Oasis of the Seas at Night by Paul Motter, CruiseMates Editor September 17, 2008
The next world's largest cruise ship will employ several new entertainment concepts.
A whole new generation of cruise ships will start presenting themselves to the cruising public beginning with the debut of Celebrity Solstice in November 2008, followed by new ships from Carnival, MSC, Oceania, Seabourn, Silversea and others. But the ultimate new ship on evertbody's lips is Oasis of the Seas from Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. Oasis will not only be the next "world's biggest cruise ship", it contains several new design concepts sure to revolutionize our view of the cruise experience.
This week, Royal Caribbean furthered its concept for "neighborhoods" for Oasis of the Seas with the introduction of its new concept for entertainment on the ship. The latest announcement is that Oasis will have several entertainment venues onboard, not just one main theater for shows meant to appeal to every passenger from eight to 80.
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With this new generation of ships, exemplified by Oasis and other designs we have seen, we are seeing "one size fits all" entertainment venues on cruise ships being replaced by a series of optional venues, each unique in presentation. Let's take a look at the diversity of entertainment options for Oasis of the Seas announced this week.
Royal Caribbean's Oasis of the Seas, will have a groundbreaking approach to entertainment. No longer will one, single theater designed to hold almost the entire passenger load in a single seating, be the only production show entertainment venue on a cruise ship. Instead, there will be a variety of various similarly-sized entertainment venues running throughout the ship, some featuring high-tech productions at pre-set show times, and others appealing to more interactive audiences, such as dance clubs, comedy clubs and a jazz clubs.
Let's start by looking at the production show venues on Oasis of the Seas. There are three vastly different show venues on the ship, and different events will happen in these venues at different times.
Opal Theater: This will be the main indoor theater showroom for production style shows. But while Oasis carries almost 6000 passengers at full capacity, almost twice as many guests as the much smaller Voyager class, this theatre will only seat the same number of guests as the Voyager-class; 1,380.
Opal Theater will feature a thrust stage and proscenium extending into the audience space for intimate and viewer interactive presentations. Entertainers will make their entrances from unexpected locations around the room, performing aerial acrobatics around and above the audience.
Opal Theater
AquaTheater: this is the most innovative entertainment venue on Oasis. This outdoor water-based stage will feature professional stage productions based on Vegas-style shows Eau by Cirque D' Soleil and Le Reve at the extravagant new Wynn hotel on the strip. A passenger swimming pool by day, at night it becomes a spectacular water stage with moving platforms above and below water for professional water acrobatic productions featuring heart-pounding aerial and aquatic acrobatics, as well as elaborate fountain shows synchronized to music and lights.
Aqua Theater - Aft end of Boardwalk
Studio B: Oasis will also have the unlikely-named "Studio B" ice rink for passenger ice skating by day and thrilling ice capade-style production shows at night. While these ice skating shows are already familiar to anyone who has sailed on a Royal Caribbean mega-ship, if you haven't seen one of the shows then you haven't seen how diverse cruise ship entertainment can get.
While the skating rink/showroom on the Freedom-class ships is larger than on the Voyager-class ships, no announcement was made as to whether the Oasis ice rink is bigger than the Freedom-class rink.
Oasis is styled with three diverse main show venues so everyone onboard will have a chance to attend each of them and see each show offered throughout the cruise. While the ship holds over 6000 guests at maximum capacity, each of the above venues will accomodate only about one-third of the ship capacity at any one time.
A logical way to look at it is like this; the Freedom-class ships are roughly 1/3 smaller than Oasis yet the the main theater and the ice rink on Oasis are the same size. The guest capacity solution is the addition of an extra show venue, AquaTheater, to take on the additional 30% any given night.
