Construction is Completed on the MS Oasis of the Seas, the World's Biggest Passenger Ship | World History Project Oct 30 2009 Construction is Completed on the MS Oasis of the Seas, the World's Biggest Passenger Ship MS Oasis of the Seas is a cruise ship in the fleet of Royal Caribbean International. The first of her class, she is expected to be joined by her sister ship MS Allure of the Seas in November 2010. Both vessels are expected to cruise the Caribbean from Fort Lauderdale, Florida in the United States. The ship replaces the Freedom-class cruise ships (also owned by Royal Caribbean) as the world's largest passenger vessel.For a sense of the scale, the ship is approximately 5 times the size of the RMS Titanic in terms of registered tonnage. Royal Caribbean Became the World's Largest Cruise Line and Pretty Much No One Noticed – Skift The giant Allure of the Seas meets sister Oasis of the Seas off Port Everglades. Royal Caribbean International Photo: Royal Caribbean International Share Tweet Post Send Skift Take Kudos to Royal Caribbean for focusing on product over bragging rights — but it would have been helpful to know about this development when it happened. — Hannah Sampson Size matters — sometimes — to Royal Caribbean International.

The Miami-based cruise line introduced the world’s largest cruise ship, Oasis of the Seas, in 2009, followed over the years by two of the same class. But the operator achieved another milestone in late 2014 that it didn’t promote — and still doesn’t talk much about. With the arrival of the slightly smaller but still huge Quantum of the Seas in late 2014, Royal Caribbean International became the world’s largest individual cruise line when measured by total passenger capacity. Even though Royal Caribbean had 22 ships at the time — compared to closest rival Carnival Cruise Line’s 24 — the number of passengers it could carry surpassed any competitor. By the end of 2014, Royal Caribbean’s passenger capacity based on double occupancy in each stateroom was about 64,150, according to its annual report. Carnival’s number was 62,366. Since then, Royal Caribbean has welcomed three more megaships, including the 4,180-passenger Ovation of the Seas in April and 5,479-passenger Harmony of the Seas earlier this month.

In that time, Carnival has only added Carnival Vista, a 3,954-passenger ship that was delivered in April. As of this month, the two lines have the same number of ships: 25. According to regulatory filings, Royal Caribbean’s capacity is now about 77,950 compared to Carnival’s 66,320. Back when Quantum arrived, all eyes were on the ship’s new features (simulated skydiving and bumper cars), technological feats (fast Wi-Fi and robotic bartenders), and eventual destination (China). The company didn’t point out the size milestone, and even now seems reluctant to give it much attention. CEO Michael Bayley told Skift that the company doesn’t really track that figure, but every now and then someone will add up the number of beds and pose the question. The answer, he said, is yes — Royal Caribbean is the largest cruise line. “It’s not really something of huge importance to us,” Bayley said. “I’m not sure it’s particularly important to our travel partners or our customers. I think people associate themselves with Royal Caribbean because of the fun innovations, the quality of the service, the experience that we deliver.

I think that’s far more meaningful than telling people you’re the biggest cruise line in the world.” Still, Royal Caribbean uses the title on its LinkedIn page and, recently, included the description in a press release about Ovation of the Seas sailing from Hong Kong later this year. Carnival Vs. Royal Caribbean For its part, Carnival Cruise Line claims the title using a different qualifier: “world’s largest cruise line based on passengers carried.” The line also uses the phrase “The World’s Most Popular Cruise Line” (with a registered trademark symbol). “It is important to bear in mind that we operate a substantial number of short cruises” of three to five days, spokeswoman Jennifer de la Cruz said in an email. “In fact, about half the fleet is on short cruise itineraries. This impacts our total passenger numbers quite a bit.” For 2015, Carnival Cruise Line carried about 4.5 million passengers. Royal Caribbean International said it carried nearly 3.9 million. Carnival expects 2016 numbers to be slightly above 4.5 million, and 2017 even higher.

