How?

[girlzillla]

How do they stretch a cruise ship? I was just reading the article on how they are planning to add 70 som feet to the Enchantment of the Seas and I'm curious how they are going to do that.

[madforcruising]

Well a modern ship is built in segments. It´s kind like a puzzle they built the different segemts of the ship and then they put them together. To stretch a ship they cut the ship in the middle - sperate the segments again and then push the front and then back section to fit in the new middle section and connect it alltogether again.
I know this is not a very technical description. It´s just how I can explain it in my words.

Actually they already started to built the new middle section.

[springtxbill]

Kind of like making a stretch limo. Cut in half, put in some more middle, and put the ends back together. When you are finished you can't tell where it was cut.:)

[dak_friendly]

There's a "documentary" that repeats frequently on Travel Channel covering the Disney Cruise Line. Part of it shows how the ship was manufactured... in two pieces!

The ship was built in two sections in two different locations and then one section was transported and merged with the other. Once you see that... you can tell how they can slice a ship in half... put more in the middle section and weld it all back together. It's pretty remarkable.

I looked it up on my Tivo and it appears to be airing on October 7th, 2004 at 5:00pm Eastern. It does repeat alot though in case you miss it.

[girlzillla]

WOW, I was thinking that they would have to cut it in half somehow, but I guess I couldn't figure out how they put it back together and still get it to float. It wouldn't comprehend in my mind.

I'll try to catch that show on Disney. I love the one on how they made the Voyager.

Thanks for all your replies.

[MadDog]

I have a friend who works for Disney and was the liason between Disney and the ship builder to some extent. It was real interesting listening to him explain how these ships are built. He and his wife were to sail on the ship to Florida from the shipyard (I think in Italy) when it was completed. Two days before they were to sail he gets a call from the Burbank office and has to go to Walt Disney World because of problems they were having with Animal Kingdom park they were building there. Man was his wife pissed!!!!

[Globaliser]

Also, if you go to an image search site (eg Google Images) and look for pictures of the [I]Norwegian Dream[/I] and [I]Norwegian Wind[/I], you should find some well-known pictures of them when they were being stretched. They're two sister ships, originally designed with a potential stretch in mind, so it was a relatively easy job to cut them exactly where intended and to "bolt in" the newly-constructed middle section.