A cruise ship is an all-in-one holiday destination, where several thousand tourists pile aboard to eat, drink and get sunburned for a week. Harmony of the Seas is the latest and largest addition, where you can lunch at a parkside cafe and jump on a zip line directly afterward.
At 1,188 feet long and 226,000 tons, the Royal Carribean ocean liner is only slightly larger than its predecessor, Oasis of the Seas. Guests and staff equal around 8,000 people, and tickets range from $1,000 to $7,000. The entire experience is guaranteed to whisk you away on what amounts to a floating Mall of America. “It gives you the sense of traveling without doing it,” says photographer Alberto Bernasconi.
When Bernasconi heard about the ocean liner, he had to see the gluttony and grandeur firsthand. He set sail on a four-day trip from Barcelona in July, just three months after Harmony’s maiden voyage. Even in the world of luxury cruises, the amenities were staggering. The ship boasts a 3-D movie theater, a casino, and “The Ultimate Abyss” slide with a 10-story drop. For the fitness-obsessed, there’s a rock-climbing wall, a sports court, and a 3-mile indoor running track. For the culturally inclined, you can see a production of Grease in the theater or a Victorian melodrama … performed on an ice rink.
And then, there’s the food. The ship is outfitted with 13 restaurants plus a robot bar. One eatery offered sustainable, “farm-to-ship” dining while another went a bit celestial with a themed menu of “sun, sea, ice, earth, fire and dreams.” Several Americans on board wanted to eat hot dogs on the 4th of July, but Harmony had that covered too with The Boardwalk Hot Dog House.
There was also the glorious Mediterranean Sea, but no one seemed to pay much attention to it. Each afternoon, Harmony docked so vacationers could wander around the many international ports like Marseilles, France and Naples, Italy for a couple of hours. But the boat was the true attraction.
Bernasconi spent most of his time wandering up and down the decks, snapping photos with a small Sony Rx100 III so as not to attract the attention of other tourists. The bright images feature the tiny vacationers almost swallowed up in the sweeping, shiny landscape. The ship looks like a world all its own. “It’s so stable, and so big, that you don’t realize you’re on a boat,” says Bernasconi. “No matter where you are in the world, you’re really somewhere else.”
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All Aboard the Most Ridiculous, Most Stupidly Huge Cruise Ship on Earth
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