Why you should not ‘freak out’ about Royal Caribbean’s big new Icon of the Seas

By some measures, it isn’t greater in any respect. It is roughly the identical size (1,098 toes versus 1,088 toes) and the identical width (213 toes versus 211 toes) as Surprise of the Seas. It will truly maintain fewer passengers than Surprise of the Seas at double occupancy — that’s, with two folks in each cabin (5,610 versus 5,734).

Icon of the Seas’ greater measurement in tonnage comes principally from the truth that it’s going to have two extra decks than Surprise of the Seas. In a world the place massive cruise ships usually have 15 to twenty decks, that is not a giant deal. A lately unveiled MSC Cruises vessel has two extra decks than Icon of the Seas.

Surprise of the Seas, it ought to be famous, is the fifth in a sequence of equally sized vessels that started rolling out in 2009.

Associated: Royal Caribbean vessels ranked by measurement, from greatest to smallest

It’s notable that Icon of the Seas would be the greatest cruise ship on the planet. However its measurement is just not inconsistent with the scale of different big ships which have debuted over the previous 15 years. If there was a time to freak out about ships this massive, it was within the late 2000s once they began showing.

Essentially the most notable factor about Icon of the Seas is not a lot its measurement however what Royal Caribbean has determined to placed on the vessel. It is being constructed with an expanded array of sights and facilities that can significantly enchantment to resort-loving households.

This features a greater water park than we have seen on every other cruise ship and new, family-friendly cabin classes.

Associated: 1st look inside Icon of the Seas below development

Royal Caribbean is doing this for one motive and one motive solely: It is what its family-heavy buyer base desires. Pooh-pooh big-ship cruising all you need, however bookings for this ship are by way of the roof for a motive: That is what American vacationers are demanding.

It most likely will not be a reservoir for sickness

One of many nice tropes about massive cruise ships is that they’re “petri dishes” for abdomen bugs corresponding to norovirus — a standard abdomen bug that you just may know higher because the “24-hour flu.”

You might be pondering that you just hear about norovirus outbreaks on ships on a regular basis. This is likely to be true, too, however here is why: A norovirus outbreak on a ship is a superb click on magnet for media shops. I ought to know. I have been on this enterprise for greater than 30 years.

Associated: Essentially the most eye-popping characteristic of Icon is its value

Although they do not occur usually, norovirus outbreaks on ships are coated by the media in an inordinate method as a result of readers like to click on on such tales. Whenever you click on on these articles, the media corporations earn a living.

As well as, studies of norovirus outbreaks on ships are available to the media in a method they are not for colleges, nursing properties and different locations, as a consequence of a monitoring system in place on the U.S. Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention. This makes writing such tales fast and simple.

Will Icon of the Seas be a reservoir for such sickness? Individuals who know cruise ships know it is extremely unlikely. Possibly each few years, the ship may have an outbreak. I am not too nervous about it — and also you should not be, both.

Cruise ships have applied actually over-the-top sanitation protocols over time designed to current sickness outbreaks — from wiping down elevator buttons and on line casino chips each few hours to putting in hand sanitizers on the entrance to virtually each shipboard venue.

For perspective, I’ve sailed on greater than 200 cruises over three a long time as a journey editor, and I’ve by no means come down with norovirus on a cruise ship. I have gotten norovirus in my hometown twice over the previous couple a long time, together with final yr. It is no enjoyable. You already know it if you get it — it is marked by a pointy onset of queasiness, vomiting and different tummy troubles that usually come and go shortly. Nevertheless it’s nothing to freak out about, even when it occurs on a ship.

It is no Titanic

One other theme we’re seeing as a part of the so-called Icon of the Seas freakout on Twitter is that individuals are amazed — shocked even — that the ship will likely be greater than the Titanic. 5 instances greater, no much less.

The feedback about this usually are mixed with assured exclamations about how this ship is so massive that it will probably’t probably keep afloat and, just like the Titanic, is doomed in a roundabout way to catastrophe.

Right here, once more, some perspective is required. Sure, Icon of the Seas will likely be greater than Titanic. However … that is additionally been the case for the overwhelming majority of cruise ships constructed over the previous 25 years. Unveiled in 1912, Titanic was gigantic for its time. However at 46,328 tons, it was comparatively small in comparison with modern-day passenger ships.

Once I began writing about cruise ships within the Nineteen Nineties, the most important and hottest cruise vessels already have been significantly bigger than Titanic by way of tonnage. Right now, there’s not a single vessel within the checklist of the 50 greatest cruise ships lower than thrice greater than Titanic.

As famous above, Icon of the Seas is not all that a lot greater than different big cruise ships presently crusing. To the extent that these ships all are working simply fantastic with out tipping over or working into icebergs, as some appear to suppose is inevitable for Icon of the Seas, it is possible that Icon of the Seas will likely be working simply fantastic, too, when it debuts in a couple of months.

Fashionable-day cruise ships corresponding to Icon of the Seas undergo intensive sea trials to show seaworthiness. Additionally they conform to far more rigorous security protocols than have been widespread a century in the past, together with worldwide Security of Life at Sea requirements for the development, equipping and operation of vessels that almost all nations of the world have agreed to implement below treaty.

I will by no means say by no means about what can occur, safetywise, on a cruise ship — or at a land resort, on a aircraft or in a automobile throughout a driving journey, for that matter. However the monitor report of cruise ships in latest a long time is that accidents that contain deaths or accidents are comparatively uncommon.