Just how big is Oasis of the Seas?

Click to see the full-size version. Image courtesy of IGLU.com

So just how big is Royal Caribbean’s mammoth Oasis of the Seas?

Our friends over at U.K. travel agency,  www.iglucruise.com, have created this fun graphic to show the true size of the 225,282-ton,  5,400-passenger ship!

It just goes to show how cruise ships have advanced over the years — according to this chart, Oasis is three times the size of the QE2 and five times bigger than the Titanic.

The picture also gives some handy information about ship building and the fast facts on how much food is consumed at sea!

One staggering fact is that Disney Cruise Line serves up 5,000 eggs each morning! Mind you, after seeing plates piled sky-high in the buffet restaurants at breakfast, we can see how this may be possible!

Do you have any fun cruise ship facts? Share them with us!

KR

Eye Openers in Guernsey

Having visited Guernsey’s St. Peter Port several times on cruise ship calls and loving it (it’s definitely on the list for a more in-depth, non-cruise-related holiday in future), I looked forward to yesterday’s call there on Westerdam. But this time I got a chance to learn about the island without actually setting foot off the ship!

This time, a bit of Guernsey came to Westerdam.

We had reached out to local journalists Mark Windsor and Nicci Martel from the Guernsey Press and Star, and Claire Brouard, from Island FM radio, with an invitation to come onboard the ship for lunch, a tour, and good conversation. The afternoon delivered on all three counts.

From left to right, Mark Windsor and Nicci Martel from the Guernsey Press and Star, and Claire Brouard, from Island FM radio

Some interesting tidbits:

*First, the complicated stuff and I only include this info because Mark tells me that Brits often don’t really get what Guernsey is all about:  Guernsey is one of England’s Channel Islands and a British Crown Dependency. Sark, Isle of Man and Jersey are among others. They’re not part of the U.K. – they’re a separate possession of the Crown.

*Remember “Bergerac”? The popular 1980s cop show was actually based in Jersey but gave the Channel Islands a big jolt as a tourist destination at the time. The basic gist of the series was, according to Wikipedia, “the blend of holiday locations, the island’s tax exile millionaire populace and, of course, some unsavoury criminals.” Our Guernsey journalists were stunned to learn from my Finnish husband that the show was such a huge hit in Finland that charter air and package tours were created to ferry Finns to the Channel Islands.

*Did you know that Guernsey’s big “crop” is money? It’s a banking mecca on the scale of Bermuda and the Caymans. The next big industry is tourism; horticulture’s on the wane but islanders do grow tomatoes and flowers (I’m told the gorgeously scented freesia is the most common flower)

*There was a spirited debate about Guernsey’s awareness among travelers. My husband, Teijo Niemela, who’s editor of Cruise Business Review (www.cruisebusiness.com), a cruise industry business to business magazine, and who joined us for lunch, really peppered the trio with questions about why the Channel Islands doesn’t market itself more aggressively to cruise lines.

*It’s almost as expensive to live here as it is in London! Claire, who’s shopping for a home, regaled us with tales of too-small, garden-less condos here that were more expensive than detached homes with big backyards in other parts of England. Island living is definitely London-esque, real estate-wise.

Shopping

*Speaking of shopping, one of the big selling points for Guernsey when it comes to cruise visitors is its variety and quality as a shopping destination (and its light tax position). It has a nice blend of high street chains and unique-to-Guernsey boutiques. But it’s a controversial issue. The Guernsey Press and Star (http://www.thisisguernsey.com/2010/07/19/the-high-streets-ship-fails-to-come-in/#ixzz0vd9SEZRH) reported recently that on a day with two ships (and 4,000 passengers) in port, the High Street was deserted; cruise shoppers did not materialize. On our visit, I noticed that many, many passengers returning onboard from their day ashore were carrying shopping bags (certainly saw more of these than on our Portland/Weymouth call).

Westerdam's Crow's Nest

On their part, neither Claire, Nicci or Mark had ever been on a cruise ship before and it was illuminating to see what caught their attention. One great comment from Claire on the pool deck, looking back towards the island: I’ve never seen Guernsey from this vantage point before! Other hits onboard for these first time cruisers included Holland America Line’s Explorations Café (the coffee bar/library/card room/Crow’s Nest bar), the lavish theater (easily as big as anything we have on Guernsey, Claire noted), and a tour of our cabin, a standard balcony that was roomier than they expected.

The weather, which was gloomy, spitting rain throughout the day, was definitely  more conducive to staying cozy and dry onboard! Ironically, just as Westerdam began to raise its tenders in preparation to heading back out to sea, the skies cleared and the sun shone brightly. Alas, it was too late to do passengers any good.

CSB

Balcony fun

On today’s home page poll on Cruise Critic UK, we earnestly ask what you like to do best on your balcony (keep it clean!). So far, reading a book is getting the grand share of votes, though 18 percent like the “get romantic” option. Dining al fresco gets a small nod, at 7 percent, but I think that’s more because most cruise lines don’t really go to any trouble to make a meal on the balcony an option (Princess Cruises does an amazing job with its balcony brunches and dinners, and Celebrity at least outfits some balconies with real tables rather than those the size of postage stamp).

I frankly thought that our poll over on Cruisecritic.com, our U.S.-based site, was a tad sharper. (We were a bit obsessed about balconies yesterday!). There, the query was: What’s the most annoying thing people do on balconies? Far and away, people who smoke are the biggest irritants (and as I write this inside my cabin, with balcony door open, my next door neighbor is puffing away. I can smell it in here).

