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The world’s largest cruise ship, Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, has set sail from Miami on its maiden voyage, carrying what amounted to the population of a small city.
The world’s largest cruise ship, Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, has set sail from Miami on its maiden voyage, carrying what amounted to the population of a small city.
The ship, built over 900 days at a shipyard in Turku, Finland, is a monument to enormity, longer than the Eiffel Tower is tall, with 20 decks and room for more than 5,600 passengers (7,600 at maximum capacity) and a crew of 2,350.
Still bored? There will be 50 musicians and comedians as well as a 16-piece orchestra.
The $2 billion Icon — the first in Royal Caribbean’s new Quantum Class of ships — is stuffed with the latest technology and, despite its mammoth size, claims to be more eco-friendly than some smaller cruise ships.
The Icon is powered by what its owners say is eco-friendly liquefied natural gas (though some experts say LNG systems can leak damaging amounts of methane gas into the atmosphere).
It also features a system — microwave-assisted pyrolysis — for converting waste to energy-producing gas, and a reverse osmosis system to provide nearly all the fresh water the ship needs, the company says.
After leaving its Miami home base Saturday on its sold-out inaugural cruise — the company says ticket demand was “unprecedented” — the Icon will spend a week in the Caribbean before returning to Miami.
At 2,000 feet long (365 meters), the Icon will be taking the title of world’s largest from a Royal Caribbean stablemate, the slightly smaller Wonder of the Seas.
