Gigantic new ship "Oasis of the Seas". Is this an attractive ship or not?

From what I understand, at the beginning of the cruise they do a test muster for lifeboat drill to show everybody where to go in case of emergency.

In a real emergency they load everybody onto the lifeboats, seal them and drop them, it is not a kind and gentle ride … the yellow ones are for the passengers, and there are select crew that go with each passenger lifecraft. The crew get the old style inflatables that are stowed aft. I would assume that the passengers do not get to bring anything more than essentially a purse with their papers and any important medications along. Something like 100ish passengers per lifecraft.

If you are really interested, I will try to take some pictures of the drill muster.

In what way? Seems to me the Oasis exceeds it in just about any statistic – length, width, height, gross tonnage, decks, passenger/crew capacity…

It isn’t any uglier than a hotel. I think it’s cool, and would love to take a vacation on it.

cruise prices are fairly reasonable . Keep in mind that once you pay the cost, all you have to pay on board is the tip for service, and if you want to drink alcohol or buy trinkets. The way it is set up the basics are included [food in most venues, coffee, tea, water, lemonaid.] If you want to do unlimited sodas, you buy a soda card, alcoholic drinks and fancy coffee drinks [faux staryucky stuff] are extra. There are a few nonincluded eateries, but the food in the main dining areas and included cafes/buffets is purportedly quite good, and room service is available free except for a tip [though between midnight and 5 am they add a service charge]

go to cruisecritics.com and read the boards …

For me, a good boat is one that can be carried for short portages.

I will be the FIRST person to say I know next to nothing nautical, I’m just quoteing numbers from wikipedia:

So they made the same mistake too.

They do conduct a muster on the first day - basically your room is assigned a lifeboat deck and location, and you are instructed to grab the life jacket from your room and make your way to the appropriate place. They really do take attendance, and generally hunt you down if you don’t show up. No one gets into the boats at this point, of course, but you’re pretty much lined up in orderly rows, facing the boats, ready to go.

Every week (or every other week, perhaps alternating with a fire drill?) the crew conducts an emergency test in which passengers are not required to participate. They usually do it on a day at port, when there are fewer passengers on board. During this test, they do lower all of the boats into the water, and putter around the port for a bit before getting them all back up. It’s rather impressive to watch!

Why? It’s distributed over far more people than any other conveyance on Earth. Your carbon footprint in fuel while riding that ship is probably less than the same amount of driving in your Prius over a comparable period of time.

If you actually take a look at the numbers per passenger the numbers are not as bad as you would think.

According to this website, the average amount of CO2 admitted per passenger mile for an airplane is 0.64* lbs. According to the Wiki on the Queen Mary II, it admits 0.94 lbs per passenger at normal cruising speed. Compared to monorail, which comes in at 2.39 lbs per passenger and RVs which come in at 2.7 lbs per passenger, the QEII is down right efficient considering the shear size of the thing.

I couldn’t find the efficiency numbers for the new ship but I would imagine that it is at least as efficient as the QEII if not more efficient.

Slee

  • I found a couple sites but the numbers varied on the emission numbers. I imagine that the difference lie in the assumptions used when calculating the efficiency numbers. I couldn’t find any raw data on this.

This time, for lifeboat muster, we didn’t have to take the life jackets. They did say to take all essential medicines with you and leave everything else behind. We went out there with our cups for pop, since we had them with us, and I had my purse. I’d guess if it had been a real emergency we would have just dropped the cups somewhere along the way. The thing that kind of amused me was the instruction to parents that, in case of a real muster the best way for them to be reunited with their children who were in the kid programs was to go to the muster station, and the children would be brought to them. Great advice, but I couldn’t help thinking how hard it would be for most parents to follow it.
Aruqvan, it’s Sangster’s if you want the brand. We got it in Jamaica. I’m not really a drinker, so it hasn’t even been opened, as I haven’t had an occasion for it yet, but they gave us samples in the store. We tried about six different flavors. It’s definitely what my dad used to call a “sippin’ drink”, sweet and creamy. We got one bottle of regular cream and one bottle of coconut cream. I wanted to bring one back for our daughter’s boyfriend, who does drink rum, but we had left the credit card on the ship and didn’t have enough cash with us to do that.

Just by way of information, we did the soda package, just because it’s easier. Most of the time they didn’t even ask for our ship card, because we had the cups with us. And in the dining room the waiter asked for it the first night, but then of course he knew we had it.

I can’t get over the tonnage of these newer cruise ships and liners, they are over twice the size of aircraft carriers?

