Brilliance of the Seas - Royal Caribbean International
Fast Facts
Vessel: Brilliance of the Seas
Cruise line: Royal Caribbean International
Star rating: not rated yet
Tonnage: 90,090 GRT
Max passenger capacity: 2501
Entered service: 2002
Description: Brilliance of the Seas offers 10 categories of cabins and 19 price bands, from interior to Owner's Suite. There are two alternative restaurants, Portofino and Chops Grill, with a $26 cover charge which is worth paying; the Seaview cafe on deck; Windjammer cafe for casual dining; and main dining room. Facilities include a spa and fitness centre, theatre, children's club, three pools, rock-climbing wall, mini golf, sports court and casino. In 2006, Brilliance of the Seas will cruise the Mediterranean from Barcelona.
An eight-night cruise in September calling at Marseille, Villefrance, Ajaccio, Civitavecchia, Naples and Valletta costs from $1466 per person for an inside cabin.
For further information contact your travel agent or Royal Caribbean International on (02) 9959 3696.
Brilliance of the Seas
Forget historic sites. Give children a pool and plenty of activities and you can relax while they enjoy themselves.
A Mediterranean cruise, I thought, would be a cultural odyssey around the great classical sites - an education for the whole family. But I quickly realised that it could have been a cruise to nowhere; my children would have been happy to dispense with the destinations altogether. The more time they spent on the ship, ideally playing in the pool, the better, with only a passing interest shown in some of Europe's finest antiquities. We'd had problems with children's clubs on previous hotel-based holidays, but Adventure Ocean, the club on board Brilliance of the Seas (and other Royal Caribbean Cruises), was fabulous. It was manned by wholesome American camp counsellors whose energy and enthusiasm never ran out. Lauren and Joel, aged seven and five, couldn't get enough of it.
We boarded in Barcelona, wilting in the scorching heat. The children, however, were instantly revived by the excitement of the ships soaring atrium lobby and glass elevators, the ice cream-making machine in the Windjammer cafe, the three swimming pools and the giant water slide. We had a balcony cabin and with four of us sharing,it was certainly cosy. The children had bunk beds. Lauren's appeared miraculously out of the ceiling every night, while Joel's was converted from the sofa. Each evening when our sizeable babysitter arrived and the children got ready for bed while I raced around getting ready for dinner, space was hilariously tight.
On the second morning, by the time we sailed into Ajaccio in Corsica, Lauren and Joel were already ensconced in Adventure Ocean, constructing Leaning Towers of Pisa and learning to make pizza. The only thing that got them ashore was the lure of a ride on the bright orange, double-decker lifeboats, which served as tenders. The crumbling, ochre-coloured buildings of old town, the Maison Bonaparte (Napoleon's birthplace), and the distant craggy mountains looked promising but after a drink and a wander round, the intense heat got the better of us. We slunk back on board and spent an hour perfecting our speed technique on the water slide, until Brilliance of the Seas hauled up the anchor chain and set sail for Livorno in Italy.
Lauren and Joel wanted to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa, so the next day, we booked a half-day tour. Sadly, it turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. It was just too hot, too shadeless and spoiled by endless, tacky souvenir stalls selling plastic leaning towers and joke boxer shorts of Michelangelo's David. There was a long queue to climb the tower so we sat in the shadow of a fountain instead, eating decadent pistachio and tiramisu ice cream.
Back on board, I cooled down with a massage in the beautiful spa and a wallow in the fantastic Thermal suite. The suite has a wall of glass looking out to sea and curvy stone lounges for basking on in between the various herbal saunas, aromatherapy steam rooms and rainforest showers. For $20 a day, you can come and go as you please and, amazingly, hardly anybody seemed to use it.
After Pisa, Lauren and Joel were reluctant to see Pompeii in the heat and asked to stay in the childrens club while we did the three-hour excursion from Naples, our next stop. Being allowed to leave your children in the kids club and go ashore is a relatively new thing on cruises. The children, however, were so happy there that I felt confident leaving them for a few hours. They made the right decision. Although on a cooler day, Pompeii would have been fantastic for children a snapshot of when Vesuvius erupted, burying the town in ashen AD79. Life on board settled quickly into a routine of eating a lot, swimming a lot, playing mini golf on deck and, for me, step classes and yoga in the gym. Most nights, the children ate in the casual Windjammer cafe, which had a large buffet and did pasta to order, so was ideal. Theyd then stay with the babysitter in the cabin (another Royal Caribbean bonus many cruise lines no longer offer individual babysitting). This allowed our evenings to pass in a pleasant haze of eating in Portofino, the Italian restaurant, or Chops Grill, which we preferred to the main dining room.
Usually, dinner was preceded by martinis in the Schooner bar and followed by a visit to the casino. One night, I took the kids to the show, an elaborate staging of Broadway hits. They were mesmerised.
Back in Barcelona, we stopped for ice cream on Montjuic Mountain, and saw a tiny Brilliance of the Seas, metres below us in the harbour. Lauren and Joel waved nostalgically at the ship. Some of Europe's most spectacular antiquities may have passed them by but as a relaxing family holiday, you couldnt fault it.
Written by Sue Bryant - 23 Autumn 2006