For as long as I can remember, the shower on a cruise ship was never the best feature in the cabin.
Most cruise ships have showers that look like a tube meant to beam people up into space. Not only that, they were super tiny and it felt like I had to keep my arms in and tucked.
It was not only cramped, but made the shower experience less enjoyable. When you have lots of hot water and great water pressure, that's not something to pass up.
Luckily, Royal Caribbean introduced a new shower for its cabins on the biggest ship in the world and it's a game changer.
Goodbye capsule showers, hello space!
Royal Caribbean is proud of so many innovations introduced on Icon of the Seas, but I think the shower design is unheralded win.
Because Icon was the first of its class, it was treated as a "white paper" ship and every aspect of it was rethought from the ground up, including cabin design.
On ships that came before Icon, standard cabin showers were a tight fit space that looked like a capsule. In fact, it had curved plastic shower doors that truly felt like you were entering the turbo lift on a Star Trek ship.
The showers were even worse on the older, smaller ships that had a fabric shower divider instead of the plastic. That curtain loves to cling to you while you shower.
They were certainly functional, but I can't say there was much enjoyment being in them because of how cramped it felt. I was just glad I wasn't that tall, because I don't know how tall people managed to shower.
Shower design got a little better with newer ships, such as Odyssey of the Seas or Wonder of the Seas. Clearly more space was given, but it was still a tube.
The improvement came with Icon of the Seas, which redesigned the space completely.
Gone was the capsule design, and instead, we got a shower that looks like one we might actually have at home.
It spans the width of the bathroom and has floor to ceiling glass, providing lots of space and most importantly, room for your elbows!
The glass door maneuvered inward and sideways to keep the bathroom less cramped.
Another smart change was to add a bench to the shower, once again providing space and functionality to the shower.
It's a far more spacious design, and prior to Icon, you could only find showers like this in suite cabins.
The shower head is also adjustable, as it can slide up or down the pole to provide the right height.
There's a black release button on the back of the arm that the showerhead attaches to that you can press in order to make the adjustment.
Something else worth noting is there's a guard to prevent the shower from getting extra hot, but you can override it.
When Icon launched, there was some that claimed you couldn't get a hot shower on the new ship, but those folks didn't understand how the temperature controls worked.
The temperature control will stop at 38°C (100°F), but you can override it by pressing the black button on the left to move it past the stopper.
Having gone on Star of the Seas in a couple of different cabins, and in each the shower configuration was very nice.
A world different from the worst shower design
If you're saying "Matt, there's no way the shower on a cruise ship makes a difference", then I'd say you haven't cruised on a cruise ship with the cloth curtain showers.
On the Radiance, Vision and some Voyager Class ships are bathrooms that have a tube shower that have a cloth curtain instead of plastic.
This is problematic for two reasons.
First, the curtain does a very poor job at keeping the water inside the shower. It flails open constantly and you're all but guaranteed to flood your bathroom.
Second, it tends to cling to your body as you're in the shower.
Like a needy ex, I hate clinginess, and then you have to remember that curtain has touched a lot of other people over the years.
Carnival is joining the trend too
When one of our writers went on Carnival's newest ships, I noticed their shower design also departed from the tube shower.
On Carnival Jubilee, a balcony cabin had a "stylish and well-designed" bathroom.
"The best aspect of the bathroom was the large walk-in shower," wrote Allie Hubers when she sailed on Jubilee.
Just like Icon and Star, the shower was rather large with a glass door that maneuvered inward.
