Six months before its maiden voyage, Royal Caribbean’s massive new ship, the Icon of the Seas, is already generating quite the response.
The ship is reportedly five times bigger than the Titanic, boasting 20 decks, eight “neighborhoods,” a miniature Central Park — and a veritable army of online haters.
Renderings of the vessel are making the rounds again on social media, following news late last month that it completed its first sea trials in the ocean.
Even though the cruise’s inaugural trip is nearly sold out, pointing to a feverish demand for the whimsical new ship, there’s an entire population of social media users who find the monstrous boat anxiety-inducing — especially in light of the Titan sub’s fatal implosion last month.
—Ray Monk (@Raymodraco) July 9, 2023
Twitter users have taken to the platform to share their disdain for the big boat, with some calling it “hell on water” or “human lasagna.” Another person called it “the Candy Crush version” of the underground world in “Silo,” a dystopian drama series on Apple TV+.
Elisabeth Morray, a psychologist and VP of clinical operations at Alma, told HuffPost that the rendering could be unnerving for people.
“As human beings, we are hard-wired to pay attention to our safety,” she told HuffPost. “We intuitively want to feel that we could escape from a threat if we needed to, and there are lots of identifiable threats to our safety that might be triggered by this image.”
Photos of the cruise ship, taken by Insider’s Brittany Chang, show a significantly more toned-down version than the early rendering. Royal Caribbean has spent days running “preliminary tests” to ensure the ship is ready to sail.
Coming in at 1,198 feet long and 250,800 tons, the cruiseliner will be able to hold more than 7,000 people. According to Royal Caribbean, it will have a surf simulator, dozens of restaurants and bars, and the largest swimming pool and water park at sea.
Source: www.insider.com
