Royal Beach Club in Nassau Bahamas - Review & First Impressions

We are one week back from our first cruise to the Bahamas. Actually, for my husband, 11 year old son and I, it was our first cruise ever. Everyone told us we would be hooked after going on our first cruise, and unfortunately (or fortunately) they were right. We’re already talking about the next one.

We sailed on Royal Caribbean’s Utopia of the Seas, and our first stop was Nassau, Bahamas. Leading up to the cruise, I joined multiple Royal Caribbean Facebook groups and Subreddits (you knew I was going to obsessively research this before we left), and from what I read, Nassau is often a “stay on the boat” port.

For some reason, people just really don’t like Nassau. Oftentimes it’s because they’ve been there so many times that they have nothing left to see, have safety concerns, or they’re afraid of getting pressured into buying things outside of the port. I think the new Royal Beach Club is going to change that for a lot of people.

Being our first cruise, there was no way we were going to stay on the ship at either of the ports. We decided to book tickets for Royal Caribbean’s new Royal Beach Club. This beach club is an exclusive excursion for Royal Caribbean guests, and just opened in December. Leading up to the opening, we watched TikTok videos of it being built. We bought the tickets in a bundle with the non-alcoholic drink package. The drink package was good for the entire length of our cruise, both on the ship and at Royal Beach Club. For three of us, we paid around $700 CAD total for the package (on top of the cost of the cruise). It was originally $800, but when I saw the price go down, I cancelled and rebooked at the lower rate. The drink package included all non-alcoholic drinks including juice, coffee, tea, pop, frozen mocktails, milkshakes, Starbucks drinks at the ship’s cafes, etc.

We arrived in Nassau around 7:45 am. We enjoyed our balcony for a bit while the ship docked, and then headed to the Windjammer for breakfast. At breakfast, they announced that the gangway was down early and we were free to leave the ship. I had the morning perfectly timed out, so the gangway going down earlier than expected meant we had to hurry to finish breakfast, grab our stuff, and head to the gangway. From what I had read online, it’s best to get to Royal Beach Club early, because the beach loungers can fill up fast. There were two Royal Caribbean ships in port that day, so both ships had access to the beach club.

Mason enjoying the balcony, with Royal Beach Club behind him.

We left the ship at 9:30am, and were on the boats heading to Royal Beach Club by 10am. Several small colourful boats are available to take you to the beach club. There was a long line waiting to board the boats, and several boats had already come and gone, so I expected Royal Beach Club to be packed by the time we got there.

Royal Beach Club is split up into three sections - Family Beach, Party Cove, and Chill Beach. If you’re looking at Royal Beach Club from the ship, Family Beach is on the far left side, Party Cove is in the middle, and Chill Beach is on the far right side. Each section has it’s own pool and swim up bar, dining options, music, etc. Based on videos I watched, I knew we wanted to go to Chill Beach immediately. Family Beach and Chill Beach are very similar, however Chill Beach has the view of Atlantis Resort, and since the boat dropped us off at Chill Beach, I knew we had a better chance of finding seating there. I later read on the Facebook group that Family Beach was having a problem with bees that day, so I’m happy we didn’t end up going there.

We were fortunate to have TONS of seating options available at Chill Beach. We chose a spot in the third row, and settled in. Much like CocoCay, Royal Beach Club provides towels that you can exchange once wet. Unlike the ship towels, they don’t require you to scan your Sea Pass to get them. We ended up having our own towels with us, but next time we will just use the supplied towels. We learned pretty quickly that towels take a long time to dry with the humidity there, and carrying around wet towels isn’t fun.

Shortly after sitting down, a Royal Beach Club server was there to take our order. Since all drinks are included with the drink packages, they took our Sea Passes and brought us whatever we wanted, all day long. They brought us a menu to our seats, and we ordered ALL of the frozen mocktails. We tried everything - Strawberry Daiquiris, Pina Coladas, Miami Vices, the Goombay Smash.When we were finished with one drink, they collected our glasses and took our order again.

While we were waiting for the first round of drinks to arrive, we took some pictures in front of the water. The ocean looked amazing, and I knew I wanted to swim, so we took some pictures before getting in the water.

Having never been to the Bahamas, one of the things I was most amazed by was the colour of the water. I’ve seen it in photos, but to see crystal clear turquoise water in person was incredible. There are no filters or colour enhancing done on these photos, this is the actual colour of the water.

