Is the world's largest cruise ship crowded? Not as much as you might fear

If sharing Icon of the Seas with up to 7,600 other passengers sounds like it will be crowded, Royal Caribbean has planned around that issue.

Icon of the Seas is the biggest cruise ship in the world, and there will be anywhere between 5,610 to 7,600 passengers depending on how many third, fourth, and fifth passengers are booked into each cabin.  Without a doubt, that’s a lot of people on any ship.

Royal Caribbean knew it had to be able to accommodate that many people while still retaining a positive guest experience.  They had already successfully tackled the issue on the Oasis Class ships that preceded Icon, and the challenge was to keep crowds moving on Icon too.

Naturally, the public was curious how crowded a ship as big as Icon would be once it started to sail.

Royal Caribbean International President and CEO Michael Bayley joked about just how much time his company spent on the issue of crowds on Icon, “A lot of time. I mean, a gazillion billion, gazillion, trillion hours of time with a lot of people.”

“We were obsessively focused, and we’ve got a lot of experience,” he said alluding to the fact Royal Caribbean has been developing mega cruise ships for decades. 

“If you look at the classes of ships over time, how they’ve evolved, we do know a lot about the flow of people, and we do know how you need to create an experience that delights the customer, but also moves people around.”

That isn’t to say there wont be any lines or crowds. Any cruise ship have lines and crowds of people that occur throughout any sailing.  With Icon, the cruise line wanted to ensure the flow of passengers mitigated the problem.

Changing the formula

One way Royal Caribbean has focused on crowds has been to re-think its crowd management strategy.

“A lot of work, a lot of study, a lot of analytics, and we’ve got a lot of information from our existing fleet, and we utilize it a lot to try to to operate this efficiently as possible, but also make sure people have a great time,” Mr. Bayley explained.

“Our classic formula is in the evening is a dinner and a show,” alluding to how things have typically worked. “When you think about dinner and a show, that really allows you to understand how people do move. And then, of course, during the day, we’ve created neighborhoods.”

Neighborhoods have served two purposes for Royal Caribbean’s mega ships.  First, it provides easy navigation aids.  Second, it helps spread passengers out.

Surfside is focused on young families with kids six and under and there’s so much to do for kids and their parents that it keeps those families in one section of the ship without much need to leave. Meanwhile, older kids are busy with Thrill Island’s water park.  Adults can hang out at The Hideaway, and then there’s likely trivia, production shows, meals, and a host of other things to do happening at the same time.

Believe it or not, there’s actually less cabins on Icon of the Seas than an Oasis Class ship.  According to Royal Caribbean Group CEO Jason Liberty, that means the actual square footage per passenger is higher.

“I think the construction of the different neighborhoods and being able to segregate different multi generations through the course of the ship was really the focus of it.”

Spinning up higher capacity

Mr. Bayley indicated prepping Icon for the crowds that would come onboard has been an ongoing effort.

Icon departed Europe with extra crew members and a lot of contractors who were onboard to continue finalizations. 

Once the ship got to Miami, they started doing shakedown cruises with employees.  That amounted to around 4,000 passengers. For the preview sailings with media and travel agents, the number went up to 4,500.

For the maiden voyage, they’re expecting, “80% of the double occupancy, it’s probably would probably be around 5500, which is easy,” Mr. Bayley said.

“And then week by week, we increase the capacity until we’re confident that we’ve got everything working the way it should. And so the full capacity of this ship, which typically will happen in peak summer during the school holidays, will be 7600.”

For those keeping score at home, Oasis Class ships max out around a similar number, “Our Oasis class peak summer have operated at around 7500 today. So we’re very confident on our ability to manage all of our guests.”

By methodically increasing capacity, Royal Caribbean feels good about handling crowds, “So far we feel really good about everything that we do.”

New elevators

There are no traditional elevators on Icon of the Seas.  Instead, the ship has destination elevators.

Destination elevators aren’t just a fad, they’re a way to more efficiently tackle the issue of getting passengers between decks and that’s been a traditional pain point on big ships.

With the destination elevators, you select which floor you want to go to on a panel and are told which elevator to take.

Once in the elevator, there’s no buttons to push.  This means less people coming in and stopping the elevator on every floor.  Or someone leaning against the panel and accidentally pushing all the buttons.

Royal Caribbean did a lot of proactive work to ensure destination elevators would be a good idea. 

“We even constructed the elevator lobbies in a warehouse in Miami full scale so we could visually understand how those elevator lobbies would look. “

“And then we sent teams all over the world to look at similar technologies to make sure that it really was something that we thought would work.”

The result early on has been a successful and efficient system.

“We’ve been delighted with the elevator lobbies, and in fact, we thought because people would be confused.” 

“In the beginning of our cruises, we put staff on every lobby with ask me on it to help people, and we found it’s really not an issue. People kind of figure it out quite quickly. And I got to say, I think the elevators are great.”

Easier ways to get between decks

As a passenger, you’ll find more ways to move from one deck to another beyond elevators and the traditional stairwells.

There are multiple stairways in the Royal Promenade to go down and up, and most importantly, in the middle of the deck.

There are a few dry slides for kids and adults to go between decks that is meant to be fun, but it’s functional. There’s one between the two levels of Chill Island and a slide in Surfside that acts as an express way down.

While the slides aren’t going to make much of an impact to lessen crowds, the escalators and stairs are easy ways to reduce the need of an elevator, and keep people moving quicker.  Moving between decks 4 through 7 is very easy on Icon of the Seas.

Keeping everyone busy

When it comes to crowds on Icon, you can expect a lot of different things happening that should draw passengers in many directions.

Royal Caribbean is leveraging entertainment, smart design, and more things to do than on any other ship to keep people busy.

Keeping in mind that Icon of the Seas is about 7% larger than Wonder of the Seas, so it’s not doubling or significantly increasing the overall size of a known entity.

If you’re having second thoughts about going on a ship as big as Icon of the Seas because of how many people will be onboard, it’s likely not going to be nearly as bad as you think it will be.