“The team of analysts who track such data tell me that we expect to remain the world’s largest cruise line based on passengers carried in 2016 and 2017 based on our understanding of Royal Caribbean’s deployment plans,” de la Cruz wrote. She said Carnival doesn’t use either phrase — largest or most popular — in advertising, and uses “most popular” (but not largest) in marketing on a limited basis. The About Carnival page on the official website, for example, goes with “World’s Most Popular.” Public relations messaging uses both, however, “and will continue to do so as the statement continues to be valid,” she wrote. “I would say that being able to say we are the most popular and/or world’s largest cruise line based on passengers carried is a ‘nice to have’ from a PR perspective, however given our brand name recognition — which is far and away the strongest in the industry — we are well positioned from a consumer standpoint regardless,” de la Cruz said. Regardless of how the companies use (or don’t use) the titles, plenty of coverage reveals the lack of clarity.

Cruise-focused sites and magazines , newspapers , travel guides , city governments , and even the best in cruise coverage have used the “world’s largest” line for Carnival after it was technically no longer true — at least by the capacity measure. Adding to the confusion: Carnival Corporation, the parent company of Carnival Cruise Line and nine other brands, is by far the world’s largest cruise ship company. Royal Caribbean Cruises — which owns Royal Caribbean International — is its closest runner up. So sometimes “world’s largest cruise line” is used to refer to the parent company, as was the case when the Associated Press wrote a story about Carnival Corp. getting approval to sail to Cuba with its new one-ship brand Fathom, which is one of the world’s smallest cruise lines. “There are all these nuances,” said Mike Driscoll, editor-in-chief of the industry newsletter Cruise Week. He points out that Carnival is the largest cruise brand sailing in America, with the bulk of its capacity based in U.S. ports, which might be more important to North Americans than a line’s size across the globe. Royal Caribbean has several large ships in Asia.

And to Wall Street, the size of an overall company is a better measure, given the opportunities for scale, cost savings, and other advantages. It doesn’t surprise Driscoll that Royal Caribbean doesn’t trumpet its status at the top. “In terms of what’s more important, the world’s largest cruise ship is probably more important because you can do things on the size of that cruise ship that actually make a difference,” he said. “They emphasize the world’s largest cruise ship. They don’t want to blur that message.” Oasis of the Seas: The World's Largest Cruise Liner Oasis of the Seas: The World's Largest Cruise Liner Gallery Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, October 4, 2009 There's a story about a grizzled foreign correspondent in Asia who once 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 couldn't help thinking of that joke while in Finland last week, touring Royal Caribbean International's new Oasis of the Seas, a ship that eclipses the U.S. Navy's Nimitz-class supercarriers and will be the world's largest cruise liner when it makes its much-anticipated 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. In fact, the meter in a D.C. cab would charge 25 cents for the distance. Under construction in the quaint port town of Turku since 2006, the Oasis of the Seas is longer, taller, wider, heavier and more expensive than any other passenger ship ever built. It's five times the size of the Titanic and more than half again as large as the mammoth Queen Mary 2. A piece of it will have to be retracted just so it can squeeze under a bridge and make it out to the Atlantic.

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, 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 -- and the closest thing in real life to the Buy n Large luxury spaceships in "WALL-E," where humans spend the centuries getting fat after mass consumerism has left the Earth a polluted mess.

In fact, the ship -- built at a cost of $1.4 billion, most of it borrowed money -- represents a huge gamble that mass consumerism is alive and well, the state of the global economy and environment notwithstanding. Royal Caribbean's chairman, Richard Fain, is betting that the Oasis will defy the recession and expand the industry's market by bringing in what he describes on his blog as the "poor souls" who are the "most die-hard cruise resisters." In fact, he's doubling down: A sister ship of the same size, the Allure of the Seas, is under construction in Turku and scheduled to set sail next year. Wall Street has been skeptical, and some cruising enthusiasts have voiced concern as well, complaining that the Oasis will be too crowded, that its prices are too high, and that all the onboard amenities will ruin the magic of an intimate journey on the open seas to an exotic destination. But Paul Motter, editor of the enthusiast Web site Cruisemates , predicted that the Oasis of the Seas, love it or hate it, will do for cruise ships what Disneyland did for amusement parks. "The image of cruising is about to change forever," he said.

