The Daily Telegraph - Features
Like five Titanics with 126 buffets
Ed Grenby takes a trip on the world’s largest cruise ship, the Wonder of the Seas, and is pleasantly surprised by the city on the ocean
On the world’s largest cruise ship, it seems they somehow couldn’t find room for Itsuki’s T-shirt, and the poor man has to discharge his duties topless. No-one seems to object, mind – possibly because his physique is almost as spectacular as his turn in the ship’s InTENse Aqua show. In fact it makes perfect sense that he carries enough muscle mass for four men, because everything about this boat is big. Its slide? The longest at sea. Restaurants and bars? Forty of them. Itsuki’s show? A 30-foot-high feat of brilliant, bonkers, bravura choreography, half in water, half in sky.
The numbers (right) and the list of weird stuff on board (see the inflatable laser-tag labyrinth on Deck 4) tells half the story here, but what really brings home Wonder of the Seas’ size is standing in front of the thing. It’s eye-wideningly, jaw-slackeningly, neckcrickeningly big, as if a mediumsized airport had been peeled off the ground, packed down and boxed up neatly for a god or two to carry off to another dimension.
It’s not pretty, exactly, but it’s certainly not ugly – which is quite an achievement, considering. With beds for 8,034 souls on board (including crew), it’s not surprising people refer to it as a city on the sea, but it’s not like any city I’ve ever been to (where’s the litter? The menacing youths?).
Stepping aboard in Barcelona last week, to join Wonder’s first European cruise, I found a fantasia of cheerfully bustling boutique-lined streets, tranquil tree-thronged little parks, graffiti-free primary-coloured playgrounds, suntrap piazzas where musicians pop up at the drop of a hi-hat – and, of course, multiple al-fresco swimming pools, waterslides, ziplines, wave simulators and crazy-golf courses. (Sheffield this ain’t.)
Separating the actually-awesome wheat from the merely-gimmicky chaff here, the zipline’s short and not-so-zippy trip across the top of an open-roofed atrium has a poor faff-to-fun ratio, and the crazy golf is probably more “mildly eccentric” than certifiably loco. The waterslides, on the other hand, are a riot, and Ultimate Abyss (if you’re prepared to overlook the over-thetop name) is that record-holdingly long enclosed slide – a thoroughly entertaining way of getting from deck 15 to deck 6, and quicker than taking the lift too.
The FlowRider is even better. Here a machine makes a permanent, perfect wave, which allows you either to surf on it (surprisingly achievable), boogieboard on it (surprisingly fun) or just watch with a beer as others do. There’s no shortage of customers – largely male, largely American – whose girth suggests their more natural environment is the buffet restaurant, and when one of them wobbles and falls, the good-natured cheer that erupts from spectators is even louder than the satisfying splash he makes.
If that sunshine version of schadenfreude is arguably the best show on the ship, Itsuki & co run it a close second. His schtick is the “slack line” – like a tight rope, but bouncier, which allows for some gravity-deriding acrobatics – but the biggest stars are the effectively amphibious young ladies who dance, dive, swim and soar around the semi-submerged stage of the
It’s a 30ft high feat of brilliant, bonkers choreography, half in water, half in sky