icon of the Seas

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MY FIRST GLIMPSE of Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, from the window of an approaching Miami cab, brings on a feeling of vertigo, nausea, amazement, and distress. I shut my eyes in defense, as my brain tells my optical nerve to try again.

The ship makes no sense, vertically or horizontally. It makes no sense on sea, or on land, or in outer space. It looks like a hodgepodge of domes and minarets, tubes and canopies, like Istanbul had it been designed by idiots. Vibrant, oversignifying colors are stacked upon other such colors, decks perched over still more decks; the only comfort is a row of lifeboats ringing its perimeter. There is no imposed order, no cogent thought, and, for those who do not harbor a totalitarian sense of gigantomania, no visual mercy. This is the biggest cruise ship ever built, and I have been tasked with witnessing its inaugural voyage.

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“Author embarks on their first cruise-ship voyage” has been a staple of American essay writing for almost three decades, beginning with David Foster Wallace’s “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” which was first published in 1996 under the title “Shipping Out.” Since then, many admirable writers have widened and diversified the genre. Usually the essayist commissioned to take to the sea is in their first or second flush of youth and is ready to sharpen their wit against the hull of the offending vessel. I am 51, old and tired, having seen much of the world as a former travel journalist, and mostly what I do in both life and prose is shrug while muttering to my imaginary dachshund, “This too shall pass.” But the Icon of the Seas will not countenance a shrug. The Icon of the Seas is the Linda Loman of cruise ships, exclaiming that attention must be paid. And here I am in late January with my one piece of luggage and useless gray winter jacket and passport, zipping through the Port of Miami en route to the gangway that will separate me from the bulk of North America for more than seven days, ready to pay it in full.

The aforementioned gangway opens up directly onto a thriving mall (I will soon learn it is imperiously called the “Royal Promenade”), presently filled with yapping passengers beneath a ceiling studded with balloons ready to drop. Crew members from every part of the global South, as well as a few Balkans, are shepherding us along while pressing flutes of champagne into our hands. By a humming Starbucks, I drink as many of these as I can and prepare to find my cabin. I show my blue Suite Sky SeaPass Card (more on this later, much more) to a smiling woman from the Philippines, and she tells me to go “aft.” Which is where, now? As someone who has rarely sailed on a vessel grander than the Staten Island Ferry, I am confused. It turns out that the aft is the stern of the ship, or, for those of us who don’t know what a stern or an aft are, its ass. The nose of the ship, responsible for separating the waves before it, is also called a bow, and is marked for passengers as the FWD , or forward. The part of the contemporary sailing vessel where the malls are clustered is called the midship. I trust that you have enjoyed this nautical lesson.

I ascend via elevator to my suite on Deck 11. This is where I encounter my first terrible surprise. My suite windows and balcony do not face the ocean. Instead, they look out onto another shopping mall. This mall is the one that’s called Central Park, perhaps in homage to the Olmsted-designed bit of greenery in the middle of my hometown. Although on land I would be delighted to own a suite with Central Park views, here I am deeply depressed. To sail on a ship and not wake up to a vast blue carpet of ocean? Unthinkable.

Allow me a brief preamble here. The story you are reading was commissioned at a moment when most staterooms on the Icon were sold out. In fact, so enthralled by the prospect of this voyage were hard-core mariners that the ship’s entire inventory of guest rooms (the Icon can accommodate up to 7,600 passengers, but its inaugural journey was reduced to 5,000 or so for a less crowded experience) was almost immediately sold out. Hence, this publication was faced with the shocking prospect of paying nearly $19,000 to procure for this solitary passenger an entire suite—not including drinking expenses—all for the privilege of bringing you this article. But the suite in question doesn’t even have a view of the ocean! I sit down hard on my soft bed. Nineteen thousand dollars for this .

The viewless suite does have its pluses. In addition to all the Malin+Goetz products in my dual bathrooms, I am granted use of a dedicated Suite Deck lounge; access to Coastal Kitchen, a superior restaurant for Suites passengers; complimentary VOOM SM Surf & Stream (“the fastest Internet at Sea”) “for one device per person for the whole cruise duration”; a pair of bathrobes (one of which comes prestained with what looks like a large expectoration by the greenest lizard on Earth); and use of the Grove Suite Sun, an area on Decks 18 and 19 with food and deck chairs reserved exclusively for Suite passengers. I also get reserved seating for a performance of The Wizard of Oz , an ice-skating tribute to the periodic table, and similar provocations. The very color of my Suite Sky SeaPass Card, an oceanic blue as opposed to the cloying royal purple of the standard non-Suite passenger, will soon provoke envy and admiration. But as high as my status may be, there are those on board who have much higher status still, and I will soon learn to bow before them.

In preparation for sailing, I have “priced in,” as they say on Wall Street, the possibility that I may come from a somewhat different monde than many of the other cruisers. Without falling into stereotypes or preconceptions, I prepare myself for a friendly outspokenness on the part of my fellow seafarers that may not comply with modern DEI standards. I believe in meeting people halfway, and so the day before flying down to Miami, I visited what remains of Little Italy to purchase a popular T-shirt that reads DADDY’S LITTLE MEATBALL across the breast in the colors of the Italian flag. My wife recommended that I bring one of my many T-shirts featuring Snoopy and the Peanuts gang, as all Americans love the beagle and his friends. But I naively thought that my meatball T-shirt would be more suitable for conversation-starting. “Oh, and who is your ‘daddy’?” some might ask upon seeing it. “And how long have you been his ‘little meatball’?” And so on.

I put on my meatball T-shirt and head for one of the dining rooms to get a late lunch. In the elevator, I stick out my chest for all to read the funny legend upon it, but soon I realize that despite its burnished tricolor letters, no one takes note. More to the point, no one takes note of me. Despite my attempts at bridge building, the very sight of me (small, ethnic, without a cap bearing the name of a football team) elicits no reaction from other passengers. Most often, they will small-talk over me as if I don’t exist. This brings to mind the travails of David Foster Wallace , who felt so ostracized by his fellow passengers that he retreated to his cabin for much of his voyage. And Wallace was raised primarily in the Midwest and was a much larger, more American-looking meatball than I am. If he couldn’t talk to these people, how will I? What if I leave this ship without making any friends at all, despite my T-shirt? I am a social creature, and the prospect of seven days alone and apart is saddening. Wallace’s stateroom, at least, had a view of the ocean, a kind of cheap eternity.

