The Carnival Splendor includes two waterslides.
You know you're riding high when birds are flying below you. From the top deck of the Carnival Splendor docked in Malaga, Spain, I'm even looking down at the famed tower of the city's baroque cathedral. And on the dock far below, I can see a stream of buses moving in military precision to load more than 3,000 passengers heading out on shore excursions.
Welcome to the new normal in cruising: supersize. The newly launched Splendor is so big it has more than twice the heft of the Titanic. In fact, it's among the largest passenger vessels ever built, bigger than any of the fabled liners of the 1930s, and longer, wider and more populated than ships that were considered wonders of mega-engineering just a few years ago.
And this ship is hardly a fluke. It's as though every cruise line is telling its ship designers the same thing: Take the plan and blow it up by 20 per cent. Wait, can you make that 50 per cent bigger? And while you're at it, stack on a few extra decks for good measure.
Most of the dozen ships coming out this year and next carry considerably more than 2,000 passengers, with the Splendor capable of tucking in as many as 3,600.
Royal Caribbean's Oasis of the Seas, coming next year (and ramping up the hype already), can accommodate a mind-boggling 6,400 passengers. It's so wide it has a multistorey canyon in the centre and guests will be offered a choice of either a sea view or a suite that faces onto the Central Park within this middle realm, complete with a tropical garden and ponds.
The expansive trend is redefining what is considered a small, medium and large ship. When Royal Caribbean introduced the 2,270-passenger Sovereign of the Seas in 1988, it was considered an unbelievable behemoth. This year, on the other hand, Holland America's newly launched ship Eurodam - carrying 2,100 passengers - is being advertised as "mid-sized."
Even small luxury lines are expanding their waist sizes. Seabourn Cruises and Silversea Cruises, known for ships that carry only a couple of hundred passengers, are planning to double up capacity on their new builds.
But this bulking up is not just for bragging rights: There are many reasons why bigger really is better, says Splendor's Duncan Puttock. Foremost is efficiency. Modern engines burn as much as 30 per cent less fuel and new designs include scrubbers to reduce the exhaust pollution. In a sense, each new cruise ship replaces two older, less efficient ships.
Costs of other supplies also drop dramatically when you're buying in container loads rather than dozens, he adds. And there is less waste cooking for thousands of passengers than for a few hundred.
For the passengers, the benefits include larger cabins, most of which have balconies. This extra space results from scrapping a long-held belief that vessels have to be narrow enough to fit through the Panama Canal.
Because most cruise ships spend most of their time in the Caribbean or Mediterranean, "post-Panama" designers are dramatically widening ships. The Oasis of the Seas will be nearly 50 metres wide. That's 18 metres wider than Cunard's QE2, for years the biggest passenger ship afloat.
Significantly, the savings from economies of scale are also passed on to passengers. Brochure prices on the big ships start at about $150 a day and promotional specials regularly bring them under $100 a day - about what it would have cost two decades ago to sail on less elaborate ships with smaller cabins.
All this has allowed Carnival, the original mass-market cruise line, to be much more inventive with its cuisine as well. When Puttock first started with the company 20 years ago, a cruise ship that carried 1,200 was considered massive. "At lunch time, a buffet line opened up and the choice was hot dogs, hamburgers, coleslaw and potato salad on a paper plate with plastic forks," he says
Today, you can go to a food court the size of a shopping mall with Indian, Szechuan or deli choices. Or you can order pizza on good china, with hotel-style cutlery and table service. And they aren't cutting corners with ingredients: There's U.S. prime beef, Swiss chocolate, and snack mixes and nuts rather than pretzels at the bars.
Despite the mass setting, there is ample personal space on the Carnival Splendor. As I sit sipping a cappuccino and reading a paper on Deck 14, I have the deck to myself. Even on the popular Lido, with its pool and big video screen, there are always lounge chairs available.
