Why you shouldn’t ‘freak out’ about Royal Caribbean’s giant new Icon of the Seas

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Everybody just needs to take a chill pill when it comes to the size of Icon of the Seas.

Yes, the soon-to-debut Royal Caribbean ship will be a giant of a vessel. At 250,800 tons, it’ll be the biggest cruise ship ever built. And it’ll be loaded with more activities on its top deck — including six giant waterslides — than any cruise ship in history.

But it’s not so unusually massive that the internet should be “freaking out” about it, as one well-read internet publication breathlessly reported this week.

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We’re not sure that the internet really is freaking out about it. As far as we can tell, just one Twitter post about the ship from a few days ago went viral, with more than 29 million views. The post noted the ship’s size and called it a “monstrosity.”

The tweet got a boost a few days after it was posted when it was mentioned in The New York Times, in a story that said Icon of the Seas had become an object of fascination (and scorn) on social media.

Related: The ultimate guide to Icon of the Seas

Twenty-nine million views is a lot of views, for sure. But, in scrolling through the many responses to the tweet, what we’re basically seeing is people pooh-poohing the entire idea of vacationing on giant ships, with a few comments about how Icon of the Seas will be a reservoir for norovirus and other stomach bugs. Is that people freaking out? Maybe.

— Ray Monk (@Raymodraco) July 9, 2023

Maybe it’s just Never Cruisers seeing a chance to sound off on what they view as a silly pastime. And, for sure, cruising on big ships isn’t for everyone.

But to the extent that there is a freakout going on over the ship’s size, there are a few things that these posters should know about Icon of the Seas. Let me debunk some myths.

Icon is not really that much bigger

Icon of the Seas is big, for sure. But it’s not much bigger than a bunch of other cruise ships that have been sailing for years.

At 250,800 tons, Icon of the Seas will measure just 6% bigger than the current size leader in the cruise world, Royal Caribbean’s 1-year-old Wonder of the Seas.

By some measures, it’s not bigger at all. It’s roughly the same length (1,098 feet versus 1,088 feet) and the same width (213 feet versus 211 feet) as Wonder of the Seas. It’ll actually hold fewer passengers than Wonder of the Seas at double occupancy — that is, with two people in every cabin (5,610 versus 5,734).

Icon of the Seas’ bigger size in tonnage comes mostly from the fact that it’ll have two more decks than Wonder of the Seas. In a world where big cruise ships typically have 15 to 20 decks, that’s not all that big a deal. A recently unveiled MSC Cruises vessel has two more decks than Icon of the Seas.

Wonder of the Seas, it should be noted, is the fifth in a series of similarly sized vessels that began rolling out in 2009.

Related: Royal Caribbean vessels ranked by size, from biggest to smallest

It is notable that Icon of the Seas will be the biggest cruise ship in the world. But its size is not inconsistent with the size of other giant ships that have debuted over the past 15 years. If there was a time to freak out about ships this big, it was in the late 2000s when they started appearing.

The most notable thing about Icon of the Seas isn’t so much its size but what Royal Caribbean has decided to put on the vessel. It’s being built with an expanded array of attractions and amenities that will particularly appeal to resort-loving families.

This includes a bigger water park than we’ve seen on any other cruise ship and new, family-friendly cabin categories.

Related: 1st look inside Icon of the Seas under construction

Royal Caribbean is doing this for one reason and one reason only: It’s what its family-heavy customer base wants. Pooh-pooh big-ship cruising all you want, but bookings for this ship are through the roof for a reason: This is what American vacationers are demanding.

It probably won’t be a reservoir for illness

One of the great tropes about big cruise ships is that they are “petri dishes” for stomach bugs such as norovirus — a common stomach bug that you might know better as the “24-hour flu.”

Outbreaks of norovirus can indeed occur on cruise ships. But, such outbreaks are relatively rare compared to the great number of ship departures every week. Plus, such outbreaks aren’t as common on ships as they are at schools, nursing homes and other places on land where people congregate.

You may be thinking that you hear about norovirus outbreaks on ships all the time. This might be true, too, but here’s why: A norovirus outbreak on a ship is a great click magnet for media outlets. I should know. I’ve been in this business for more than 30 years.

Related: The most eye-popping feature of Icon is its cost

Even though they don’t happen often, norovirus outbreaks on ships are covered by the media in an inordinate way because readers love to click on such stories. When you click on those articles, the media companies make money.

In addition, reports of norovirus outbreaks on ships are readily available to the media in a way they aren’t for schools, nursing homes and other places, due to a tracking system in place at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This makes writing such stories quick and easy.

Will Icon of the Seas be a reservoir for such illness? People who know cruise ships know it’s highly unlikely. Maybe every few years, the ship will have an outbreak. I’m not too worried about it — and you shouldn’t be, either.

Cruise ships have implemented truly over-the-top sanitation protocols over the years designed to present illness outbreaks — from wiping down elevator buttons and casino chips every few hours to installing hand sanitizers at the entrance to almost every shipboard venue.

For perspective, I’ve sailed on more than 200 cruises over three decades as a travel editor, and I’ve never come down with norovirus on a cruise ship. I have gotten norovirus in my hometown twice over the past couple decades, including last year. It’s no fun. You know it when you get it — it’s marked by a sharp onset of queasiness, vomiting and other tummy troubles that typically come and go quickly. But it’s nothing to freak out about, even when it happens on a ship.

It’s no Titanic

Another theme we’re seeing as part of the so-called Icon of the Seas freakout on Twitter is that people are amazed — shocked even — that the ship will be bigger than the Titanic. Five times bigger, no less.

The comments about this often are combined with confident exclamations about how this ship is so big that it can’t possibly stay afloat and, like the Titanic, is doomed in some way to disaster.

Here, again, some perspective is needed. Yes, Icon of the Seas will be bigger than Titanic. But … that’s also been the case for the vast majority of cruise ships built over the past 25 years. Unveiled in 1912, Titanic was gigantic for its time. But at 46,328 tons, it was relatively small compared to modern-day passenger ships.

When I started writing about cruise ships in the 1990s, the biggest and most popular cruise vessels already were considerably larger than Titanic in terms of tonnage. Today, there’s not a single vessel in the list of the 50 biggest cruise ships less than three times bigger than Titanic.

Related: Royal Caribbean announces unusual new feature for Icon

As noted above, Icon of the Seas isn’t all that much bigger than other giant cruise ships currently sailing. To the extent that those ships all are operating just fine without tipping over or running into icebergs, as some seem to think is inevitable for Icon of the Seas, it’s likely that Icon of the Seas will be operating just fine, too, when it debuts in a few months.

Modern-day cruise ships such as Icon of the Seas go through extensive sea trials to prove seaworthiness. They also conform to much more rigorous safety protocols than were common a century ago, including international Safety of Life at Sea standards for the construction, equipping and operation of vessels that nearly all countries of the world have agreed to enforce under treaty.

I’ll never say never about what can happen, safetywise, on a cruise ship — or at a land resort, on a plane or in a car during a driving trip, for that matter. But the track record of cruise ships in recent decades is that accidents that involve deaths or injuries are relatively rare.

Bottom line

The internet may be freaking out about the giant size of Icon of the Seas. But there’s no reason to panic. I’m not panicked, at least. Indeed, I plan to sail aboard this vessel the first chance I get.

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