One of the nagging questions in our collective minds as we peer over the horizon of the cruise world has to do with the size of ships. What’s next? Is bigger better? How big is too big? Now that ships are becoming destinations in themselves, could they become just destinations?
Royal Caribbean’s two sailing monsters, Allure of the Seas and Oasis of the Seas, are nose-to-nose (above) for big-ship bragging rights, and they’re a small town ahead of the nearest competitor, Norwegian’s Epic. This was the first line, and the first ship, to break out of the pack and take on Royal Caribbean for size — three Freedom Class ships are also slightly larger than the Epic in posted passenger capacity and length.
These seemed like reasonable questions for the captain of the world’s biggest cruise ship not flying the colors of Royal Caribbean. Actually, Trygve Vorren is one of two captains of the Epic, and he spent a lot of time watching her being built in France before assuming command on the bridge.
There are always new ships in the planning, including two by Norwegian over the next two years. So, is the biggest yet to come?
“You never say never,” says the personable Norwegian-born resident of North Carolina. “I’m sure there are companies planning it. I don’t know how far they will go. There are tankers that weight 560,000 tons, so anything is possible.”
The Epic weighs 155,000 tons…the Allure and Oasis about 225,000.
“What will catch people’s attention will be the future,” continues Captain Vorren. “What will make them come back? Look at the last last 20 years…we have developed technology we never imagined. What did we do — not in cruising but in life — when we didn’t have the Internet?”
Will cruise ships as destinations catch people’s attention? Captain Vorren thinks not: “Because people always want to go places. You would not have a 
destination, and everyone on cruise ships likes going to a land resort. What’s the purpose of going on a ship if it’s not going anywhere?”
There is another reason, the Jones Act. That’s for another day.