Worse awaits me in the dining room. This is a large, multichandeliered room where I attended my safety training (I was shown how to put on a flotation vest; it is a very simple procedure). But the maître d’ politely refuses me entry in an English that seems to verge on another language. “I’m sorry, this is only for pendejos ,” he seems to be saying. I push back politely and he repeats himself. Pendejos ? Piranhas? There’s some kind of P-word to which I am not attuned. Meanwhile elderly passengers stream right past, powered by their limbs, walkers, and electric wheelchairs. “It is only pendejo dining today, sir.” “But I have a suite!” I say, already starting to catch on to the ship’s class system. He examines my card again. “But you are not a pendejo ,” he confirms. I am wearing a DADDY’S LITTLE MEATBALL T-shirt, I want to say to him. I am the essence of pendejo .

Eventually, I give up and head to the plebeian buffet on Deck 15, which has an aquatic-styled name I have now forgotten. Before gaining entry to this endless cornucopia of reheated food, one passes a washing station of many sinks and soap dispensers, and perhaps the most intriguing character on the entire ship. He is Mr. Washy Washy—or, according to his name tag, Nielbert of the Philippines—and he is dressed as a taco (on other occasions, I’ll see him dressed as a burger). Mr. Washy Washy performs an eponymous song in spirited, indeed flamboyant English: “Washy, washy, wash your hands, WASHY WASHY!” The dangers of norovirus and COVID on a cruise ship this size (a giant fellow ship was stricken with the former right after my voyage) makes Mr. Washy Washy an essential member of the crew. The problem lies with the food at the end of Washy’s rainbow. The buffet is groaning with what sounds like sophisticated dishes—marinated octopus, boiled egg with anchovy, chorizo, lobster claws—but every animal tastes tragically the same, as if there was only one creature available at the market, a “cruisipus” bred specifically for Royal Caribbean dining. The “vegetables” are no better. I pick up a tomato slice and look right through it. It tastes like cellophane. I sit alone, apart from the couples and parents with gaggles of children, as “We Are Family” echoes across the buffet space.

I may have failed to mention that all this time, the Icon of the Seas has not left port. As the fiery mango of the subtropical setting sun makes Miami’s condo skyline even more apocalyptic, the ship shoves off beneath a perfunctory display of fireworks. After the sun sets, in the far, dark distance, another circus-lit cruise ship ruptures the waves before us. We glance at it with pity, because it is by definition a smaller ship than our own. I am on Deck 15, outside the buffet and overlooking a bunch of pools (the Icon has seven of them), drinking a frilly drink that I got from one of the bars (the Icon has 15 of them), still too shy to speak to anyone, despite Sister Sledge’s assertion that all on the ship are somehow related.

Kim Brooks: On failing the family vacation

The ship’s passage away from Ron DeSantis’s Florida provides no frisson, no sense of developing “sea legs,” as the ship is too large to register the presence of waves unless a mighty wind adds significant chop. It is time for me to register the presence of the 5,000 passengers around me, even if they refuse to register mine. My fellow travelers have prepared for this trip with personally decorated T-shirts celebrating the importance of this voyage. The simplest ones say ICON INAUGURAL ’24 on the back and the family name on the front. Others attest to an over-the-top love of cruise ships: WARNING! MAY START TALKING ABOUT CRUISING . Still others are artisanally designed and celebrate lifetimes spent married while cruising (on ships, of course). A couple possibly in their 90s are wearing shirts whose backs feature a drawing of a cruise liner, two flamingos with ostensibly male and female characteristics, and the legend “ HUSBAND AND WIFE Cruising Partners FOR LIFE WE MAY NOT HAVE IT All Together BUT TOGETHER WE HAVE IT ALL .” (The words not in all caps have been written in cursive.) A real journalist or a more intrepid conversationalist would have gone up to the couple and asked them to explain the longevity of their marriage vis-à-vis their love of cruising. But instead I head to my mall suite, take off my meatball T-shirt, and allow the first tears of the cruise to roll down my cheeks slowly enough that I briefly fall asleep amid the moisture and salt.

I WAKE UP with a hangover. Oh God. Right. I cannot believe all of that happened last night. A name floats into my cobwebbed, nauseated brain: “Ayn Rand.” Jesus Christ.

I breakfast alone at the Coastal Kitchen. The coffee tastes fine and the eggs came out of a bird. The ship rolls slightly this morning; I can feel it in my thighs and my schlong, the parts of me that are most receptive to danger.

I had a dangerous conversation last night. After the sun set and we were at least 50 miles from shore (most modern cruise ships sail at about 23 miles an hour), I lay in bed softly hiccupping, my arms stretched out exactly like Jesus on the cross, the sound of the distant waves missing from my mall-facing suite, replaced by the hum of air-conditioning and children shouting in Spanish through the vents of my two bathrooms. I decided this passivity was unacceptable. As an immigrant, I feel duty-bound to complete the tasks I am paid for, which means reaching out and trying to understand my fellow cruisers. So I put on a normal James Perse T-shirt and headed for one of the bars on the Royal Promenade—the Schooner Bar, it was called, if memory serves correctly.

I sat at the bar for a martini and two Negronis. An old man with thick, hairy forearms drank next to me, very silent and Hemingwaylike, while a dreadlocked piano player tinkled out a series of excellent Elton John covers. To my right, a young white couple—he in floral shorts, she in a light, summery miniskirt with a fearsome diamond ring, neither of them in football regalia—chatted with an elderly couple. Do it , I commanded myself. Open your mouth. Speak! Speak without being spoken to. Initiate. A sentence fragment caught my ear from the young woman, “Cherry Hill.” This is a suburb of Philadelphia in New Jersey, and I had once been there for a reading at a synagogue. “Excuse me,” I said gently to her. “Did you just mention Cherry Hill? It’s a lovely place.”

As it turned out, the couple now lived in Fort Lauderdale (the number of Floridians on the cruise surprised me, given that Southern Florida is itself a kind of cruise ship, albeit one slowly sinking), but soon they were talking with me exclusively—the man potbellied, with a chin like a hard-boiled egg; the woman as svelte as if she were one of the many Ukrainian members of the crew—the elderly couple next to them forgotten. This felt as groundbreaking as the first time I dared to address an American in his native tongue, as a child on a bus in Queens (“On my foot you are standing, Mister”).

“I don’t want to talk politics,” the man said. “But they’re going to eighty-six Biden and put Michelle in.”

I considered the contradictions of his opening conversational gambit, but decided to play along. “People like Michelle,” I said, testing the waters. The husband sneered, but the wife charitably put forward that the former first lady was “more personable” than Joe Biden. “They’re gonna eighty-six Biden,” the husband repeated. “He can’t put a sentence together.”

