Brilliance of the Seas: Sanitation Record & Health Report

Brilliance of the Seas has been sailing since 2002, which makes it old enough to legally drink in every port it visits, and it just came off a top-to-bottom refurbishment in 2025 to prove it's not ready for the scrapyard. The Radiance-class ships have always been the quiet overachievers of the Royal Caribbean fleet — smaller, faster, and somehow more graceful than the floating shopping malls the line churns out now — and the inspection record backs that reputation up, mostly. A 97 on March 23, 2026 is the kind of score that makes a health inspector nod and move on without asking follow-up questions. Then April 12 rolled around and it slipped to a 92. Still comfortably passing (the bar is 86), but a six-point drop in three weeks is the kind of trend line that gets flagged "declining" for a reason, and we're not going to pretend otherwise.

Here's the honest math: with only two inspections on the books, this ship's all-time average of 94.5 is sitting above the fleet-wide average of 96.7 we track across all 162 ships... actually, no — 94.5 is below that 96.7 benchmark, so file Brilliance under "solidly fine" rather than "class valedictorian." The food safety side, though, is where this ship actually flexes — a perfect 100.0 and a "Spotless Galley" grade is as good as it gets, and it's the number we'd trust more than a two-inspection sample size that swings six points in either direction. We don't have outbreak data to weigh in on here — CDC's outbreak records were unreachable at the time of writing — so we're leaving that column blank rather than guessing, and you should be skeptical of any review that tells you otherwise.

Who it's for: Cruisers who want a mid-size, well-refurbished ship without the 6,000-passenger crowd crush, especially anyone eyeing those Ravenna or Civitavecchia sailings for a genuinely different itinerary than the standard Caribbean shuffle. The galley score alone should ease any food-safety nerves. Who should skip it: Anyone allergic to variance — if a declining score trend makes you twitchy even when it's still passing, wait for the next inspection cycle to see whether 92 was a blip or the start of a pattern before you book.