Step aboard the Oasis of the Seas, one of the largest and most spectacular cruise ships ever built. 🚢 In this episode of Mighty Ships, explore how this floating city carries thousands of passengers across the seas while offering world-class entertainment, restaurants, and engineering marvels.
Mighty Cruise Ships - Season 3 Episode 1 - Oasis of The Seas From its jaw-dropping size and innovative design to behind-the-scenes operations that keep everything running smoothly, discover why the Oasis is truly a mighty ship.
Welcome to MIGHTY, the channel that celebrates the world’s most impressive machines. From high-flying aircrafts to massive ships and powerful trains, we bring you thrilling adventures, jaw-dropping feats, and the incredible engineering behind these mighty marvels. Join us for a front-row seat to the action!
There's never been anything like her.
Oasis of the Seas is the biggest cruise ship ever built.
She's the most of everything.
A floating five-star hotel, part New York, part Las Vegas.
This was worth waiting a year and a half.
A ship so big even the crew gets lost.
I stopped going to the gym room
because the ship itself is a total exercise.
Never a dull moment, darling.
It's the maiden voyage of Oasis of the Seas
and everyone on board wants to know if bigger is better.
Oasis of the Seas is the brand-new queen of cruise ships.
She's five times bigger than the Titanic
with 21 swimming pools, 24 restaurants,
even her own versions of New York Central Park
and Atlantic City's boardwalk.
Oasis can carry a whopping 5,400 passengers,
50% more than any other cruise ship.
And she needs a crew of 2,200,
more than one for every three guests to take care of them.
If it all sounds like too much,
according to Captain William Wright, it's supposed to.
The mission of this ship is to amaze the world.
We can offer our guests amenities,
amenities, venues that have never been
on part of any cruise experience on any cruise line anywhere.
It cost Royal Caribbean International
$1.4 billion to launch Oasis.
For that money, NASA could launch the space shuttle
into orbit three times.
There's a bundle riding on Oasis of the Seas' maiden voyage,
a seven-day Caribbean cruise,
because in the travel industry,
you can sink or swim depending on the reviews.
It's important for us.
It's our top priority to get it right.
Her first test starts right here,
dockside in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
It's 9 a.m.
Oasis sails in less than eight hours,
and there are still tons of supplies to load.
That's strong box.
I-95.
Those three pallets there, going forward there.
Okay, all right.
So we need to get some people in the forward.
How many trucks we've had so far?
We have 21 trucks today.
Total 21 trucks.
What's it take to stock the biggest cruise ship in the world?
Well, for a start, wine, beer, and spirits.
47,000 bottles in all.
44 tons of meat and seafood,
42,000 bed linens,
and 10,000 rolls of toilet paper.
It sounds like a lot,
but inventory manager David Adams doesn't know for sure
if it will be enough.
There's no history behind this operation.
We have never done, you know, 5,000 guests at any one time.
The crew will be loading Oasis right up to the last minute,
and for a little added pressure,
things are heating up on the other side of the terminal, too.
Good afternoon, how are you?
Welcome to the Oasis.
By mid-morning, the first of more than 5,000 passengers
are pulling up, eager to get aboard.
You're here for the Oasis, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
We want to make sure that you have all your documents on you
so you won't have to return looking for your luggage.
All the way to the end, have a ball.
All the bags are going to be x-rayed
and delivered to your rooms.
We have about 2,000 more to go.
Hopefully it'll go quick.
The ship's home is Terminal 18,
the largest cruise ship terminal in the world.
It's the size of three football fields,
and was expanded at a cost of $75 million
just to accommodate Oasis.
With 90 counter-agents hustling them through,
passengers go from curbside to gangway in less than 15 minutes.
Here's your sea pass card.
That is your searoom key.
Hi there. Yeah, it's Julie.
I want to be 100% sure that the airlines can do that,
because what worries me...
For guest services manager Julie Sherrington,
it's all about first impressions.
What I want to make sure is that the guests feel that
although it's a big ship,
we're organized and we're getting them on as smooth as possible
so they can enjoy the ship as soon as possible.
