High-tech mega-cruise ship takes crowd control to new level
Other Columnists
ABOARD THE OASIS OF THE SEAS, Atlantic Ocean - Royal Caribbean got its first taste of mega crowd control last week as 4,718 passengers sailed aboard its newest and largest vessel, the Oasis of the Seas, from Fort Lauderdale to Labadee, Haiti.
The ship isn't just a virtual floating city, it resembles New York City, with "Broadway" (a 1,380-seat theater), a Central Park featuring 12,000 plants and trees, and Coney Island-esque boardwalk (complete with carousel).
It even contains virtual suburbs, where passengers can play nine holes of miniature golf, zoom down a zip line, frolic in a water park or go surfing.
With Oasis' passenger capacity able to stretch to 6,300, the cruise line says it needed to take unprecedented measures to keep guests entertained, well-fed - and safe.
"We don't build big just to build big," said the ship's captain, William Wright. "There is safety in scale." Beyond the Oasis' sheer size, which makes the vessel more stable in choppy water, Wright says recent technological advances gave Royal Caribbean more sophisticated measures to manage so many passengers. Among them:
EMERGENCIES
Anticipating a higher volume of onboard 911 calls and medical emergencies, Wright says the ship was given a stand-alone command center that handles all aspects of security and safety. In shipwide emergency drills, crew members use wireless personal digital assistants to scan passenger ID cards as they enter muster stations. The results are charted on projection screens so security can quickly see who is accounted for. The ship's lifeboats are "little tiny ships themselves," Wright says, with twin engines.
MEDICAL CARE
A medical facility is staffed by three doctors and six nurses, with equipment for digital X-rays and blood work, and critically ill patients can be put on a respirator or evacuated via the ship's helicopter pad.
DINING
With 24 places to eat, including a three-level dining room that seats about 3,000, mealtime calls for some serious innovation. For the first time, customers can make dinner reservations in the smaller specialty restaurants online before the ship even sails.
To avoid backlogs, the more popular eateries have head-counting cameras embedded in their ceilings, says Frank Weber, Royal Caribbean's vice president for food and beverage operations. A computer compares the tally against the room's capacity and displays a green, yellow or red reading on the shipwide TV station. That way, passengers craving a bite know where to go, or to avoid.
"This was a no-brainer for us," Weber says. "I didn't want guests to arrive in a restaurant and find out it's full."
