[2] On 11 February 2011, Royal Caribbean announced that they had ordered a new class of ships from the Meyer Werft shipyard in Papenburg, Germany, the first of which was scheduled to be delivered by autumn 2014.

[5] She arrived at her first homeport, Southampton, England, on 15 April 2015, to prepare for her maiden European summer season.

Wilby then sang Katy Perry's hit song "Firework", after which she pushed a button to send a very large bottle of Perrier-Jouët champagne down a zipline on the ship's top deck, from the North Star gondola thrill ride into a wall bearing the ship's name.

[8] On 7 February 2016, the ship was struck by "extreme wind and sea conditions" off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina while sailing south from Bayonne, New Jersey to Port Canaveral, Florida.

The ship resumed sailing on 8 February, returning to port in the New York area to avoid further bad weather that had been forecast.

[18][19] On 4 September 2016, Anthem of the Seas was again confronted with stormy conditions generated from the nearby Hurricane Hermine, which was a post-tropical cyclone at the time.