Mighty Cruise Ships

[babs135]

Caught up with the episode about the Symphony of the Seas. She is one big ship. Can't make up my mind whether I would like to sail on such a monstrosity, I'd be worried it was top heavy plus too many people.

 

Anyone here sailed on her and can give their opinion?

[jocap]

Well, she won't be top heavy, with all that weight in the engine room! We were next to her in Barcelona, for her very first cruise, and many of us went out on deck, on Oceana, to see her sail... we were in the middle of the Mistral wind blowing down from France, and it was so bad that we heard Azura in Civitavecchia had broken all her mooring lines! Cold, gale force winds, but off she sailed like a queen!

We kept meeting with her at different ports- still cold and windy- but everyone looked as if they were enjoying themselves.

[babs135]

We were on the Queen Elizabeth berthed next to the Harmony of the Seas which is the sister ship so could get a reasonably close look at her.  Quite impressive  what I could see if I'm honest, but it's still an awful lot of people!!!

[MicCanberra]

I haven't been on either of those two ships but have been on the Ovation of the seas (4800) several times and also on NCLs epic (4200)  which are both great ships and apart from embarkation, neither seemed too crowded. There are lots of areas so the crowds are spread. I suppose if you are doing a longer cruise the ship is more important and may play a larger part but if the cruise is port intensive, the ship is not so important as you are off it almost as much as you are on it.

[babs135]

DH is still not fit to travel 😞 but there is a very very very small chance we might be able to get away in December and the more I think about these behemoth ships the more I'm thinking I'd like to try them.  After all, they wouldn't have built them if they didn't think the paying customer wouldn't like them!!  😀

 

The biggest ship we've sailed is the Norwegian Breakaway at just under 4,000 passengers and apart from the atrium it didn't feel too crowded.  The Diamond Princess carries just under 3,000 and there were times when (at sea) the ship appeared deserted.  We did wonder where everyone was hiding!

 

 

[MicCanberra]

I think it depends on the itinerary and the time of the year, if the weather is good, many will be up on deck and that leaves the public areas in the ship less busy. With ships having more balconies and suites (along with the suite areas), that also takes people out of the public areas.

[Sancho_proudfoot]

On 7/31/2019 at 8:13 PM, babs135 said:

Caught up with the episode about the Symphony of the Seas. She is one big ship. Can't make up my mind whether I would like to sail on such a monstrosity, I'd be worried it was top heavy plus too many people.

 

Anyone here sailed on her and can give their opinion?

 

Our first cruise was on Independence when she was brand new, and, at the time the biggest cruise ship afloat. We worried about so many people onboard but as it turned out, we didn't need to have.

 

Haven't tried the RCL megaships, but am going up a notch on MSC Seaview which carries 4.5K pax.