Cruise ships are already pretty bloomin’ massive. Essentially entire towns on water, the biggest cruises are filled with everything you could want, from restaurants and shopping centres to waterparks. These days, all that stuff sort of comes as standard.
So imagine what you’ll get on the world’s biggest cruise ship. Well, you won’t have to imagine much longer: the largest cruise ship in the world has just launched, marking its maiden voyage before beginning proper commercial use next year.
Called the Icon of the Seas, the ship was built in the Finnish city of Turku and will be operated by Royal Caribbean International. And its scale is truly something else. The Icon of the Seas is 365 metres long. That’s right: over a third of a kilometre!
Once it’s fully furnished and filled with people, the Icon will apparently weigh a mind-boggling 250,800 tonnes. It’ll have space for 5,610 passengers and 2,350 crew, with 20 decks and eight entire neighbourhoods. It’ll eventually also have the world’s largest at-sea water park, with six waterslides, seven pools and nine whirlpools. Here’s what it’ll look like.
Currently, the largest cruise ship in the world is another Royal Caribbean International ship, the Wonder of the Seas. That one, however, is only 362 metres long and has only 18 decks. Puny, we know.
The Icon of the Seas is set to enter public service in January 2024, when it’ll start sailing around the Caribbean. It marked its maiden voyage on June 22 – find out more about the ship on the official site here. Then read our take on why 2023 is the year you should ditch flying for overland (and overwater) travel.
Did you see the fancy new planes that will fly the world’s longest route?
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