I recently sailed on Legend of the Seas, one of Royal Caribbean’s enormous Icon-class ships.
It can carry roughly 7,600 passengers and 2,350 crew at maximum capacity. That means if the ship is full, there could be 9,950 people onboard!
That is an awful lot of people…
There were around 6,500 guests onboard my sailing – so that would have been around 8,850 – once the crew are added into the figures.
Twenty years ago, having 9,950 people onboard a cruise ship would have sounded completely crazy!
Yet strangely, the ship didn’t feel as huge or crowded as I had expected.
And that made me wonder…
Are ships getting too big – or are we actually reaching the practical limit of how big a cruise ship can be?
Cruise Ships Have Been Getting Bigger for Decades
Every generation of shipbuilders has wanted to build the “world’s biggest cruise ship”.
Ships that once felt enormous and cutting-edge now look modest beside Icon-class ships.
Bigger ships have allowed cruise lines to add:
- more restaurants
- more pools
- bigger shows
- water parks
- neighbourhoods
- family zones
- more cabin categories
For years, “bigger” genuinely brought obvious new benefits.
Have a look at the article below, which compares the original (cutting-edge in her time) Legend of the Seas with the new Royal Caribbean Mega Ship of the same name. They are worlds apart!
I Cruised On The New And Old Legend Of The Seas. They Couldn’t Be More Different
Legend Made Me Wonder What’s Left to Add
On Legend of the Seas, there is already an extraordinary amount onboard.
You can enjoy multiple entertainment venues, there is an Aqua Dome where they hold aqua/diving shows, pools, waterslides – they seem to have thought of everything.
There are loads of restaurants and bars.
There are dedicated areas for families with children, quiet spaces for adults – and at some point you have to think, what could they actually add next?
Another five restaurants? Another slide? Another neighbourhood?
Will that meaningfully improve the cruise, or will that just mean diminishing returns for the cruise line?
After all, there are only so many ways you can fling a human being down a tube at sea!
Passenger Numbers Can’t Just Keep Rising Forever
Adding more facilities is relatively easy – adding more people is where things get complicated.
Legend shows how well modern ship design can distribute thousands of passengers, but there are always going to be bottlenecks:
Things can get crowded:
- At lifts/elevetors
- At embarkation
- At disembarkation
- Theatre exits after the shows finish.
- At popular restaurants
- During peak breakfast periods
At some point, making the ship bigger means adding even more infrastructure just to handle the extra passengers.
They will have to start adding space simply to solve problems created by the additional size.
The Biggest Limitation Might Actually Be the Ports
At some point, these mega ships need to dock. Many ports simply can’t handle ships of this size.
Ports need long enough berths and deep enough water.
Huge terminals are needed to process the number of passengers.
When I sailed on Legend of the Seas, the ship actually docked at two terminals in Barcelona, not one! I have never seen that before!
You need huge baggage handling capacity and enough coaches/taxis/transport options to get passengers to and from the ship.
Mega-ships are already excluded from many smaller, more interesting ports.
If ships get significantly larger, they’ll have even fewer places to visit.
At that point, are you building a cruise ship or effectively a floating resort that rotates between a handful of enormous terminals?
When I sailed on Legend of the Seas, the port of Naples was working on the pier where she was supposed to dock. Because of this, the port visit was cancelled at the last moment.
It wasn’t just a case of “we’ll find another port further down the coastline”. There wasn’t anywhere else big enough for her to dock, so the port – and the country were missed.
We ended up sailing to Marseille, France – a completely different country.
Luckily for me, I have visited Naples, and Italy in general, many times before. But if you had flown a long way to visit Naples, you could have ended up very disappointed.
I could clearly see the ship turning around on my Cruise Globe app.
The app is completely free to use, and you can track your cruise in real time. You can download it on the apple app store or android store, just search ‘The Cruise Globe’.
Thousands of Passengers Also Have to Go Somewhere Ashore
Even if the port can physically accommodate the ship, the destination has to absorb the passengers.
