Largest cruise ship in the world docks in Philipsburg in November
PHILIPSBURG – On Tuesday, November 27 at 9 a.m. the currently largest cruise ship in the world will dock in the port of Philipsburg. The Symphony of the Seas will spend the day in port and leave again at 6 p.m. The vessel is part of the fleet of Royal Caribbean; it was delivered to the company last week Friday by STX France at the ship yard of Saint-Nazaire in the western part of France.
The Symphony of the Seas will spend its first months in the Mediterranean before it crosses the Atlantic to its future home port of Miami.
Its first tour of the Caribbean begins on November 17 but that trip does not include a stop in St. Maarten. When the Symphony sails again on November 24 it will spend two days at sea before arriving in Philipsburg. Afterwards the cruise makes stops in St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands and in the Bahamas before it returns to its home port on December 1.
The vessel’s arrival in Philipsburg will be a true spectacle. With a length of 362 meters, a width of 66 meters and a weight of more than 228,000 ton it is just a little bit bigger than its sister ship Harmony of the Seas. STX France delivered that vessel in May 2016 to Royal Caribbean.
STX France chairman Laurent Castaing said during the transfer ceremony last Friday that the difference between the two vessels’ size is 1 percent. The construction of the Symphony of the Seas took two years and the project comes with a price tag of $1 billion.
According to STX France the Symphony is more silent and also faster than its sister. It is a floating city with fifteen different restaurants plus other spaces for entertainment. There are 2,700 cabins and the vessel can carry 9,174 people – 6,780 guests and 2,394 crew members.
The Symphony offers plenty of activities for its guests – too many to list here. Among those activities are ice skating, rock climbing and even a zip line.
Prices for the cruise vary from $741 per person for an inside cabin to $2,924 per person for a suite. Click here to request a quote from Lets-Cruise.co.
Photo caption: Royal Caribbean’s new flagship, the Symphony of the Seas. Photo cruiseweb.com.