"I think it's going to be the first ship where people truly book just for the ship and hardly care where it goes." 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 chunk of the Crystal City Hilton or the Watergate 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 sports 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. "It's a shame you've never been on a cruise; then you'd understand how different this is," he replied, noting that only a few ships in the world have a space like this, and that the one on the Oasis is twice as wide as the largest out there now. CONTINUED 1 Worlds Largest Cruise Ship - UPI.com Comments The Oasis of the Seas, the world's largest cruise liner, is seen during its float out ceremony on November 25, 2008. The cruise vessel, commissioned by Royal Caribbean International, departed Turku, Finland on October 30, 2009 on its maiden voyage bound for Florida. The Oasis spans 1,200 feet (360 meters), 16-decks, and can accommodate 6,300 passengers and 2,100 crew.

UPI/Royal Caribbean International License photo | Permalink Royal Caribbean International's newest cruise ship "Oasis of the Seas" glides into Port Everglades, Florida on November 13, 2009. "Oasis of the Seas" is currently the largest and most innovative vessel to serve the cruise and travel industry. At 1,187 feet, or nearly four football fields long, "Oasis" is the longest cruise ship to serve the Caribbean. Royal Caribbean International is planning her inaugural cruise to take place on Dec 5. UPI/Joe Marino-Bill Cantrell License photo | Permalink Royal Caribbean International's newest cruise ship "Oasis of the Seas" glides into Port Everglades, Florida on November 13, 2009. "Oasis of the Seas" is currently the largest and most innovative vessel to serve the cruise and travel industry. At 1,187 feet, or nearly four football fields long, "Oasis" is the longest cruise ship to serve the Caribbean. Royal Caribbean International is planning her inaugural cruise to take place on Dec 5.

UPI/Joe Marino-Bill Cantrell License photo | Permalink Royal Caribbean International's newest cruise ship "Oasis of the Seas" glides into Port Everglades, Florida on November 13, 2009. "Oasis of the Seas" is currently the largest and most innovative vessel to serve the cruise and travel industry. At 1,187 feet, or nearly four football fields long, "Oasis" is the longest cruise ship to serve the Caribbean. Royal Caribbean International is planning her inaugural cruise to take place on Dec 5. UPI/Joe Marino-Bill Cantrell License photo | Permalink Royal Caribbean International's newest cruise ship "Oasis of the Seas" glides into Port Everglades, Florida on November 13, 2009. "Oasis of the Seas" is currently the largest and most innovative vessel to serve the cruise and travel industry. At 1,187 feet, or nearly four football fields long, "Oasis" is the longest cruise ship to serve the Caribbean. Royal Caribbean International is planning her inaugural cruise to take place on Dec 5.

UPI/Joe Marino-Bill Cantrell License photo | Permalink Royal Caribbean International's newest cruise ship "Oasis of the Seas" glides into Port Everglades, Florida on November 13, 2009. "Oasis of the Seas" is currently the largest and most innovative vessel to serve the cruise and travel industry. At 1,187 feet, or nearly four football fields long, "Oasis" is the longest cruise ship to serve the Caribbean. Royal Caribbean International is planning her inaugural cruise to take place on Dec 5. UPI/Joe Marino-Bill Cantrell License photo | Permalink Royal Caribbean International's newest cruise ship "Oasis of the Seas" glides into Port Everglades, Florida on November 13, 2009. "Oasis of the Seas" is currently the largest and most innovative vessel to serve the cruise and travel industry. At 1,187 feet, or nearly four football fields long, "Oasis" is the longest cruise ship to serve the Caribbean. Royal Caribbean International is planning her inaugural cruise to take place on Dec 5.