6,000 to 7,000 people arriving at once can dramatically change the port experience ashore.
It can become overwhelming for locals trying to get on with their everyday lives, and this can cause resentment.
Attractions, transport and streets can suddenly become overwhelmed.
A bigger ship may work brilliantly onboard, but create problems once everyone steps ashore.
This is one reason destinations, not shipbuilding, may determine the practical size limit.
Bigger Ships Need Bigger Private Destinations
Cruise lines increasingly rely on private islands and private destinations.
Those places can be deliberately designed around Mega-Ships.
They can control capacity, transport, food, beaches and attractions.
Bigger ships therefore work particularly well when paired with purpose-built destinations.
Norwegian Cruise Line started this trend back in 1977, when they acquired Great Stirrup Cay in the Bahamas.
This proved such a huge success that other major cruise lines followed.
Royal Caribbean, Carnival, Disney, MSC, Holland America, Princess Cruises – they all have their own private islands, mostly in The Bahamas.
While that makes good financial sense for the cruise lines, it does push cruising further towards the “ship + private resort holiday” – rather than traditional destination-focused cruising.
That is not necessarily a good or bad thing, it is just a fundamentally different product.
One of the things I most love about cruising is visiting different ports and destinations in different countries. I am not one for sitting on a beach with a cocktail – but I fully appreciate everyone enjoys different things.
That is one of the great things about cruising – there is something for everyone.
There’s Also a Human Limit
People can only realistically use so much stuff during a seven-night cruise.
You might have 25 onboard restaurants, but you won’t get round all of them.
You might have dozens of bars and activities, but most passengers will only use a small percentage.
At some point, more choice becomes meaningless.
Bigger ships may stop improving the passenger experience, long before the engineers run out of ways to actually build them.
Bigger Ships Are Already Surprisingly Good at Hiding Their Size
Despite having around 6,500 passengers onboard, there were times onboard Legend when I could almost forget it.
Neighbourhood-style layouts are incredibly effective. Children onboard seemed to be concentrated – particularly around Surfside and the main pool area.
I loved spending time around the AquaDome area. There were great views out towards the front of the ship, and plenty of quiet places to relax or read a book.
This shows that ship designers have become very good at managing scale.
The question therefore isn’t necessarily whether they can build larger ships – It’s whether there is any real reason to.
Have a look at my week on Legend of the Seas below. It was definitely a ship-focused cruise – I hardly got off in port at all…
Maybe the Next Battle Won’t Be “World’s Biggest”
Historically, the “world’s largest cruise ship” has been a huge marketing tool, and cruise lines have rushed to build the biggest and best, because cruises on these mega ships are easy to sell.
But bigger ships are expensive and operationally complicated.
The next generation of ships may focus more on:
- efficiency
- clever layouts
- environmental performance
- passenger flow
- more usable outdoor space
- better cabins
…Instead of simply adding another 500 passengers.
Have a look at MSC’s Mega Ship, World Europa. These “world-class” ships are MSC’s equivalent of Royal Caribbean’s Icon class ships.
They are far cheaper to sail on – but are they as good? Have a look here:
So, Have We Reached Peak Cruise Ship?
We may be getting close to a practical ceiling for ship size.
Engineers could undoubtedly build something larger, but the bigger question is whether cruise lines, ports and passengers actually need it. Would a bigger ship be practical?
Legend and her sister Icon Class ships already offer such an enormous amount. The benefits of another huge leap in size are much harder to see now than they were 20 years ago.
Before You Go
It is hard to imagine the scale of these huge ships, unless you have stood next to one. Have a look at the article below that might help you visualise it!
The World’s Biggest Cruise Ships Compared To Cars, Buildings – And Even Capybaras
Even walking from one end to another of these huge ships is a mission! Find out more about that here:
How Long Does It Take To Walk Across The World’s Biggest Cruise Ship?
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