Royal Caribbean's Oasis of the Seas, the biggest cruise ship in the world |
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$75 million has been spent on
tripling the size of the Port Everglades terminal at Fort Lauderdale from where
it sails, and new docks have been built around the Caribbean to berth it Back in the days when old-fangled ocean liners were evolving into shiny new cruise ships, sea dogs had a way of distinguishing between the two. A liner was a ship with a hotel built inside it; a cruise ship was a hotel with a ship built around it. It's a distinction, along with almost every other maritime convention, that has been blown out of the water by the $1.4 Billion Oasis of The Seas. Never mind the hotel stuff, Oasis is hardly a ship. For those just back from Planet Zog and who may have missed it, Oasis, which embarks on its maiden voyage on December 5, is the biggest cruise ship ever built: |
| - So big that if stood on end it would be taller than either the highest
skyscraper at Canary Wharf in London or the Chrysler Building in New York. - So big that it can carry 6,296 passengers at a time. - So big that it needs at least 312,000 passengers a year. It has to fill up every week because it only makes seven-night cruises . - So big that travel agents are worried they may not find enough aircraft seats between them and Florida to supply it. Four out of 10 British holidaymakers booking a West Indies cruise with the ship's owners, Royal Caribbean, are choosing to go on Oasis. - And so big that $75 million has been spent on tripling the size of the Port Everglades terminal at Fort Lauderdale from where it sails, and new docks have been built around the Caribbean to berth it. |
| It is not a thing of beauty. The first sight is of
a colossal wall, 16 storeys high, pixelated with balconies. It will keep
Channel Five going with programmes about monster machines for years. But is it
a ship? Not in any traditional poop and fo'c'sle sense, it isn't. Royal Caribbean admits as much. The company refers to it as "our floating nation". That may be a little extravagant, but only a little: the ship's population of 8,461, which comprises all those passengers, plus 2,165 crew, is more than half that of the island of Anguilla. If it is a ship, it's a town ship. Three quarters of Oasis is in maritime denial. Until you reach the open decks - or your cabin, if you have one of the 1,481 with an outside balcony - you're barely aware of the sea. As the song so nearly goes, "Join Oasis to see the world, and whad'ya see? You see a city." Life on these ocean waves is essentially urban living, more metro than matelot. You walk in off the street - well, off that whopping new terminal - straight on to a street, paved, lined with shops, bars, cafés and a pizzeria. There is even a car parked in the middle. It's a racy two-seater, a slinky replica of a 1936 Auburn. On Oasis you may question what they have done, but you can't question the panache with which they have done it. That street - Royal Promenade - is one of the ideas carried on from Royal Caribbean's two |
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smaller classes of ship, Voyager and
Freedom, both vast in their day. Of course, the Oasis Promenade is bigger: big
enough for there to be a bar at its centre. It's called the Rising Tide because
it ascends very slowly through three decks. It's like a pod from the London
Eye; it has the same 32-person capacity. But the Rising Tide only goes up and
down, not around and around. It's proclaimed as the first on any ship, though I confess the point of it escaped me. As did "the cosy charm of an old English pub", which was promised in the Globe and Atlas. Besides being among the few places where smoking is permitted, it is lit like a power cut. So for "cosy charm", read "nicotine-fumed", and instead of English pub imagine New York dive. Royal Promenade is one of seven "neighbourhoods". Note the urban terminology. Nothing nautical there: there might at least have been somewhere called Buoyz n the Hood. Rising Tide doesn't really count because that sounds like a social trend, but the Schooner Bar does have pictures of ships, part of a $10 million, 7,000-item art collection. No paradox, then, that for me the most convincing bit of Oasis was easily the most metropolitan. Central Park nestles in a cleft in the heart of the ship, open to the sky and bounded on either side by five-storey blocks of balconied apartments. The effect is of an exclusive little mews with outdoor cafés and sidewalk tables outside Vintages wine bar and Giovanni's trattoria. |
| Throughout it all runs the "park", actually a garden containing
93 different plant varieties, lilies, ferns, crotons, ginger and trees that
will grow to more than 24 feet. Hanging gardens, four floors high, of ferns and
flowering vines cascade down either side. Unless the ship rolls, you would have
no idea you were not in one of the more moneyed quarters of Boston or New
York. The ship's steakhouse, Chops Grille, and the smartest restaurant, 150 Central Park, are here, too. There are 24 different eating places on board - "dining options" in cruise-speak - half of them levying a cover charge above the cost of the cruise. In 150 Central Park it's $35 a head. |
| The reason Oasis is so spacious is that it is so
wide. Its beam, 208ft, is almost double the "Panamax", the maximum
width for a ship to get through the Panama Canal. Oasis is registered at
225,282 tons, which is a measurement of volume, not weight. That makes it more
than 30 per cent bigger than the previous supersized cruise ship, Royal
Caribbean's Freedom of the Seas. But size isn't everything. "We don't
build a big ship for the sake of it, just to be the biggest in the world,"
said Robin Shaw, Royal Caribbean's vice-president and managing director for the
UK and Ireland. "The fact that the ship is big gives us the opportunity to
do so many more different things you couldn't do on a smaller ship." In Royal Caribbean they call it "working on the wow." You would be suffering from severe synapse deficiency not to be dazed by the scope and scale of the Oasis wow. The Boardwalk, another of the neighbourhoods, is themed as a Fifties Coney Island-style esplanade with ice-cream parlour and a Johnny Rockets hamburger joint. In the centre is a working carousel, its exquisitely carved and painted animals rising and dipping to a steam organ's tinny chords. At the end of the Boardwalk, right in the stern, is the AquaTheatre, an amphitheatre where the stage is a pool. All told, there are 21 pools on board including whirlpools, two of which stick out from the side of the ship like an epaulette high above the ocean. The AquaTheatre pool is almost 18ft deep. It's used for swimming and scuba diving lessons by day and for a water show at night - part Peterhof Palace in Russia, with fountains spurting 65ft in the air, and part Olympics, |
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| with synchronised diving and gymnasts bouncing off a trampoline, it's an
unusual performance. The climax is a heart-stopping leap from a 55ft platform.