UPI/Joe Marino-Bill Cantrell MODEL SHIP OASIS OF THE SEAS 206L x 40W x 70H (cm) 81.10L x 15.74W x 27.55H (inch) 1 mï¿½ = 35.31 ftï¿½ Suggest: Display case to preserve the model from dust Picture of the ship in the display case is just for illustration purpose. HISTORY MS Oasis of the Seas is an Oasis-class cruise ship, delivered to her owner, Royal Caribbean International, in October 2009. The first of her class, she was joined by her sister ship MS Allure of the Seas in December 2010. Both vessels cruise the Caribbean from Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She set a new record of carrying over 6,000 passengers. The ship surpassed the Freedom-class cruise ships (also owned by Royal Caribbean) to become the largest cruise ship in the world at that time.

She has, however, since been surpassed by Allure of the Seas, which is 50 millimeters (2.0 in) longer, although this difference may have been caused by different temperatures when the measurements were made. In details The vessel was ordered in February 2006 and designed under the name "Project Genesis". Her keel was laid down on 12 November 2007 by STX Europe Turku Shipyard, Finland. The company announced that full funding for Oasis of the Seas was secured on 15 April 2009. The name Oasis of the Seas resulted from a competition held in May 2008. During the first float-out of the vessel the tugboats that were pulling the ship from its dock failed to control the ship, resulting in the port side of the ship hitting the dock. This resulted in some cosmetic damage and minor damage to the hull, which was repaired and did not affect the final delivery date of the vessel. The ship was completed and turned over to Royal Caribbean on 28 October 2009. Two days later, she departed Finland for the United States.

While exiting the Baltic Sea, the vessel passed underneath the Great Belt Fixed Link in Denmark on 1 November 2009. The bridge has a clearance of 65 m (213 ft) above the water; Oasis normally has an air draft of 72 m (236 ft). The passage under the bridge was possible due to retraction of the telescoping funnels, and an additional 30 cm (12 in) was gained by the squat effect whereby vessels traveling at speed in a shallow channel will be drawn deeper into the water. Approaching the bridge at 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph), the ship passed under it with less than 60 centimeters (2 ft) of clearance. Proceeding through the English Channel, Oasis stopped briefly in the Solent so that 300 shipyard workers who were on board doing finishing work could disembark, then left on the way to her intended home port of Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The ship arrived there on 13 November 2009, where tropical plants were installed prior to some introductory trips and her maiden voyage on 5 December 2009.

While Royal Caribbean's chief of captains William S. Wright was in command of the ship's journey across the Atlantic and also for the first few sailings, navigation of Oasis of the Seas is regularly handled by Trym Selvag and Thore Thorolvsen. Oasis had a minor refit in winter 2011, adding the DreamWorks Experience which allows passengers to interact with characters, such as Shrek, on board the ship. The Oasis-class also now features 3D movies. Oasis underwent a second drydock refit in October 2014. During drydock the ship was modified to support Dynamic Dining, adding the suite-only "Coastal Kitchen" restaurant to the Viking Crown and dividing the main dining room into three separate restaurants: "American Icon Grill", "The Grande", and "Silk". In addition, the Broadway-style production of Hairspray was replaced with a production of Cats. back Oasis of the Seas: the ship that mistook itself for a city state | Travel | The Guardian The Observer Oasis of the Seas: the ship that mistook itself for a city state It carries more than 8,000 people, has an on-board park and themed bars from all over the globe.

But one experience you don't get on board Oasis of the Seas is that of being at sea Oasis of the Seas, the world's largest cruise ship passes through the Solent, Britain. Photograph: Robin Jones/Rex Features Saturday 28 November 2009 19.06 EST First published on Saturday 28 November 2009 19.06 EST Share on Messenger Close William Morris called ocean liners "the cathedrals of the Industrial Age"; I'm sitting in an English theme pub, sipping a pint of sweet American bitter, trying to decide exactly which god the Oasis of the Seas, the world's largest "megaliner", might be dedicated to. The pub, the Globe and Atlas, is in the Royal Promenade quarter of a ship that organises itself not by deck but by neighbourhood (and is routinely described in its brochures as both "a floating city" and, rather more wildly, an ocean-going "nation"). I'm a long day into a "preview sailing" on the Oasis, which will have its maiden public voyage, complete with a christening from "godmothers" Gloria Estefan and Jane Seymour, next week.