From the moment I board the ship, I also enjoy the personal touches that are the hallmarks of small cruises: The room steward knocks and introduces himself; a supervisor drops by asking if everything is the way we like it; the bartender wants to know how I prefer my Manhattan - and remembers my order down to the extra cherry juice I like.
When it comes to entertainment options, many have been added to appeal to younger, active cruise guests - who are the future of the industry - so the gym and spa area are vast and Wi-Fi reception is available throughout the ship.
Really, for those used to smaller ships, the supersize experience is like going from a small town Main Street to a big city neighbourhood. There are two entire decks of clubs, restaurants and shops - including a raunchy honky-tonk on Deck 5, where a piano man holds forth on a revolving stage singing Toby Keith's I Love this Bar, while pie-eyed fans throw money in his tip jar.
There are tradeoffs that come with being vast, of course. For starters, remembering what deck your cabin is on after a night of carousing. And itineraries like this 10-day trip from Dover to Rome tend to include big cities that have the port facilities to handle the crowd rather than charmingly remote, or more exotic, stops.
With so many fellow passengers scattered over an area bigger than many suburbs, you can't foster friendships in quite the same way either. I met several people during the cruise that I would have liked to see again over drinks or a dinner, but sadly we never crossed paths again. (In other cases, this might be a good thing.)
The trend to big will probably remain a juggernaut, but there are signs that it might slow a bit because of economic realities.
All this extra capacity is hitting the waves at a time when passengers are worried about whether they will have disposable income for their future. Signs of consumer resistance include reports that bookings are down for the Caribbean, Europe and more exotic destinations. Last week, Carnival cut prices for group bookings of European cruises in 2009 by as much as $600 a person.
Another sign that all may not be full speed ahead is a report last month that Norwegian Cruise Line may be pulling out of a contract to build two much-ballyhooed 4,500-passenger ships in a new supersize class called F3. One of the ships is a quarter completed, but there are suggestions the billion-dollar program is putting a strain on the company's balance sheet.
Still, the lines remain confident that they will weather the current economic storm. They've done it before.
I would certainly book on this ship again without hesitation. And it seems I'm not alone. Sixty per cent of the passengers on Splendor are repeat guests of Carnival. And 395 of the people on this cruise are from Canada, including Bob Smillie and his wife, Ruth, from Brampton, Ont.
They have been on three Carnival cruises in the past, moving over from Royal Viking, a now-defunct line whose ships carried fewer than 1,000 passengers.
Their verdict?
"We've never felt we were in a crowd, except when we go ashore," Bob says. "And the mix of people is so wide, all age groups from around the world. Everybody seems to love the ship. I haven't met anyone who wishes it was smaller."
Carnival Splendor by the numbers
113,000 Tons gross weight
3,600 Maximum sleeping capacity
30,000 Photos of guests taken in an average week
60,480 Bacon slices served in an average week
2,100 Pounds of coffee poured in an average week
Big bookings
Several new ships on the horizon are longer, wider and carry more passengers than any ever built:
HOLLAND AMERICA EURODAM hollandamerica.com. This "mid-sized" ship takes 2,100 passengers. Features include a spa deck where guests can rent private cabanas.
CELEBRITY SOLSTICE cruisecelebritysolstice.com. Coming in November, this ship will carry 2,850 guests. The ship will feature real grass on its upper deck and 11 restaurants.
MSC CRUISES' FANTASIA msccruises.com. Launching in December, this ship will carry 3,300 guests. Staterooms will have personal butlers.
CARNIVAL DREAM carnival.com. Following the Carnival Splendor (launched last July), this ship will have a vast spa area, a water theme park and room for 4,000 passengers. The Dream is due in September.
ROYAL CARIBBEAN OASIS OF THE SEAS oasisoftheseas.com. Due in late 2009, this ship will carry up to 6,400 passengers.
NORWEGIAN CRUISE LINES ncl.com. This 4,200-passenger ship promises bowling alleys and an ice bar that will provide fur coats and gloves for guests in the -8 degree lounge. The F3 ship has been partly built, but financial issues may put the project on hold.
Wallace Immen