Global General

World's biggest cruise ship is a floating resort

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-11-25 15:02

Oasis' size limits its itinerary. It will stop initially at the Caribbean ports of St. Maarten and St. Thomas and the Bahamian capital of Nassau, a week-long voyage that will later alternate with western Caribbean sailings.

World's biggest cruise ship is a floating resort

Staterooms overlook the boardwalk deck on the Oasis of the Seas during a media tour at its home port in Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Florida November 20, 2009. Royal Caribbean's new Oasis of the Seas is the largest, widest, tallest, most expensive cruise ship afloat, a cornucopia of amusements aimed at quashing the notion that cruising is a sedentary vacation, said chief executive Richard Fain. Picture taken November 20, 2009. [Agencies]

Those ports dredged and deepened their approaches and built new docks to accommodate Oasis, while Port Everglades built a whole new terminal to handle the crowd of passengers who will leave the ship as a new horde embarks.

The mega-ship has its detractors. Travel writer Arthur Frommer wrote in his Budget Travel column that it exists to "cater to more of those people who are unable to entertain themselves, those arrested personalities who rely on constant, massive, outside distractions to ward off depression."

Other lines are cheering the Oasis, figuring the publicity bonanza will lift all cruise ships. Boutique lines are pitching their smaller more intimate vessels as the anti-Oasis.

"Yes they have the most space but they're also putting the most number of guests into that space," said Steve Tucker, vice president of North American field sales for privately held luxury line Silversea, which launches its all-suite Silver Spirit on a 91-day voyage from Port Everglades in December.

At a tenth the size of the Oasis, Silver Spirit offers a private butler in every stateroom and carries 540 passengers.

Fain, meanwhile, is "looking at the forward bookings and smiling" while fending off the inevitable question of whether Royal Caribbean will build a ship even bigger than Oasis.

"I'm not saying it couldn't happen but one would need a reason," he said. "If somebody comes up with an idea that we think would be appealing to our guests, we would certainly look at it."