After I mentioned that I was a writer—though I presented myself as a writer of teleplays instead of novels and articles such as this one—the husband told me his favorite writer was Ayn Rand. “Ayn Rand, she came here with nothing,” the husband said. “I work with a lot of Cubans, so …” I wondered if I should mention what I usually do to ingratiate myself with Republicans or libertarians: the fact that my finances improved after pass-through corporations were taxed differently under Donald Trump. Instead, I ordered another drink and the couple did the same, and I told him that Rand and I were born in the same city, St. Petersburg/Leningrad, and that my family also came here with nothing. Now the bonding and drinking began in earnest, and several more rounds appeared. Until it all fell apart.

Read: Gary Shteyngart on watching Russian television for five days straight

My new friend, whom I will refer to as Ayn, called out to a buddy of his across the bar, and suddenly a young couple, both covered in tattoos, appeared next to us. “He fucking punked me,” Ayn’s frat-boy-like friend called out as he put his arm around Ayn, while his sizable partner sizzled up to Mrs. Rand. Both of them had a look I have never seen on land—their eyes projecting absence and enmity in equal measure. In the ’90s, I drank with Russian soldiers fresh from Chechnya and wandered the streets of wartime Zagreb, but I have never seen such undisguised hostility toward both me and perhaps the universe at large. I was briefly introduced to this psychopathic pair, but neither of them wanted to have anything to do with me, and the tattooed woman would not even reveal her Christian name to me (she pretended to have the same first name as Mrs. Rand). To impress his tattooed friends, Ayn made fun of the fact that as a television writer, I’d worked on the series Succession (which, it would turn out, practically nobody on the ship had watched), instead of the far more palatable, in his eyes, zombie drama of last year. And then my new friends drifted away from me into an angry private conversation—“He punked me!”—as I ordered another drink for myself, scared of the dead-eyed arrivals whose gaze never registered in the dim wattage of the Schooner Bar, whose terrifying voices and hollow laughs grated like unoiled gears against the crooning of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.”

But today is a new day for me and my hangover. After breakfast, I explore the ship’s so-called neighborhoods . There’s the AquaDome, where one can find a food hall and an acrobatic sound-and-light aquatic show. Central Park has a premium steak house, a sushi joint, and a used Rolex that can be bought for $8,000 on land here proudly offered at $17,000. There’s the aforementioned Royal Promenade, where I had drunk with the Rands, and where a pair of dueling pianos duel well into the night. There’s Surfside, a kids’ neighborhood full of sugary garbage, which looks out onto the frothy trail that the behemoth leaves behind itself. Thrill Island refers to the collection of tubes that clutter the ass of the ship and offer passengers six waterslides and a surfing simulation. There’s the Hideaway, an adult zone that plays music from a vomit-slathered, Brit-filled Alicante nightclub circa 1996 and proves a big favorite with groups of young Latin American customers. And, most hurtfully, there’s the Suite Neighborhood.

I say hurtfully because as a Suite passenger I should be here, though my particular suite is far from the others. Whereas I am stuck amid the riffraff of Deck 11, this section is on the highborn Decks 16 and 17, and in passing, I peek into the spacious, tall-ceilinged staterooms from the hallway, dazzled by the glint of the waves and sun. For $75,000, one multifloor suite even comes with its own slide between floors, so that a family may enjoy this particular terror in private. There is a quiet splendor to the Suite Neighborhood. I see fewer stickers and signs and drawings than in my own neighborhood—for example, MIKE AND DIANA PROUDLY SERVED U.S. MARINE CORPS RETIRED . No one here needs to announce their branch of service or rank; they are simply Suites, and this is where they belong. Once again, despite my hard work and perseverance, I have been disallowed from the true American elite. Once again, I am “Not our class, dear.” I am reminded of watching The Love Boat on my grandmother’s Zenith, which either was given to her or we found in the trash (I get our many malfunctioning Zeniths confused) and whose tube got so hot, I would put little chunks of government cheese on a thin tissue atop it to give our welfare treat a pleasant, Reagan-era gooeyness. I could not understand English well enough then to catch the nuances of that seafaring program, but I knew that there were differences in the status of the passengers, and that sometimes those differences made them sad. Still, this ship, this plenty—every few steps, there are complimentary nachos or milkshakes or gyros on offer—was the fatty fuel of my childhood dreams. If only I had remained a child.

I walk around the outdoor decks looking for company. There is a middle-aged African American couple who always seem to be asleep in each other’s arms, probably exhausted from the late capitalism they regularly encounter on land. There is far more diversity on this ship than I expected. Many couples are a testament to Loving v. Virginia , and there is a large group of folks whose T-shirts read MELANIN AT SEA / IT’S THE MELANIN FOR ME . I smile when I see them, but then some young kids from the group makes Mr. Washy Washy do a cruel, caricatured “Burger Dance” (today he is in his burger getup), and I think, Well, so much for intersectionality .

At the infinity pool on Deck 17, I spot some elderly women who could be ethnic and from my part of the world, and so I jump in. I am proved correct! Many of them seem to be originally from Queens (“Corona was still great when it was all Italian”), though they are now spread across the tristate area. We bond over the way “Ron-kon-koma” sounds when announced in Penn Station.

“Everyone is here for a different reason,” one of them tells me. She and her ex-husband last sailed together four years ago to prove to themselves that their marriage was truly over. Her 15-year-old son lost his virginity to “an Irish young lady” while their ship was moored in Ravenna, Italy. The gaggle of old-timers competes to tell me their favorite cruising stories and tips. “A guy proposed in Central Park a couple of years ago”—many Royal Caribbean ships apparently have this ridiculous communal area—“and she ran away screaming!” “If you’re diamond-class, you get four drinks for free.” “A different kind of passenger sails out of Bayonne.” (This, perhaps, is racially coded.) “Sometimes, if you tip the bartender $5, your next drink will be free.”

“Everyone’s here for a different reason,” the woman whose marriage ended on a cruise tells me again. “Some people are here for bad reasons—the drinkers and the gamblers. Some people are here for medical reasons.” I have seen more than a few oxygen tanks and at least one woman clearly undergoing very serious chemo. Some T-shirts celebrate good news about a cancer diagnosis. This might be someone’s last cruise or week on Earth. For these women, who have spent months, if not years, at sea, cruising is a ritual as well as a life cycle: first love, last love, marriage, divorce, death.

