Let’s take a peek on the what Royal Caribbean’s subsequent new cruise ship seems like whereas nonetheless underneath building.
Icon of the Seas is on the Meyer Turku shipyard in Finland, the place she is being assembled.
RoyalCaribbeanWeblog.com commissioned a set of aerial drone pictures to survey the progress being made for the profit our readers.
These drone pictures had been taken on the morning of February 14, 2023.
Icon of the Seas may have her inaugural crusing January 2024, and the ship is already extremely common based mostly on the bookings Royal Caribbean has seen up to now.
“That ship actually has been the best-selling product within the historical past of our enterprise,” stated Royal Caribbean International CEO Michael Bayley throughout final week’s earnings name with traders.
“It’s been completely excellent by way of the demand and the pricing that we’re producing.”
Icon is the primary ship in a brand new class of Royal Caribbean cruise ships, and meaning it introduces a number of latest improvements and ideas which have resonated with shoppers.
Icon of the Seas may have 26 new options by no means earlier than seen on a Royal Caribbean ship, which incorporates 15 new water experiences.
It may have have greater than 40 meals and beverage ideas, with 23 of them fully new to Royal Caribbean.
The 20-deck-high vessel will characteristic quite a lot of new-to-fleet concepts, comparable to a water park, Vegas-style pool space, indoor AquaTheater, devoted neighborhood for younger households and a lot extra.
Royal Caribbean has additionally added new sorts of cabins which are designed to carry extra visitors.
The new ship can be 250,600 tons in measurement and take the title of the most important cruise ship on the earth.
The first crusing of Icon of the Seas can be a seven-night cruise from her homeport of Miami to the Eastern Caribbean on January 27, 2024.
Icon will then alternate between Eastern and Western Caribbean itineraries via April 2025.
Much of the development exhibits extra cabins have been added since our final photograph replace.
Cabins are constructed elsewhere after which slid into the superstructure of the ship as soon as the slot for them is prepared.
Icon of the Seas was floated out for the primary time in early December 2022.
Royal Caribbean shared a timeline of occasions for Icon in December, and the plan is for the brand new ship to have her first sea trials in May 2023.
Sea trials are when a brand new cruise ship assessments out her techniques at sea so as to consider efficiency and stability.
Icon’s second sea trials are scheduled for June 2023, with ship within the second half of 2023.
Once full, she’ll be a bit longer and better than Wonder of the Seas, which is at the moment the biggest ship on the earth.
Icon may have two extra passenger decks than Wonder, and about 10 toes longer.
Icon can accommodate as much as 5,610 passengers at double occupancy (7,600 passengers when you maxed out each mattress).
She may also be Royal Caribbean’s first ship to make use of liquified pure fuel (LNG) and gasoline cell know-how.
Icon of the Seas is the primary of at the least three Icon Class cruise ships.
The subsequent one can be accomplished in 2025 and the third in 2026.
Beyond the Icon Class, Royal Caribbean has no present orders for extra ships, however the firm hasn’t dominated something out.
Speaking with Royal Caribbean Group CEO Jason Liberty in December 2022, he stated there may be extra time to order ships than a number of years in the past, “The degree of demand for brand new ships was so excessive that you simply needed to order ships a lot additional out so as to have entry to these slots. So you had been seeing folks order ships six or seven years out.”
“If you concentrate on the Icon one’s and the Icon two’s, there’s just a little bit extra respiratory time for us to have to put in these orders due to that structural change pre-pandemic.”