In one corner of the pub a man with earnest hair and seen-it-all eyes is making an assault on Robbie Williams's "Angels". At the next table a couple in their fifties seem to have split up suddenly to smooch with strangers. I decide the Oasis, which sails out of southern Florida, is partly a tribute to XXXL, the American god of girth (although the cruise ship is 17 decks high it is – appropriately enough in the Land of the Free to Wear Outsize Shorts – the extraordinary broadness of its beam that makes it nearly half as large again as any passenger vessel ever built). And the ship certainly pays cultish homage to Me-Time, the goddess of pampering and personal wish-fulfilment. But mostly, I decide (perhaps swayed by the singer, who is now coming to terms with Fleetwood Mac), it is a hymn of praise that will echo down the ages to the deity of retro and recycling, to the virtually divine Pastiche.

As well as the English pub experience, the Oasis can provide beach experiences and Abba experiences, multiple shopping experiences and champagne experiences, a fairground experience complete with hand-whittled carousel, a casino experience complete with row upon row of glassy-eyed slot machines, and more exquisite fine-dining experiences than you could possibly ever manage to experience in a week. (Of course, this being the Caribbean, there is also an ice-show experience, just because they can). Out on deck there is an addictive wave machine that simulates surfing (on which I immediately simulated wipeout), and a rock wall that simulates rock climbing, (on which, having failed to negotiate an overhang three times to the disdain of my Italian guide, I found myself dangling three storeys up, staring out to sea, with a rope between my legs above the boardwalk experience, simulating looking like a berk). Strangely, given this breadth of experiences, one of the few "personal journeys" the Oasis of the Sea seems at pains to avoid is the experience of being at sea. You can go for hours on the Oasis without so much as glimpsing the ocean.

Even the artwork ("7,000 specially commissioned pieces") favours desert landscapes and forested abstracts to nautical themes. The classic ocean liners of the past, a genealogy that ended abruptly with the QE2, were built for purpose, ships of streamlined grace and power. After the airlines usurped their function of getting from A to B, however, and cruise liners were born, the aim was to recreate at sea the most effective economic usage of space pioneered on land. The biggest American cruise ships followed the Las Vegas model and became untethered air-conditioned leisure complexes and shopping malls with affordable accommodation attached. The Oasis of the Seas, with its 6,296 maximum passenger capacity, takes this principle to somewhere near its conclusion. In dock it looks like an apartment block. At its centre, eight floors up from the main deck, is a park, complete with 12,000 specimen trees and plants, surrounded on all sides by walls of balconied rooms. This means that guests can have the option of a tree view and never have to contemplate the ocean at all; cabin fever, born of on-board rooms without a view, is close to a thing of the past.

In this respect, the ship's name, which was chosen in a competition in which 90,000 people participated, starts to seem less of a contradiction in terms. The ship is an oasis within the sea, a sort of inward-looking gated community of the waves, moving its passengers restlessly from experience to experience, spending money. As in a shopping mall or a night club, this restlessness is incorporated into the décor. The Oasis is full of mirrors and reflective surfaces, in the great glass elevators, along the mock boardwalk with its candy stores and seafood shacks, and sometimes where you least expect them. More than once as I navigated from bar to "Art Walk" to "quarterback challenge" or "Name that Michael Jackson song" and back to bar, wondering if the next experience might be more authentic than the last, I was confronted by a pasty-looking malcontent who seemed to be dogging my steps, wandering towards me, bags under his eyes, conspicuous in his rumpled clothes among a coiffed throng of pastel shirts and capped-tooth grins, only to realise that it was my reflection.