Read: The last place on Earth any tourist should go

I have talked with these women for so long, tonight I promise myself that after a sad solitary dinner I will not try to seek out company at the bars in the mall or the adult-themed Hideaway. I have enough material to fulfill my duties to this publication. As I approach my orphaned suite, I run into the aggro young people who stole Mr. and Mrs. Rand away from me the night before. The tattooed apparitions pass me without a glance. She is singing something violent about “Stuttering Stanley” (a character in a popular horror movie, as I discover with my complimentary VOOM SM Surf & Stream Internet at Sea) and he’s loudly shouting about “all the money I’ve lost,” presumably at the casino in the bowels of the ship.

So these bent psychos out of a Cormac McCarthy novel are angrily inhabiting my deck. As I mewl myself to sleep, I envision a limited series for HBO or some other streamer, a kind of low-rent White Lotus , where several aggressive couples conspire to throw a shy intellectual interloper overboard. I type the scenario into my phone. As I fall asleep, I think of what the woman who recently divorced her husband and whose son became a man through the good offices of the Irish Republic told me while I was hoisting myself out of the infinity pool. “I’m here because I’m an explorer. I’m here because I’m trying something new.” What if I allowed myself to believe in her fantasy?

“YOU REALLY STARTED AT THE TOP,” they tell me. I’m at the Coastal Kitchen for my eggs and corned-beef hash, and the maître d’ has slotted me in between two couples. Fueled by coffee or perhaps intrigued by my relative youth, they strike up a conversation with me. As always, people are shocked that this is my first cruise. They contrast the Icon favorably with all the preceding liners in the Royal Caribbean fleet, usually commenting on the efficiency of the elevators that hurl us from deck to deck (as in many large corporate buildings, the elevators ask you to choose a floor and then direct you to one of many lifts). The couple to my right, from Palo Alto—he refers to his “porn mustache” and calls his wife “my cougar” because she is two years older—tell me they are “Pandemic Pinnacles.”

This is the day that my eyes will be opened. Pinnacles , it is explained to me over translucent cantaloupe, have sailed with Royal Caribbean for 700 ungodly nights. Pandemic Pinnacles took advantage of the two-for-one accrual rate of Pinnacle points during the pandemic, when sailing on a cruise ship was even more ill-advised, to catapult themselves into Pinnacle status.

Because of the importance of the inaugural voyage of the world’s largest cruise liner, more than 200 Pinnacles are on this ship, a startling number, it seems. Mrs. Palo Alto takes out a golden badge that I have seen affixed over many a breast, which reads CROWN AND ANCHOR SOCIETY along with her name. This is the coveted badge of the Pinnacle. “You should hear all the whining in Guest Services,” her husband tells me. Apparently, the Pinnacles who are not also Suites like us are all trying to use their status to get into Coastal Kitchen, our elite restaurant. Even a Pinnacle needs to be a Suite to access this level of corned-beef hash.

“We’re just baby Pinnacles,” Mrs. Palo Alto tells me, describing a kind of internal class struggle among the Pinnacle elite for ever higher status.

And now I understand what the maître d’ was saying to me on the first day of my cruise. He wasn’t saying “ pendejo .” He was saying “Pinnacle.” The dining room was for Pinnacles only, all those older people rolling in like the tide on their motorized scooters.

And now I understand something else: This whole thing is a cult. And like most cults, it can’t help but mirror the endless American fight for status. Like Keith Raniere’s NXIVM, where different-colored sashes were given out to connote rank among Raniere’s branded acolytes, this is an endless competition among Pinnacles, Suites, Diamond-Plusers, and facing-the-mall, no-balcony purple SeaPass Card peasants, not to mention the many distinctions within each category. The more you cruise, the higher your status. No wonder a section of the Royal Promenade is devoted to getting passengers to book their next cruise during the one they should be enjoying now. No wonder desperate Royal Caribbean offers (“FINAL HOURS”) crowded my email account weeks before I set sail. No wonder the ship’s jewelry store, the Royal Bling, is selling a $100,000 golden chalice that will entitle its owner to drink free on Royal Caribbean cruises for life. (One passenger was already gaming out whether her 28-year-old son was young enough to “just about earn out” on the chalice or if that ship had sailed.) No wonder this ship was sold out months before departure , and we had to pay $19,000 for a horrid suite away from the Suite Neighborhood. No wonder the most mythical hero of Royal Caribbean lore is someone named Super Mario, who has cruised so often, he now has his own working desk on many ships. This whole experience is part cult, part nautical pyramid scheme.

From the June 2014 issue: Ship of wonks

“The toilets are amazing,” the Palo Altos are telling me. “One flush and you’re done.” “They don’t understand how energy-efficient these ships are,” the husband of the other couple is telling me. “They got the LNG”—liquefied natural gas, which is supposed to make the Icon a boon to the environment (a concept widely disputed and sometimes ridiculed by environmentalists).

But I’m thinking along a different line of attack as I spear my last pallid slice of melon. For my streaming limited series, a Pinnacle would have to get killed by either an outright peasant or a Suite without an ocean view. I tell my breakfast companions my idea.

“Oh, for sure a Pinnacle would have to be killed,” Mr. Palo Alto, the Pandemic Pinnacle, says, touching his porn mustache thoughtfully as his wife nods.

“THAT’S RIGHT, IT’S your time, buddy!” Hubert, my fun-loving Panamanian cabin attendant, shouts as I step out of my suite in a robe. “Take it easy, buddy!”

I have come up with a new dressing strategy. Instead of trying to impress with my choice of T-shirts, I have decided to start wearing a robe, as one does at a resort property on land, with a proper spa and hammam. The response among my fellow cruisers has been ecstatic. “Look at you in the robe!” Mr. Rand cries out as we pass each other by the Thrill Island aqua park. “You’re living the cruise life! You know, you really drank me under the table that night.” I laugh as we part ways, but my soul cries out, Please spend more time with me, Mr. and Mrs. Rand; I so need the company .

In my white robe, I am a stately presence, a refugee from a better limited series, a one-man crossover episode. (Only Suites are granted these robes to begin with.) Today, I will try many of the activities these ships have on offer to provide their clientele with a sense of never-ceasing motion. Because I am already at Thrill Island, I decide to climb the staircase to what looks like a mast on an old-fashioned ship (terrified, because I am afraid of heights) to try a ride called “Storm Chasers,” which is part of the “Category 6” water park, named in honor of one of the storms that may someday do away with the Port of Miami entirely. Storm Chasers consists of falling from the “mast” down a long, twisting neon tube filled with water, like being the camera inside your own colonoscopy, as you hold on to the handles of a mat, hoping not to die. The tube then flops you down headfirst into a trough of water, a Royal Caribbean baptism. It both knocks my breath out and makes me sad.

