Cruise Ships: interesting facts to tell your friends

This is becoming a very competitive industry and it shows with how many ships are under construction to put into service.

Our ship is about 90k tons and considered at the high end of the middle in terms of size. RC (Royal Caribbean) currently has a ship under construction that will be 150k tons.

By the numbers:

Passengers: 2501

Americans: 1600

Repeat RC passengers: 800

Staff: 859

The ship was built in Germany and from what I understand almost all of them are now being built there. Many of the components are made all over the world, but the construction is done in Deutschland. This surprised me because I assumed with so much heavy manufacturing moving to the Pacific Rim this would include cruise ship building. Not so, I am told. The Asians are strong in the freighter market taking it from Ireland among others; and the Americans are strong with naval shipbuilding.

They are re-fitted every 2 years and are built with an eye to the modular so all parts connected over the super structure can be swapped out quickly for updating. The wear and tear is tremendous and with an international clientele most of the décor is done with a world touch rather than Americanized.