She’s Icon-ic.
The most important cruise ship on the planet — Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas — has yet to welcome her first paying guests, but she’s already making waves within the Caribbean.
Today, locals and visitors in Ponce, Puerto Rico, were granted a sneak peek on the 1,198 foot-long, 250.800-gigaton pleasure cruiser, which some have labeled a “monstrosity,” taking a break in port as a part of a trial voyage obligatory to finish the certification process.
Boasting 20 decks, room for as much as 7,600 passengers, a food hall, six pools and the biggest waterpark at sea with a spread of waterslides, the Icon — five times larger than the Titanic — is sizable enough to have been split into separate, experience-oriented and themed “neighborhoods.”
“We’re positioning it as the last word family vacation, and while you step back and take a look at all of the energy and time that has gone into creating this ship it’s mind-blowing,” Royal Caribbean International president and chief executive Michael Bayley said in an earlier statement.
Armchair travel critics have had a field day poking fun on the bloated craft, which reportedly cost $2 billion to construct.
“As visions of hell go, that’s just about probably the most hellish,” one X user said after seeing photos of the ship, while one other wrote, “I’m sorry but it is a nightmare.”
“Each time I see an image of the Icon of the Seas cruise ship, I’m crammed with an intense dread,” another person commented.
“For a second I used to be like ‘No, the Icon of the Seas is just not real, it could’t hurt you because some wacky giant cruise ship seasteading scheme goes viral every 10 months.’ But I looked it up and it seems they really built this one,” one other X-er said.
While Icon will indisputably be the world’s largest cruise ship in the meanwhile, keen-eyed cruisers will recognize Royal’s latest addition as a comparatively modest upsizing from pre-existing megaships like Wonder, Utopia, Harmony and Symphony of the Seas, all of which debuted lately.
Royal Caribbean has long had a status for offering an over-the-top choice of activities and dining options, luring in travelers with mountain climbing partitions, wave pools and other wow-inducing amenities.
Icon is scheduled to welcome the general public for its first, reportedly sold-out sailing from Miami on Jan. 27.
As a part of the seven-night voyage, the ship will stop in St. Kitts, St. Thomas and CocoCay, Royal’s private island within the Bahamas.
Current fares for the yr’s schedule of seven-night Caribbean sailings begin at $1,542 per person.
