America's addiction to cruises

25.01.2024 - 11:33 / insider.com / Royal Caribbean / Cruises

On January 27, the world's largest cruise ship is set to glide out of the Port of Miami. For the several thousand passengers who have reserved a berth on its maiden voyage through the Caribbean, the Icon of the Seas might seem like the dream holiday. Weighing as much as five Titanics, the ship is a floating ziggurat of fun and indulgence.

The "first-of-its-kind combination of the best of every vacation," as Royal Caribbean describes it, boasts seven pools across the ship's 20 floors, an aquapark with six waterslides, a 55-foot water curtain, and a surfing simulator. There's a climbing wall, an ice-skating rink, a minigolf course, a karaoke bar, a casino, an escape room, an obstacle course, and "The Pearl," a multimedia sphere billed as "the world's largest kinetic sculpture." Passengers have 40 ways to dine across eight distinct "neighborhoods," and 28 ways to sleep, including the $80,000-a-week "Ultimate Family Townhouse," each with its own white picket fence, mailbox, and indoor slide. The opening of reservations for the Icon, in October 2022, saw Royal Caribbean's "single largest booking day in its 53-year history," the company said.

The megaship embodies a rapid redemption for the cruise industry. In the early months of the pandemic, as the global cruising fleet moldered at port, some wondered whether the hiatus might prove terminal. Instead, cruising has come roaring back, setting passenger records and attracting a new cohort of younger travelers.

But the Icon is also debuting at a moment of reckoning. As it pulls away from the American mainland, it will be pursued by a storm of animosity from port communities, environmental activists, and bystanders who feel that, in a period of overtourism and climate crisis, it all seems a bit much.

When a rendering of the Icon's flamboyant stern went viral in July, for every person presenting it as the ultimate vacation, someone else was calling it a monstrosity, an avatar of grotesque overconsumption. Few could deny that the lurid leviathan was indelible. But what is it an icon of, exactly?

Love them or loathe them, giant cruise ships are among the most remarkable success stories of the mass tourism age. In the mid-20th century, as commercial airplanes supplanted boats as the main mode of long-distance transportation, passenger shipping lines fell into steep decline. Cruising was initially a small-scale and ponderous pastime: Ships would dock at ports of call for several days and cater to a clientele that had both time and money. Then Ted Arison, the scion of an Israeli shipping family, flipped the industry on its head by asking: What if the boat itself was the destination?

In January 1972, Arison bought an old passenger liner and commissioned a hasty refit