In keeping with the aquatic theme, I attend a show at the AquaDome. To the sound of “Live and Let Die,” a man in a harness gyrates to and fro in the sultry air. I saw something very similar in the back rooms of the famed Berghain club in early-aughts Berlin. Soon another harnessed man is gyrating next to the first. Ja , I think to myself, I know how this ends. Now will come the fisting , natürlich . But the show soon devolves into the usual Marvel-film-grade nonsense, with too much light and sound signifying nichts . If any fisting is happening, it is probably in the Suite Neighborhood, inside a cabin marked with an upside-down pineapple, which I understand means a couple are ready to swing, and I will see none of it.

I go to the ice show, which is a kind of homage—if that’s possible—to the periodic table, done with the style and pomp and masterful precision that would please the likes of Kim Jong Un, if only he could afford Royal Caribbean talent. At one point, the dancers skate to the theme song of Succession . “See that!” I want to say to my fellow Suites—at “cultural” events, we have a special section reserved for us away from the commoners—“ Succession ! It’s even better than the zombie show! Open your minds!”

Finally, I visit a comedy revue in an enormous and too brightly lit version of an “intimate,” per Royal Caribbean literature, “Manhattan comedy club.” Many of the jokes are about the cruising life. “I’ve lived on ships for 20 years,” one of the middle-aged comedians says. “I can only see so many Filipino homosexuals dressed as a taco.” He pauses while the audience laughs. “I am so fired tonight,” he says. He segues into a Trump impression and then Biden falling asleep at the microphone, which gets the most laughs. “Anyone here from Fort Leonard Wood?” another comedian asks. Half the crowd seems to cheer. As I fall asleep that night, I realize another connection I have failed to make, and one that may explain some of the diversity on this vessel—many of its passengers have served in the military.

As a coddled passenger with a suite, I feel like I am starting to understand what it means to have a rank and be constantly reminded of it. There are many espresso makers , I think as I look across the expanse of my officer-grade quarters before closing my eyes, but this one is mine .

A shocking sight greets me beyond the pools of Deck 17 as I saunter over to the Coastal Kitchen for my morning intake of slightly sour Americanos. A tiny city beneath a series of perfectly pressed green mountains. Land! We have docked for a brief respite in Basseterre, the capital of St. Kitts and Nevis. I wolf down my egg scramble to be one of the first passengers off the ship. Once past the gangway, I barely refrain from kissing the ground. I rush into the sights and sounds of this scruffy island city, sampling incredible conch curry and buckets of non-Starbucks coffee. How wonderful it is to be where God intended humans to be: on land. After all, I am neither a fish nor a mall rat. This is my natural environment. Basseterre may not be Havana, but there are signs of human ingenuity and desire everywhere you look. The Black Table Grill Has been Relocated to Soho Village, Market Street, Directly Behind of, Gary’s Fruits and Flower Shop. Signed. THE PORK MAN reads a sign stuck to a wall. Now, that is how you write a sign. A real sign, not the come-ons for overpriced Rolexes that blink across the screens of the Royal Promenade.

“Hey, tie your shoestring!” a pair of laughing ladies shout to me across the street.

“Thank you!” I shout back. Shoestring! “Thank you very much.”

A man in Independence Square Park comes by and asks if I want to play with his monkey. I haven’t heard that pickup line since the Penn Station of the 1980s. But then he pulls a real monkey out of a bag. The monkey is wearing a diaper and looks insane. Wonderful , I think, just wonderful! There is so much life here. I email my editor asking if I can remain on St. Kitts and allow the Icon to sail off into the horizon without me. I have even priced a flight home at less than $300, and I have enough material from the first four days on the cruise to write the entire story. “It would be funny …” my editor replies. “Now get on the boat.”

As I slink back to the ship after my brief jailbreak, the locals stand under umbrellas to gaze at and photograph the boat that towers over their small capital city. The limousines of the prime minister and his lackeys are parked beside the gangway. St. Kitts, I’ve been told, is one of the few islands that would allow a ship of this size to dock.

“We hear about all the waterslides,” a sweet young server in one of the cafés told me. “We wish we could go on the ship, but we have to work.”

“I want to stay on your island,” I replied. “I love it here.”

But she didn’t understand how I could possibly mean that.

“WASHY, WASHY, so you don’t get stinky, stinky!” kids are singing outside the AquaDome, while their adult minders look on in disapproval, perhaps worried that Mr. Washy Washy is grooming them into a life of gayness. I heard a southern couple skip the buffet entirely out of fear of Mr. Washy Washy.

Meanwhile, I have found a new watering hole for myself, the Swim & Tonic, the biggest swim-up bar on any cruise ship in the world. Drinking next to full-size, nearly naked Americans takes away one’s own self-consciousness. The men have curvaceous mom bodies. The women are equally un-shy about their sprawling physiques.

Today I’ve befriended a bald man with many children who tells me that all of the little trinkets that Royal Caribbean has left us in our staterooms and suites are worth a fortune on eBay. “Eighty dollars for the water bottle, 60 for the lanyard,” the man says. “This is a cult.”

“Tell me about it,” I say. There is, however, a clientele for whom this cruise makes perfect sense. For a large middle-class family (he works in “supply chains”), seven days in a lower-tier cabin—which starts at $1,800 a person—allow the parents to drop off their children in Surfside, where I imagine many young Filipina crew members will take care of them, while the parents are free to get drunk at a swim-up bar and maybe even get intimate in their cabin. Cruise ships have become, for a certain kind of hardworking family, a form of subsidized child care.

There is another man I would like to befriend at the Swim & Tonic, a tall, bald fellow who is perpetually inebriated and who wears a necklace studded with little rubber duckies in sunglasses, which, I am told, is a sort of secret handshake for cruise aficionados. Tomorrow, I will spend more time with him, but first the ship docks at St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Charlotte Amalie, the capital, is more charming in name than in presence, but I still all but jump off the ship to score a juicy oxtail and plantains at the well-known Petite Pump Room, overlooking the harbor. From one of the highest points in the small city, the Icon of the Seas appears bigger than the surrounding hills.

I usually tan very evenly, but something about the discombobulation of life at sea makes me forget the regular application of sunscreen. As I walk down the streets of Charlotte Amalie in my fluorescent Icon of the Seas cap, an old Rastafarian stares me down. “Redneck,” he hisses.

