January 29th - Luxury or liability? The Debate Over Giant Cruise Ships
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 29 January 2024
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today I explore the complex narrative surrounding the 'Icon of the Seas', the world's largest cruise ship. I discuss its extravagant offerings against the backdrop of environmental concerns, probing the moral and ecological dilemmas posed by such grandiose voyages.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder. |
| 0:09.0 | It's Monday the 29th of January. |
| 0:12.2 | And as I talk, there is a ship sailing from Miami to St Kitts in the Caribbean. |
| 0:21.3 | She's making about 19 knots, roughly 22 miles an hour. |
| 0:27.0 | But she's not any ordinary ship. |
| 0:30.1 | This is the world's largest cruise ship, |
| 0:34.0 | icon of the seas owned by Royal Caribbean, |
| 0:37.4 | and holding up to |
| 0:39.9 | 7,600 passengers. |
| 0:44.6 | There are 20 decks, |
| 0:46.4 | seven swimming pools, |
| 0:47.9 | six water slides |
| 0:49.3 | because you can never have enough water slides |
| 0:51.4 | on a ship as far as I can see, |
| 0:57.2 | 40 restaurants, bars and lounges, |
| 1:05.5 | and the idea, of course, is that you can stay happily on board for a week and never need to leave. |
| 1:13.2 | That's actually just as well, because only a limited number of ports can handle a ship of this size. |
| 1:20.9 | On the maiden voyage, in which icon of the seas will be covering nearly 3,000 miles I calculate, |
| 1:32.0 | and in the course of a week, it will only be calling at St. Kitts, at St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands, and at Cocoa, a Bahamas private island which is devoted to cruise ships. |
| 1:39.0 | Now, she is absolutely massive, nearly a quarter of a mile long. |
| 1:45.0 | A gross tonnage, a quarter of a million tons. |
| 1:49.0 | This is a vast ship. |
... |
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