The Harmony of the Seas cruise ship is a big, brash behemoth
HAVING never set foot on a cruise liner before, I’m not sure what to expect as I set off on Royal Caribbean’s Harmony of the Seas, the world’s biggest cruise ship, for its first sailing. It’s certainly thrilling to stand on deck as two long toots of the horn signal that it’s time to leave our berth in Southampton and head out to sea.
I’ve read some of the facts of course — that it has 2,747 rooms, is 1,188 feet long, cost $1.5 billion (€1.34m) and took more than two and a half years to build — but that doesn’t prepare me for experiencing the actual scale of the thing. At first, its sheer size is overwhelming. It is not so much like being on a hotel on water as being on a very large, floating shopping mall.
Imagine Dundrum Shopping Centre drifting out to sea. Not getting it? Well, Harmony of the Seas is the size of four football pitches. She is three times the length of the field at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium. She is longer than the Eiffel Tower is high.
I’m lost among the 18 decks and 24 elevators,the 20 restaurants, 42 bars and lounges. When I ditch the swanky lifts for the short flights of stairs between floors instead, all of a sudden I get my bearings and my sea legs, in the same way as it isn’t until you stop using the underground and start to walk or take the bus that you get to know a new city.
But aside from its mammoth size, what sets Harmony of the Seas apart is the variety of what’s on offer. The ship has a shopping district, 23 pools, a casino, gym, spa, nursery, theatre, ice rink, basketball courts and a hospital. There are even whispers of a morgue. Some 2,300 crew look after up to 6,410 guests, that’s a total of nearly 9,000 people. The favourite statistic I hear is that 15,000 eggs are consumed on board every day.
The ship is divided into seven distinct ‘neighbourhoods’. The Boardwalk emulates a traditional seaside experience, complete with burgers, hotdogs, an old-fashioned carousel and, just in case you’re getting too misty-eyed with nostalgia there: screams.
From the amusements. Which in this case is the Ultimate Abyss – a big purple slide and the largest at sea. It is a 100ft tall tube that starts 150ft above sea level with guests making the descent off a see-through platform into 216ft of tunnels that spiral down, down, down 10 storeys, at an average speed of nine miles per hour.
The team was given orders to create this, the ship’s greatest gimmick, only six months ago, presenting them with the biggest technical and engineering headache of the project.
The hull of the ship had already been constructed, so the challenge was to create a multi-sectioned slide that would withstand the vibration from the propellors without cracking.
Down on The Royal Promenade, there’s a Bionic Bar staffed by robots. Tap your ingredients into a keypad and they serve up your cocktail. And there’s a bar called the Rising Tide that goes up and down between decks.
The Pools and Sports zone has crazy golf, a basketball court, badminton and table tennis, waterslides, and two Flowriders, where you can learn to surf, though the weather is a bit cold and windy for outdoor games on my trip.
You can pamper yourself at the spa and work off all those cocktails at the fitness centre before heading for a night at the tables in the casino down in the Entertainment Palace where you can play the slots or roll the dice. And smoke.
The Youth Zone provides kids and teenagers with their own entertainment.
Babysitting for tots is €5 an hour, but older children are supervised free of charge by professional child care staff. The area has its own theatre and science lab.
There will be no teenage sulks about sluggish wifi, thanks to a dedicated satellite beam which follows the ship around, giving superfast internet service.
My favourite zone is the Central Park neighbourhood, an outdoor space right in the middle of the ship, with over 10,000 real plants and trees, including a futuristic vertical garden along one wall.
It has some good restaurants, including Jamie Oliver’s, and some upmarket shops like Cartier and Bulgari with eye-popping prices. Don’t despair, you can also get jewellery gift sets for €19.99.
As our two-night inaugural spin takes me and my guest from Southampton into the middle of the English Channel and back again, we forget we’re on the world’s biggest cruise ship — or on a boat at all. At first there is a slight sway, but that goes away due to multiple tactics in place to level the ship such as giant stabilisers.
As we wander through bars and restaurants that never seem to close I’m getting the feeling that I am in a cocoon, but I think that’s what they want. Royal Caribbean created the ship with the widest possible demographic in mind, but see it as the perfect holiday for multi-generational families.
It is cleverly designed to maximise the circulation of passengers and, despite the numbers on board, nowhere ever seems crowded. A sense of spaciousness is created by lots of open spaces and massive atriums.
Loud, big ‘art’ is everywhere. As I stare at a huge, moving, sculpture in the shape of a head, like an enormous glitter ball — by Czech artist David Cerny, who’s mirrored bust of writer Franz Kafka made all that fuss when it first appeared in Prague — my mind boggles at how on earth they built that on a ship. I begin to think of other logistics, working out that dinner-time is like catering for 50 average sized weddings a night.
How do they organise the food, refrigeration, cooking, waste management, water management. To clear my head, I run around the circumference of the ship on the outdoor track down on Deck 5 and do a yoga class.
Later, the drizzle turns to rain outside, but we’re cosy inside our luxury cabin which is much roomier than expected, with 7 foot ceilings, a flat-screen TV with a full range of channels and on-demand movies.
And best of all, a balcony. But don’t worry if you can’t afford a balcony or even a window because the cabins with no windows at all have virtual ones — LCD screens that stream real-time footage of the view from deck directly to your room.
As cruising becomes the fastest growing sector of the mass tourism industry and ships get bigger and bigger, fears of pollution increase.
I’m told Harmony of the Seas is 20% more energy efficient than previous ships. Several small changes added up to make this 20%: improvements in hydrodynamic design, a new type of engine, lowering the fuel consumption, replacing traditional incandescent light bulbs with LED lighting — but the biggest single factor was redesigning the hull to make it more energy efficient.
‘Bubble technology’ blows air under the ship’s hull to create a blanket of bubbles reducing friction with water, saving 2-3% energy as she glides through the sea.
Mid-channel weather is not good, but we are determined to have a good time. Regular announcements over the tannoy, remind us that the staff are equally determined that we do so. They are all very friendly, even though working on these ships means they can be away from their families for six months at a time. “We want to make people happy,” our smiling Jamaican attendant says as I thank him for leaving the evening’s itinerary laid out on the pillow.
After dinner, our entertainment options are many and varied, so we try them all.
In the 1,400-seat theatre we catch a glimpse of Grease. We enjoy a jaw-droppingly good ice-skating show, the skill of the performers and level of production design is incredible, and relax to a bit of jazz before dancing until late to a live Salsa band.
Next day, as we step off and look back at the ship, looming above us like several blocks of flats, I know exactly what it reminds me of: Vegas meets Disneyland on water. Brash? Maybe. Flashy? I’d say. Fun? You bet.
* This summer, Harmony of the Seas will be sailing around the Western Mediterranean.
* For a 7-night cruise, departing weekly from Barcelona and booked direct with Royal Caribbean, prices start at €1,269 pp including return flights from Dublin Airport, from July - October. See www.royalcaribbean.ie
