Anthem of the Seas - Penang & Phuket from Singapore
Anthem of the Seas' signature short escape from her Singapore homeport, pairing George Town's street-food-famous old quarter with the beaches of Phuket before a lazy sea day back down the Strait of Malacca.
Price Range
$
Budget
*Prices vary by cabin type, sailing date, and availability. Confirm rates with Royal Caribbean before booking.
Ship Details — Anthem of the Seas
View full Anthem of the Seas details
Year Built
2015
Tonnage
168,666 GT
Passengers
4,180
Crew
1,500
Decks
16
Class
Quantum Class
Itinerary & Route Map
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Where this cruise calls, day by day
4 ports and 1 sea day over 4 Nights.
- Day 1
Singapore
SingaporeDepartSingapore is the turnaround hub for most Southeast Asia itineraries, so for a lot of passengers it is embarkation day rather than a port call. Ships use either Marina Bay Cruise Centre, purpose-built for the largest hulls, or the older HarbourFront terminal next to VivoCity. What you get on arrival is an efficient, very hot city where the metro is fast and cheap and almost nothing worth seeing is more than half an hour away.
- Gardens by the Bay - the Supertree Grove, Cloud Forest and Flower Dome
- Hawker lunch at Maxwell Food Centre or Lau Pa Sat
- Chinatown and the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, then the shophouses of Little India
- Singapore Botanic Gardens and its National Orchid Garden
- Getting ashore
- Docked. Marina Bay Cruise Centre is a 10-minute walk from Marina South Pier MRT and a short taxi from downtown; HarbourFront sits directly above its own MRT station.
- Best months
- Feb-Apr (driest); hot and humid year-round
- Day 2
Penang (George Town)
MalaysiaPortPenang is the easiest port day in Malaysia, because Swettenham Pier puts you at the edge of George Town's UNESCO-listed old quarter and you can simply walk off. The town is a layered Straits Chinese, Indian, Malay and colonial city of shophouses, clan houses and street art, dense enough to cover on foot. It is also one of the best eating stops in Asia.
- The Khoo Kongsi clan house and the Chew Jetty stilt village
- Fort Cornwallis and the colonial buildings along the Esplanade
- Kek Lok Si Temple at Air Itam, and the Penang Hill funicular
- Street food at Gurney Drive or the hawker stalls off Lebuh Chulia
- Getting ashore
- Docked at Swettenham Pier, on the edge of George Town's historic centre - most of the old town is a 10-20 minute walk from the gangway.
- Best months
- Dec-Mar (driest); Sep-Nov is the wettest
- Day 3
Phuket
ThailandPortPhuket is a large island rather than a single town, and where your ship puts you changes the day considerably. In the November-to-April high season most ships anchor off Patong and run tenders to the beach; in the wetter months they use the deepwater pier at Ao Makham on the east coast. Patong is loud and commercial, but Old Phuket Town's Sino-Portuguese shophouses are a genuinely different Thailand.
- Old Phuket Town - Thalang Road's Sino-Portuguese shophouses and the Chinese shrines
- The Big Buddha on Nakkerd Hill, with the view over Chalong Bay
- Wat Chalong, the island's largest and busiest temple
- A longtail or speedboat out to Phang Nga Bay and the limestone stacks
- Getting ashore
- Varies by season - tender to Patong Beach in the Nov-Apr high season, or dock at Phuket Deep Sea Port (Ao Makham), about 20-30 minutes from Patong and 15 from Old Phuket Town.
- Best months
- Nov-Apr (dry season, calm Andaman)
Day 4 · At sea
- Day 5
Singapore
SingaporeArriveSingapore is the turnaround hub for most Southeast Asia itineraries, so for a lot of passengers it is embarkation day rather than a port call. Ships use either Marina Bay Cruise Centre, purpose-built for the largest hulls, or the older HarbourFront terminal next to VivoCity. What you get on arrival is an efficient, very hot city where the metro is fast and cheap and almost nothing worth seeing is more than half an hour away.
- Gardens by the Bay - the Supertree Grove, Cloud Forest and Flower Dome
- Hawker lunch at Maxwell Food Centre or Lau Pa Sat
- Chinatown and the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, then the shophouses of Little India
- Singapore Botanic Gardens and its National Orchid Garden
- Getting ashore
- Docked. Marina Bay Cruise Centre is a 10-minute walk from Marina South Pier MRT and a short taxi from downtown; HarbourFront sits directly above its own MRT station.
- Best months
- Feb-Apr (driest); hot and humid year-round
What to know about this sailing
Drawn from 7 traveler threads about Anthem of the Seas out of Singapore, 27 about the Singapore–Penang–Phuket route on other ships, the route data and the port notes above (the archive holds 260 Anthem threads overall, mostly from other regions).
