The World’s Biggest Cruise Ship, Harmony Of The Seas, Sets Sail In All Its Gargantuan Glory


If the standard cruise ship is far too puny for your luxurious tastes, fear not. The world’s largest cruise ship, the Harmony of the Seas, set sail from France on Thursday for the first time.

The Harmony of the Seas is just on a trial, which is meant to test the cruise ship’s propulsion, steering, and navigational equipment before any paying customers board, USA Today reported. They occur several months before the ship’s first sailing.

Thousands of people gathered at the dock in Saint-Nazaire, in western France, to watch the Harmony of the Seas set sail for the first time, the Guardian reported. About 500 people are on board the massive ship, mostly officials, crew, engineers, and suppliers. The trial will continue until Sunday.

The ship is so big that the three pilots who steered the Harmony of the Seas out of the Saint-Nazaire estuary had to be trained on a simulator in Nantes for the past year to learn the “tricky maneuvers” needed to get it out into open ocean.

The Harmony of the Seas still has some finishing touches before Royal Caribbean welcomes the massive vessel into its luxury fleet on May 12, the Orlando Sentinel reported. Its inaugural sailing will take place on May 19, also from Southampton, England, on May 19.

This summer, it will bask in the Mediterranean sun for a few months before heading to Port Everglades in Florida for the fall. The inaugural sailing out of Fort Lauderdale will set off in November for a three-day trip to the Bahamas. After that, it will sail for seven-night trips in the eastern and western Caribbean.

The Harmony of the Seas’ size is unimaginable. It weighs 227,000 tons, will fit nearly 6,000 passengers (crew not included), and is bigger than its sisters in the Royal Caribbean fleet — the Oasis of the Seas and Allure of the Seas — by 1,700 tons.

The cruise ship has been under construction at the STX shipyard in western France for more than a year, and during that time, tourists have boarded to gawk at the Harmony of the Seas’ behemoth interior. It has 16 decks and is longer than the Eiffel Tower, at 1,187 feet.

The Harmony of the Seas cost $1.1 billion to build. Its first sailings in the Caribbean will actually be fairly inexpensive — for a luxury cruise — at only $885 a person for an interior room (taxes not included). That’s pretty good for what’s considered the most anticipated new ship in years and a record-breaker at that.

And of course, the Harmony of the Seas isn’t just glitzy and overwhelming on the outside, it also has some pretty insane features on the inside.

Probably the coolest feature on the Harmony of the Seas is the Bionic Bar, where drinks are served by robot bartenders. If that’s not nearly cool enough for you, there’s also the Rising Tide Bar, which gradually ascends three decks while cruisers sip their cocktails.

The Harmony of the Seas will also have the cruise line’s first full-size water park with twisting dry slides that drop 100 feet from Decks 16 to 6. The water slides have a similarly dramatic view, dropping 10 decks facing the middle of the ship’s Central Park area. The ship will also feature an 82-foot-long zip line.

The Harmony of the Seas will also feature windowless “inside” cabins with Virtual Balconies, giving passengers real-time views of the outside world. There will be two shows — Broadway’s Grease and the original comedy Columbus, The Musical! — two ice-skating productions, surf simulators, mini golf, an outdoor sports area, Boardwalk, and rock climbing walls.

And if all that luxury still isn’t enough, another cruise ship in the Oasis class — the same class as the Harmony of the Seas — is also under construction and should debut in 2018.

[Photo by Laetitia Notarianni/AP]

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