Back in 2014, I was cruising the Caribbean in the Oasis of The Seas, the first ship of Royal Caribean's Oasis-class, the largest cruise ships in the World.
Back then the Oasis was technically the second largest ship, as its sister ship, Allure of the Seas was built to be 50mm (2 inches) larger. Since then, a new ship of the Oasis class was launched with an extra 33cm (about a foot).
The Oasis, with 242,999 Net Tons, houses up to 6,780 passengers and 2,300 crew. You can imagine the infrastructure necessary to power this ship, serve all the passengers, and provide living arrangements for all this crew.
We had the opportunity to sign up for the All Access Tour, for $150 a person, which takes a handful of passengers on a 3.5hrs tour of several crew-only, off-limits parts of the ship, such as the Galley, the Bridge, the Engine Control Room, Laundry and more.
Photographs were forbidden in some parts of the tour but allowed in most of it, so here's an inside look at those parts:
Due to the large number of images, I broke this post in two. See the Laundry Room, Bridge and Heli Bar in here
The Aqua Theater
The first stop was the Aqua Theater. They demonstrated the mechanisms that turn it from a flat stage to a 5.4m (18ft) deep pool, and the ways the divers use to go underwater or to the 10m (32ft) diving platforms.
The Galley
The ship has over 20 galleys with a crew of over 1,100 consisting of cooks, servers, cleaners, and so on. We visited the main kitchen, that serves dinner to the six thousand passengers in two shifts on a dining room spanning three floors of the ship.
The Pantry
They need to carry enough food and drink to feed around 9,000 people between passengers and crew for seven days. The tour happened in the final days of the cruise, so it wasn't as full as it could be.
The Engine Room
Here they monitor and control the engines and power on the ship.
For safety, we weren't allowed to go to the engines, but you could see them on the monitors.
Due to the large amount of images, you can see The Laundry Room, The Bridge and The Heli Bar on part two.
don't forget to follow @burnin for more things like this (and unlike this as well)