The bluntest reply in the Anthem-from-Singapore threads is that for what this loop costs at Christmas you could spend three nights at a good beach hotel in Penang or Phuket, fly there on a budget airline and eat and drink better, which is the honest counter-argument to a four-night cruise whose two ports are both beach-and-food destinations in their own right. The route itself is simple: north up the Strait of Malacca to Penang on day two, Phuket on day three, then a sea day for the run home. Penang is a walk-off call; Phuket is the one where the month decides how you get ashore, and on a single-day stop a tender queue is real time lost. Season is the structural point. Anthem homeports in Singapore for the northern winter, and a poster who tried to book this loop for May 2025 found no dates because the ship is in Alaska by then; the replies, and a 2023 photo thread from the same Singapore–Penang–Phuket circuit, point to Spectrum of the Seas running the identical route in other months. The base fare on this page is the cheapest way into a Quantum-class ship in the catalog, but it moves with the Singapore school calendar: the Christmas-week price a 2024 poster quoted was well over double it.
The replies to that pricing question describe who is actually on board. A round-trip from Singapore in the school holidays fills first with Singaporeans, then Indian and mainland Chinese nationals, with Australians outnumbering Britons or Americans; one reply compared it to a four-day Caribbean run on the same class of ship with a different crowd, less drinking, more gambling, and pools that may be busier after dark because most guests come from equally hot countries and are not sun-seekers. Singapore and Penang are hot and humid in any month. A travel-agent reply who did the same three-country loop on Spectrum in December for a honeymoon called the seas calm and the fellow passengers courteous. Nobody in the archive complains about the ship on this route; the reservations are about price and about whether the two ports are better done by hotel.
Against the rest of the Singapore catalog this is the sampler. The ten-night Vietnam & Thailand sibling on the same ship costs roughly three times as much and is the one people book for the ports; Diamond Princess's fourteen-night Southeast Asia Holiday shares Penang and Phuket at several times this fare, and a January 2026 review of that sailing over Christmas and New Year, from a family group of ten, called the older ship immaculate with no rain at any port and a mostly Australian, North American and British passenger list. The Silversea and Seabourn departures from Singapore are a different price universe. This four-nighter suits people already in the region who want to test whether cruising is for them, families on the Singapore school break, and anyone who wants a Quantum-class ship for the price of a weekend; it does not suit travelers flying long-haul for it, or anyone who wants Penang and Phuket for their own sake.
Questions about this sailing
Can I fly into Singapore the same day Anthem of the Seas departs?
A 2024 poster with a flight landing at 11:45 for a 4 pm sailing on this route got both answers. The standard advice was to fly in the day before, but replies familiar with Singapore said the airport-to-terminal run is about twenty minutes, leaving roughly a two-hour buffer, and that many passengers on these short loops arrive on regional flights the same morning. The consistent caveat: you must be aboard by the line's boarding cut-off, typically an hour or two before departure, and morning flights are delayed less often than afternoon ones.
Why is the 4-night Anthem of the Seas Singapore cruise so expensive in December?
Because December is the Singapore school holiday and the ship prices to that market, not to visitors. A 2024 poster quoted a Christmas-week fare well over double the base price on this page and asked whether it was any kind of deal; replies said no, that the same money buys three nights at a good Penang or Phuket beach hotel plus a budget flight, and that the value case for this loop is strongest outside the regional holidays.
Do I need a Wi-Fi package on a short Singapore cruise?
Probably not. Posters on Anthem's Singapore sailings in late 2024 asked whether a single-day pass could be bought on board rather than paying per day for the whole cruise; replies said yes, at the undiscounted daily rate plus a couple of dollars, sold as a continuous 24-hour block, and one reported about $25 for a day on a three-night sailing. The more common advice was a regional SIM or eSIM, since this itinerary docks on two of its four days and only the sea day is spent away from land.
Onboard Amenities
Cruise Highlights
About the Ship
What Travelers Say About Anthem of the Seas
Reviews of the ship itself — the same for every Anthem of the Seas sailing. Distilled from 272 traveler threads, passenger reviews and travel blogs.
Anthem of the Seas is Royal Caribbean's globe-trotting Quantum-class veteran - the longtime New Jersey favorite that now splits its year between Alaska summers from Seattle and South Pacific seasons from Sydney. Its identity is 'the indoor ship': the North Star capsule, iFLY skydiving, SeaPlex sports arena, indoor pool and Two70's tech-heavy shows were designed for cool-weather cruising, which is exactly why it thrives on the routes it sails today. Ten years of reviews average out remarkably steady - around 4.2 - for a ship that has hauled millions of passengers.
What People Love
- The North Star capsule - a glass pod rising 300 feet over the sea - is free on sea days and repeatedly called the best view in cruising, especially on scenic routes
- RipCord by iFLY indoor skydiving and the FlowRider give it a thrill lineup no similarly-priced ship in its markets matches
- Weather-proof design: the indoor pool, Solarium and SeaPlex make it the rare big ship that stays fun on cold or rainy days - a huge plus in Alaska
Common Complaints
- The Windjammer buffet is undersized for 4,180 guests and turns into a scrum at breakfast on port days
- Signature attractions (North Star on port days, iFLY, FlowRider lessons) can carry fees or long waitlists - book immediately or miss out
- Pool deck is smaller and more enclosed than Oasis-class ships; on warm-weather itineraries outdoor space gets tight
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