It's less than six hours to departure,
and hundreds of passengers are already boarding.
30 feet below on the dock,
the stevedores are anxious to start loading luggage,
15,000 pieces of it.
We've got to do luggage at 11.30.
The longer we wait, the longer it's going to hold us up.
All right, thank you.
It's hard to say.
Fuller.
11.
Passengers are arriving from all over the world for this cruise.
They started booking two years ago,
before Oasis was even built.
This is so cool.
Central Park is all the way up there.
They've seen pictures online, but in person,
this ship is something else.
This was worth waiting a year to have.
Hi, ladies.
Is he looking after you all right?
Julie Sherrington went to sea 16 years ago
and worked her way up from hairdresser
to Royal Caribbean's top guest services manager.
For Julie, every cruise has its problems,
and she thought she'd seen them all.
But this one surprises even her.
One of the VIP passengers, a mysterious millionaire,
is missing a suitcase packed with his favorite brand of cigarettes.
Philip Morris.
Philip Morris cigarettes.
There's a prince on board, and that's all he smokes.
If there is, I'll jump in the cab and grab them.
Okay, bye-bye.
Never a dull moment, darling.
Everything all right?
Has he got Annie to tide him over to, or St. Martin, or St. Thomas?
They've searched everywhere.
Even in Miami, they couldn't get the cigarettes.
But apparently, the private yacht is liaising with the airlines
to get this bag flown in.
The bodyguard's dealing with it.
So hopefully the bodyguard's cute.
Ten decks below in the belly of Oasis,
the main corridor leading to the ship's storage area
is nicknamed I-95, after America's busiest freeway.
And what's a freeway without a traffic jam?
Ray, bring this in the food box, please.
Congression, forklift running over somebody,
you know, the heavy traffic in the area.
And we had instances where, you know,
pilots run into a crew member.
So that's one of the things that I don't want to see.
It's rush hour down here.
Only two hours left to load the last of 1,800 pallets of supplies
before Oasis heads to sea.
Once you start panic, then you have a lot of chaos.
And we try to prevent chaos here.
Marvin, make sure you clear the part for the ice cream
so the ice cream will go right down.
While David directs traffic chaos below,
up on the main decks, passengers are heading
for the one-of-a-kind elevator bar,
strolling in Central Park or relaxing by the pool.
And by 5 p.m., right on schedule,
First Officer Matthew Scantlebury
gives the order everyone's been waiting for.
Engine room?
Yeah, we'd like power for three engines and three thrusters.
Nine decks below, the engine room starts her up.
OK, we have two engines online. We can start the propulsion.
OK, we start propulsion one by one.
With storm clouds on the horizon,
Captain Wright is eager to get out of port.
Right now we have a little bit of weather coming in from the west.
The pilot's on board.
Basically, the fun is about to begin.
Oasis of the Seas. Forward and aft.
Let go all lines. Let go everything.
The newest, mightiest cruise ship in the world
has passed her first big test.
5,400 passengers are on board
and Oasis of the Seas is leaving right on time.
But this voyage has just started.
And there are plenty more challenges on the horizon.
Oasis of the Seas.
The world's biggest cruise ship is ready to leave
Fort Lauderdale, Florida on her maiden voyage.
And Captain William Wright can't wait to show her off.
She's the most of everything.
She's the most maneuverable.
She's the most stable.
She's the safest.
She has the most entertainment options.
She has just so much to offer to our guests.
5,400 passengers are aboard
for a seven-day cruise to the Caribbean.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am more than happy to tell you
that the Oasis of the Seas is starting out
on her maiden voyage.
It's great to have you on board.
Now comes the tricky part.
Captain Wright and a harbor pilot
have to squeeze Oasis out of port
through a very tight channel.
A maneuver that wouldn't be possible
without the ship's amazing propulsion system.
At the stern are three Azapod propellers.
They can rotate 360 degrees
so the props both propel and steer the ship.
And each packs a whopping 27,000 horsepower.
Up front, four bow thrusters help with the steering.
They're the biggest ever built on a cruise ship.
Four meters in diameter.
And each one delivers ten times the power
of a Formula One race car.
