Freedom of the Seas: Excess is success on giant new ship

Royal Caribbean International has put to rest the skeptic's question, "What's there to do on a cruise ship?"

If the line's new Freedom of the Seas is any indicator, the answer is "everything."

The 160,000-ton vessel, which debuted in late May and nudged out the Queen Mary 2 as the biggest cruise ship, , brings with it an ever widening world of whiz-bang amenities. Frankly, there's so much to do on board this behemoth, it could stay put and not sail anywhere at all. Freedom-huge and jam-packed with options-really mimics a city at sea. (If you include its elevators, you could say it even has a local transportation system.).

The $800-million ship, sailing on Caribbean cruises out of Miami and already heavily booked,, brings the cruise industry some good news. Several deaths, including a honeymooning groom who went missing from a Royal Caribbean Mediterranean cruise last summer and 12 Celebrity Cruises passengers killed in a March bus accident in Chile, along with several incidences of widespread illnesses onboard ships, have dampened bookings and caused some lines to slash prices. Two punishing hurricanes seasons in the Caribbean haven't helped either.

Super-sized ship

While in a class all its own, Freedom has all that its Voyager-class precursors have... and then some. One industry wag dubbed it "Freedom from the Seas" because, unless you bring binoculars, you won't ever see the ocean on a ship this huge.

Freedom's statistics are startling. It soars to 15 decks high. At 1,112 feet in length, if stood upright it would rise taller than New York City's 1,046-feet-high Chrysler Building and tower over Paris' 986-feet-high Eiffel Tower.

From another perspective, the ship is as wide as the White House is long and can carry 4,375 passengers with all berths filled. Add 1,360 crewmembers and the behemoth will haul nearly 6,000 souls per sailing.

It's hard to imagine anyone being bored on board. Especially sports enthusiasts. Even if you aren't an athlete, you're likely to enjoy watching other passengers take full advantage of what Freedom offers-like FlowRider, a 40-foot by 32-foot water surfing simulator, complete with bleachers. Or watch boxers sparring in the gym's first-ever-at-sea boxing ring. And the gym has scores of high-quality exercise machines without any sense of being cramped.

Many cruisers already can recite some of the ship's high points by heart: the rock-climbing wall and the ice-skating rink, for example. Even here, though, Freedom is synonymous with steroids: its expanded rock-climbing wall is 43 feet high by 44 feet wide with a central spire and 11 climbing zones.

On our recent tour of the ship, while it was docked in Bayonne, N.J., we found the vessel's interior beautifully designed and decorated — colorful and lively, without the excesses of some megaships. Lots of light pours through nearly 62,430 square feet of windows, a signature aspect of Royal Caribbean's ships, arguably the airiest afloat.

More than most mammoth vessels, Freedom really does feel like a land-based resort, offering deck after deck of diverse amenities. Nevertheless, it's surprisingly simple for a passenger on board to navigate. (Maybe we're just getting used to big ships.) Much on Freedom is, of course, oversized to accommodate its complement of passengers-its super-sized casino, for instance and the triple-level main restaurant. Most of it, though, is nicely parsed for comfort with lots of nooks and crannies. Freedom even raises the bar on bars: there are 16 of them ship wide. The heart of this ship is its 445-feet-long and several-decks-high promenade, which spans the interior of the ship. It's a destination unto itself. More like a boulevard, the promenade invokes a village street with lots of places for the locals to hang out. It boasts a malt shop; a coffee shop; a burger joint; a pizzeria; bistro; library; book store; Internet cafe; a pub or two; a romantic wine bar; a champagne bar; a Ben & Jerry's emporium; and a barber shop. Families won't want to miss H2O Zone, a water park with brightly colored sculptures that includes a circular current pool and a swimming pool fed by a waterfall. Among Freedom's more highly touted new features for adults: cantilevered whirlpools on spa deck that extend 12 feet out from the sides of the ship to vertiginously view the ocean 112 feet below.

Some material from the St. Petersburg Times was used in this report.