“No,” I want to tell him, as I bring a hand up to my red neck, “that’s not who I am at all. On my island, Mannahatta, as Whitman would have it, I am an interesting person living within an engaging artistic milieu. I do not wish to use the Caribbean as a dumping ground for the cruise-ship industry. I love the work of Derek Walcott. You don’t understand. I am not a redneck. And if I am, they did this to me.” They meaning Royal Caribbean? Its passengers? The Rands?

“They did this to me!”

Back on the Icon, some older matrons are muttering about a run-in with passengers from the Celebrity cruise ship docked next to us, the Celebrity Apex. Although Celebrity Cruises is also owned by Royal Caribbean, I am made to understand that there is a deep fratricidal beef between passengers of the two lines. “We met a woman from the Apex,” one matron says, “and she says it was a small ship and there was nothing to do. Her face was as tight as a 19-year-old’s, she had so much surgery.” With those words, and beneath a cloudy sky, humidity shrouding our weathered faces and red necks, we set sail once again, hopefully in the direction of home.

THERE ARE BARELY 48 HOURS LEFT to the cruise, and the Icon of the Seas’ passengers are salty. They know how to work the elevators. They know the Washy Washy song by heart. They understand that the chicken gyro at “Feta Mediterranean,” in the AquaDome Market, is the least problematic form of chicken on the ship.

The passengers have shed their INAUGURAL CRUISE T-shirts and are now starting to evince political opinions. There are caps pledging to make America great again and T-shirts that celebrate words sometimes attributed to Patrick Henry: “The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people; it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.” With their preponderance of FAMILY FLAG FAITH FRIENDS FIREARMS T-shirts, the tables by the crepe station sometimes resemble the Capitol Rotunda on January 6. The Real Anthony Fauci , by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., appears to be a popular form of literature, especially among young men with very complicated versions of the American flag on their T-shirts. Other opinions blend the personal and the political. “Someone needs to kill Washy guy, right?” a well-dressed man in the elevator tells me, his gray eyes radiating nothing. “Just beat him to death. Am I right?” I overhear the male member of a young couple whisper, “There goes that freak” as I saunter by in my white spa robe, and I decide to retire it for the rest of the cruise.

I visit the Royal Bling to see up close the $100,000 golden chalice that entitles you to free drinks on Royal Caribbean forever. The pleasant Serbian saleslady explains that the chalice is actually gold-plated and covered in white zirconia instead of diamonds, as it would otherwise cost $1 million. “If you already have everything,” she explains, “this is one more thing you can get.”

I believe that anyone who works for Royal Caribbean should be entitled to immediate American citizenship. They already speak English better than most of the passengers and, per the Serbian lady’s sales pitch above, better understand what America is as well. Crew members like my Panamanian cabin attendant seem to work 24 hours a day. A waiter from New Delhi tells me that his contract is six months and three weeks long. After a cruise ends, he says, “in a few hours, we start again for the next cruise.” At the end of the half a year at sea, he is allowed a two-to-three-month stay at home with his family. As of 2019, the median income for crew members was somewhere in the vicinity of $20,000, according to a major business publication. Royal Caribbean would not share the current median salary for its crew members, but I am certain that it amounts to a fraction of the cost of a Royal Bling gold-plated, zirconia-studded chalice.

And because most of the Icon’s hyper-sanitized spaces are just a frittata away from being a Delta lounge, one forgets that there are actual sailors on this ship, charged with the herculean task of docking it in port. “Having driven 100,000-ton aircraft carriers throughout my career,” retired Admiral James G. Stavridis, the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, writes to me, “I’m not sure I would even know where to begin with trying to control a sea monster like this one nearly three times the size.” (I first met Stavridis while touring Army bases in Germany more than a decade ago.)

Today, I decide to head to the hot tub near Swim & Tonic, where some of the ship’s drunkest reprobates seem to gather (the other tubs are filled with families and couples). The talk here, like everywhere else on the ship, concerns football, a sport about which I know nothing. It is apparent that four teams have recently competed in some kind of finals for the year, and that two of them will now face off in the championship. Often when people on the Icon speak, I will try to repeat the last thing they said with a laugh or a nod of disbelief. “Yes, 20-yard line! Ha!” “Oh my God, of course, scrimmage.”

Soon we are joined in the hot tub by the late-middle-age drunk guy with the duck necklace. He is wearing a bucket hat with the legend HAWKEYES , which, I soon gather, is yet another football team. “All right, who turned me in?” Duck Necklace says as he plops into the tub beside us. “I get a call in the morning,” he says. “It’s security. Can you come down to the dining room by 10 a.m.? You need to stay away from the members of this religious family.” Apparently, the gregarious Duck Necklace had photobombed the wrong people. There are several families who present as evangelical Christians or practicing Muslims on the ship. One man, evidently, was not happy that Duck Necklace had made contact with his relatives. “It’s because of religious stuff; he was offended. I put my arm around 20 people a day.”

Everyone laughs. “They asked me three times if I needed medication,” he says of the security people who apparently interrogated him in full view of others having breakfast.

Another hot-tub denizen suggests that he should have asked for fentanyl. After a few more drinks, Duck Necklace begins to muse about what it would be like to fall off the ship. “I’m 62 and I’m ready to go,” he says. “I just don’t want a shark to eat me. I’m a huge God guy. I’m a Bible guy. There’s some Mayan theory squaring science stuff with religion. There is so much more to life on Earth.” We all nod into our Red Stripes.

“I never get off the ship when we dock,” he says. He tells us he lost $6,000 in the casino the other day. Later, I look him up, and it appears that on land, he’s a financial adviser in a crisp gray suit, probably a pillar of his North Chicago community.

THE OCEAN IS TEEMING with fascinating life, but on the surface it has little to teach us. The waves come and go. The horizon remains ever far away.

I am constantly told by my fellow passengers that “everybody here has a story.” Yes, I want to reply, but everybody everywhere has a story. You, the reader of this essay, have a story, and yet you’re not inclined to jump on a cruise ship and, like Duck Necklace, tell your story to others at great pitch and volume. Maybe what they’re saying is that everybody on this ship wants to have a bigger, more coherent, more interesting story than the one they’ve been given. Maybe that’s why there’s so much signage on the doors around me attesting to marriages spent on the sea. Maybe that’s why the Royal Caribbean newsletter slipped under my door tells me that “this isn’t a vacation day spent—it’s bragging rights earned.” Maybe that’s why I’m so lonely.