Together, the thrusters and Azapods
give Oasis an unprecedented combination
of power and precision.
On deck and on shore, Oasis draws a crowd.
The residents of Fort Lauderdale
have seen plenty of cruise ships come and go.
But never one like this.
Say hi to all of our friends in the condos.
Safely out of port, Oasis turns south.
Starboard five.
It'll take her just a day and a half
to cover the 1,800 kilometers to St. Thomas
in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Okay, staff captain has the navigational command
and the con.
Oasis sails through the night
and into the next morning.
Landscape specialist Laszlo Turos
is one of the first people up and working.
It's a good idea to get an early start
when you've got 12,000 plants to take care of.
We do it by hand.
We don't use any power equipment.
Laszlo grew up in Hungary,
and he's been landscaping in South Florida
for 15 years.
But he never dreamed he'd be in charge of Central Park.
The first ever garden at sea.
I would never have thought I'd work on a ship, ever.
And it's a unique experience, and I love it.
This is all my children.
All 12,000 of them.
Look down into Central Park,
or up from the carnival-themed boardwalk
at the aft end of the ship.
And one thing is clear.
No one has ever designed a ship like this before.
The ship is actually split in two.
With a block on either side,
the center has been opened up
like a giant hot dog bun.
And the only reason that's possible
is the unprecedented width of Oasis.
Until now, the biggest cruise ships
had a width, or beam, of 38 metres.
Oasis of the Seas has a beam of 47 metres.
The beam has really been a win-win situation for us.
It's given the designers the area to work in
and create all these great environments.
But it's also given us stability, it's given us safety.
On any cruise ship, stability is priority one.
With all that's offered on board Oasis,
it's hard to imagine doing any of it
with the ship rocking and rolling about.
But that's not a problem,
thanks to that extra nine metres of beam.
Incredibly, it makes Oasis of the Seas
twice as stable as the largest cruise ship built before her.
So she's immune to all but the heaviest seas
and biggest waves.
This is the most stable ship,
not just cruise ship,
the most stable ship that I've ever been on board.
She has amazed us.
Day turns to night.
Tomorrow morning, they'll be docking in St Thomas.
But there's plenty to do between now and then.
By 8pm, in the Opal Theatre at the bow of the ship,
cruise director Ken Rush
is warming up a packed house of 1,300 for a concert.
But at the other end of the ship,
the one-of-a-kind Aqua Theatre is dark.
It's 600 seats empty.
By now, the first-ever performance
of an acrobatic water show at sea should be in full swing.
But stage manager Craig Corbett has shut it down.
Well, definitely not an easy call to make to the boss
and tell him that we can't do a show
because we have some technical problems.
Looks like we're going to have to cancel the 10.30.
There's a problem with the centrepiece pool.
It contains seawater,
so they've added chlorine to keep it clean.
Turns out that's a bad combination for the divers.
It stings their eyes so painfully they can't see or perform.
The pressure's on Craig to get the show back up and running.
We absolutely have to be good to go for tomorrow
because I can't make that phone call again.
Ladies and gentlemen,
for any guests who have the 10.30 reservations
for the Oasis of Dreams Aqua show,
I'm sorry to say that due to some technical difficulties...
It's going to be a long night for the team at the Aqua Theatre.
If they want to make a splash with the guests,
they'll have to fix the problem fast.
After two days at sea on her maiden voyage,
Oasis of the Seas is ready for her first shore visit ever,
St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
She's never sailed into this harbour before,
so up on the bridge, they're on full alert.
It's up to a local harbour pilot to direct the ship.
He knows this port better than anyone.
Without him, they could easily run aground.
That makes perfect sense to me.
It's basically steaming straight towards the radio tower.
Yes.
I like it. OK. Moving to the wing.
Put it into Aziman from there.
Everything looks good,
until they try to park this monster snug against the dock.
You're right about all that water that's being moved.
Oasis is 360 metres long,
and all that bulk is pushing a massive wave of water
against a solid concrete pier
stretching all the way down to the harbour floor.
With nowhere to go,
that wave keeps bouncing back and forth
between the pier and the ship's hull.
