Promenade Deck on Wonder of the Seas (2024)

Wonder of the Seas and other Royal Caribbean Oasis Class ships have the best promenade decks at sea. It’s kind of like two decks in one since the Royal Promenade on the inside of the ship is a completely different area than the outside promenade.

The Royal Promenade sprawls through a good portion of the center of deck 5. The theater and spa are at the front of that deck and the main dining room at the back. The Royal Promenade somewhat resembles a city street, but without the traffic. There is one car as part of the decor, but it doesn’t move so nobody has to worry about getting ran over. It’s an old car to go along with the Route 66 theme of the decor.

The center is a wide lane dotted with shopping booths and items of decor. The Rising Tide Bar is sometimes there, and sometimes it rises up to Central Park leaving a hollow in its place. Drinks are not hard to find on the Royal Promenade even when the Rising Tide has risen because it is also home to a couple of pubs and the Bionic Bar, manned by robots.

There’s a pizza parlor, a cafe, and a karaoke club mingled in with the shops. Even though the ship has its own cafe/coffee shop, there’s a Starbucks there too. Shops range from liquor to expensive jewelry, accessories, clothing, and pretty much all the other usual sorts of things found in cruise ship shops. There’s also a gift shop that had lots of logo items, but not the one thing I always look for. They did not have any ship model Christmas tree ornaments of the Wonder available during our cruise, though it was near Christmas and they had other ornaments. There are also some shops in other areas of the ship.

The Royal Promenade is open in the center up several decks, with skylights into deck eight’s central park in its ceiling. There are a few public areas on the sides of deck 6 with views onto the promenade including a bar and the shore excursion desk and photo gallery. On deck 7 there are a few interior cabins with a view window over the promenade.

Sometimes the promenade gets pretty crowded, but other times – like really early in the morning before anything opens there may not be anyone else there. If they have a sale at any of the little booths in the center there’s sure to be a crowd. Even more so when there are activities going on there. One day there was a pirate parade.

Although the Royal Promenade on the inside is great with its city-like atmosphere around shops and eateries, that’s not all the promenade deck has going for it. While I’m usually pleased just to find an outside promenade deck that goes all the way around the ship since so many ships don’t have that these days, this ship class goes above and beyond.

The outside promenade deck is actually set up as a running track. Although it is on the outside of the ship it’s mostly sheltered. The bow area is under cover and both sides are mostly protected by lifeboats, with a few view spots in between. The back is wide open for a great view of the wake and where the ship has been. On the inside edge of the track at the back there are windows into the AquaTheater and a view of the rock climbing walls and Ultimate Abyss 10-deck slides.

Each side has a wide area of open space to the water side of the track where there isn’t a lifeboat. These spaces have places to sit and things to do. One has shuffleboard and a ping-pong table, the other more chairs and tables. Lifeboats surrounding the track means there are no rooms with their views blocked by lifeboats on this ship.

It’s not just the surface area of the track that makes this deck special either. It has signs posted with how many laps equals how much distance. There’s a walk lane, a run lane, and a bit of extra space alongside the lanes where people can pass by slower movers. If you start at the space marked starting line and run the number of laps indicated there are markers along the track to tell you at what point you have reached your goal. Overhead signs give encouragement and entertainment along the way.

The downside of such a great promenade is that other people like it too. Going out for an early morning run there were already crew people using the track when I started, and other passengers by the time I finished. At least there weren’t any people swabbing the deck, which is a hazard on early morning promenade deck runs on some ships.

Most of the other people are courteous and will let faster movers by without any trouble, but there are always those few entitled folks who want to sprawl across the entire track area walking slowly and looking quite affronted when you want to pass by them in the run lane even though that lane is clearly marked for runners, not baby buggies and slow walking groups. They have the walk lane for that. Runners on the other hand are usually quick to move aside into the walk lane if a faster runner comes up behind them. Crew people are the most courteous of all. They will try to get out of the way for a passenger even if the crew person is the faster runner.

The promenade deck on this class of ship is my favorite of all the ships I have been on so far. Mainly due to the track, but the Royal Promenade is nice too.

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2024