Symphony of the Seas in St. Maarten

There’s lots to do on Royal Caribbean’s Symphony of the Seas. Just watersports alone have quite a variety of activities to choose from.

aqua theater show

The biggest water feature on Symphony of the Seas isn’t actually a sport for the passengers, but rather a show. At the back of the ship a hidden pool surrounded by towering structures creates the venue for a watershow performed several nights during the voyage to give more people a chance to attend since there isn’t seating enough for all the guests to see the show at once.

one of the ship’s pools

In more traditional water activities, the ship has several pools and numerous hot tubs. The pools are out in the open, but even on the pool deck the hot tubs are a bit sheltered with a shade cover. There’s additional hot tubs in the covered adults only solarium area. In addition to standard pools there’s also a beach pool with a gradually sloping edge much like where a beach enters the water. Some of the deck chairs surrounding this pool sit in the shallow water along the pool’s edge.

splash park for small children

For the little ones, there’s a splash park with kid-sized water features and small slides.

hot tub

The ship has 3 waterslides. The blue and yellow slides wind down about 3 decks worth of space together, the main difference between the two in that the yellow one is lighter inside the slide tube while the blue one has portions of total darkness. The third green slide sends people spinning around a bowl-shaped area before going down the last bit of slide.

bowl slide and beach pool

There are also two flowriders onboard. Some flowrider sessions are for boogie boarding, with instructions provided for beginners on both how to use it and how to wipeout without getting injured should a wipeout happen. Some sessions use surfboards instead, of which some are for advanced surfers only.

flow rider

Barbara and I tried the boogie boarding. I’d done it once before on a prior Royal Caribbean cruise, but it’s been awhile so I listened to the first timer instructions and assumed I’d probably wipe out, but never did. Barbara had actually never done it before, but performed like a pro never wiping out even when she tried to. Unlike one of the guys there at the same time we were who did not follow instructions and wiped out multiple times each turn. Barbara even went up on her knees, but due to an old knee injury I can’t do that because my knee can’t handle it. At the end of the cruise they have a flow show on the flowrider, which is a lot of fun to watch, but we were busy doing other things and didn’t make it to the flow show on Symphony.

the big purple slides snaking down the back of the ship are not waterslides

Before sailing on Symphony of the Seas I had always thought the 10-deck slides at the back of the ship were waterslides, but they are actually dry slides where you go down on a mat. Those 10 decks go by pretty fast and even without water the slides are fun.

2 of the ship’s 3 waterslides

Since our cruise on Symphony of the Seas was in the Caribbean, it was nice to have a variety of ways to enjoy water while onboard.

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