As an antidote to such anxieties, the spa was doing great business in immediate rejuvenation – tints and waves and exfoliation, on-board Botox-style smoothing, and a headline treatment in which a layer of gold leaf was added to your face to leave you both looking like a million dollars and with the sense that you had just spent them. The great thing about experiences, as Disney has demonstrated over the years, is that, in contrast to the real thing, you can exert full control over them. Not much can go wrong on a theme park safari experience; plenty can go wrong on a safari. The owner, Royal Caribbean, has taken this philosophy firmly on board. The Oasis not only sets out to rule the waves – it seems to have obsessive-compulsive tendencies toward them. The benevolent voice of Captain Bill Wright, part shipping forecast, part Pearl & Dean, booms out from a thousand speakers from time to time, reminding you where you should be, or what you might be about to miss, and just occasionally referring you to the quite relaxed on-board codes of conduct.

The ship has its own form of swipe card security: every time you make a transaction, the server checks your face against the haggard photograph that appears on his till screen. The system monitors your progress around the ship, along with 2,000 security cameras. (There are rumours of on-board cells, which I failed to substantiate, perhaps on the superstitiously "missing" Deck 13.) In a question-and-answer session the morning after last orders in the Globe and Atlas, I hear the chief executive of Royal Caribbean, Richard Fain, asked whether, since the boat is such a destination in its own right, the cruise company has thought of offering a trip like this one without an end in sight, a week-long voyage to nowhere, a costly cruise round the bay. Fain assured his questioner that the idea has been thoroughly researched (you don't doubt it) and that punters have overwhelmingly rejected it. A ship has to be going somewhere, otherwise it would just be, well, drifting. It might as well be a deluxe hotel with a sea view. Where the Oasis goes, however, is very much determined by its dimensions.

The ship could not dock in any European port, for example; it requires custom-made facilities that can manage not only the particular mooring requirements of its 225,000-tonne bulk but which can also cope with the need to disembark up to 6,000 people effortlessly. To this end, in a strategy that happily adds to the corporate control of the overall experience, Royal Caribbean has built mega-piers at Fort Lauderdale, where the ship will be based (alongside, in a year's time, its sister, the Allure of the Seas) and also in Haiti and the Bahamas. The beauty of this for the intrepid Caribbean cruiser is that the new ports come complete with a signature "resort facility": "Haiti" is distilled into a confected Royal Caribbean paradise called Labadee, built from scratch. Travellers can be abroad and on dry land without necessarily having to experience anything they would not encounter on the ship (Port-au-Prince, for example). This controlled experience of foreignness seems to be duplicated on board. The Oasis has a crew of "2,165 from 71 different countries".

This fact is advertised each time a waiter or waitress introduces himself – which they do with punctual regularity – and implores you to "enjoy". "I am Sanjay from India, please enjoy"; "I am Loretta from Trinidad, please enjoy." Our evening meal was served, with perfect grace, by an uneasy pairing from Hungary and the Philippines. This United Nations of recruitment is designed, presumably, to leave you with the vague impression that you are in the midst of a great ocean-going melting pot – without ever straying too far from what looks like home. The sense of familiarity, of every space looking like somewhere you have been before (in my case, Millionaires nightclub on Birmingham's Hagley Road, circa 1983) creates one of the more curious aspects of the Oasis of the Seas: the fact that you soon become accustomed to its gargantuan size. It is cleverly intimate in its public spaces; corridors are punctuated with local interest rather than stretching, as they could, for a quarter of a mile.

One useful aspect of this loss of scale is that everything you consume is dwarfed by the immensities around you: the immensity of the ocean, the immensity of the ship and the immensity of a good many of your fellow diners. Above the ship's main drag, a non-stop news ticker reminds you, lest you forget, of the steel miracle on which you are vacationing. Addressing guests with a nice update on "lords, ladies and gentlemen" – "royal family, celebrity elite, media partners…" – it lists some of the more telling fun stats on a loop: there are 5,070,632lbs of water in the ship's swimming pools, say, or each day 110,231lbs of ice cubes are produced. Even these superlatives are hard to take on board, however, and the statistics you really want ("how many jumbo prawns do you serve in a week?", or "what is the average bar bill?") are, when I put them to head chef Ivor (from Germany, enjoy) not forthcoming.