Eat your heart out Acapulco. The La Quebrada divers may jump from higher, but
they're not trying to land on a moving ship in what must look like a
puddle. It's when Oasis tries to be a conventional cruise ship that it is least successful. The brutish architecture of the ship's superstructure glowers over the open, top deck, which seems to be fenced by so many five-bar railings that it appears as corralled as a stockyard. And to provide enough loungers for thousands of sunbathers means jamming them together as tightly as piano keys. Get back to the action quick and have a round of mini-golf, shoot some hoops on the basketball court, conquer a climbing wall, surf the high-pressure rapids of the Flowriders and dangle from the zip line 80ft above the Boardwalk. It's pretty tame, more dawdle than zip. Whatever became of deck quoits? Inevitably, the spa is the largest at sea, the fitness centre the biggest and the jogging track the longest. And for children, Oasis is the most ginormous adventure playground on the planet long before they venture into their own neighbourhood, where there's a children's theatre and science lab. |
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At night, as well as the jazz and the
dancing, the karaoke and the guys doing stand-up in the comedy club, there is a
full-blown Broadway musical in the Opal Theatre. Currently it is Hairspray, the
story of Tracy Turnblad who finds celebrity after her discovery on a television
dance show. Very appropriate: Tracy would have been on Oasis like a shot. As
for me, I have some reservations. I am personally baffled that anyone should
choose to go on holiday with 5,998 strangers; I am professionally puzzled that
someone should do so while paying £4,269 a head for the most expensive
suite - the gargantuan one on two floors with a whirlpool bath and a baby grand
piano that plays by itself. Still, they can console themselves in the shop selling Breitling watches and, if they can get up a party of 14, they can have a private dinner at the Chef's Table for $75 each. |
| I have other questions. Oasis is being joined by a sister ship next year,
so how is it that cruise ships are getting ever bigger when the trend
everywhere else in the holiday business seems to be to downsize for greater
individuality and more personal service? Economies of scale is Royal
Caribbean's response. And what is the effect on communities in places such as Jamaica and St Maarten, where a lot of cruises already call, when 5,000 or more passengers can now go ashore from a single vessel? Robin Shaw explained that they had been working with port authorities for six years. "There is a significant economic benefit to these places and they welcome us," he said. But does a ship like Oasis, a destination in itself, need to go anywhere? Adam Goldstein, the company president, was emphatic about the importance of ports of call. "Research continues to show that people are still very interested in where ships will take them," he said. He unequivocally ruled out the notion of seven-night cruises to nowhere. |
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The big test, though, is whether
Oasis works. Smallish rooms are fine for creating a feeling of intimacy, but
they do fill up quickly. Every time I tried to get into either Johnny Rockets
or the Seafood Shack fish restaurant, there was a waiting list of at least an
hour, and we had only 4,000 guests aboard. Shows and restaurants can be booked
online pre-cruise. I strongly recommend it. When I arrived at the ship, it took four hours for my luggage to reach my cabin. With the petulance of a man who had been up almost 20 hours, had no change of clothes, needed a shower and in five minutes' time was expected for dinner, I called a man in Guest Relations. "It is hard to find one piece of luggage among 15,000," he said unhelpfully. Did I detect a note of pride in the way he said 15,000? Undoubtedly, it is the biggest collection of suitcases ever to put to sea. I knew that ought to have made me feel better. |
| Size matters Length: Over 1100 feet - a "superjumbo" Airbus A380 is over 220 feet long; the RMS Titanic was 815 feet long. Height: 239 feet above the waterline - the same height as a 23-storey building Displacement: 100,000 tonnes - equal to a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier Speed: 22.6 knots Cost: $1.4 billion |
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