In a word, the ship is huge. According to Wikipedia, the ship’s tonnage exceeds 169K tons, is 347 meters long, and comprises 18 decks – 16 of which are accessible to guests. The key locations for the ship are:
Deck 3: Main Dining (complimentary dining), Casino,
Deck 4: Music Room (where live bands perform, and also easy-going game activities), Royal Theater (headliner shows and performances), retail, specialty dining. Two70 (lounging area, and also for selected headliner shows are and movie screenings)
Deck 5: Specialty dining
Decks 6 to 10: Staterooms
Decks 11 and 12: Staterooms and Adventure Zone (an indoor playground for children)
Deck 13: Staterooms, fitness center
Deck 14: Solarium (nifty lounging and heated pools with fabulous views, adults only though), children wet and wild, pools, Windjammer (complimentary dining), Sorrento (complimentary pizzas!)
Deck 15: Ripcord, Skypad, North Star activities, running track
Deck 16: Sundeck, Flowrider (super fun surfing-lite)
The promenade area is on decks 3 to 5. You really feel like you’re in an indoor mall while exploring this area for the first time.
At the onset, the ship was a little intimidating for us to navigate. Specifically, without looking at the signage, we routinely had difficulties telling what was the front and aft of the ship was! Thankfully, there is numerous signage everywhere that guides guests to places of interest. It would had been even better if the RC app was able to pin-point exactly where you are on the ship, but I guess the technology isn’t quite there yet.
One does get used to the key places in a few days though: since the areas where most guests not paying the additional fees for premium level hospitality – would be at Main Dining, Music Theater, Windjammer, and decks 14 and 15 where many activities are located.
The missus also ventured to lower decks where the crew areas are, and was politely told by crew that she ran into that guests need to stay within guest areas.
There are two sets of elevators that service each guest deck: front and aft, and each set has around ten elevators, five to six on each side. The elevators were working very hard everyday! Many a times, there would be large crowds waiting for the elevators to come to the floor, so we ended up just using the stairs.
An interesting fact: given the sheer size of the ship and that a lot of times, we’re basically indoors inside the ship, you don’t really get to see how big the ship is from an exterior perspective. OK, the North Star will probably get you a great look, but the price of a 10-15 minute ride up for all four of us would had been quite high, so we gave that a miss.
There are also numerous little areas throughout the ship if you’d just like to curl up in a quiet corner and read (i.e. like me). If this is your thing, then Two70 is the best place to go to. The multipurpose hall has a large number of seats of various types, fantastic views, and a high ceiling making for a truly pleasant area to vegetate and contemplate life.
On the second day morning, the ship’s crew also tested out the ship’s lifeboats. This is probably the only time you’d actually get to see the lifeboats getting deployed, so it’s a nifty experience to observe from the comfort of your stateroom if you’re in one with a balcony.
Lastly, I was also initially a little anxious if I’d get seasick while cruising, even going so far as to bring onboard Novomin pills for possible motion sickness. I eventually didn’t need to use them at all. Given the sheer size of the ship, the calm sea just east of Malaysia, and that the ship was – for good parts of the cruise – either relatively stationery or sailing at very slow speeds, at no point throughout did I feel even the slightest vertigo. And this is coming from someone who is particularly susceptible to motion sickness! The most I heard was the occasional soft rumbling of the ship’s engines, especially when in the Main Dining room at deck 3: but that’s it.
Continued in the next post – our Stateroom!