Great, thanks

We have the soda package, but really dont drink so the wine package is out. Hubby will probably get it by the glass.

Well, I wouldn’t take my hypothetical Prius bumming around the Caribbean (or anywhere on land of comparable dimensions) for extended periods, either.

We went to St. Thomas, St. Martin and Puerto Rico. We did do some shore excursions - I know we went to a fort in Puerto Rico, but nothing that was really memorable for me. Maybe it was just that the people I was with were more interested in shopping – since they paid all my expenses for the trip, I wasn’t complaining. :smiley:

I don’t drink alcohol, so I wouldn’t know about the rum, and I don’t drink soda, so I didn’t need one of those soda packages, but I believe both my sister and my brother had them. In any case, I think I would be perfectly happy going on one of these cruises and spending the entire time on the ship. My absolute favorite memories (other than those with friends and family), were of sitting on the balcony reading or just enjoying the ocean. If the ugly design allows more people to have balconies, I’m all for it.

We had a room with a window, but it looked out over the Promenade. Maybe not as pretty as watching the ocean, but it did mean we could sit there and watch some of the activities down there when it was crowded, or we just wanted to relax but not miss things completely. We watched one of the parades from there, and part of the 70s dance night thingie. It was fun sometimes just to watch people going by. Kind of like looking down on a street scene.

We’ve about decided that if we do another cruise we’ll plan more ship time and a bit less shore time. But I don’t know what we would have left out this trip. So we’ll see.

No, you introduced the word “heavier”. Their comment is correct. It has about 4.5times the volume, but not 4.5 times the weight. Weight is displacement, gross tonnage is volume.

Again, you are I assume confusing displacement tonnage and gross tonnage. The Nimitz class aircraft carriers are about 100,000 tonnes displacement, and so is the “Oasis of the Seas”. That means they displace about the same weight of water, ie that’s how much the ship weighs.

For cargo vessels, displacement isn’t so significant: what is significant is volume and the weight of cargo that can be carried (volume if it’s something light like wheat, weight if it’s say iron ore). So the figures given for cargo vessels tend to be registered tonnage (gross or net) which is a measure of volume) or deadweight tonnage (mass of cargo that can be carried).

For cruise vessels, displacement again isn’t significant: what is significant is volume of hotel area . So the figure given tends to be registered tonnage (gross or net).

It’s hard to get GRT/NRT or DWT for naval fighting vessels because neither the volume of cargo or hotel space, nor the mass of cargo they can carry, is relevant.

The Oasis of the Seas has a very large GRT because it is a gigantic, largely hollow, box. I shouldn’t think a DWT figure would be readily available for her, but it’s not relevant since she wouldn’t carry much cargo. She would have a reasonably small DWT figure compared to a cargo vessel that was of similar GRT, because the latter can go very deep draft, effectively sinking most of its bulk (this doesn’t work out so well with cruise vessels, especially if you leave your balcony door open).

Very large aircraft carriers may be heavy due to all the aircraft, armour, runway and all that (ie high displacement), but would have low GRT and low DWT because they have fine hull forms that are designed for speed, and they are not gigantic floating boxes.

We plan on ordering up the carafe of coffee first thing in the AM, and sitting on the balcony swilling it until we are ready for breakfast, then finding a comfy nook to read and people watch for a while, then hit the hot tub for hydrotherapy for my joints, followed by lunch, then vegging on the balcony with another pot of coffee reading, then maybe a snack while people watching, then dinner, and another pot of coffee on the balcony relaxing before bed … Rob is the only one that is doing excursions, at least this time around. It isn’t really clear what excursions are gimp accessable, and I am unsteady enough that the tender ports are not going to be easy for me.

I figure we will scope out the different ports, and figure out which excursions are doable, and catch them next year. We are figuring on making a feb cruise our annual vacation [our wedding anniversary is tritely enough valentines day =)]

Wow! Ignorance fought! Thanks Princhester!.

We took a trip to Washington State (and US parts way north west) and it’s obvious there a WHOLE nautical world I don’t know the first thing about.

The family spent about an hour Sunday in bed with the laptop, viewing the videos of the boat on the Oasis’ website. I’m absolutely amazed at how developed the cruise-line industry is. Several major disparate industries coming together to essentially provide a Moblie Las Vegas/Disneyland…and they do it WELL.

Vile. Like a seagoing council estate.

Fair enough, but geez, are you NEVER going to take a vacation? You’ll have to use some sort of conveyance to get there at some point. Even if you walk, the calories you’ll need to burn to walk there create carbon waste by virtue of the prodution of the food you need to eat to expend them.