I’m standing high up on board a cruise ship when the floor suddenly opens beneath me. I’m falling, spinning and looping through the air. What’s happening? Is this my second-worst nightmare come true (don’t ask about the first).
Actually, it’s not happening to me yet, but it could do next May, when Norwegian Breakaway is launched. Because among the ship’s “recreational facilities” will be the biggest collection of water slides at sea. One of them is the side-by-side Free Fall, which not only combines the scary experiences I have just described, it’s also a race between two participants.
The Whip is another racer which sends guests twisting in a spiral to the finish line, and there’s also a family-friendly open flume body slide. They are all part of the biggest water park at sea, outdoing even the slides on the much bigger sister ship, Norwegian Epic.
The Aqua Park and Breakaway’s three-storey (should that be three-deck?) sports complex are the latest details of the 4,000-passengers ship to be revealed as construction gathers pace at the Meyer-Werft yard in Germany.
Alongside the nine-hole miniature golf course, climbing wall and basketball court – standard fare for today’s modern cruise ship – will be a ropes course copied from the one introduced last year by rival Carnival Magic. The Breakaway difference is a gangplank that takes passengers, attached to a safety harness, eight feet over the side of the ship.
Kevin Sheehan, Norwegian’s CEO, said: “I am so excited about the extraordinary recreation and the over-the-top ways to play on this incredible new ship. Our guests will have the time of their lives.”
Let’s hope none of the innovations end up like Epic’s plastic “ice rink” which was quickly stripped out after Sheehan, taking part in TV documentary Undercover Boss, realised how much effort was involved in laying it down and pulling it up again.
Breakaway will arrive in New York in early May 2013; during the summer the ship will sail seven-day cruises to Bermuda, and in the winter to the Bahamas, Florida and the Caribbean.
►Latest news of Royal Princess, another cruise ship which will debut in 2013, is that one of its entertainment venues will be a 280-seat TV studio which will host game shows, interactive cooking shows, art house films, enrichment classes, murder mysteries, and the cruise director’s daily broadcasts. The adjacent Princess Live! café will offer passengers interactive wall-mounted screens showing the ship’s position, ports of call, points of interest and international newspapers.
About the Author: John Honeywell
John Honeywell is a travel writer specialising in cruise ships and cruise travel. Winner of CLIA UK's Contribution to Cruise award 2017.
I just hope that someone who is a little merry one evening doesn’t mistake the close by funnels as one of the shoots!