OUGD505 - Design Production 2: Cruise Ships

I have decided to change my topic of research from airports to cruise ships. This is because I think I will have more scope when it comes to the next brief, and I think I will enjoy researching it more. I wanted to do something related to travel which is why I chose airports, but I think this is a better option.
I have been on a few cruises so I already know a lot about them.

Here is a list of the biggest cruise liners:

Royal Caribbean
These are the cruiseships I am most familiar with, because I have been on a few of them. They also dominate the largest cruise ships list. I looked at their website.

They have a big fleet of ships, all with different features and sizes, aimed at different people.

These paragraphs show the different ships within the classes. The Oasis class is the most recent, and the most advanced.

Oasis of The Seas

I watched a couple of videos on the Oasis of the Seas, which is the biggest one of the fleet being used so far. The long video is a documentary on its first voyage and I found out some facts:

21 swimming pools
24 restaurants
New York Central Park
5,400 passengers
2,200 crew
10,000 loo rolls
First garden at sea
154ft wide beam
16ft deep aqua theatre pool

It shows problems such as an engine problem, passengers coming too late into dock and the ship becoming behind schedule.

These are a list of its amenities:

They are so advanced, you don't even realise you are on a ship.

Even the smallest ship of the fleet, Majesty of the Seas, has a capacity of 2,767 guests, and lots of amenities.

The website has a scale which shows you the activities you can do depending on how relaxed or thrilling you want to be.

From spas and shows, casinos, libraries and a gym, it is amazing what can be fitted on.

There is so much entertainment on board, and the shows they have are far from the cheesy kind that you expect from a cruise ship, with huge shows such as Chicago and Hairspray.

There are also so many bars, you are spoilt for choice. A lot of time you are cruising at sea rather than being docked at a port because of the time it takes to travel to other countries, so you need a lot of choice so you don't get bored.

The website even has a list for prices of drinks. I thought this is handy for me because for the next brief I could include menus for branding.

Deck Plan

Each ship has a deck plan as well, and here are some from Jewel of the Seas, one of the ships I have been on.

It's one of the smaller ships, and here are some of the facilities:

When you try and search for a cruise using the online facilities, this is how the process looks like:

Destinations

As it is one of the biggest cruise lines, it has a lot of destinations it goes to:

I looked at Cruises from the UK, as I think I might focus my next brief on this, and I want to tailor the content for my research book to this.

These are destinations you can go to from the UK:

They are mainly around Europe, because they are not as far to travel to.

Here are some of the holidays you can do:

Here are the ships that sail from UK:

The newest ship to sail from the UK is Anthem of the Seas, and activities onboard include skydiving, dodgems, music hall and North Star capsule.

Excursions

These are a massive part of cruising, because people book them to have something to do off shore. They are popular because they are all arranged for you, and you don't have to worry about transportation, language barriers and getting back to the ship in time.

Here are the different types of excursions:

Mini Cruises

You can also get mini cruises from the UK, which I think I am going to look further into, because it could be more accessible for me to do branding for a small cruise line.