Recapping my first Royal Caribbean cruise on Icon of the Seas

Did the 7-night Western Caribbean from Miami in a balcony stateroom (11388), disembarked last week. Our first time sailing with Royal Caribbean; not super big cruisers but the trips we've taken have been on Norwegian mostly. Sharing some of my thoughts; TLDR terrific experience and very impressed with Royal Caribbean across the board (will definitely cruise with them again), huge ship but very well managed and very well thought out. Sorry for all the text, waiting for a flight so had some time to type --

• Getting on and off the ship, from checking in, ports, and disembarking, is the smoothest experience I have ever gone through in my lifetime, for any sort of trip. We did the check-in stuff on the app beforehand, got to PortMiami, dropped off our suitcases with one of the guys, literally went in, up the escalator, through security, and onto the ship in a few minutes (I was actually in disbelief that I was walking onto the ship, kept thinking I was walking to another part of the check-in process). I cannot gush enough how extremely fast we got on the ship, explored it, and were eating in Windjammer. We didn't pay for any extras like VIP or anything (I kind of wonder how fast things would be if we did). My wife and I were joking the trip was worth it just for the smooth check in process. With all the people, at ports, no waiting to get off the ship, smooth and orderly down the escalator and off the ship; same for getting back on (I don't even understand how they made it feel like it was a smaller ship's worth of people getting on and off board). In comparison, NCL (from New York at least) involves a lot of waiting to first get on the ship, and at ports there is a lot of standing in line waiting. I remember our last NCL cruise to get off at one port we had to wait in a theatre with other groups of people, then had to wait, standing, in a line in the casino, then more waiting before disembarking.
• Using the ship wifi was very easy. We paid for the Voom package, one user two devices and we didn't have any trouble the entire trip on our phones (email, social media, YouTube, etc.). We actually connected as soon as we got on the ship and were still exploring, before we got to the muster check-in. I was also able to use ExpressVPN on my phone and laptop with the ship wifi if I connected it after connecting through the app (needed to disconnect vpn to use all the features on the ship app again). My wife's corporate vpn did not work on Voom. Wifi on ExpressVPN was fast enough for me to upload large files, email, edit docs; I didn't test Zoom.
• The muster/safety check-in was very easy, showed up at the bar before the ice skating rink and a worker scanned our phones and that was it. I thought it was going to be waiting with groups of people like on NCL.
• When first exploring the ship we were overwhelmed by how large it is, literally like a mall on a cruise ship. Very quickly however somehow it stopped feeling like a huge ship and felt like a walkable ship like every other ship we've been on. Kudos to the very well thought-out design -- super super cool to be in a floating mall with shops but still feel very walkable -- In fact we chose to walk most of the time rather than wait for the elevators (which were very fast as well since they are the kind that go to the floor you choose first rather than stopping at every floor). Places were a good mix of feeling very busy without feeling super super packed.
• I used to live in New York and walked through Central Park almost every day, so before the trip I was kind of rolling my eyes at the idea of Icon's "Central Park". I confess I loved Royal Caribbean's Central Park concept -- breezy, comfortable, lots of places to sit and relax, and the cafe was nice to get snacks and drinks. I spent a bunch of time there in the chairs. I was very tempted to stop by the watch store in that area but did not give in.
• Food in the main dining room, buffet (Windjammer), and specialty (we tried the steakhouse and Izumi) was average, on par with Norwegian, in our opinion. We were not blown away, including by the pizza parlor place that people seem to rave about online -- very average. interestingly nothing tasted "bad", but rather a lot of flavorlessness. I do want to note I did not get food poisoning the entire trip, whereas on NCL I typically get food poisoning the first or second day. First day Windjammer had lobster, last evening Windjammer had lobster and a chocolate fountain/chocolate dipping station. One thing we liked was the cafe-like places (Pearl Cafe and the cafe in the Central Park area) -- the to-go boxes are an awesome idea and things like couscous salad and sandwiches from there were great. We didn't pay for a drink package, found the lemonade, fruit punch, water, iced tea, juice coffee etc more than enough. Paid for a few alcoholic drinks and sodas during the trip, drinks were fairly light on the alcohol content. The food court area with crepes, asian stir fry, Mac and cheese, mediterranean was also cool, but again only average tasting (crepes were fine, overly sweet; asian stir fry worse than Panda Express). Overall we really enjoyed the variety of dining options in addition to a buffet. I don't think we were able to figure out the Main Dining Room reservation system, we reserved one floor (3) I think and kept going to the wrong floor (4 or 5) but getting seated anyway. The food being mostly the same in the main dining room and buffet made it so next trip we'd be fine without going to the dining room. Some people took the dress formal and dress in white nights fairly seriously, others dressed however.
• The aqua diving show with the robots, Starburst ice skating show, Wizard of Oz, and the new superhero show -- these were amazing. Terrific to begin with and the fact they're on a ship brings it to amazing. We could only get tickets once I think so I went back on my own for standing room only to watch the aqua show and ice skating show by myself twice. The superhero show didn't require reservations. I liked the Q&A with performers and the Chief Dog Officer, found it informative and fun. I even enjoyed the pirate show thing in the main lobby. I didn't participate but liked watching others enjoy the silent parties with the headsets, too.
• Employees were all extremely professional and hard working, more so than on NCL and Carnival, in my opinion. My wife actually thought the employees seemed unhappy/"too" serious but I don't think I felt that. There seemed to be a large number of middle manager types walking around and asking the other staff to do things like clean or pickup, which I thought was interesting. Stateroom attendants I saw at 6am, 9pm, not sure what kind of schedules they have but very intense.
• The room is much nicer (partly because newer, partly because the layout feels better thought out maybe) than on NCL balcony rooms, love the lighting control panel and different modes (like movie/theater mode). Water temperature very good, pressure fine, very good size balcony with outdoor light, good privacy as well. When walking to our room the first day to pickup our room keys we actually walked by our luggage in the hallway, not sure when they would have been delivered on their own, so we just rolled them the rest of the way. The bed/s were nothing special.
• Ports/excursions: Did the Gumbalimba park tour in Roatan, nothing in Costa Maya (just walked around), nothing in CocoCay (walked around and lounged on the beach); we had booked a submarine excursion in Cozumel but it got canceled around 45 minutes before check-in time due to the weather (refunded). We enjoyed the different stops and being able to relax and go at our own pace.
• Miscellaneous: we couldn't really figure out the disembarkation process beforehand (reserved one time on the app but then it got changed on its own for some reason); we were fine with handling our own luggage so we just left the room at 8am after breakfast; they put out a ton of chairs on the top decks, I mean a weirdly huge amount; I understand the idea I guess but the entire trip there were just huge swaths of empty chairs by the pool and upper decks; mini golf, basketball, the water slides are all very cool, also liked watching the dodgeball competition; the Royal Caribbean app is great, including the customer service messaging and for reserving things; very good sized gym with lots of equipment, wish there were more freestanding benches however (only a handful that were always occupied whether I went at 6am or at 9pm), liked the other gym area / yoga type area but the stationary bikes on that level didn't seem to work; liked the running track; liked the water bottle refill stations; casino was smaller than I would have expected but decent, casino nonsmoking area was pretty good. When in port and first walking off, if there was another ship next to us the Icon would seem similar in size, but once we got to the end and could see both ships side by side, we were always blown away by how wide the Icon is, very impressive in scale. Nothing to do with the ship but I wish more people wore masks and washed their hands; lots of coughing openly without covering and lots of walking right by handwash stations; I was fine for most of the trip, got deathly sick on the last night despite being covid and flu vaccinated.