So as we're coming alongside,
with not a lot of clearance under the keel,
it's a classic kind of bottleneck.
It's a hitch no one saw coming,
but they've never tried docking Oasis at this pier before.
So as you're pushing the water,
because it doesn't have freedom to go in all directions,
it really creates a cushion.
Captain Wright has more than 110,000 horsepower
at his disposal,
but this calls for a delicate touch.
So you have to use a lot of power,
and as you're using the power,
then you get different currents that we're generating ourselves.
If he applies too much power,
Oasis will crash into the pier.
Too little, and she'll never reach the dock.
How are we doing?
One to go, one to go.
It's a game of centimetres.
And then...
The eagle has landed.
Oasis of the Seas is docked,
finally at her first port of call.
Her passengers can't wait to flood off the ship.
They don't have to be back on board for eight hours,
and that gives the crew time to catch up.
At the Aqua Theatre,
they've replaced the seawater with fresh water
produced by the ship,
and the divers are jumping for joy.
We were just like, we want fresh water, really.
So, I don't know, just the way they, you know,
bring in the water and everything,
that's engineers and all that, we don't know that.
It is, it's much better, yeah.
We can actually open our eyes and see where we're going.
So, yeah.
One last run through,
and tonight's show just might go on.
All right, everyone, stand by for top of show.
Stand by top of show.
I am rolling the top of the show.
Mounting an acrobatic water show is tough enough on land,
but it's never been tried on a ship at sea.
The Aqua Theatre pool is five metres deep,
three times bigger than any other pool on board a ship,
and it holds five million litres of water.
Oasis may be the most stable cruise ship in the world,
but it doesn't take much for all that water
to start sloshing about.
Even the slightest motion of the ship
can create downright dangerous conditions
for the show's Olympic-class divers.
So the Aqua Theatre pool has a rising wall
that divides it in two and calms the waters.
And that's not all.
The real stars of the show are a pair of platforms
that rise up and turn the entire pool into a stage.
They allow us to kind of transition fairly seamlessly
between a dry environment and a wet environment,
so it's not just a show about diving and swimming,
but, you know, there's other more traditional choreography
like maybe dance and all sorts of other stuff.
The shore visit will be over in just two hours.
That means executive chef Ivo John is working to a deadline.
He's got 5,400 hungry guests coming for dinner,
and they're expecting a three-course meal.
Ready for tonight? Hello, good evening.
Chef Ivo is in charge of 21 restaurants and 28 galleys
scattered over 10 different floors.
I just have to run, so I need my breath.
So checking up on each one means running all over the ship.
Adolfo, how is the Indian food today?
It looks lovely, huh?
In the course of a day, he figures he covers about 10 kilometres.
That's not just a lot of walking, it's a workout.
I stopped going to the gym room
because the ship itself is a total exercise.
Chef Ivo may be the most important man on the ship
because everyone who goes on a cruise
expects great food and plenty of it.
Is the elevator coming?
But in the ship's most exclusive restaurant,
chef Karianne von Reisfeldt is out to increase the stakes
by promising passengers the best meal of their lives.
This steak, the kopi steak, is $150 for this little piece of meat.
It's actually the most expensive steak ever served on a cruise ship.
$150 Central Park is on par with any five-star restaurant
on the real Central Park in New York.
But this one is at sea.
Guests here pay a premium of $75 on top of their cruise fare
to dine on food made by one of the best young chefs in the world.
I have complete control and complete freedom,
and so I'm fortunate enough that they're giving me all the best.
Yeah, my goal is definitely for someone to come into this restaurant
and have an experience that they've never experienced before on the ship.
What about the lobster?
It's almost 5 o'clock,
and Oasis of the Seas' first shore visit is over.
As the ship pulls out of St. Thomas,
the dining rooms are starting to fill up
while the galleys are heating up.
Down in the main kitchen,
Ibbo John and his staff of 225 prepare to feed an army.
We're sharing approximately 300 shrimps,
and we have some alternative dishes, steak, chicken breast, 150.
We're going to serve about 900 chicken masala.