"We try to be about quality not quantity." In search of a sense of the sheer power of the ship, I take a tour of the engine room with Norwegian chief engineer, Staale Johan Ludviksen. Ludviksen grew up on cargo ships from the age of five, when his father, an officer on a container vessel, took him to sea. He has a quietly infectious enthusiasm for his behemoth, which generates nearly 19,000 horse power in three "azipod thrusters". The engines are started and stopped not with a giant brass lever, but with the click of a mouse on an "on-off" button on a screen. The engine room has no visible moving parts; much of the pipework is encased in silver insulation, giving the whole a kind of Blake's Seven quality. Most of the engine is Italian, though it was constructed, along with the ship, in Finland. Ludviksen cannot think of a single British tooled component. The great record-breaking ships have always reflected the temper of the times.

Just as surely as the Clyde-built QE2 marked the last knockings of the British empire of making things, I have a sense that in years to come the Oasis of the Seas – commissioned before the credit crunch at a cost of $1.4bn and completed after it – may be seen as something of a symbol of the end of an American empire based on vast consumption. When I emerge from below decks, it is into the teeth of a tropical storm. It's chucking it down on the boardwalk, and everyone has run for cover into the donut store and the temporary tattoo parlour. Inside, the casino is filling up with punters, and the queues at the eating experiences from the world's four corners extend around the block. There's a gale howling around the mini golf course and every so often lightning illuminates the pool bar. Many storeys below, the ocean swells and churns; the Oasis of the Seas, though, glides on through the squall regardless, doing business as usual. I consult my entertainment itinerary: Hans Christian Andersen on ice or karaoke time?

Essentials Royal Caribbean International (0844 493 2061; royalcaribbean.co.uk ) offers a nine-night trip to the eastern Caribbean from £1,709, including flights from Heathrow to Miami, transfers, one night's hotel accommodation and seven nights on board Oasis of the Seas, with all meals and entertainment, taxes and fees. Departing from Fort Lauderdale (Florida), the ship calls at, among other ports, Charlotte Amalie (US Virgin Islands), Philipsburg (Dutch Antilles) and Nassau (Bahamas) before returning to Fort Lauderdale. Oasis of the Seas | Largest ship in the world ( - YouTube Oasis of the Seas | Largest ship in the world ( Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later.

Published on Dec 27, 2014 Name: Oasis of the Seas Owner: Royal Caribbean International Port of registry Nassau, Bahamas Route Caribbean Builder STX Europe, Turku, Finland Cost US$1.4 billion (2006) Laid down 12 November 2007 Launched 21 November 2008 (float-out) Christened 30 November 2009 Maiden voyage 5 December 2009 Identification Call sign C6XS7 Class & type Oasis-class cruise ship Tonnage 225,282 GT Length 361.6 m (1,186.5 ft) overall Beam 47 m (154 ft) waterline 60.5 m (198 ft) max beam Height 72 m (236 ft) above water line Draught 9.3 m (31 ft) Depth 22.55 m (74 ft) Decks 16 passenger decks Installed power 3 × 13,860 kW (18,590 hp) Wärtsilä 12V46D 3

 × 18,480 kW (24,780 hp) Wärtsilä 16V46D Propulsion 3 × 20 MW (27,000 hp) ABB Azipod, all azimuthing 4 × 5.5 MW (7,400 hp) Wärtsilä CT3500 bow thrusters Speed 22.6 knots (41.9 kmh; 26.0 mph) Capacity 5,400 passengers at double occupancy 6,296 maximum Crew 2,165 on maiden voyage 2,394 as of July 2012 And Finally Follow This Link For More Info : Category Oasis of the Seas: on board the world's largest cruise ship - Telegraph Cruises Oasis of the Seas: on board the world's largest cruise ship Royal Caribbean's Oasis of the Seas, the biggest cruise ship in the world, starts its maiden voyage on Saturday.

