Oasis is currently the largest class of cruise ships at sea. There are only two Oasis class ships right now. The other is Allure of the Seas. Although RCI has begun design on a third ship in the class it is not expected to come out until 2016 after the first ship in the next class is launched in late 2014. Oasis ships are big, very big. Let me explain to you how big.
According to the 2010 census, the population of Childress, Tx. was 6,105. Oasis of the Seas carries 6,296 guests. Serving those guests and manning the ship are 2,165 crew members. The population of San Augustine, Tx. is 2,108. This means that you could empty Childress and San Augustine, load all of the residents of both towns onto buses, drive them to Florida and load them onto the ship, then still have room left over for my entire family, many of my Facebook friends and a few other select people that I would probably have to hand pick. The problems that you would face of course would be do you really want to spend time at sea with the populations of Childress, San Augustine and my family. I guess it would all come back to what I always say when someone asks if I could be on such and such ship for 7 days with so and so.... "As long as I have a balcony.... yeah, I could do it."
The other issue would be that if you wanted an experienced crew you know that wouldn't run the ship aground or catch it on fire and would clean your cabin everyday you'd probably have to send San Augustine back home and keep the actual Royal Caribbean crew on board. So, honestly, only Childress is going on this cruise with me if I ever hijack Oasis. I don't actually know anyone from Childress, but I'm sure they are nice people and we would all get along well. After all, my grandmother was born there and she was a nice person. So, I am sure that the people who live there now, 100+ years later are all just like her. They probably all would enjoy hugging me and make really good chocolate and coconut pies and are competitive as hell. It's a wild assumption, but I am certain that it is accurate.
Getting back to Oasis, the ship has many extraordinary features. You have probably heard about a lot of them if you are into cruising at all. For instance, it is the first ship at sea with a living park. The Central Park neighborhood contains 12,175 plants, 56 trees and bamboo. (I don't know why they felt the need to throw the bamboo in on their fact sheet but since they obviously felt it was pertinent information, I'm passing it on to you.) Oasis has 4 swimming pools and 10 whirlpools. In a 24 hour period it's passengers consume 4.7 million pounds of fresh water. I'm not sure why the fact sheet I have measured water in weight rather than gallons. But that's the information I got, so you are going to have to deal with it. I'm sure that if I really wanted to Wow you I could find a site on the internet that would translate that weight into gallons, but I'll just leave that for you to do at your own convenience. Maybe it will give my friend and her family something to do later this week as they drive to Florida to board the ship. It would be a nice little math project for the girls. But regardless of whether the water is in gallons or pounds, it's a bunch of water.
There is an AquaTheater on board that is home to what are apparently some amazing diving and synchronized swimming performances. The artist rendition above is apparently what it would look like during a performance. There are two Flowriders and two rock climbing walls and a zip-line nine decks in the air. There is a Rising Tide Bar that moves from one deck to another as you sit at the bar. I guess if you sit down at that bar, you could get lost if you have too many martinis and get off at the wrong floor. They have a Broadway caliber performance during each cruise. My friend and her family will be seeing Hairspray on board Oasis during their cruise. There is a Boardwalk area which contains a full size carousel. It is pictured below. |
| Rising Tide Bar |
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| Boardwalk |
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| Dr. Quinn at the ships Christening |
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