We're going to serve 1,800 of the shrimp dish.
It comes down to roughly 5,000 main courses.
5,000 dinners all at once.
It's a tall order,
even for one of Royal Caribbean's most experienced chefs.
Let me show you this plate very quick, yeah?
Okay.
But he never misses a step.
Every detail counts.
And you use a whole ladle, okay?
All right, so clean up the rinse.
Now you got the right mixture,
and he's going to make the final touch over there.
In the main dining room,
more than 500 waiters hustle between tables,
serving up to 3,500 guests at a single seating.
A few decks above, at 150 Central Park,
Chef Carrie-Anne and her three cooks
have only 77 guests to satisfy.
But some of them are very picky.
What do you need?
She can't have the lobster
because first she said gnocchi.
Now she says she can have beef.
She wants two beefs?
It's a special request of a customer.
It's something I struggle with
as I'm doing a tasting menu here,
so really I've strategically planned out
each dish and the order of each dish
and also the wine pairing for it.
People don't like lobster,
which who doesn't like lobster, I don't know.
But Carrie-Anne knows that like it or not,
the passenger is always right.
Anyways, you kind of just have to
bite your tongue as a chef and go with it.
Life on a cruise ship.
Two lobster for Jacques.
After dinner, passengers head out
for the evening's entertainment.
At the Aqua Theatre,
cruise director Ken Rush is hoping
that tonight's show goes off without a hitch.
Tonight, guests will go to bed
with sweet dreams of fearless divers
and gorgeous girls swimming through their heads.
But in the early hours of the morning,
the ship's engineers are having a nightmare.
There's a problem with one of Oasis' big diesel engines.
And if it's not fixed right away,
this brand-new ship could be dead in the water.
The largest cruise ship in the world
is 60 kilometers from the nearest shore,
and there's trouble in the engine room.
Oasis of the Seas is powered by six big diesels,
and chief engineer Stalle Ludvigsen
is worried that one of them is misfiring.
Yeah, it's a brand-new engine,
but there is always that you have to do adjustments
on every engine, every cylinder.
Compression in the engine's cylinders
should all be roughly the same,
but the readings that first engineer Francois Cantin
is getting for engine number four are all over the map.
192, 192, these three values.
The average is 195.
When an engine is running right,
every bit of fuel fed into the cylinders is burned up.
But when the compression is off, it runs dirty.
You get leftover fuel,
and you see that the engine will smoke
and you see that you have oil that has not been burned.
Unburned fuel is money up in smoke,
and left unchecked,
it could cause the engine to fail altogether.
When a power plant like this one costs $26.8 million,
it's not something Stalle is going to ignore.
It can cost money, and it can also make the engine fail.
Francois adjusts the timing of the spark
that ignites the fuel.
195. It takes seconds.
The cylinder value is instantly reacted.
The pressure evens out,
and the big diesel is purring again.
Correct.
It's good.
It's perfect.
They've fixed the engine just in time
to sail into Phillipsburg on St. Martin.
It's a huge harbor, so big,
even a ship as enormous as the Oasis
has room to turn around
and back into its berth.
And Captain Wright slides her in
like he's parking a minivan at the mall.
Phillipsburg has seen lots of cruise ships,
but nothing on this scale.
For the next eight hours, Oasis's passengers
will quintuple the population of this sleepy little town,
and she plans to be back every two weeks.
That's welcome news here.
Shore visits pump big money into the island economy,
well worth the $35 million St. Martin spent
upgrading the port to attract a ship like Oasis of the Seas.
But shore visits can create headaches for the crew.
At departure time, there's always a few stragglers
who haven't made it back to the ship.
On the stern, if you see any movement
of guests approaching, let us know, please.
But when you carry 5,400 passengers...
We still have a few remaining guests
that are not yet on board.
A few is actually more than a hundred.
Any delay here can mean a late arrival
at the next port of call,
and the captain is a stickler for punctuality.
We don't like to leave them.
They should have been on board
one minute and 30 seconds ago.
Any tourists missing?
Down on the gangway,
Julie Sherrington is worried about her missing passengers.
