Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Symphony of the Seas to sail from Miami in 2018
The fourth edition of Royal Caribbean International’s Oasisclass of ships — Symphony of the Seas — is heading to PortMiami in November 2018 for year-round cruises to the Caribbean, the cruise line announced Wednesday.
Symphony — a sister ship of Harmony of the Seas, Allure of the Seas and Oasis of the Seas — will sail from the cruise line’s new Terminal A at the Miami seaport.
Officials from parent company Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. were scheduled to join representatives from PortMiami and Miami-Dade County in a groundbreaking ceremony for the multimillion dollar cruise terminal.
Allure, which now sails from Port Everglades, will join Symphony in Miami late next year, Royal Caribbean’s President Michael Bayley told reporters during a conference call. While Harmony will remain at the Broward County seaport, Oasis will continue sailing from Port Canaveral, he said.
With Symphony’s arrival, all four Oasis-class ships will be sailing from Florida, a key market for Royal Caribbean.
To compensate for Allure’s departure from Port Everglades, Royal Caribbean plans to deploy other ships there so its overall capacity won’t be decreased, he said.
From Miami, Symphony and Allure will sail on eastern and western Caribbean itineraries that will include new Oasis-class port calls in St. Kitts & Nevis.
Reservations for the 6,780-passenger Symphony’s inaugural European and Caribbean cruises are now open, while Allure’s Miami-based 2018-19 itineraries will commence later this month.
The new ship will first cruise in the Mediterranean during the summer before repositioning to Miami for voyages to the Caribbean beginning Nov. 17, 2018.
Symphony — set for delivery in April 2018 — will be Royal Caribbean’s 26th vessel, and the next to hold the title of world’s largest cruise ship after Harmony, which debuted in 2016.
As the newest Oasis-class vessel, Symphony will be “slightly longer and a tad wider” than Harmony and will be heavier at 230,000 gross tons, Bayley noted. It will also have 28 more cabins than Harmony’s 2,747, and will feature a redesigned adults-only Solarium area.
While more details about Symphony’s onboard offerings will be announced in coming months, the ship will showcase many Oasisclass features but will also have some new bells and whistles of its own, Bayley said.
Among them will be Bionic Bar robot bartenders, AquaTheater, Perfect Storm trio of water slides and the Ultimate Abyss, a twisting, 100-foot long dry slide.
The new Terminal A is being designed to accommodate the line’s larger Oasis-class ships in a way similar to Terminal 18 at Port Everglades, Bayley said.
“It looks pretty snazzy,” he said. “It’s going to be quite attractive, quite beautiful.”
Dubbed the ‘Crown of Miami,’ the nearly $250 million, 170,000-square-foot terminal is expected to be ready ahead of Symphony’s arrival. The construction project is expected to create 4,000 jobs and an annual economic impact of $500 million, officials have said.
With the addition of Terminal A, parent company Royal Caribbean is expecting to funnel at least 1.8 million cruise travelers through PortMiami, accounting for 30 percent of the port’s passenger traffic.
Also Wednesday, Royal Caribbean announced significant improvements at its private island in The Bahamas — Coco Cay — which will be completed in phases in 2018 and 2019.