Icon of the Seas is about to set sail on her maiden voyage later this week, and Royal Caribbean is already working on ways to improve on a ship that has barely sailed.
Star of the Seas will be the second Icon Class cruise ship and will debut in 2025 to sail from Port Canaveral. Not only is the ship well into construction, but improvements and updates from Icon are in the works.
Icon of the Seas will have her first voyage with paying passengers on Saturday, but the ship has had employees, media, and travel agents onboard for short preview sailings to fine tune everything in the lead-up to the maiden sailing.
Royal Caribbean's Senior Vice President and Chief Product Innovation Officer Jay Schneider is leading the charge to innovate with Star.
While the cruise line is not ready to reveal everything that will be different on Star, we have a few ideas what they have in mind.
Star of the Seas will not be the biggest ship in the world
With the Oasis Class ships, Royal Caribbean made each subsequent ship just a little bit bigger so that it could take the title of biggest in the world. The Icon class will not follow that trend.
"That isn't the case on Icon. Star will not be a foot bigger. It will be 1198ft long. The third ship in the icon class, yet to be named publicly, will also be 1198ft long."
According to Mr. Schneider, there's no point in continuing that pattern, "We don't feel a need to do that right now. Maybe we'll change our mind. Never say never. But that isn't the design intent."
Update to the supper club
Royal Caribbean opened its first ever supper club experience on Icon of the Seas with Empire Supper Club, but expect a new motif on Star.
On Star of the Seas, the venue will be Chicago themed (Icon has a New York theme to it). And there's more ideas after that.
"It'll actually become Chicago themed, but same DNA," said Mr. Schneider. " "On Icon three, it becomes Hollywood themed."
"Great music choreographed to the delivery of the food and the service, with cocktails paired but all wired for the theme that goes with it. So Chicago will be more Midwestern themed, Hollywood will be Hollywood themed, and the decor and the venue will match, and the food and music will twist to again match that theme."
"If we build future versions of icon, we'll just keep going around the world assuming that concept remains successful."
Star and Icon 3 are being built at the same time
With Star of the Seas coming in 2025 and Icon 3 in 2026, work is happening concurrently.
"The ships are essentially being built in parallel," which is a necessity in order to keep the ship on schedule for delivery.
While work is underway, that doesn't mean tweaks can't be made in the process.
"As we operate this with real guests over the next three, four months, that will also really help inform what we want to adjust on Star and what we want to adjust on Icon three."
A hot tub will be added
Mr. Schneider alluded to a hot tub idea that was cut from Icon due to weight concerns, but will be on Star.
"When we initially were pulling out in sea trials, we thought we were at maximum weight."
"We are not as it turned out so, we did have some room. And so the hot tub that I that painfully cut is now coming back on Star of the Seas."
