Reporting and photography by Dawn Gilbertson
NASSAU, Bahamas -- The 4,400 cruisers on Royal Caribbean's Freedom of the Seas had plenty of options when the ship docked in the Bahamas Friday morning.
Stay on the ship (it was windy and unseasonably cold), swim with pigs, shop the Straw Market, book a resort day pass, maybe tour the island. The excursion the cruise line touted the most, though, was a hot new beach club on a 17-acre sliver of Paradise Island.
Royal Beach Club opened in late December. It is the first stand-alone beach club for Royal Caribbean International, the company's latest effort to capture a bigger share of passengers' vacation dollars. Another beach club is due to open in Santorini, Greece, this year, followed by Cozumel, Mexico.
Unlike Royal Caribbean's private island in the Bahamas, Perfect Day at CocoCay, cruisers have to pay extra to visit and onboard drink packages don't apply. The cabanas are supersized, too, with one going for $10,000 for the day. Yes, day. Executives gush about early results.
The big question for vacationers, of course, is whether it's worth a visit. Facebook cruise groups are filled with questions about the beach club. So I booked a last-minute Royal Caribbean cruise out of Miami to see if the experience lives up to the hype. Nassau was one of two stops on the five-night cruise. The Wall Street Journal paid all expenses, and Royal wasn't notified I was on board.
The hard sell for the beach club started as soon as I booked the cruise in mid-January. The confirmation email featured a pitch for the place, calling it your "all-inclusive pass to paradise."
Several more emails followed, promising the "best beach day ever." Front and center on my bed on the first day of the cruise: a Royal Beach Club flier with a QR code for booking.
Upsells are nothing new in mainstream cruising, of course. There are drink packages, specialty dining packages, spa specials, pickleball lessons and other activities. Certain ice-cream spots even cost extra on the ship I was on.
Best beach day ever?
I paid a hefty $175 to visit Royal Beach Club on Friday. That included ferry transportation, open bar, food, towels and lounge chairs by the pool and beach. Pricing is dynamic. Some cruisers nabbed last-minute precruise deals as low as $105. The price without alcohol was $99 in advance. Kids ages 3 and younger are free.
By comparison, the Swimming Pigs Express package the cruise line offered was $154 for adults. A Nassau beach break and sightseeing tour cost $114 a person. Resort Pass, which sells hotel "daycations" around the world, was offering a day pass to Margaritaville Beach Resort in Nassau for $90, excluding food and drinks.
I love a good beach day but the weather gods weren't cooperating on Friday. Winds topped 20 mph and the ocean was churning. The beach was closed. The feels-like temperature when I arrived on the first ferry: 53 degrees. The Bahamian lifeguards and servers were bundled up. At least it was mostly sunny. (We were lucky the excursion wasn't canceled; that has happened more than a few times already due to the winter weather this year.)
One plus: Our ship was the only Royal Caribbean one in port that day. The beach club is open to passengers on Royal and sister cruise line Celebrity, and can accommodate as many as 4,000 passengers a day. The company estimates that about a third of its passengers docking in Nassau will visit Royal Beach Club, bringing annual visitation to about one million.
There was no problem finding a lounge chair at any of the three sections: Chill Beach, Party Cove and Family Beach. Early in the day, the place felt almost empty. That isn't likely to be the case during busy times as cruisers race off the ferries for prime spots, especially at the giant swim-up bar.
The pools are heated, but that was little consolation when I got out of one pool on Friday. This is probably why so many passengers spent a lot of time in the water.
Party Cove reminded me of those Las Vegas pool parties, albeit with an older crowd. A DJ blasted nonstop music from a perch above the pool. Bahama Mamas were flowing and one of the servers was twerking to "Wild Thing."
The drink lineup was solid, much better than the slim pickings at my $89 beach day in the Dominican Republic a few days earlier.
The food was just OK, but that's how I'd describe the food on mainstream cruise ships in general. Think mainly theme-park or sports-stadium concession-stand fare. I tried the lobster BLT, grilled shrimp, chicken tenders and fries.
Cabana life
I didn't spring for a cabana, many of which were more than the cost of my cruise. But a lot of them were filled with families and friend groups on Friday.
One that wasn't: the two-story Ultimate Family Cabana for 12 with a built-in waterslide, a hot tub and your own bathroom. It was going for $6,000 that day but is often listed for $10,000. One recent visitor says she snagged it last-minute for $1,400.
Royal executives last summer said they have sold many of them at $10,000. A security guard stood in front of the cabana to stop any would-be squatters.
Oregon chiropractor Joshua Wolfram paid $950 for a cabana for his extended family of nine on the family beach. (Prices started at more than $1,300 but dropped as the cruise approached. Royal allows cancellation and rebookings.)
Wolfram says his family splurges on a cabana so they have a base for the day and don't have to navigate Nassau with a big group, including his parents. The price covers admission, food and drink and there's a cabana attendant, making it a good deal. His girls, ages 9 and 11, were disappointed there's no water park like there is on Royal's private island.
The beach club was clean, he said, but seemed a little "Disney fake." (The beach decor in the bars seemed straight out of HomeGoods, complete with an "I love you to the beach and back" quote.)
"For what it is, it's nice," Wolfram said.
And that's pretty much how I'd sum up Royal Beach Club. I was a party of one, but if I were cruising with my family and wanted a vacation splurge, I'd go the route of the Pennsylvania farmer I met.
He and his wife treated their three kids, on their first trip out of the U.S., to a $750 private snorkeling charter in Nassau. On the lunch menu: red snapper the captain caught that morning.
Write to Dawn Gilbertson at dawn.gilbertson@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 10, 2026 20:00 ET (01:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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