Brilliance of the Seas

Brilliance of the Seas is the second of the four Radiance-class ships Meyer Werft built at Papenburg, delivered on July 5, 2002 and on her maiden voyage two weeks later. Her sisters’ pages cover what the class is (a Panamax hull wrapped in glass, gas turbines instead of diesels, sea-facing elevators), so the thing worth knowing about this particular hull is her calendar. She works two continents. Part of the year she sells short Bahamas cruises out of Fort Lauderdale and Western Caribbean weeks out of Tampa; the rest of it she is based at Ravenna, on the Italian Adriatic. She crosses the Atlantic to get between them, twice a year, and sells the crossing.

What 90,090 tons is good for now

She is small by Royal Caribbean’s current standard: about a third of Icon of the Seas, and 2,140 guests at double occupancy against the 5,600-plus the Oasis ships carry. Twenty-four years ago that was a mid-size ship. Now it is the smaller end of the fleet, and it is the reason she has the deployment she has.

The gas turbines are the class’s oddity. Two General Electric LM2500+ units, 20.5 MW each, feeding two ABB Azipods, quiet, clean, and thirstier than the diesels everyone else installs, which is why nobody built many more ships this way. What they give you is a ship rated at 25 knots that does not shake at speed, which matters on a repositioning voyage and matters on an itinerary with long legs between ports.

She also has the glass. Around three acres of it, with elevators running up the outside of the Centrum facing the sea rather than the atrium, two-deck windowed dining rooms, and a solarium pool under a roof that slides back. On a wet crossing day that solarium is the most valuable room aboard.

What is aboard

Not a lot, by 2026 standards, and that is a fair thing to say out loud. There is no waterslide, no surf simulator, no ice rink. The specialty restaurants are Chops Grille and Izumi. The bars that people actually name when they talk about her are Vintages, the R Bar, and the King & Country pub. There is a rock climbing wall forty feet up the back of the funnel, a Vitality Spa, and a casino.

The trade is straightforward: she has fewer attractions and more window. If your week is about the ports and the sea, that is the right trade. If your week is about the ship, it is not.

Ravenna, and the crossings

Ravenna is not an obvious homeport. It is a working Adriatic port south of the Venice lagoon, and Royal Caribbean uses it as her Italian base for seven-night Adriatic and eastern Mediterranean loops; a handful of her European sailings run from Rome instead, out of Civitavecchia. A 962-foot ship gets into berths and anchorages that a 1,200-foot one does not, which is most of why she draws this assignment rather than a newer, larger hull.

The North American half is different work entirely. From Fort Lauderdale she runs Bahamas sailings, the shortest of them three nights, and from Tampa she runs Caribbean weeks. Between the two seasons sit the transatlantic crossings, sold as one-way voyages of around two weeks, which are the only sailings on her schedule that use the whole ship for what it was designed to do.

Who she suits

People who want an older, quieter, port-driven ship and know what they are giving up for it. She is very good on the Adriatic run and genuinely good on a crossing. The glass, the solarium and the outside elevators still work.

She is a poor choice for families expecting the modern Royal Caribbean product, because most of it is not aboard: no FlowRider, no ice show, no water park, and a kids’ program on a ship built before any of that was standard. She is also the wrong ship for a three-night Bahamas run if the ship is meant to be the attraction, since on that itinerary there is not much of one. Book her for the week-long sailings, and preferably the ones on the far side of the Atlantic.