Peter Hughes had a preview and found it ‘more metro than matelot’. Image 1 of 3 $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 Royal Caribbean refers to Oasis of the Seas as 'our floating nation' Image 1 of 3 The Royal Promenade is one of the ideas carried on from Royal Caribbean's two smaller classes of ship, Voyager and Freedom, both vast in their day By Peter Hughes 11:17AM GMT 03 Dec 2009 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 £800 million 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. Related Articles Mediterranean cruises: Family fun on Ventura 02 Nov 2009 – So big that it needs at least 312,000 passengers a year – that's more people than live in Coventry. It has to fill up every week because it only makes seven-night cruises. – So big that British travel agents are worried they may not find enough aircraft seats between Britain and Florida to supply it. Four out of 10 British holidaymakers booking a West Indies cruise with the ship's owners, Royal Caribbean cruises , 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 for Caribbean cruises . 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 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 (about £21) 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, 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. 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. 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: 360m (or just over 3.5 football pitches) - a "superjumbo" Airbus A380 is 73m long; the RMS Titanic was 269m long. Height: 72m 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 Worlds Largest Cruise Ship | Freedom of the Seas the worlds … | Flickr SnotSucker By: SnotSucker Worlds Largest Cruise Ship Freedom of the Seas the worlds largest cruise ship until Oasis of The Seas is completed this year.

Done First steel is cut for Royal Caribbean's Oasis 3 which will become the biggest cruise ship in the world - Mirror Online Steel silhouette: Oasis 3 with (from l) Richard Fain, Jean Yves Jaouen, Adam Goldstein, Harri Kulovaara, Laurent Castaing Share Get daily updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again laterInvalid Email The building of what will become the world’s largest cruise ship got under way this morning. Royal Caribbean chairman and CEO Richard Fain pressed a button to cut the first piece of steel for what he is calling Oasis 3 and what the STX Europe shipyard in France has branded A34. The ship will be a near-identical sister to Oasis of the Seas and Allure of the Seas. Keel-laying will take place in April next year and the 227,700 GRT vessel will be delivered in spring 2016. Vangelis’s theme music for the film 1492: Conquest of Paradise rang through the construction shed in St Nazaire as the ceremonial moment arrived.

The first piece, a silhouette of the ship, was then signed by Fain, Royal Caribbean president Adam Goldstein and executive vice-president Harri Kulovaara, together with STX chief executive Laurent Castaing and operations director Jean Yves Jaouen. The new ship’s real name is yet to be announced – though it’s a certainty it will end in “ of the Seas” just like every other vessel in Royal Caribbean’s fleet. Fain and Goldstein were characteristically coy about revealing other details, which will be drip-fed in a series of headline-grabbing announcements over the next couple of years. Fain said: “We have a few things up our sleeve but we will keep them close to our vest. There is an opportunity to tweak some things, but we are not fundamentally changing a successful design.” Builders STX issued a fact sheet which discloses that at 362.15 metres the new vessel will be 2.15m longer than its predecessors and gross tonnage will be 2,718 greater. Oasis 3 will have a maximum capacity of 6,360 passengers – 42 more than Allure.

Castaing was an apprentice at the yard 27 years ago when it built Sovereign of the Seas, its first ship for Royal. He said “60,000 tons of steel will be used to create 400,000 pieces of the puzzle that forms the structure of the ship.” Oasis and Allure were both built in Turku, Finland. They have, said Fain, become the most successful and the most popular vessels in the fleet. “Oasis 3, with its French touch, will become just as successful and will be even more energy-efficient.” A yard spokeswoman said a giant new crane would enable Oasis 3 to be constructed in 90 individual blocks, whereas the earlier two ships were made up of 160 blocks. Royal Caribbean has an option to order a fourth Oasis-class vessel in the next 12 months. It is also building three slightly smaller Quantum-class ships at the Meyer-Werft yard in Papenburg, Germany. There are 300 people currently working on the project in Saint-Nazaire and the number will grow to more than 2,000 in the coming months.

Two military vessels being constructed for the Russian Navy have to be completed before the first blocks of A34 are laid in the yard’s dry-dock, which also saw the construction of Cunard’s Queen Mary 2. Like us on Facebook Most Read Most Recent Most Read Most Recent

Question: Oasis of the Seas became the world's largest what, when completed in 2009?
Answer: Cruise Ship