Royal Caribbean - Splendour of the Seas Review

In 2005 we signed up for the Royal Caribbean credit card.  In less than a year and a half we earned enough points to qualify for $500 cruise discount.  We decided we wanted a cheap cruise that wouldn't use up a lot of vacation days to just break up the cold winter.  We shopped around and found a 5 night cruise out of Galveston TX.  The airfare from Chicago was ½ the price of that to Florida at the same time.  The cruise left on A Saturday, which most 5 day cruises out of Florida left in the middle of the week.  Since we didn't want to use up a full week of vacation for a short cruise this was the best option.  For an inside cabin, it was about $600 a person.  We used our $500 credit for this cruise and basically cut our costs in half.  Using the points was easy and just required us to call RC, and cash in our points.

The Ship:

Splendour Of The Seas, is an older smaller ship.  It was nice, but not great.  We have been on some really nice/larger ships so this was different.  We didn't expect the Ritz, so it was good that we set our expectations where we did. 

The Spa was older, I would skip the mani/pedi, it wasn't worth the price.  The newer ships have better facilities for those treatments.  The massage room had a window the looked out over the ocean.  That was worth the price and was really nice.

Entertainment

The ship was smaller but the entertainment was really good.  We saw a lot of the shows and enjoyed all of them.

People

If you are from Texas you'll love this cruise.  About 80% of the cruisers were Texan, and the cruise staff capitalized on it.  It was pretty funny, how the usual cruise events took on a Texan flare.  For example the art auction had a lot of "YEE HAWS" after each piece was put up.  Being from the Mid-west this was rather amusing.

One Last thing to keep in mind: