With cruise ships continuing to evolve, it is beginning to make one stand out more than another quite difficult without constructing something very massive and launching it out to sea. Instead of enlarging the scale of a company’s vessels, cruise operators are starting to innovate primarily in boat design, ultimately destroying the rule books on marine engineering to create something more unique.
Celebrity Edge is one example of this who is currently working towards a large (but not exceptionally massive) vessel in the Chantiers d’Atlantique shipyard on the northwestern coast of France. It might look pretty standard viewing from the outside, but on the inside reveals a stunning cruise ship. Not only is it beyond glamorous, but Edge also has something very unusual within the interior of the vessel. Celebrity Cruises claims with its innovative endoskeleton design, it will make seagoing travel better than ever before.
While all previous large cruise liners relied on centuries-old shipbuilding principles that require a solid hull to hold the vessel together, Celebrity Edge was able to open sides of the vessel by shifting the spine to the center. By opening the sides it allows maximum lighting, as well as the chance to create suites with beautiful panoramic ocean views.
The entire vessel was designed using 3D technology, which enabled engineers to push all boundaries of possibilities, while still creating a vessel capable of floating and withstanding high seas weather.
“Every ship in the last decade has used 3D renderings […] to understand what they’re building,” he says. “But this was entirely done in three dimensions and it’s given us the ability to do things that you couldn’t do before.”
Celebrity claims that Edge’s first passengers will sail from Florida to the Caribbean in December of 2018. During their cruise, they will be as close as possible to ocean via cruise ship, without of course, hopping over the rail. The price to create the Celebrity Edge is a whopping $1 billion – and there is even a sister ship due to launch in 2020, named the Celebrity Apex. Although the price is quite hefty, a large invest may well be worth it, according to CNN, as 28 million passengers are expected to take to the water globally in 2018, which is up from 24.7 million in 2017.
