People are sometimes surprised to hear a boutique advisor recommend a Royal Caribbean sailing. They shouldn’t be. My work is not to sell the most expensive cabin on the smallest ship — it is to match a particular group of people to the voyage that will actually make them happy. And when that group spans three generations, the big ships very often win.

The large mainstream lines — Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, MSC, Disney — are engineered to solve one specific and genuinely hard problem: keeping a six-year-old, a sixteen-year-old, their parents, and their grandparents all content on the same afternoon. That is not the problem a quiet luxury ship is built for, and pretending otherwise does a family no favours.

What the megaships do brilliantly

The defining feature of a large ship is that everyone can pursue a different day and still meet for dinner. The teenagers disappear to the surf simulator and the arcade; the youngest are in a supervised kids’ club the grandparents trust; the adults find a quiet deck, a spa, or a cooking class. No one is negotiating a single itinerary that pleases no one fully. On a small ship, that same range of ages is often stuck with each other — charming for a weekend, wearing for a week.

There is also the matter of arithmetic. A multigenerational trip usually means three, four, or five staterooms. The large lines offer connecting cabins, family suites, and a fare structure that keeps the total within reach — which frequently decides whether the whole family can come at all. Flexible dining removes the nightly ordeal of getting nine people to a table at the same hour. These are unglamorous virtues, and they are exactly the ones that make or break a family sailing.

When Royal Caribbean and its peers are the right call

I point families toward a big ship when the group is genuinely wide in age — grandparents and grandchildren both aboard; when it is someone’s first cruise and the sheer abundance of things to do lowers the stakes; when the budget has to stretch across many cabins; and when the point of the trip is the time together rather than any single port. For a reunion, a milestone birthday, or a first family voyage, the ship is the destination — and the big lines build the best version of that ship.

When they are not

The honest other half: a large ship is the wrong instrument for a couple seeking quiet, for travellers who care most about the food and wine, and for anyone whose reason to sail is the destination itself — the small harbours a megaship physically cannot enter. If the Aegean’s quieter islands or a table worth crossing an ocean for is what you’re after, we should be talking about very different ships. Knowing which conversation you’re in is most of the job.

Where an advisor still earns their place

“Book a big ship” is not the end of the advice; it is the beginning. Which ship in the fleet — the newest and busiest, or a slightly older hull with more room to breathe? Which week, which cabins adjacent to one another, which dining plan for a group this size? And the fares on the large lines move constantly, which means the same sailing can be negotiated well or booked at retail. That is the part I do quietly in the background, whichever ship turns out to be right for you.

If you’re planning a trip with the whole family — the full span of ages, more cabins than you can count on one hand — tell me who’s coming and I’ll tell you honestly whether the answer is a grand ship or a small one.