What’s your biggest pet peeve about balcony etiquette or lack thereof? Feel free to post it here — or go to Cruisecritic.com and vote!

CSB

Dine With Nick Stars!

This morning I had one of the most lively breakfasts of my life. The location: The colourful Spiegel Tent on Norwegian Epic. The event: A character breakfast with the stars of Nickelodeon.

Now, since this isn’t a revenue cruise – and  the ship is mostly full of weary travel agents who may have had one too many glasses of Champagne last night – the atmosphere was perhaps not quite as electric as it would be on a regular cruise when families will be flocking into this eatery.

However, we got into the spirit of things, and as our cooked breakfast came out (sausage, eggs, bacon, pancakes),  so did the stars of the kids TV programmes.

SpongeBob Squarepants, Dora the Explorer, Jimmy Neutron (who posed for a picture with me!) and pals paraded on stage and sang their rendition of “Celebration” – that certainly woke us up!

There were a couple of children in the restaurant and when we were all given the chance to meet the characters, you could see the excitement on their faces. That’s not to say there weren’t plenty of fully grown adults standing in line to have their photos taken with the stars!

It’s a great addition for NCL, and if you’re planning to sail with your kids, definitely try to check it out – it’s on three times a cruise and you can book in the Box Office. For children aged 4-12 the cost is $10 per child; ages 13 and upwards, the fee is $15 per person.

KR

Studio cabins

Easily ranking in the top three of things our readers most want to know about are Norwegian Epic’s studio cabins and lounge. As you may recall, NCL originally planned to make this grouping of very small cabins a sort of hipster’s retreat for the budget-impaired. Didn’t go over. So now — in a brilliant move that as I like to say made lemonade out of lemons — NCL decided to transform the space into cabins for solo travelers.

In a word? Small but oh-so-cozy. Each has a double bed, enough storage space, flat screen telly, neat ambient lighting (four different colors; one person at yesterday’s press conference wanted to know if it was an effort to introduce chronotherapy —  therapy of color? — into the ship). I think it just looks nice. Ironically, the frosted-glass bathrooms that are controversial in the cabins-for-two don’t exist here (here, you get a toilet and a shower in a regular, pre-fab plastic-formed bathroom. The irony of course is that here who cares about privacy: You’re in the cabin alone!

These are technically considered inside cabins but do have a window (with adjustable venetian blind) that looks into the corridor.

Loved the studio lounge, take a look at the photo. It’s just a sleek, contemporary place to chill out with its own coffee making facilities and also a bartender at certain times of the day. It feels more like Seabourn than NCL. Also a cool touch: there’s a vending area down the hall that sells the usual junk food (chips, candy, soda), though there’s no microwave (no need to be heating up pallid plastic containers of fake spaghetti with all the options the ship has to offer dining wise).

The whole thing reminds of the pod hotel craze that’s creeping into airport accommodations. All things equal, I’d prefer a cabin with a balcony for the same price as this — but if that’s delusional, well, I’d be happy here. Would you?

CSB

It’s the “it” ship, trust us…

Norwegian Epic, the newest (and largest) cruise ship from Norwegian Cruise Line, also known as the “freestyle”  icon (no rules, no regimentation), was delivered today by STX Europe’s shipyard in France’s St. Nazaire.

At Cruise Critic we call it the “it” ship because it’s the rare vessel in 2010 that’s completely and utterly unique. There are a lot of nice new ships launching this year, such as P&O’s Azura, Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas, Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth and Celebrity’s Eclipse, but they’re pretty much copies of an earlier original. Norwegian Epic IS an original.

By and large, the ship seems at first to be geared to a huge, sprawling, mostly U.S.-centric audience. In its own way, though, the line is trying to court UK and European cruisers too (with the former, it’s bringing the ship, pre-inaugural era anyway, to Southampton for some festivities and with the latter, it’s planning to deploy Epic to the Mediterranean during summertime starting next year).

Frankly I don’t think the ship is either American or European. It’s a mishmash of styles that have more to do with age demos than cultural ones. If you regularly read the celebrity-oriented tabloids, you’ll fit in just fine (which if we’re all going to be brutally honest, includes most of us!). Clearly, this is a ship that’s courting the hip and trendy young set (if in cruising we classify the “young set” as the under 50s, well, bear that in mind).

So there’s the solo studios for single travelers, the Spice H20 beach club for South Beach wannabes, and the Blue Man Group, essentially a mime act, that started in the U.S. but is now spreading worldwide.

We’re not the first to express the opinion that the ship’s exterior is the ugliest we’ve ever seen (and I’ll tell you that a few NCL folks have admitted as much to us) though if you’re already onboard, I’ll say it probably doesn’t matter what the outside looks like. I’ll confess that when writing a poll this week that asked “what one aspect of Epic intrigues you?” [Poll is here, please feel free to weigh in: http://bit.ly/aFTUuh], I did slip in a reference to the ship’s unwieldy outward design (somewhat surprisingly, a mere 5 percent so far have voted for this option).

Shockingly, even less enthusiasm was accorded to such choices as Shanghai’s Noodle Bar (an industry first), which so far has engendered just 1.5 percent-worth-of-excitement, the Spice H20/Posh Beach Club (which weighs in at a measly 2 percent) and, sadly, the Argentinean steak house restaurant, which clearly is not ringing bells but does deserve a bit of credit for a daring effort (it gets less than 1 percent).

CSB