Nine times out of ten,
it's unpredictable situations they've been put in.
The car would have broken down,
the taxi would have got lost, believe it or not.
Extreme situations.
At this point, I'm sure the captain's got his binoculars
up on the bridge and he's watching to see who's running.
Security officer, staff captain,
give us an account for every ten guests
as we are coming down towards zero.
Captain Wright's not happy.
They're 20 minutes behind schedule.
And to make matters worse,
another ship has leaped past Oasis
in the lineup to exit the port.
It's very similar to aircraft
lining up on their final approach to an airport.
We take our order and right now it's our turn.
Even though we were scheduled to come out first,
now we're actually number two coming out.
The next leg of the cruise to the Bahamas
will take the better part of two days,
even at top speed.
If Oasis falls any further down in the order,
there's no way she'll make it there on time.
And that could turn into a late arrival back in Florida
and no one wants to miss their flight home.
How many?
46.
Julie Sherrington keeps a list and a running score.
There's 46 guests missing now
and it's just after 20 past six.
Leaving it a bit fine.
It's quite a long pier to run down.
As a few more stragglers appear,
the gangway crew radios the latest count up to the bridge.
29.
Let me know for every five, countdown.
As the sun sets,
Captain Wright has a hard choice to make.
Toss his schedule out the window
or leave more than a dozen passengers behind.
Night is falling on the island of St. Martin.
But Oasis of the Seas is stuck at the dock.
A dozen passengers are still missing after the shore visit.
And the captain is running out of patience.
Nice.
As the count goes down,
Captain Wright makes his case with the harbor pilot
to allow Oasis to pull out of port next.
We're ready in a couple more minutes, Tim.
Four.
Three.
Stop.
Two.
Go.
One.
The last missing guest is finally on board
and Captain Wright wastes no time casting off.
Okay, let's get out of here.
I have to go faster, have greater speed than we otherwise would have.
Sailing at night, the bridge operates in the pitch black.
Any light could obscure the vision of the captain
or First Officer Matthew Scantlebury.
There's no chance of seeing anything out there
if you have your lights on in here.
I mean, the darker it is, the better it is.
And that view is critical, especially with Oasis picking up speed.
Now we've got five engines on line and we're well over 22 knots.
By morning, Captain Wright is pushing his big ship as hard as he dares.
St. Martin to Nassau is a voyage of over 1,600 kilometers
and Oasis has a boatload of time to make up.
All six engines are running at 85% capacity,
cranking out 115,000 horsepower,
driving Oasis of the Seas to an average speed of 25 knots
or almost 50 kilometers per hour.
That's 10% faster than normal.
If they keep this up, it will cost an extra $45,000 in fuel
to get to Nassau on time.
This mighty cruise ship is working hard.
And her guests?
They're playing hard.
This is the side of cruising that passengers never think of.
To them, time just doesn't matter.
There you go, you've got it.
But every cruise ship is a slave to the clock
and one delay in the schedule can easily cascade into another.
After 24 hours powering through the day and night,
the crew's hard work has paid off.
Oasis of the Seas reaches the mouth of Nassau Harbor right on time.
The officers meet to plot the precise course they must follow
to get to the dock.
I think this will be relatively straightforward.
Much smaller ships than Oasis have nearly run aground here.
It's one of the premier cruise ports
but it's always been a very tight port
in the sense that there wasn't a lot of wiggle room.
Royal Caribbean wouldn't even think of bringing Oasis here
if the port hadn't made drastic changes.
Oasis of the Seas is so much broader than other ships
she poses a problem for any harbor she enters.
In Nassau, she would have easily run aground
between the shoreline and the pier
if the harbor hadn't been dredged,
not to make it deeper, but to make the basin wider.
Still, docking won't be easy.
They were supposed to be finished dredging two weeks ago
but the job's not done yet.
What's more, there are some squalls moving in.
And in windy conditions,
the enormous size of Oasis actually works against her.
This is a big sailboat.
We have 15,500 square meters of sail area
on each side of the ship.
So when the wind starts blowing, it's a big factor.
