Royal Caribbean designer reveals big changes coming with new ship
The cruise line is doubling down on family experiences with Star of the Seas.
The sequel to Royal Caribbean’s next-generation Icon of the Seas, the largest cruise ship in the world, is nearly ready to welcome its first passengers.
As the summer launch of Star of Seas approaches, the cruise line is sharing more details on how this second Icon-Class ship will differ from its sister to deliver next-level family vacations in its own unique way.
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With Star of the Seas, which sets sail from Port Canaveral, Florida, beginning in August, Royal Caribbean is positioning its Icon-Class cruise vacation experience as a super-sized alternative to Orlando theme park vacations.
Because of that, the cruise line doubled down on youth and family, elevating the ship’s family-focused areas and features — like enhancing the popular Surfside neighborhood that debuted on Icon of the Seas.
In a recent “Star Insider” video, Royal Caribbean’s Senior Director of Product Development Jennifer Goswami shared the inside scoop on just how the cruise line is improving upon the family areas of Icon of the Seas with its upcoming sister ship.
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Royal Caribbean shares inside look at Star of the Seas design process
Transcript:
Star Insider: Tell me how Star of the Seas is doing.
Jennifer Goswami: Star of the Seas is coming along great. As of this morning, she's 96% ready.
Star Insider: How is this ship different?
Jennifer Goswami: Star will have quite a few new things. We really wanted to focus on youth and family, so we redesigned our entire playscape. We added some fun to Splashaway Bay. We redesigned Adventure Ocean and gave teens a full refresh.
Star Insider: How many ships have you worked on?
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Jennifer Goswami: Personally, between refits and new builds, I've worked on about 15 ships.
Star Insider: Wow. What is one of the most difficult parts about making a cruise ship?
Jennifer Goswami: Well, there's not that much that's easy about making a cruise ship. But one of the things that is very challenging, but part of the best job, is that we start over a lot. We are very ambitious. We're very innovative. So, we go through certain processes. And we're like, no, we could do better. And then we start over.
Star Insider: How do you explain Icon Class to someone who knows nothing about it?
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Royal Caribbean’s Icon Class is designed to offer the ultimate family vacation
Jennifer Goswami: Icon really is the world's best family vacation. We have a water park. We have a pool for every day of the week. Broadway shows. We have specialty dining. And the one thing that you can't get on any other vacation is that Star, Icon, any of our ships, can bring you anywhere in the world.
Star Insider: What's the easiest part of planning a venue or neighborhood?
Jennifer Goswami: Easiest part is dreaming up what we want with it and how much fun we can have with it.
Star Insider: What's the hardest part?
Jennifer Goswami: Actually doing it.
Star Insider: I'm sure we've talked to some of our guests. What did guests say about Icon?
Jennifer Goswami: Guests are loving Icon. We've done a lot of different focus groups. We're really collecting a lot of different data through different means. And we're really excited to hear how much guests love the product.
Star Insider: What did we take from those focus groups to make different on Star of the Seas?
Jennifer Goswami: So, some of our big changes are really in Surfside. So, knowing that we're sailing out of Port Canaveral, we really wanted to double down on youth and family, so we are making our Splashaway Bay even bigger. We reimagined our playscape completely. We redesigned our teen space because teens told us they didn't necessarily think it was cool on Icon. So, we really did a lot in the family space.
Star Insider: Can you possibly give a sneak peek of the new updates you did for Star of the Seas?
Jennifer Goswami: Yeah, absolutely. Follow me. I'll bring you to someone who's working on it.
Star Insider: Amazing.
Jennifer Goswami: Let me introduce you to Daniel, who leads our special projects department.
Royal Caribbean shares sneak peek of Star of the Seas enhancements
Daniel: How are you?
Jennifer Goswami: Great. We would love to know more about some of the special projects and some of the fun stuff that's going in Surfside.
Daniel: We're reimagining the playscape to double down on family. It's going to be a super fun addition to Surfside.
Jennifer Goswami: One of the things that we really learned here, right, was that kids are a little bit older than we thought they were going to be. So, what we wanted to do is incorporate even more physical play into the playscape to kind of really make sure we're hitting on that older-kid demographic.
Thank you so much, Daniel.
Star Insider: Nice meeting you.
Daniel: Nice meeting you.
Jennifer Goswami: Great. Do you want to come see the model for Icon?
Star Insider: I would love to. How does it feel to see you and your team's ideas come to life?
Jennifer Goswami: It truly is incredible. To see products that we've dreamed about for years physically make it on board is a feeling I never thought I'd be able to have.
Star Insider: Do you have a model or type of approach for designing new ships and venues?
Jennifer Goswami: We do. As we look through how we're wanting to evolve our brand, we always think about three things: making sure that we strike the right balance between familiar, evolutionary, and revolutionary.
Star Insider: How long does it take to make a cruise ship?
Jennifer Goswami: Years. So, as we think about kind of our first in class or first of series, it can take anywhere between five, seven, or up to 10 years to really dream up what the right product will be.
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Royal Caribbean’s headquarters has a virtual lab for ship design
Star Insider: How do you know what's going to work without seeing it in real life?
Jennifer Goswami: Well, we do have several tools here within Royal Caribbean International. So, we have a virtual lab where we're able to actually walk on board the ship and see everything down to kind of the kinetic tiles in The Pearl or signage placements or galley designs, as well as we actually physically build out a lot of different products and different things as well. Do you want to see any of them?
Star Insider: I would love to.
This is so cool. So, what happens down here?
Jennifer Goswami: So, we're right now in our warehouse space. This is where we really get to build things out, test them, bring different focus groups through them. So, this is where we really build and make sure that we're getting things right.
Star Insider: Do we have anything from Icon or Star here?
Jennifer Goswami: Absolutely. Every ship we love to innovate; we love to make changes. So, actually on the carousel for Star, we're going to be introducing a new character. And fun fact about this: we actually brought a lot of different kids through and we built out quite a few. And this is the one the kids told us would be the most fun.
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