Why the world’s largest cruise ship won’t be as crowded as you fear

13.01.2024 - 17:59 / thepointsguy.com / Royal Caribbean

There's one thing that can make or break a cruise ship experience, and it's not dining, entertainment or cabins.

It's flow.

I'm talking about passenger flow, the ability of guests to move through a cruise ship unimpeded by crowded bottlenecks or dead ends. And when you're building Icon of the Seas, the world's largest cruise ship, set to carry 5,610 passengers at double occupancy (up to 7,600 at maximum capacity), you need to pay extra attention to where people will congregate and how they will move from point A to point B throughout a 20-deck-high ship.

For cruise news, reviews and tips, sign up for TPG's cruise newsletter.

Luckily, Royal Caribbean's ship-designing team are pros when it comes to flow.

The internet has been freaking out about the size of the ship, and the assumption of many people who have never sailed on a giant cruise ship is that thousands of people stuck together on a floating megaresort will lead to the feeling of people everywhere. They imagine a vacation that is dominated by queues, claustrophobic spaces packed with people and the inability to find a quiet spot to yourself.

While certain parts of the ship will be busy (the pool deck on a sea day is never quiet on big, mass-market ships), Icon of the Seas passengers will not feel like they're fighting for seats, tables and clear pathways every minute of the day. The ship is designed to move passengers easily through the decks, connecting key public areas and removing dead ends.

"We had to go to great lengths to make it feel like there was not too much, or that when you put 7,000 guests on there that it was going to feel overwhelming," Jay Schneider, Royal Caribbean's chief product innovation officer, told TPG during an interview aboard Icon of the Seas. "And that took us to some really specific decisions."

Here's what he told us about what his team did to create a humongous cruise ship that won't feel as crowded as you fear.

Schneider and his team make a point to study other cruise ships, both Royal Caribbean and its competitors. "Where I think ships often feel stuffy, tight, closed is guest flow," he said.

"Cruise ships continue to find dead ends for people that they can't get around, and we really focused on not doing that [on Icon of the Seas]. You can get from Deck 2 to Deck 8 at the heart of the ship without having to touch an elevator if you don't want to."

I experienced that easy flow on board Icon of the Seas during a sneak peek at the ship this week in advance of its first sailings (though it only had hundreds, not thousands, of people on board). When you're in Surfside, the ship's family area, it's simple to go up the stairs to Central Park, an outdoor park-line zone of the ship, or down to the indoor, mall-like