On Board Harmony of the Seas, Part One

Yes, she’s the biggest ship on the seas—but it’s not about “mine is bigger than yours,” says Royal Caribbean chairman and CEO Richard Fain. Rather, it’s about dreaming up things that customers of all ages will love, and then building a ship that can hold them.

“Because it’s wider we can put more weight up high and make things larger,” Fain said on the ship’s very first preview sailing, for travel-industry insiders, this weekend off the coast of Southampton. “The balconies are longer, the Windjammer (buffet) is larger. And a few extra inches on the beam of the ship gives it more stability.”

Indeed, despite all the hype about Harmony being the biggest ship afloat, literally and figuratively, it’s really just 2.5 feet wider than the Oasis and the Allure. She looms huge, though, against the backdrop of a cloudy Southampton sky as we board.

Grease on stage.

Captain Claus Andersen notes that despite its size, the Harmony is fully 20% more fuel efficient than Allure of the Seas, launched just six years ago. A unique hull shape and air lubricant system that injects a layer of bubbles to hold it up reduce the friction between the hull and the water, making up the largest part of the savings. The rest come from little tweaks that each add “a tenth of a percent, a hundredth of a percent.”

Fain says the original goal was to make her 5% more fuel-efficient; that achieved, the design team aimed for 10%, and then suddenly 20% was achievable.

The result? In all ways, “it’s an amazing ship to handle,” Capt. Andersen said. “It’s why sailors go to sea.”

For customers going to sea, Harmony is full of unique and fun features aimed at all members of the intergenerational groups that form its core market, including:

The Ultimate Abyss, the tallest slide at sea, at 10 stories

A 90-minute production of Grease

A Bionic Bar with robot bartenders

An outdoor Central Park and six other “neighborhoods”

Two rock-climbing walls, a zipline, and a skating rink

The first two-story Wonderland restaurant

A new set of exclusive benefits and amenities for suite guests called, Royal Suite Class

Salad in pumpernickel-crumb “dirt” at Wonderland.

When the Oasis of the Seas came out, the Miami papers ran a headline “Super Ship Arrives in Miami,” Fain noted; “we thought there would be one Oasis.” But the huge ships have found an audience, and “now we are looking at three and four.”

Fain said Royal Caribbean is “in a constant process of thinking about what’s next. What we’ve seen over time is that when the value, the fun, the entertainment are genuinely excellent, more and more people want to try it.”

Indeed, Fain said, “I’m as surprised as everyone to see that ships have gotten larger. I remember when we built the Sovereign and thought she was huge. But we didn’t design her to be bigger; we design them to be better—to have more amenities, more things that wow our guests. And those things require more space.”

And in a marketplace where volume really matters, travel professionals are a key distribution channel, noted president and CEO Michael Bayley.

“Travel agents continue to be our most important partners, and that’s true in every market,” Bayley said. “We’ve been consistent about that and we will not change that philosophy.”

There are too many details to share—and too much to do onboard—for me to keep writing today. Stay tuned for more in Part Two of our coverage.