A notoriously tight harbor, tricky winds,
plus all the usual things that can go wrong
entering any port.
Well, steering.
You can have steering propulsion
if you were to have a blackout at a critical point
when you're approaching shallows and the dock and whatnot.
The torrential rains hit,
but Oasis pulls dockside right on schedule.
Fore and aft is send your lines ashore.
We put the pedal to the metal.
We're almost 25 knots, and here we are.
We're on time, we're getting rid of salt,
and we're watering Central Park.
Life is good.
Docking in Nassau could not have gone better.
Even the rain clears
by the time passengers step off the ship
for the last shore visit of the cruise.
But six hours later, when it's time to be back on board,
a single pair of guests threatens
to delay departure from port yet again.
We've got some very important people missing.
I'm not going to mention any names.
The missing VIPs?
That millionaire and his wife.
Maybe he just made a quick stop to pick up cigarettes.
He said they're just in front of the ship.
Marina, they're just coming now.
Guys, hello!
We were worried about you.
It's time to pull out of Nassau.
As they turn west and set sail for home,
Captain Wright couldn't be happier
with his new ship's first voyage.
So far, no.
She's taken everything we've asked her
and performed just remarkably to everything we've asked her to do.
So I think we're all pretty happy.
Oh, yes.
Okay, we can put on some more engines,
start getting that going.
So time to head home.
For the passengers, it's the last night at sea.
And it's a safe bet no one's going to get much sleep.
While the passengers dance the night away,
the crew is already collecting their luggage
and getting ready for the big job
of turning Oasis of the Seas around for her next cruise.
After seven days in the Caribbean,
the maiden cruise of Oasis of the Seas is almost over.
It's 4.30 in the morning,
and she's entering her home port of Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
So I definitely feel at home in more ways than one.
Yeah, it actually is.
I can see my condo right over there.
Many of her 5,400 passengers are still asleep when Oasis docks,
but most of the 2,200 crew are wide awake.
It's turnaround day,
and they have to be ready to sail again in less than 12 hours.
You know, turnaround day, as we call it,
I guess you could say it's the end,
but it's also the beginning.
So we'll be busy all day.
15,000 pieces of luggage collected overnight
are already on their way off the ship.
Julie is praying their owners will soon follow.
She needs Oasis cleared by noon to make room for a whole new crowd.
Good morning. You're leaving me today.
I was hoping to have about 1,500 guests off by between 6 and 7,
but it was a bit slow, but it's Saturday morning,
so people aren't in a rush to get off.
As each room empties,
the ship's 166 housekeepers don't waste a minute.
They've got more than 3,000 beds to make
and just eight hours to do it.
For David Adams and the loading crew,
it's a whole new ballgame.
Last week was a cakewalk compared to this.
Last week we had no guests coming off of the ship.
This week we have guests disembarking with luggage.
So it's a huge difference in the whole loading process.
Three pool tables, we want to put them forward.
Not on board, by the side, by the side.
I-95 too, put it on.
Up above, thousands of guests have already left,
enough to empty most other cruise ships, but not Oasis.
There's 2,700 left on board.
This ship is still half full,
and Julie's already running on empty.
I'm going to sit down, have a cup of coffee.
I think I'm going to sit down, here we go.
Good morning.
Hi, Ricardo, do you speak Mandarin or Cantonese?
OK, I'll be with you in a second.
I'm never going to get that coffee, am I?
Even when the last passenger strolls off the ship,
there's no rest,
because now the crew has to do it all over again.
Oasis of the Seas has made an impressive maiden voyage.
Captain Wright expected nothing less.
I think we truly wowed our guests.
They had no idea what this ship actually is
until they stepped foot on board.
Her awesome size, spectacular spaces,
and first-class service make for an unforgettable experience.
We're just totally focused on making the Oasis of the Seas
the best vacation experience we can offer,
and we did that this cruise,
and we're going to continue doing that down the road,
so that's what we're focused on right now,
what the future holds.
Only the future will tell.
Oasis of the Seas has a long life ahead of her,
and the queen of cruise ships
plans to be around to astonish vacationers
5,000 at a time for decades to come.