Today is a big day for Icon passengers. Today the ship docks at Royal Caribbean’s own Bahamian island, the Perfect Day at CocoCay. (This appears to be the actual name of the island.) A comedian at the nightclub opined on what his perfect day at CocoCay would look like—receiving oral sex while learning that his ex-wife had been killed in a car crash (big laughter). But the reality of the island is far less humorous than that.

One of the ethnic tristate ladies in the infinity pool told me that she loved CocoCay because it had exactly the same things that could be found on the ship itself. This proves to be correct. It is like the Icon, but with sand. The same tired burgers, the same colorful tubes conveying children and water from Point A to B. The same swim-up bar at its Hideaway ($140 for admittance, no children allowed; Royal Caribbean must be printing money off its clientele). “There was almost a fight at The Wizard of Oz ,” I overhear an elderly woman tell her companion on a chaise lounge. Apparently one of the passengers began recording Royal Caribbean’s intellectual property and “three guys came after him.”

I walk down a pathway to the center of the island, where a sign reads DO NOT ENTER: YOU HAVE REACHED THE BOUNDARY OF ADVENTURE . I hear an animal scampering in the bushes. A Royal Caribbean worker in an enormous golf cart soon chases me down and takes me back to the Hideaway, where I run into Mrs. Rand in a bikini. She becomes livid telling me about an altercation she had the other day with a woman over a towel and a deck chair. We Suites have special towel privileges; we do not have to hand over our SeaPass Card to score a towel. But the Rands are not Suites. “People are so entitled here,” Mrs. Rand says. “It’s like the airport with all its classes.” “You see,” I want to say, “this is where your husband’s love of Ayn Rand runs into the cruelties and arbitrary indignities of unbridled capitalism.” Instead we make plans to meet for a final drink in the Schooner Bar tonight (the Rands will stand me up).

Back on the ship, I try to do laps, but the pool (the largest on any cruise ship, naturally) is fully trashed with the detritus of American life: candy wrappers, a slowly dissolving tortilla chip, napkins. I take an extra-long shower in my suite, then walk around the perimeter of the ship on a kind of exercise track, past all the alluring lifeboats in their yellow-and-white livery. Maybe there is a dystopian angle to the HBO series that I will surely end up pitching, one with shades of WALL-E or Snowpiercer . In a collapsed world, a Royal Caribbean–like cruise liner sails from port to port, collecting new shipmates and supplies in exchange for the precious energy it has on board. (The actual Icon features a new technology that converts passengers’ poop into enough energy to power the waterslides . In the series, this shitty technology would be greatly expanded.) A very young woman (18? 19?), smart and lonely, who has only known life on the ship, walks along the same track as I do now, contemplating jumping off into the surf left by its wake. I picture reusing Duck Necklace’s words in the opening shot of the pilot. The girl is walking around the track, her eyes on the horizon; maybe she’s highborn—a Suite—and we hear the voice-over: “I’m 19 and I’m ready to go. I just don’t want a shark to eat me.”

Before the cruise is finished, I talk to Mr. Washy Washy, or Nielbert of the Philippines. He is a sweet, gentle man, and I thank him for the earworm of a song he has given me and for keeping us safe from the dreaded norovirus. “This is very important to me, getting people to wash their hands,” he tells me in his burger getup. He has dreams, as an artist and a performer, but they are limited in scope. One day he wants to dress up as a piece of bacon for the morning shift.

THE MAIDEN VOYAGE OF THE TITANIC (the Icon of the Seas is five times as large as that doomed vessel) at least offered its passengers an exciting ending to their cruise, but when I wake up on the eighth day, all I see are the gray ghosts that populate Miami’s condo skyline. Throughout my voyage, my writer friends wrote in to commiserate with me. Sloane Crosley, who once covered a three-day spa mini-cruise for Vogue , tells me she felt “so very alone … I found it very untethering.” Gideon Lewis-Kraus writes in an Instagram comment: “When Gary is done I think it’s time this genre was taken out back and shot.” And he is right. To badly paraphrase Adorno: After this, no more cruise stories. It is unfair to put a thinking person on a cruise ship. Writers typically have difficult childhoods, and it is cruel to remind them of the inherent loneliness that drove them to writing in the first place. It is also unseemly to write about the kind of people who go on cruises. Our country does not provide the education and upbringing that allow its citizens an interior life. For the creative class to point fingers at the large, breasty gentlemen adrift in tortilla-chip-laden pools of water is to gather a sour harvest of low-hanging fruit.

A day or two before I got off the ship, I decided to make use of my balcony, which I had avoided because I thought the view would only depress me further. What I found shocked me. My suite did not look out on Central Park after all. This entire time, I had been living in the ship’s Disneyland, Surfside, the neighborhood full of screaming toddlers consuming milkshakes and candy. And as I leaned out over my balcony, I beheld a slight vista of the sea and surf that I thought I had been missing. It had been there all along. The sea was frothy and infinite and blue-green beneath the span of a seagull’s wing. And though it had been trod hard by the world’s largest cruise ship, it remained.

This article appears in the May 2024 print edition with the headline “A Meatball at Sea.” When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

• CruiseMapper

Sicilia ferry

Cruise line BALEARIA (Ferries)

Sicilia ferry current position

Sicilia ferry current location is at North East Atlantic Ocean (coordinates 37.14990 N / -6.87811 W) cruising en route to Huelva. The AIS position was reported 3 minutes ago.

Specifications of Sicilia ferry

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Sicilia ferry Review

Review of sicilia ferry.

MV Sicilia ferry is a Ro-Ro passenger vessel owned and operated by the Spanish company BALEARIA . The ship has a max capacity of 1000 passengers and 480 cars. The vessel was launched in 2004 and currently operates on the ferry route Valencia - Palma de Mallorca (crossing time 7,5 hours).

As cruise ferry, Sicilia has air-conditioned 2-berth cabins with either 1 double bed or lower-bunk bed configurations. All staterooms are fitted with en-suite bathrooms. The ferry company provides bed linens, towels, and toiletries. The ship also has wheelchair-accessible cabins (adapted for disabled passengers).

The ship's Seating Lounge is equipped with large TV and reclining Pullman seats (comfortable, fully reclining leather armchairs). Reserved seats are available for pre-booking. These deals are inclusive of complimentary beverages (tea, coffee, soft drinks). The Lobby Bar Lounge is furnished with comfortable leather chairs and round glass-topped tables.

All passengers must vacate their staterooms 30 min prior to homeport arrival.

