Info regarding Rover, Chief Dog Officer on Icon of the Seas

Chalker · April 3

My family and I got to have an amazing private session with Rover, the Chief Dog Office on Icon of the Seas and thought we'd share a lot of the info we learned, since it seems lots of people love Rover and wonder about her.

We got to have the private session by winning the Make a Wish Auction on the second day of the cruise. In case you aren't aware, Royal Caribbean has a partnership with Make a Wish and does special auctions on each cruise for a variety of experiences / perks. On Icon of the Seas, a private session with Rover is usually one of the items. We got into a small bidding war with another family, but stopped bidding at $300. The cruise director then offered both our families sessions with Rover if we both made a $300 donation. We quickly agreed.

Once you win an auction. they bring a small receipt for you to sign / fill out your info and the charge shows up on our onboard account in the Royal Caribbean app. We also got a certificate with details of the meeting. They followed up the next day with a voicemail in our stateroom, and then on the 4th day with a personalize letter delivered to your stateroom. They worked around our schedule a bit to find a time that worked for us, which ended up being on day 6, the second sea day of our cruise.

We had to meet a staff member outside of Spotlight Karaoke at our designated time. They brought us into the small private Karaoke room in the back, where Rover was already waiting for us, along with her “Chief of Staff” and “Chief of Staff in training”. Rover had a ton of energy and was sniffing all over the place and loved rolling around and being petted. We got to spend about 25 minutes total with them, asking lots of questions and getting pictures and videos taken with Rover. Some things we learned:

As of now (April 2025) Rover is almost 2 years old. She is a golden retriever lab.
She joined the ship when she was 6 months old, in Puerto Rico, after the Icon made its initial transatlantic crossing but before the first passenger cruise. She was part of the christening ceremonies in Jan 2024 in Miami.
Royal Caribbean has a partnership with the American Humane Society, which does regular visits / inspections to ensure Rover’s health and well being. The RCL staff were very proud of the fact they are certified by AHS.
As part of this, Rover is only allowed to ‘work’ for a max of 2 to 3 hours per day, and 20 minutes at a time. The rest of her day is doing normal ‘dog’ stuff.
She doesn’t really like big crowds, so generally only makes unscheduled appearances in quieter places, in particular Central Park and the Overlook.
She is officially a ‘3 stripe officer’ and has a small suite that corresponds to that rank. Her ‘Chief of Staff’ gets to live in the suite as well. The cabin is setup to provide her with lots of space to play / live / sleep. She has 3 different dog beds available in there for her and a variety of toys / activities.
When not in her cabin and not visiting with passengers, she spends a lot of time in the crew areas. She regularly visits the bridge and the captain loves her. The crew in general love interacting with her through the day, such as in the crew café area. There are certain areas she can also run around, such as the helipad, where she regularly plays fetch.
Her ‘Chief of Staff’ is the crew member that takes care of her day to day. When we met Rover, the primary crew member had been onboard since September and was getting ready to have a vacation. Another crew member was ‘in-training’ to take over and would be moving into the cabin in the near future. This position is highly competitive due to the perks that come with it (i.e. the cabin, the duties, and schedule). It only goes to staff that have spent a significant amount of time on Icon and already know and interact with Rover a lot (i.e. smart crew member go out of their way to interact regularly with Rover day to day when she is in the crew areas). They want to ensure Rover always has someone available she is familiar and comfortable with.
When Icon is in Miami once a week for cruise turnover, Rover gets to go off the ship. She has a regular vet she visits there, along with a groomer she sees every week. She loves going to the beach and playing in the sand, as well as various outdoor parks and malls. She’s sometimes recognized as Rover by people walking around Miami.
When we met Rover, she was wearing a cute little pink skirt that looked like a mermaid tail. She doesn’t dress up too often. She also has a captain’s hat, a pirate costume for Halloween, and a reindeer costume for Christmas. She also has a variety of bandanas she wears.
One of the reasons she was so active when we met her was because she had recently found a duck in that room and was looking for another one (search up ‘cruise ship ducks’ if you aren’t aware of the practice of hiding / finding them). But she’s not allowed to have the ducks because they are choking hazards for her. Same for certain types of other toys (i.e. stuffed animals).
Once she turns 2 years old, she’ll be allowed to have plush toys, which the crew said is going to really be amazing to her.
Some of her favorite games are fetch and tug of war. The staff can’t say the words ‘ball’ or ‘tug’ in front of her (they spelled them out letter by letter in front of us) or else she’ll think she’s going to do that game right then and would have stood at the door because she knows that it’s only allowed in certain areas.
She’s expected to stay on Icon until she’s about 5 or 6 years old and then will be adopted by someone to live out the rest of her life in a ‘normal home environment’. There is already a long list of people interested in taking her in at that point.
Rover has a doggy life vest available for her (check out her Instagram page for a picture of her wearing it). Her muster station is by the giant dog statue on the Royal Promenade.
She has great sea legs and hasn’t ever had any issues when there are rough seas.
There is a dedicated pet relief area for Rover near the front of the ship on the walking track on deck 5 that you can see anytime. It’s got what looks like a raised bed garden planter in it with what looks like wood chips or similar that is a dirt simulant.
Rover is not going to be the only Chief Dog Officer in the fleet for long. Star of the Seas is going to launch soon with ‘Sailor’ as the Chief Dog Officer.
Rover is generally hand fed throughout the day. If you interact with her you’ll notice the Chief of Staff has a fanny pack and is constantly pulling somethings out of it for Rover to eat. This is generally her food. She does occasionally get other treats too. She loves carrots and bananas, in particular. One great story we heard was that one day Rover was in the crew areas and there was a small piece of carrot that had fallen on the floor. Some galley staff were cleaning up and her Chief of Staff ask if she could have the carrot piece to give to Rover. The galley staff shook their heads no.. disappeared into a walk in cooler, and came back out with a full sized carrot to give to Rover. Rover thought this was the most amazing thing and was strutting around with the carrot in her mouth like a stick or bone for a while (they clearly didn’t want Rover to have to settle for a ‘scrap of carrot’) – If anyone from Royal Caribbean management is reading this, please give Rover full carrots more often! I don’t think the crew feel empowered to ask for them.
Rover responds to a variety of hand signals and verbal commands. For example, she knows how to look at a camera for a pose, and how to wave. We got a short video of us all waving to the camera at the same time.
Royal Caribbean does allow service animals onboard. Whenever there are any onboard, the Chief of Staff are notified. Rover isn’t a big fan of small dogs in particular (they often are a bit aggressive around her). The main show on Icon is ‘The Wizard of Oz’ (which is absolutely amazing!) and has a small dog puppet that plays the role of Toto. They once introduced Rover to the Toto puppet and Rover was very confused, because it looks like a small dog, but didn’t smell or sound or move like a small dog.
She got a special dog-friendly birthday cake and party for her 1 year birthday.
She has a traditional collar with a dog tag with her name / phone number on it. She does not have any type of crew ID card or the typical RCI staff name tag. Her Chief of Staff said they are trying to get her one, but haven’t been able to yet (again, if anyone from RCI management is reading this, please give Rover a staff crew badge to wear!)

Hope this is helpful and you all get a chance to meet Rover!

JohnK6404 · April 3

Very nice donation for a great cause!

Thanks for the additional info on Rover! We're partial to Rover as we have two Golden Retrievers of our own and are active members of our local Golden Retriever rescue organization (my wife is a member of the board and both our Goldens are rescues).

Our "pups"... Bella (12) on left and Jake (7) on the right!

We were lucky in that we had the chance to meet Rover a couple of times on our Icon sailing last May. It was not easy tracking her down! Our FB cruise group had a "Rover Alert" established so when anyone saw her, they would message the group immediately!