Royal Carribean Icon of the Seas Rooms – Family Infinite Ocean View Balcony

Have you noticed a new room type on Royal Caribbean cruise ships? We just sailed on the Icon of the Seas and got a chance to experinece the Family Infinite Ocean View Balcony first hand and can share the good, the bad, and the ugly about this new room type. Come take a peak!

Icon of the Seas Rooms

There are so many choices for staterooms on the newest and largest cruise ship in the world. Whether you are looking for value, convenient aft stateroom, an upgrade, or just trying something new, there is a stateroom for you! We talk more about the icon of the seas staterooms in our Icon of the Seas Review,  but for this post we are going to share more about the newest room category – the Infinite Ocean View Balcony and the family upgrade option for that room.

Plus don’t miss learning about the amazing private island Cococay Royal Caribbean, plus 30+ tips for sailing on the Icon Cruise Ship.

Icon of the Seas Staterooms

We were so excited to get on the newest Royal Caribbean ship and it didn’t dissapoint! The staterooms had all gotten a nice style life with a more modern and sleek feel. There were more uique lines, clever spaces, cheery yellow color pallet, and of course some new ideas like the infinite ocean view balcony icon of the seas. Well there were a lot of things we liked, there are also some quirks and frustrations that come with this new room category. Let me show you the room and all it has to offer and then break down the good, the bad, and the ugly in this honest review from our family.

Family Infinite Ocean View Balcony

The way these staterooms are adjoining is the entry way. If you have both “adjoining rooms” the outside brown doors become the cabin door and your individual doors stay open. So it is more like you have two rooms with an adjoining hall.

infinite ocean view balcony icon of the seas

As soon as you come in there is a temperature control panel on your right. You’ll understand what I mean in a minute, but if the “balcony” feature is enabled the air conditioning for the entire room is disabled. A real bummer in my book. You cannot enjoy the balcony and return to a cool room immediately. Also to get the maximum chill it will automatically close the blind for your room to darken it. While we were able to keep the room at a comfortable temperature with no balcony,  anytime the window opened to make the “balcony” the room got so hot and it took forever to cool it back down.

To the left is the kids bunk area. To the right is the main room. Straight ahead is a giant chalkboard. This was such a fun playful feature, and my kids loved making drawing and pictures when we hung out in our room. If you ask the room steward they can give you an eraser or more chalk.

icon of the seas family infinite ocean view balcony

Here is the super cute kids bunk area. This was a huge upgrade in my book as it made the room this much bigger! My 13 and 16 year old girls shared this space and though it was so much fun to have their own little hideout.

• They each had a TV in their bunk. Mind you, Royal only has kids station, news, and a nature station for free. If you want a movie, you have to pay $11.99 to rent it, and at that they only had 5 choices – all which were not appropriate for my kids.
• The bunk beds are comfy and easy to access
• There is handy storage behind the stairs, under the floor level bed, and in each of the stairs.
• Each bunk bed has it’s own private lighting.
• There are curtains to darken the top bunk or the entire bunk area for sleep and privacy.
• The area is super cute and cheery in yellow and white!

infinite balcony icon of the seas

A “perk” we weren’t expecting when booking the family upgrade to the infinite balcony stateroom was the split bath. The toilet section was VERY spacious because of the unie angling of the toilet and oversized space.

The good part was that someone could shower and use the restroom at the same time. We also had two sinks which made brushing teeth or getting ready for dinner easier.

icon of the seas infinite balcony

The shower part was so crampt. While the shower itself was adequate, the area to get into the shower was so small you really couldn’t set down clothes, get dressed or move around well at all. Maybe a tiny woman or elementary age child, but the rest of us hated using the space and ended up just leaving the space in a towel to change elsewhere.

NOTE: If you have a regular Infinet Balcony without the family bunk bed upgrade you will just have one good size bathroom.

infinite family balcony icon of the seas

Here is the main room. It was well decorate, comy, and with plenty of space. Because of the family bunk, our couch was just a couch. We loved not having to trip over beds there, but just have permanent seating. The trow pillows here (and in lounges throughout the ship) look cute, but I wonder how often they are cleaned or if they are just harboring germs.

Note: I didn’t take a picture, but you can see it in the video below, the baskets in the bottom of the shelf might look cute, but they make such horrible scraping noises if you pull them in and out. I wish they would have designed them better.

infinite balcony

Here is the actual infinite balcony. As you can see their are two cute an d comy chairs, a table, and an ottoman. While this is a clever concept, in practice it is not a balcony. Yes it is a great view, but it is not a balcony. It is a window, albeit a big one, that opens.

Pros:

• larger window (floor to ceiling)
• you get more space in your room that is allocated as balcony (50 square feet). So you have more room to host other family members or spread out.
• The chairs are nicer in the “balcony” because they aren’t worried about them getting exposed to the elements.
• You can open the window if you want a breeze, change the air, etc. (Don’t forget what I told you about the air conditioning thought, if you open the window the room air conditioning shuts off until the window is fully closed. It will take at least an hour to cool your room back down.)

Cons

• It is not a balcony! You can’t just go out of the noise of your room and sit on a balcony for peace and quiet with just the noise of the ocean. It’s hard to explain, but even with it open, it doesn’t feel like a balcony and we really missed it.
• You can’t enjoy your balcony and have a cool stateroom for others.

I’m just going to drop this here because it is about services to yoru room. Yes, Royal Caribbean still does towel animals, but we were told by the manager of housekeeping that their policy is to only do them every other day or so. We were dissapointed and complained and we did get daily towel animals after that, but other than the ones you see here they made at once to make up for 3 days of no towel animals, the rest were small hand-size creations. Not a deal breaker per say, but good to know to set expectaitons.

Family Infinite Balcony Stateroom on the Icon of the seas

Sometimes pictures make it hard to really see the spaces, so here is a video that gives you a handy walk-through of the family infinite balcony stateroom on the Icon of the Seas.