Super-sized cruise ships are becoming the norm. Is there an end in sight?

Royal Caribbean's Icon of the Seas heads out to sea from PortMiami in Florida. The world's largest cruise ship will soon be joined by more behemoth ships. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

Who could forget the images that went viral last year of a cruise ship’s stern looking like a top-heavy birthday cake? So colourful and cartoon-like were the decks layered with twisting waterslides, turquoise pools and neon accoutrements galore, many commenters wondered how it could float.

If you thought the simultaneous buzz and uproar that accompanied the January 2024 launch of the world’s biggest cruise ship — Royal Caribbean’s 1,196-foot-long Icon of the Seas — was the last you’d hear about super-sized cruise ships for a while, think again.

The bigger-is-better adage is one that the world’s biggest cruise lines — Royal Caribbean, MSC, Carnival Cruise Line and Norwegian Cruise Line among them — continue to embrace, as one mega-size cruise ship after another rolls down the pipeline on its way from the shipyard to the sea.

This year alone will see a litany of new larger-than-life (and in many cases, larger than their predecessor sister ships) cruise ships traversing the world’s oceans.

In late April, Norwegian Cruise Line’s newest ship, Norwegian Aqua, began cruising out of Florida’s Port Canaveral with a passenger capacity of 3,600 — 10 per cent more than other Prima Class ships can carry. The cruise line has ordered four larger ships, carrying 5,000 passengers each, for delivery starting in 2030 (with several more Prima Class ships rolling out in the interim).

Also in April, MSC debuted its second-largest ship after Mediterranean-based MSC World Europa. MSC World America can accommodate 6,762 passengers and stretches 1,092 feet long. It sails on Caribbean itineraries out of the MSC Miami Cruise Terminal, the largest cruise terminal in the world, which is capable of processing 36,000 passengers daily on three ships.

Two more new MSC World Class ships are in the pipeline for delivery in 2026 (MSC World Asia, which will sail in the Mediterranean) and 2027 (MSC World Atlantic, which will cruise the Caribbean from Port Canaveral).

Carnival Cruise Line has plans to launch its most behemoth cruise ship class ever in 2029 when it takes delivery of the first of three ships with more than 3,000 cabins and maximum capacity of nearly 8,000 guests.

And in August of this year, the sister ship to the 7,600 passenger Icon of the Seas and the second ship in Royal Caribbean’s Icon Class, Star of the Seas, will set sail from Port Canaveral on seven-night year-round Caribbean sailings. The ship will have roughly the same maximum passenger capacity and 20 equally eye-popping decks festooned with waterslides, a water park, seven pools and 40 places to eat and drink.

Royal Caribbean isn’t stopping there. In 2026, Legend of the Seas, the third ship in the Icon Class, is slated to set sail from Fort Lauderdale. And a fourth yet-to-be-named ship is on tap for delivery in 2027.

A demand that shows no signs of ebbing

More than 37 million passengers are expected to cruise in 2025, according to Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA). The global cruise ship orderbook extends through 2036, with 77 new cruise ships scheduled for delivery, a CLIA spokesperson told CNN.

While that may sound overwhelming when it comes to choice, size and carbon footprint, rolling out bigger and better ships isn’t new.

“Pre-pandemic, cruise lines were on a tear with lots of ships on order. And then, of course, the pandemic happened and virtually everything halted,” says Cruise Critic’s editor-in-chief, Colleen McDaniel.

What we’re seeing now, she says, is what appears to be more cruise ships on order than ever before.

Cruise Critic’s users are “absolutely looking forward” to cruising on some of the bigger ships, including Star of the Seas and MSC World America, says McDaniel.

“If you look at the orderbook for cruise ships all the way through 2036, their ships on those, there are some really big ones,” she says. “The more cruisers you can get onto a ship, the more potential revenue you have from those cruisers.”

And while there’s no official passenger number when it comes to what defines a super-sized cruise ship, McDaniel says Cruise Critic generally considers ships with more than 3,000 passengers in that category.

According to CLIA, a little less than one-third (28 per cent) of all cruise ships fall into the large category, with 3,000 or more “lower berths” (indicating double-occupancy passenger capacity).

All about the flow

The key to making the experience of a super-sized ship pleasant for passengers is the flow of movement onboard as well as the creation of distinct spaces for guests to escape and make their own, McDaniel says.

“(Cruise lines) have to be able to ensure that if you are on a ship that has 6,000 people on board, that they’re still able to move passengers through comfortably and to make them feel like it’s an experience that doesn’t have that many guests on board,” says McDaniel, adding that this is something the mega ships do well.

“They make sure that the flow is good. They count on passengers to sort of find and return to spaces they really love,” she says.

Royal Caribbean’s Oasis and Icon Class ships have “neighborhoods” while MSC’s World Class ships have a “districts” concept meant to make a large cruise ship feel more manageable.

As a result, she says, the ship feels like a destination unto itself and therein lies the appeal for many passengers.

“The era of guests going on a cruise to simply get to a destination is over,” says Suzanne Salas, MSC Cruises executive vice president, marketing, eCommerce and sales.

“People are not using a cruise to get to the Bahamas. People want the cruise to have innovation, to have bars, to have dining, to have entertainment,” she says.