Shipboard dining and entertainment options

As facilities, the Sicilia ship offers:

• Accommodation options - cabins, Superior Lounge seats (black leather recliners), Lobby Bar seating. All lounges are fitted with large TVs.
• Dining options - Self-Service Restaurant (full menu, single courses, kids-vegetarian-healthy meals, traditional local dishes), Bar-Cafeteria (patisserie - pastries, cakes, drinks, snacks, sandwiches), Outdoor Bar (grill, cocktails, beers, sundeck barbecues), chocolate and ice-cream parlor. Purchasing dining services in advance offers a 10% discount.
• Passengers with disabilities - 2 adapted cabins for passengers with reduced mobility, lifts (passenger elevators connecting all decks).
• Gifts & Travel Necessities Shop (combined boutique and general store - gifts and souvenirs, alcohol and tobaccos, perfumes and cosmetics, drinks, snacks, sweets, toiletries, electronics, toys, books, newspapers, local gourmet produce)

Entreolas by Balearia Magazine is a free-of-charge onboard magazine themed on travel and lifestyle, culture, sports, fashion, music, cuisine, Balearia news. Wi-Fi and Internet are available at extra cost. Mobile phone chargers and Ipad rentals are also offered.

All Balearia ships are equipped with CCTV cameras with image recording. Smoking anywhere inside the ships is not permitted.

All ferried vehicles must have documentation and valid insurance. Having the car's technical data sheet makes boarding checks easier. Upon booking, the vehicle's model, length and height must be specified. Car ferry passengers must arrive at the departure port 90 min prior departure.

All Balearia ships have a hold for bikes. Free of charge travel bicycles, mopeds, and motorbikes (up to 125 ccs), which must be indicated upon booking.

Special vehicles (height over 3 m / 10 ft) must be booked via the company's Call Center (902 160 180).

Follows a list of car decks related safety procedures:

• Disabled passengers or those requiring specific assistance should visit the ship's Information Desk.
• Apply handbrake and place the vehicle in park or 1st gear position. Switch off the ignition, alarm, electrical equipment, headlights. Gas cylinders, if any, must be switched off. Lock the vehicle.
• From your vehicle take only valuables and essential hand baggage.
• Make a note of your vehicle's location and garage deck number/stairway before leaving the car deck.
• Access to the ship's vehicle (cargo) decks during the voyage is prohibited.
• Smoking on vehicle decks, as well as in cabins and passenger lounges is forbidden.
• Wait for the onboard announcement before returning to your vehicle.
• In order to avoid air pollution, don't start the engine until instructed.

Balearia ferry deals

Onboard shopping offers discounted pricing for Balearia Club members. Balearia Club members enjoy as perks:

• 10% discounts are offered in onboard shops, bars, and restaurants
• preferential queue (priority boarding in select departure ports)
• With standard chair booking, along with the boarding card club members receive vouchers giving access to Superior Lounge (reclining leather chairs / subject to availability).
• Balearia has over 50 partnerships for exclusive offers and promotions. Club Member-only offers, provide discounts on land-based facilities and services (resorts, hotels, restaurants, chain stores, boutiques, tours, buses, travel insurance, etc).

(ferry + train travel) Balearia has a partnership with the Spanish state-owned railroad company Renfe Operadora. The company serves the routes between Paris, Lyon, Toulouse, Marseilles, Barcelona, and Madrid. The Balearia-Renfe partnership offers discounted train travel. Upon online booking the Balearia ferry, there is an option that if checked creates a Renfe promo code. The code is valid for the next 48 hours if you book online Renfe trains.

(ferry + hotel) On select routes, Balearia offers discounted ferry-hotel packages, with prices starting from around EUR 65.

(day tour) deals are valid when purchasing roundtrip tickets and within 24 hours after booking (no changes or cancellations are accepted). Kids under 13 receive a 50% discount, while babies travel for free. Day tour package prices range between EUR 10-60 (depending on itinerary). Shuttle bus service is provided.

The ship-charterer Balearia ( fleet , 1998-founded, headquartered in Denia Spain ) is a Spanish ferry company operating passenger ferry services in the Mediterranean and Caribbean (Bahamas).

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Sicilia ferry ship related cruise news.

Balearia Receives Ferry Upgrades Grant from the European Commission

Spanish ferry company Balearia received fleet upgrades grant of EUR 11.8 million from the EU Commission in order to upgrade 5 of its cruiseferries...

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Other BALEARIA cruise ships

• Abel Matutes ferry
• Bahama Mama ferry
• Denia Ciutat Creativa ferry
• Finnclipper ferry
• Hedy Lamarr ferry
• Hypatia de Alejandria ferry
• Marie Curie ferry
• Martin i Soler ferry
• Napoles ferry
• Regina Baltica ferry
• Rusadir ferry

Sicilia ferry Wiki

The ship was powered by two MAN marine diesel engines (model 9L48-60, total power output 18,9 MW) and as propulsion has two controllable pitch propellers. In late-October 2018, Balearia contracted Caterpillar Marine to install MAK dual-fuel engines on 3 vessels (Abel Matutes, Bahama Mama, Martin I Soler). Engine conversions (by Caterpillar dealer Finanzauto) were scheduled for early-2019. By this project, ship's diesel engines (2x 9M43C, total power output 18 MW) were replaced with 2x MaK 9M46DF (dual-fuel / diesel- LNG , power output 8,7 MW each) used with gearbox and controllable pitch propellers. Caterpillar provided dual-fuel conversion kits and all engine modules (ignition, ventilation, exhaust gas, and GVU ventilation, valves, housing).

In November 2018, BALEARIA started a EUR 443 million (USD 520 M) drydock reconstruction project for nine ferries to be retrofitted/converted to LNG (liquified natural gas). The project was partially (20%) funded by CEF (Connecting Europe Facility).

All drydocks (at Gibraltar Gibdock and West Sea's Viana Shipyard) included modifying the diesel engines (to MAN dual-fuel) and installing LNG tanks. Each ship now has dual-fuel (LNG-diesel) MAN marine engines (model 9L-51-60-DF). The Wartsila-made LNG tanks (one or two per vessel) are able to store up to 425 m3 LNG, which allows autonomous operations up to 1800 km (1100 mi). Onboard gas pipes are from Cryospain (Madrid-based). The project as engineering was designed by Cotenaval (Valencia-based).

The fleet retrofitting resulted in fuel savings, with expected annual emissions reduction per vessel 9113+ tons (CO2) and 871+ tons (NOx) plus zero SOx emissions and no soot particles. Ferry's annual CO2 reduction is equal to the emissions of ~6000 cars.