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A grizzled foreign correspondent was taken to task over a taxi fare on an expense report. He defended it as routine, but the accountants pointed out that he'd been reporting from an aircraft carrier at sea on the day in question. Without missing a beat, the correspondent growled, “Well, do you know how big those things are?”
I thought about that joke while in Finland last month, touring Royal Caribbean's new vessel: the Oasis of the Seas, a ship larger than the Navy's Nimitz-class super-carriers. The ship will be the world's largest cruise liner when it makes its maiden voyage in December. As I stood in the bow, it didn't seem completely unreasonable to take a taxi to the stern, almost a quarter-mile away.
Under construction at the quaint Finnish port of Turku since 2006, the Oasis of the Seas is five times the size of the Titanic and more than half again as large as the mammoth Queen Mary 2. On its 18 decks, a crew of 2,165 will tend to as many as 6,296 paying customers – nearly 45 percent more than the largest cruise ships now operating – on the Freedom-class vessels launched by Royal Caribbean three years ago.
But the Oasis of the Seas isn't just a jumbo version of its predecessors. More important than its staggering size is what its designers have done with the extra space: filled it with attractions never before seen on a cruise ship, including an open-air park with trees and hanging gardens, a boardwalk-style area with a merry-go-round, a pool that changes into a stage for high-diving shows and a theater that has booked the Broadway musical “Hairspray.”
In short, Royal Caribbean has created a Las Vegas resort that floats. Yes, there's a casino, too.
Viewed up close from the outside, the ship doesn't seem like an industry game-changer. It looks instead as if someone decided to stack an ugly, imposing hotel or apartment complex on the keel.
But step aboard, and it immediately feels different.
Raimund Gschaider, the Oasis hotel director, took me through the vessel's belly and then up to Deck 5, where arriving guests will get their first glimpse of the inside. The ship was already in the water and had completed its first sea trial, but it was still littered with scaffolding, tools and building materials and buzzing with thousands of workers trying to finish the interior.
Even with the clutter, though, it was clear that coming aboard the Oasis would be less like climbing onto a boat than like walking up the concourse of a fancy stadium. Instead of placing a block of cabins in the middle of the ship, the builders have stacked the rooms on either side, a radical innovation that left an airy, glass-enclosed atrium longer than a football field at the core.
Gschaider called it the Royal Promenade and pointed out stores, restaurants and the first cupcake shop at sea. I told him it felt like a nice shopping mall.
Determined to impress, he led me up a few decks to the area dubbed Central Park. (There's a small bar and lounge on a platform that moves up and down between the decks, but we took the stairs.) Now we were standing under the sun in what felt like a plaza between two small apartment buildings, actually walls lined with cabin balconies.
Gschaider pointed out art galleries and restaurants, and told me that when the ship arrives in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., – the arrival is set for Wednesday – more than 2,000 plants will be installed on the deck. “Imagine sitting here under the sky, amid the bushes and trees, with the light breeze of the Caribbean, enjoying your steak,” he said.
But he wasn't done. The Promenade and Central Park are just two of seven “neighborhoods” on the Oasis. Two decks down and toward the stern is the open-air Boardwalk, complete with faux wood tiles, leading to a high-diving pool at the end of the ship. From the amphitheater-style seats, 600 guests can watch acrobatics and synchronized swimming with the ocean as a backdrop.
Nine decks up, atop the roofs of the cabins, is the Sports Zone, which might be described as a more traditional cruise ship's outdoor space – if weren't for the size. I counted four swimming pools, two rock-climbing walls, a miniature golf course, a jogging track, a basketball court, two water rides that simulate surfing and a zip line you can buckle yourself into and glide along over the Boardwalk far below. Nearby are the luxury lofts, penthouses with a view of the sea that sell for as much as $34,000 per week.
And somehow, below deck, architects also managed to squeeze in a big children's play area, a sizable gym and spa, and an entertainment section with a theater, ice rink, casino, comedy stage and several nightclubs.
High-tech command center
Carolyn Spencer Brown, the editor of the online site Cruise Critic, says the designers managed to make the ship feel both spacious and cozy. “I remember walking around it and forgetting I was on a cruise ship,” she said in a phone interview. “The design is interesting because it tries to move people to every corner, with these separate, smaller areas.”
Part of the appeal, I realized, lies in the knowledge that you're not just in a resort but also in a marvel of engineering – an enormous, seaworthy craft that can cruise through the ocean at a speed of 22 knots (25.3 mph). From the stern, I could see its half-completed sister ship nearby in dry dock and look down into its mechanical guts. The ships are too big to be built the traditional way, from the bottom up, a deck at a time. Instead, pieces as large as buildings are finished on shore, then hoisted into place and welded together like so many Lego blocks. The Oasis took 181 blocks, each weighing about 600 tons.
Tor Olsen, one of the ship's captains, could barely contain his excitement as he showed off a high-tech bridge full of keyboards, joysticks and computer screens.
Gizmos aside, at some Oasis destinations – such as the stops in St. Thomas, St. Maarten and the Bahamas – harbors have been modified to accommodate the enormous ship.
“Our hope, of course, is that people don't get off, because this ship itself is the destination,” Olsen said. “This is better than a lot of the islands.”
But if the port calls don't matter, then why take a cruise at all? Why not just go to a resort in Las Vegas?
“This,” Gschaider insisted, “is better than Vegas.”
