The Harmony of the Seas cruise ship is a big, brash behemoth

What is it really like on board the world’s biggest cruise ship? Hilary Fennell finds out as she boards Harmony of the Seas for its inaugural sailing.

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.