And the mega ships offer all that in spades.

“Yes, you are going to really wonderful places, be it the Caribbean or the Mediterranean, but the ship offers so much to do that it’s actually difficult to fit it all into the space of a week,” McDaniel says.

A formula that’s working

In the increasingly competitive global cruise industry, large providers are looking for opportunities to gain market share by driving unique travel experiences, says Jerry Roper, chief digital architect at Deloitte Digital, which analyzes travel industry trends.

“Larger ships are seeing considerable increase in occupancy and the newer experience is a draw for customers,” Roper says.

The market is changing from cruise to an integrated experience with multiple examples of cruise partnerships plus expanded, captive experiences — Royal Caribbean’s private island, Perfect Day at CocoCay, and MSC’s Ocean Cay MSC Marine Reserve, for example — that expand the cruise experience beyond the confines of the ship, Roper says. Carnival Cruise Line will open its new cruise port destination, Celebration Key, on the south side of Grand Bahama Island this summer.

Tampa, Florida, resident Jeanetta Sheppard has sailed on roughly 20 cruises aboard ships of varying sizes but says she prefers mega ships like Icon of the Seas and ships in Royal Caribbean’s Oasis Class, like Utopia of the Seas, which can carry over 5,600 passengers.

Even when a show ends up getting cancelled, Sheppard says she still finds plenty to do onboard like “being able to explore the ship and walk and all the different artworks and different floors. There’s always something to do.”

A few months ago, she cruised on a smaller ship from Tampa and was disappointed despite the service being excellent, Sheppard says.

“I told my husband, ‘Let’s go explore the ship,’ and I swear, I walked out my door and before long we’d seen it all,” she says.

‘Everything’s on track’

Royal Caribbean CEO Michael Bayley says that while the company was very optimistic with the launch of Icon of the Seas last year, they had “no clue how well-received it would be.”

The ship was not only the biggest, but the biggest hit the company has ever introduced, he says.

Bayley attributes that success, in part, to multi-generational families traveling together more and every member of the family wanting to have places on board where they can gather together and disperse to on their own.

A mega ship like Icon or Star takes a bit over two years to build, Bayley says, with the conception and design process starting some five years before the ship will ever enter the water.

Still under construction in the shipyard in Turku, Finland, as of early May, Star of the Seas is currently in its finishing stages, says Bayley.

“Her engines are in there with all the techs in there. The ship is almost finished. All of the public spaces are being finalized. So you can imagine the scale of the construction of a ship of that size, and everything’s on track and on time,” Bayley told CNN Travel.

The sea trials come next, when technicians test the ship’s major systems in the water, then it will be sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to Port Canaveral for “shakedown cruises” to iron out any issues before entering service in late August, he says.

Legend of the Seas is in the same shipyard in Finland but still in its early construction stages, Bayley says, adding that it will fundamentally be the same ship as Star with “various upgrades and some tweaks and changes that improve the product and improve the overall experience.”

Right now, he says, Legend looks like a jumble of Lego blocks.

“You look at it and think, what’s that?” he says.

The environmental red flags you can’t see

For all the fans they have in passengers eager to explore their neighborhoods and shows, water parks and thrill rides, behemoth ships also raise environmental concerns and some ports are wary of receiving the inundation of passengers.

Mega cruise ships are “essentially floating cities,” says Bryan Comer, marine program director at the International Council on Clean Transportation.

“And with each new launch, we’re seeing increases in fuel consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution and wastewater discharges,” he says.

Mega ships including Icon of the Seas, Star of the Seas and MSC World America are powered by LNG, an alternative marine fuel produced from natural gas from underground reserves, and traditional marine fuel. All three have shore power connectivity that allows engines to be switched off in port to cut down on local emissions.

The sustainability pages for Royal Caribbean, MSC, Carnival and Norwegian all state the companies’ commitments to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

But Comer says bio-methanol and renewable e-methanol are better options than LNG when it comes to long-term climate risk and achieving very low life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions.

“Even if ships eventually use bio-LNG or renewable e-LNG, any methane emissions from the fuel tanks or engines will erode some of the climate benefits, making it very challenging to achieve net-zero emissions,” he says.

The industry has the opportunity to innovate and lean on low-emission travel now, he says.

“I think it’s important to remember that the future of cruising doesn’t have to look like the past,” says Comer.

There is also the question of overtourism to consider and the impact to local infrastructure that comes with dropping thousands of tourists in ports, big and small.

“Many of the tourism destination leaders we work with tell us yes, some cruise tourism is beneficial to the local economy,” says Paula Vlamings, chief impact officer of global nonprofit Tourism Cares, a pioneer in promoting sustainable tourism.

But there’s a tipping point, says Vlamings.

Too many large ships in a port at once — or the equivalent in the form of one mega ship — can create negative impacts that “far outweigh the positive,” overwhelming the people that live there, providing little economic opportunity in return and putting a heavy burden on local resources and infrastructure, she says.

“Whether it’s cruise ships, tour operators or attractions, the travel industry must focus on protecting the places and people who call them home.”

Florida-based freelance writer Terry Ward lives in Tampa and has been on a handful of cruises of the mega-ship and smaller variety.

Terry Ward, CNN