The drinks arrived, so we enjoyed them by the water for a bit before swimming.

For anyone who has been on a cruise, or to an all inclusive resort, you know this is normal, but for us this was LUXURY. Getting to sit oceanside in the Bahamas, and have someone bring us whatever drinks we wanted all day long was an absolute dream. I honestly don’t think I can travel non-inclusive again. This ruined me for normal vacations. Since it was non-alcoholic, we were not conservative about how many drinks we ordered. We got our money’s worth, and then some. We’re still talking about how much we miss the endless frozen drinks.

Something I also noticed, is the servers are very attentive to the guests who order alcohol. It was very hot and humid there, so they had to make sure people weren’t overdoing it. The group sitting behind us was doing shots at 10:30am, and their server made sure to bring them ice water periodically. Anyone who does not have the drink package, still has the option to purchase alcohol using your sea pass.

The waves were perfect for swimming that day. We stayed close to shore where we could touch, and just enjoyed floating in the waves. Being from the Maritimes, we’re no strangers to swimming in the ocean, but this was a different experience entirely. The water here was extremely salty, more so than the beaches at home. I carried my Yeti Sidekick bag into the ocean (it’s fully waterproof), and on a few occasions I had to pull out napkins to dab the salt water out of my eyes. Because of the salt content, we also felt more buoyant. It was basically like being in the best wave pool ever. There was barely any seaweed, and we didn’t encounter any unfamiliar sea creatures.

My son found a huge piece of sea glass while swimming. You aren’t allowed to take shells from the Bahamas, but sea glass is considered trash, so we were allowed to take it home.

We spent three hours at the beach before venturing out for some food. All food at Royal Beach Club is completely included, you don’t have to pay for anything. We stayed in the Chill Beach area, and found a picnic table with a PERFECT view of the ocean. It was honestly the best spot we could have found. There were surprisingly a ton of tables and seating available near the food shacks. With how busy it seemed earlier in the day, I expected it to be packed, but many people stayed at Family Beach or Party Cove, so Chill Beach had pretty low crowds.

The small line for food went really fast, and we were able to go back a few times to try other items without waiting. They pre make all of the food and have it sitting on carts behind the counter, so when you order something, it’s already made.

Note our “Maritimes” bag - we brought a little bit of home to the Bahamas.

After lunch, we decided to try out some of the pools at Chill Beach and Party Cove. There were lots of seating options available at both locations. By this time, some clouds were rolling in, which may have helped the crowd situation, as many people were heading back to port early.

It was still warm out, and it hadn’t started raining yet, so we decided to swim for as long as we could before the rain hit.

A look-out point between Chill Beach and Party Cove

All of the pools at Royal Beach Club have swim-up bars, which my son was VERY excited about. Everytime we turned around, he was swimming up for a frozen mocktail. This area had a live band playing “chill” music, like Fleetwood Mac, etc. The pools are also heated, which was nice after being in the ocean.

The pool at Chill Beach. This pool was super long, and had a ton of loungers nearby.

After spending some time at the Chill Beach pool, we decided to explore Party Cove. The infinity pool at Party Cove was stunning. It may have been my favourite view for the entire trip. The waves crashing below, the seagulls flying around, the storm clouds in the distance. Pure magic.

The infinity pool at Party Cove. Rain clouds were rolling in, but no thunder or lightning!

Party Cove definitely had a bigger party vibe than Chill Beach. A DJ was stationed above the pool, and music was loud in this section.I think at this point, a lot of people had gone back to the ship, because it wasn’t very busy.

They had lots of great seating options all over the island!

Towards the end of our day there, it started to rain, so we grabbed a free ice cream and headed back to the boat. The boat drops you off right outside of the straw market, so we decided to walk down the street and see what we could find for souvenirs. A lot of the shops just outside of the port offer souvenirs (keychains, magnets, etc) for really good prices. We also exchanged some of our American cash for Bahamian, as a souvenir.

We loved our day at Royal Beach Club, and would definitely go back! After a busy weekend at Disney, it’s exactly what we needed to relax, and was a great first stop on our vacation. If you’re considering going, and have any questions, let me know!

Travel, The ItineraryDedreanna DionneMarch 1, 2026The ItineraryComment